Assata Shakur is a Hero, not a Terrorist

Eugene Puryear

On May 2, the Federal Bureau of Investigation suddenly announced that they had placed Assata Shakur on its “Most Wanted Terrorists” list, making her the first woman to be so designated. The state of New Jersey also raised the bounty on her head to $2 million. These government actions came on the 40th anniversary of the shoot-out in which police allege that Shakur killed an officer.

It is clear that these are the vindictive attempts of the Empire still outraged that a rebel could escape, survive outside its reach, and continue to expose its long history of exploitation and oppression. The recent provocations are part of a long-term smear campaign by the U.S. government to erase her revolutionary legacy.

The FBI’s accusations target Shakur as an individual, but the labeling of her as a terrorist is an attack on all revolutionaries.

Shakur has been living in exile in Cuba for the last 29 years. So what changed in the recent days and weeks to now put her on the “Most Wanted Terrorists” list? The FBI presented no evidence against her and revealed no terrorist plots. Assata’s real crime, FBI spokesman Aaron Ford said, was that from Cuba she continues to “maintain and promote her … ideology” and “provides anti-U.S. government speeches espousing the Black Liberation Army message”—an ideology and message that the U.S. government has declared “terrorism.”

In other words, President Obama’s and Eric Holder’s FBI is charging Shakur with a political crime, the advocacy of revolutionary politics and Black liberation as “terroristic” and “criminal.” According to the outrageous “War on Terror” legal doctrines currently employed in Washington, she could be targeted for assassination. In addition, the designation of Shakur as a terrorist helps them justify the targeting of socialist Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism.”

The defense of Assata Shakur is therefore part and parcel of a general defense of the right to espouse revolutionary politics, of Black liberation and of free speech more generally.

‘I wanted a name that had something to do with struggle’

Assata Shakur was born JoAnne Chesimard, and her change in name was reflective of her desire to fully identify with the revolutionary struggles of her African heritage. Assata means “she who struggles,” her middle name Olugbala means “love for the people,“ and her last name Shakur was taken in honor of her comrade Zayd Shakur.

It is no surprise that the U.S. government now seeks to further criminalize Shakur. In fact, it is just the latest extension of the government’s counter-revolutionary COINTELPRO initiative waged against the Black liberation movement in the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, the U.S. government was so fearful of the growth of revolutionary movements that J. Edgar Hoover even declared the Black Panther Party, of which Shakur was a member, the “greatest internal threat” facing the ruling class. It used a wide range of tactics, all the way up to assassinations of leaders, to disrupt this radical movement.

It must be recalled that the government described much of the political activity of the era—in the anti-war movement, the Black freedom movement, the fight for independence of Puerto Rico, and solidarity with revolutionary Cuba, among others struggles—as explicitly criminal.

Of course, while they were locking up and killing activists and revolutionaries within the country, the U.S. government was engaged in a wide-ranging brutal and murderous campaign in Southeast Asia. They were dealing cosmetically with the terrible conditions of poverty and class oppression inside the United States, while deploying troops to suppress growing rebellions among oppressed Black, Latino and Native peoples. They were launching coups in multiple nations. They were attempting—and sometimes succeeding—in assassinating revolutionary leaders. They were backing apartheid and Portuguese colonialism in Africa.

When Martin Luther King Jr. famously said that the U.S. government was the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” he laid bare the essence of the “American Century.”

It was in this world context, which in its core features is unchanged today, that Assata Shakur grew up. Millions took part in the growing movements against the injustices of the U.S. government and Shakur was one of those millions. As a college student, Shakur did not use her degree as an “escape valve” to distance herself from the mass of poor, oppressed and exploited people. Instead, she joined—body and soul—in the fight for their collective liberation.

Out of the mass movement in the United States, a wing emerged that advocated for various forms of armed struggle as a way to expedite the revolutionary movement and give solidarity to peoples of the Third World. Assata was part of this trend—and she and her comrades were targeted for severe repression, often framed and incarcerated under false pretenses.

Assata Shakur is not guilty

Shakur was falsely convicted of having killed an officer on May 2, 1973. While driving on the New Jersey Turnpike, Assata, Zayd Shakur, and Sundiata Acoli were stopped by state troopers, allegedly for having a “faulty taillight.” A shootout ensued where one state trooper killed Zayd Shakur, and another trooper, Werner Foerster, ended up dead. Shakur was charged with both murders, despite the fact that the other trooper, James Harper, admitted he killed Zayd Shakur.

Assata had been, following police instructions, standing with her hands in the air, when she was shot by Trooper Harper more than once, including a bullet to the back. Trooper Harper lied and said he had seen Shakur reach for a gun, a claim he later recanted. He also claimed she had been in a firing position, something a surgeon who examined her said was “anatomically impossible.” The same surgeon said it was “anatomically necessary” for her arms to have been raised for her to receive the bullet wounds she did. Tests done by the police found that Shakur had not fired a gun, and no physical or medical evidence was presented by the prosecution to back up their claim that she had fired a gun at Trooper Harper.

While she was in trial proceedings, the state attempted to pin six other serious crimes on her, alleging she had carried out bank robberies, kidnappings and attempted killings. She was acquitted three times, two were dismissed and one resulted in a hung jury.

Shukur was put on trial in a county where because of pre-trial publicity 70 percent of people thought she was guilty, and she was judged by an all-white jury. Without any physical evidence to present, the prosecution had to rely totally on false statements and innuendo aimed at playing on the prejudices of the jury pool against Black people, political radicals, and Black revolutionaries in particular. Finally, after years behind bars, the state secured her conviction for the Turnpike shooting.

Terrorism double-standard and potential of assassination

Being placed on this Most Wanted Terrorist list means that hypothetically Shakur could be targeted for assassination. The legal white paper released by the Obama administration around the confirmation of CIA Director John Brennan stated that the United States would pay no attention to another nation’s sovereignty in choosing targets who they deem to be “terrorists.” The massive expansion of the security powers and the methods used in the “War on Terror” are being fashioned to target revolutionary militants.

Placing Shakur on the Most Wanted Terrorists list is also a significant attack on Cuba. On May 1, 2013, the United States refused to remove Cuba from the “State Sponsors of Terrorism” list. The next day, Assata became a “Most Wanted Terrorist.” By claiming that Cuba supports “terrorism” and is harboring a “terrorist,” the government provides itself with a pretext to continue the illegal blockade of Cuba and starve the revolution of trade.

Further, the United States does absolutely nothing to apprehend, convict or punish in any way the violent anti-Cuba groups who routinely and openly boast from U.S. soil of planning terrorist attacks on Cuba. Despite having killed thousands of Cubans, none of these organizations or individuals have ever been placed on America’s list of “Most Wanted Terrorists.”

For instance, Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative who currently walks free in Miami, publicly admitted to The New York Times that he had engaged in a campaign of fatal hotel bombings in Cuba. In 1976, Posada was a key figure in the bombing of a Cuban airliner where 73 people perished. In 2000, Posada was caught attempting to set up a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro as he spoke to university students in Panama. If successful, the attack would have killed hundreds.

Threat to political prisoner solidarity work

Ominously, by criminalizing Assata Shakur, the government has also taken a step towards criminalizing the broader movement in support of political prisoners. Many political prisoners in this country have also been alleged to be members of the Black Liberation Army. If Shakur is a terrorist simply for giving speeches in support of the BLA, what about those convicted of crimes alleged to have taken place while they were members? Will political prisoner support groups now be targeted as “supporters of terrorism” or “terrorists” themselves?

The new attacks on Shakur aim to have a chilling effect on those who seek to express their support for political prisoners. This is especially true when one considers that drone strikes and indefinite detention at Guantanamo Bay are the typical U.S. responses to those accused of terrorism.

The placement of Assata Shakur on the Most Wanted Terrorist list is another example that the U.S. government, and the capitalist class it represents, will go to any length to intimidate, repress and defeat potential threats.

Because Shakur remains a symbol of resistance, and is unrepentant in her politics, the government will never stop their attempts to smear, kidnap or kill her. But millions of people know the truth. Her legacy cannot be whitewashed or dismissed; it cannot be distorted. So even though she is in Cuba, the government remains afraid of her example. They know that while decades have passed, the conditions still exist to give birth to a million Assata Shakurs.

In Venezuela, Oligarchy Strikes Back

Félix López

Henrique Capriles, the candidate of Venezuela’s oligarchy and imperialism, has lost two presidential elections in six months. The first on October 7, 2012, against Chávez. The second, this April 14 against Nicolás Maduro. Capriles’ most recent election victory took place on December 16, 2012 when he became governor of Miranda, with an advantage of just 45,111 votes over his Bolivarian opponent, Elías Jaua. At that time, the National Electoral Council (CNE) seemed to him to be a very fair, respectable, and transparent body.

This April 14, Capriles lost to Nicolás Maduro by a difference of 234,935 votes (according the first official bulletin released). And as he made clear through his attitude prior to the elections, he is not accepting the result and he has called for national protest with cacerolazos (banging of pots and pans in street demonstrations), guarimbas (public disorders, blocking streets), accusations and refusal to acknowledge the election results, lies, and fear campaigns, denying the President-elect’s legitimacy and ignoring the majority will of the people, leading in the aftermath of the election to despicable acts of violence against some properties including health facilities, and residential, commercial, and political buildings.

Undoubtedly, the coming days in Venezuela will be tense. The irresponsible attitude of the defeated candidate and his campaign staff, which receive their orders and assistance from the U.S. embassy in Caracas, aims to create a similar climate to that of April 2002. Only this time the leadership of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces is connected to the people and is loyal to their Comandante en Jefe; the Bolivarians are more organized, the national public system of communication is more solid and Nicolás, the elected President, has told them that he is a man of peace, but that he will not allow the country to descend into violence.

The sore loser and his mentors are lashing out against the CNE. They are demanding a recount of the votes, a demand that the Bolivarians accept, confident as they are that they will emerge even better when the non-automated votes are counted, which come from the remotest areas of the country where there is majority support for the revolution. But Capriles has not requested a peaceful audit process. His fit of temper, as well scripted as his election campaign, involves creating a series of destabilization events, and in any one of these scenes something out of the ordinary could happen which could put the country’s peace at risk.

Let us not forget today’s new style of coup d’etat, which has already been rehearsed with a certain degree of success in Honduras and Paraguay; and we say “a certain degree of success” because the people’s response to the events and the reaction across the continent also point to the existence of a new way of dealing with the situation. For the Bolivarian revolutionaries this is a time to be alert, patient and firm. While the opposing temper tantrum spreads its class hatred throughout Venezuela, the people must unite around Nicolás Maduro, the continuator of Chávez’ work.

If the Venezuelan opposition had learned the rules of the democratic game (with which Chávez won 17 to 1), they would now be leading the large number of their followers (680,000 more than in October 2012) instead of calling them to battle. Capriles has the responsibility to guide and lead those who voted for him, not to take them into confrontation, as they did in 2002, attempting to take by force the power they could not win at the polls.

Having been declared President by the CNE, Nicolás Maduro has sent a clear message: “A majority is a majority and in a democracy this should be respected, we should not be looking for ambushes, pretexts to put the sovereignty of the people at risk (…); all that has one name: golpismo (coup-plotting). And that is what this is all about, the next chapter of a novel in which the recurring theme is an ongoing coup and an intention to topple the revolution by force. Because by the proper channels (with votes) they have lost again.

Voice of America Promotes Tibetan Self-Immolation

Tibet Online

On December 2, 2012, Sangdegye, an 18-year old Tibetan young man from Xiahe County of Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, northwest China’s Gansu Province, bought three liters of gasoline and some painkillers in the village grocery, and drove a borrowed motorcycle toward the nearby Bora Temple.

At 2 pm, he poured the gasoline on his clothes and set himself on fire. Although the hospital rescued him, he lost both legs forever.

Why did he set himself on fire?

“I burned myself because of the Voice of America (VOA for short),” said Sangdegye, who used to watch the VOA Tibetan-language programs, said he admired the self-immolators VOA reported on, as they were like “heroes”.

Actually, the “heroes” in the eyes of Sangdegye are also young audiences poisoned by those VOA reports.

Kimba, a regular viewer of VOA Tibetan-language programs in Tongren County, Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Qinghai Province, also watched the VOA self-immolation reports with his friend named Kumi Tenzin the day before he set himself on fire.

After hearing that the Dalai Lama would “pray for the self-immolators”, Kimba set himself alight on the Regong Cultural Square of Tongren County the next day. He did it because he “wants to be famous”.

From the screen to the reality, the Voice of America has been involved in the Tibetan self-immolation incidents. It is not only the behind plotter of the stage “heroes”, but also the “invisible killer” who grips the soul of the self-immolators.

According to the Xinhua news report, police in northwest China’s Gansu Province said on February 27, 2013 that they found Karong Takchen, a 21-year-old monk from a temple in neighboring Sichuan Province, had entered Gansu last July to organize self-immolation activities.

Karong Takchen acted under the instruction of Gantrin and Kunga, both members of the Tibetan Youth Congress, as well as Amdo, a Tibetan broadcaster for the Voice of America and a VOA journalist Palden.

He had colluded with local monks Samuten, Tashi Gyamuktso and Tentsang to recruit self-immolation volunteers in several places.

They encouraged a series of self-immolations within 20 days that led to the death of three people.

However, David Ensor, director of the VOA denied the report. Losang Gyatso, head of the Tibetan language department of the VOA claimed that “any news reports are not affected by the Dalai Lama or the Tibetan government-in-exile.”

Even the U.S. government, which has always advocated “press freedom”, stands out as shield for the VOA’s misconduct.

Victoria Nuland, spokesperson of the US State Department said in Washington that “the State Department supports the VOA’s declaration that it had not been involved in the Tibetans self-immolation incidents.”

Had the VOA really “not been involved in the Tibetans self-immolation incidents”?
How could VOA obtain first-hand materials?

Since 2012, the Tibetan Language service center of the VOA for many times first released scoops about the self-immolations taken place in Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Gansu Province and Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan. In 2013, the reports become much more detailed.

For example, as soon as the self-immolation took place in Aba on January 18, the VOA soon “obtained” the first-hand photos at the scene. On January 22, no sooner had a Tibetan burned himself in Xiahe County of Gansu than a photo of his identity card was uploaded on its website. On February 3, the VOA again released its exclusive report after a monk in the Roige County of Sichuan set himself on fire.

Although it is quite far from the scene, the VOA always has the first-hand material and immediately responds to the self-immolations.

“By Reviewing the reports about the self-immolations for the past two years, we have found that VOA always took the lead in releasing news of self-immolations, and most of them were exclusive reports,” a netizen commented on the website.

Could the VOA foretell the occurrence of self-immolations? Or how could it respond to them in such a short time with photos and exclusive reports？Didn’t it claim that all news in the Tibetan areas “has been strictly controlled”?

People could feel the political inclination of the VOA through every word of its reports.

The information source of the VOA is unbalanced either from the macroscopic or microcosmic point of view.

“Both its blurred information and careful choice of words are deliberate with ulterior motives,” said Song Ying, a scholar of the Beijing Foreign Studies University who has been carrying out an analytical research on the discourse of the VOA reports since 2005.

For example, she talked about a VOA report on February 26, 2013 that all quotations used were from the Tibetan activists without any words from the Chinese government. It intentionally misled readers to believe that the Tibetans “had no other choice but burned themselves as they were in a great dilemma”, and claimed that the self-immolation “is permissible by the Chinese law”.

“VOA committing crimes against the Chinese, especially Tibetans”

In order to help the U.S. government gain maximum political interest the VOA collaborates with the Dalai clique to distort truth, which is the only reasonable explanation for the VOA’s act.

The VOA stated to launch the Tibetan Language Channel in 1991. As China is becoming more powerful, the Dalai clique soon became the only bargaining chip for the U.S.government to contain China.

Obama vs. Palestine & Syria

David Sole

President Barack Obama’s four-day visit to Israel, the first since his first election in 2008, began March 20. Worldwide media attention was focused on what the powerful U.S. leader would tell its client regime and settler state. Overall, reports indicated worse news for the beleaguered Palestinian people and for sovereign Syria.

Obama took the gravest step against Syria just before boarding his plane to fly to Jordan on March 22, when he met privately with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. During that meeting Obama succeeded in pressuring Netanyahu to call Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and apologize for the 2010 Israeli attack on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara. In that raid Israeli troops killed eight Turkish citizens and one Turkish U.S. citizen who were trying to bring supplies to the blockaded people of Gaza.

Until his meeting with Obama, Netanyahu had strongly resisted any apology or compensation to Turkey. For its part Turkey had withdrawn its diplomats from Israel and brought criminal charges against four Israeli military officers involved in the action. Obama forced the Israeli apology to ensure continued Turkish-Israeli cooperation in the war against Syria’s government and people. The New York Times admitted this on March 23 when it wrote that it “would help a fragile region confront Syria’s civil war.”

Military aid to Israel

Right off the plane on March 20, Obama inspected a battery of Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system. This high-tech weaponry, designed to shoot down short-range missiles, was paid for by $1 billion from U.S. tax dollars. Recent reports by experts challenge Israel’s claims that the weaponry is 86 percent effective. An extensive report in the March 21 New York Times questions whether the actual figure is closer to 10 percent.

Obama also told the Israelis that he was open to a new 10-year military agreement. The U.S. has financed Israel to the tune of billions of dollars every year since the Zionist state’s creation in 1948.

On March 21, Obama spoke to Israeli students and then visited Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. In a sharp slap in the face to the Palestinian people, Obama “urged Palestinians to drop their demand for a freeze in Israeli settlement-building as a precondition for peace talks.” (bbc.com, March 23) Instead the U.S. president told the Palestinians to return to negotiations with the Israelis while more and more Palestinian land falls under Zionist control.

The Palestinian response was heard in several ways. Abbas refused to withdraw the demand for an end to new settlement construction in remarks to reporters with Obama standing next to him. When Obama spoke to a crowd of young Israelis, an Arab-Israeli student in the crowd shouted out for an end to occupation and for the liberation of Palestine, before being dragged out of the auditorium. Meanwhile, several rockets from Gaza exploded in the town of Sderot in southern Israel.

On March 22, his final day in Israel, Obama laid a wreath at the grave of Theodore Herzl (1860-1904), the founder of the Zionist movement. This action by Obama, as the leader of U.S. imperialism and modern neocolonialism, was appropriate since Herzl had spent years meeting with every colonial leader in his effort to get backing for his movement. Zionism was never envisioned as a progressive movement to fight anti-Semitism and racism. It was sold to colonial powers as a force that could help keep down oppressed colonized peoples.

Encouraged by Obama’s public support for Israeli oppression and occupation, WAFA, Palestine News & Information Agency, reported March 23, “Israeli settlers Saturday smashed windows of cars belonging to Palestinians travelling on roads near Nablus” on the West Bank.

Imperialist assault on Syria

On March 22, Obama moved on to visit Jordan’s King Abdullah II as part of strengthening the imperialist front in the war against the Syrian government. Jordan has taken in an estimated 460,000 Syrian refugees from the fighting, which has severely stressed the small nation’s economy. To keep this ally happy, Obama pledged to give Abdullah an additional $200 million in aid.

The U.S. has been training anti-Syrian rebels in a CIA training camp on the Jordanian side of the Syrian border. On March 14, a Reuters article published comments by a “senior” officer of the counterrevolutionaries that “most of the first contingent of Syrian rebels taught by U.S. army and intelligence officers in Jordan to use anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry have finished their training and are now returning to Syria to fight.”

Official U.S. policy — obviously constructed on lies — has been that it will not directly intervene in Syria. Following charges by the Syrian government that counterrevolutionary terrorists had used chemical weapons in fighting near Aleppo, Obama tried to turn the charges against the Damascus government. While in Israel on March 20, he hypocritically said the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be a “game changer” and could provoke open U.S. intervention.

The U.S. had just succeeded in getting a Syrian-born, long-time U.S. citizen, Ghassan Hitto, named as the “rebel” coalition’s prime minister at a meeting in Istanbul on March 18. Far from cementing together the dozens of disparate contra fighters, many of whom are extremist terrorists who kill people based on religious affiliations, it provoked the resignation of coalition president Moaz Khatib on March 24.

In addition, the commanders of the killers in the so-called Free Syrian Army said they would not fight under Hitto.

The disarray among the contras makes it even more likely that the imperialists — the U.S. and some of the NATO military powers including Turkey and also Israel — will intervene directly.

Kerry’s Middle East Tour Prepares Endless War for Afghanistan, Syria

Alex Lantier

US Secretary of State John Kerry left Kabul for Paris yesterday, after a Middle Eastern tour to Jordan and Afghanistan to plan broader wars across the region. In Paris today, he is expected to discuss arming opposition forces fighting Washington’s proxy war against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with French officials.

During his unannounced two-day visit in Kabul, Kerry held a joint press conference with President Hamid Karzai, the leader of the American puppet regime in Afghanistan. He announced that US forces will remain in Afghanistan beyond the Obama administration’s 2014 withdrawal deadline.

Kerry and Karzai both called upon the Taliban to open an office in Doha, the capital of the US-allied Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar, from which location they could negotiate with Karzai. To encourage the Taliban to accept the offer, Kerry stressed that the Taliban should not count on a US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Currently there are some 100,000 occupation troops in the country, including 66,000 US forces. American officials have reportedly discussed a lasting presence of roughly 12,000 US and European troops in Afghanistan.

Kerry also offered to hand over formal control of Bagram prison to the Karzai regime. This was apparently designed to allow Karzai to posture cynically before the Afghan people, claiming he is restoring Afghan sovereignty over the country. The US-controlled prison, notorious for the killings and torture of Afghan resistance fighters imprisoned there, has become a hated symbol of the NATO occupation.

This action was apparently aimed at smoothing US relations with Karzai, strained after the latter criticized Washington for “colluding” with the Taliban.

The handover of Bagram has nothing to do with ending US rule in Afghanistan, however. Karzai made clear that Washington would continue to effectively control detainees at the prison, promising that an Afghan review board would consider intelligence provided by US authorities before deciding to release prisoners. Afghan officials also reportedly gave “private assurances” that no “enduring security threats” would be released from Bagram.

By threatening to continue the bombing and occupation of Afghanistan, Kerry is pushing the Taliban leadership to negotiate a political settlement with Karzai that would include a lasting US protectorate in Afghanistan. Washington’s control would rest upon US air superiority and a permanent occupation force stationed in the country. It would be based on collaboration between Washington, the warlords backing Karzai and the Islamic fundamentalist leadership of the Taliban to suppress resistance to foreign occupation by the Afghan people.

The American ruling class sees Afghanistan as a launching pad for US operations in Central Asia, such as the hundreds of drone strikes Washington has launched in Afghanistan and neighboring countries. The New York Times commented, “The Obama administration has made a priority of reaching an agreement on an American military presence here after 2014 that will allow the United States to keep tabs on Iran and Pakistan.”

Significantly, Kerry had hoped to visit Pakistan during his tour, but decided against it. There is deep anger in that country over US drone strikes and the collaboration of the Pakistani army and intelligence with Washington. (See also: “UN says US drone war in Pakistan violates international law”)

Instead, Kerry reportedly met privately with Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani in the Jordanian capital of Amman on Sunday, before traveling to Afghanistan.

Washington’s neo-colonial war in Afghanistan—like its proxy war in Syria, Iran’s main Arab ally—aims at establishing US imperialist hegemony over the Middle East and Central Asia. This involves not only controlling and manipulating the conflicts in Pakistan and broadly across Asia unleashed by the Afghan war, but also organizing regime change in Iran, an oil-rich state that Washington sees as the main obstacle to its interests in the Middle East.

Kerry’s visits both to Amman and to Kabul were clearly bound up with Washington’s war drive against Iran and its regional allies. As the Secretary of State left Jordan for Afghanistan, the Associated Press (AP) reported that the US is working in Jordan with Britain and France to train Syrian opposition fighters. These fighters then cross the border into southern Syria to carry out attacks.

The AP wrote that these forces were “secular” forces, apparently in an attempt to distinguish them from Al Qaeda-linked forces that provide the bulk of the Syrian opposition’s fighting forces. The wire service’s description of these forces made clear, however, that they are largely army deserters recruited on a religious or tribal basis.

It wrote, “The training has been conducted for several months now in an unspecified location, concentrating largely on Sunnis and tribal Bedouins who formerly served as members of the Syrian army, officials told the Associated Press. The forces aren’t members of the leading rebel group, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which Washington and others fear may be increasingly coming under the saw of extremist militia groups, including some linked to Al Qaeda.”

The AP report came a day after the New York Times published an extensive report detailing how Qatar, Jordan and Saudi Arabia helped finance and arm the Syrian opposition for over a year. This took place under CIA supervision and after General David Petraeus, the CIA director until last November, “prodded various countries” to arm the Syrian opposition. The White House was regularly briefed on these arms shipments. (See also: “The CIA war against Syria”)

On Monday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest confirmed that the US “has provided some logistical nonlethal support that has also come in handy for the Syrian rebels.”

With Kerry now headed to Paris to discuss stepping up the war in Syria, the Arab League also joined in the campaign against Assad yesterday, formally seating Syrian opposition officials as Syria’s representatives to the Arab League.

Qatari emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani officially welcomed Moaz al-Khatib, the former imam of Damascus’ Umayyad Mosque who recently stepped down as the Syrian opposition’s official leader, to represent Syria. Al-Khatib was replaced by Ghassan Hitto, a US-based information technology executive. This move apparently aimed to present the opposition as less Islamist and reliant on Al Qaeda-linked forces from Libya, Iraq and Chechnya.

Al-Khatib’s speech at the Arab League made no secret of the Syrian opposition’s continuing ties to far-right Islamist elements. Denouncing Assad and supporting Hitto, he defended the presence of foreign jihadist fighters among the anti-Assad militias—though he awkwardly tried to downplay this by suggesting that if Islamist fighters’ families needed them at home, they should return to their families.

Was Life for Iraqi Women Better Under Saddam?

Rania Khalek

In March 2004, President George W. Bush gave a speech to an audience of 250 women from around the world to commemorate International Women’s Day. His speech focused on the women of Iraq and Afghanistan who he proudly proclaimed were “learning the blessings of freedom” thanks to the United States. “Every woman in Iraq is better off because the rape rooms and torture chambers of Saddam Hussein are forever closed,” said Bush.

But on the tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq—an illegal war that killed over one million Iraqis, created 4.5 million refugees, provoked sectarian strife that was for centuries virtually non-existent and empowered religious zealots—women are anything but “liberated.”

Iraq Before the Invasion

Contrary to popular imagination, Iraqi women enjoyed far more freedom under Saddam Hussein’s secular Ba’athist government than women in other Middle Eastern countries. In fact, equal rights for women were enshrined in Iraq’s Constitution in 1970, including the right to vote, run for political office, access education and own property. Today, these rights are all but absent under the U.S.-backed government of Nouri al-Maliki.

Prior to the devastating economic sanctions of the 1990s, Iraq’s education system was top notch and female literacy rates were the highest in the region, reaching 87 percent in 1985. Education was a major priority for Saddam Hussein’s regime, so much so that in 1982 Iraq received the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) award for eradicating illiteracy. But the education system crumbled from financial decay under the weight of the sanctions pushing over 20 percent of Iraqi children out of school by 2000 and reversing decades of literacy gains. Today, a quarter of Iraqi women are illiterate, more than double the rate for Iraqi men (11 percent). Female illiteracy in rural areas alone is as high as 50 percent.

Women were integral to Iraq’s economy and held high positions in both the private and public sectors, thanks in large part to labor and employment laws that guaranteed equal pay, six months fully paid maternity leave and protection from sexual harassment. In fact, it can be argued that some of the conditions enjoyed by working women in Iraq before the war rivaled those of working women in the United States.

It wasn’t until the 1991 Gulf War and U.S.-led economic sanctions against the regime that women’s rights in Iraq began to deteriorate. The sanctions in particular had devastating consequences for the one million Iraqi civilians who slowly starved to death, over half of them children.

As Human Rights Watch points out, “Women and girls were disproportionately affected by the economic consequences of the U.N. sanctions, and lacked access to food, health care, and education. These effects were compounded by changes in the law that restricted women’s mobility and access to the formal sector in an effort to ensure jobs to men and appease conservative religious and tribal groups.”

Then came the invasion.

What “Liberation” Looks Like

The U.S.-led invasion in 2003 exacerbated the desperation of Iraqi women and girls to unprecedented levels. It left them vulnerable to an underground sex industry and subject to severe methods of punishment by an increasingly religious post-invasion government.

A comprehensive examination into sex trafficking by the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI)explains, “Ousting the government and all systems of security left Iraqi cities vulnerable in the following months to gangs of men who kidnapped women and girls and assaulted them sexually.”

Many of the kidnapped were sold to nearby countries, as demonstrated in 2004 when houses used to “store” girls before they were purchased were uncovered. Though it is difficult to determine exactly how many women have been victims of sex trafficking, OWFI estimates that in the first seven years after the invasion, 4,000 Iraqi women and girls went missing, twenty percent of whom were under the age of 18.

As the country’s leadership took a turn toward religious fundamentalism – several mass killings of prostitutes and suspected sex workers followed. As the occupying power at the time, the United States was legally responsible for protecting and upholding the human rights of Iraqi civilians. It failed miserably.

Widows and Orphans

The loss of husbands and fathers over the last decade has left 2 million Iraqi women widowed. Furthermore, estimates put the number of orphaned Iraqi children at 5 million, most of whom are growing up without an education. As a result, says OWFI, there are now “more than 3 million women and girls with no source of income or protection, thereby turning them into a helpless population” and making them vulnerable to “trafficking, sexual exploitation, polygamy, and religious pleasure marriages.”

OWFI’s President Yanar Mohammed told this writer that the greatest tragedy has been the impact on the youngest generation. “We’ve lived through two decades of war,” she said. “Eventually we reached a point where the young ones have no good memory of life in Iraq.”

Women’s Rights Set Back 70 Years

Unsurprisingly, most U.S. media outlets have failed to accurately cover the deterioration of women’s rights in Iraq. More often than not, they point to a post-invasion constitutional quota, which reserves 25 percent of Parliament seats for women, as proof that Iraq is on the path to gender equality. But, as Haifa Zangana put it in the Guardian, “this token statistic has repeatedly been trotted out to cover up the regime’s crimes against women.”

Nadje Al-Ali, author of the book “What Kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq” is also critical of the quota. She argues that the women who benefit from it are “the sisters, daughters and wives of the male conservative leaders” who vote just like them and do not represent ordinary Iraqi women.

Meanwhile, there is just one female minister serving in Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki’s government. Her name is Abtihal Alzidi and she is the Iraqi Minister for Women’s Affairs. But don’t let her gender fool you. Alzidi is an outspoken proponent of misogyny, once telling a local news outlet:

I am against the equality between men and women…If women are equal to men they are going to lose a lot. Up to now I am with the power of the man in society. If I go out of my house, I have to tell my husband where I am going. This does not mean diluting the role of woman in society but, on the contrary, it will bring more power to the woman as a mother who looks after their kids and brings up their children.

Al-Ali argues that the Iraq War set women’s rights back 70 years. Given the above statement, it’s impossible to disagree.

Saddam’s Rape Rooms Make a Comeback

Human Rights Watch (HRW) declared in a 2011 report that “life in Iraq is actually getting worse for women” and accused the U.S.-backed Iraqi government of “violating with impunity the rights of Iraq’s most vulnerable citizens, especially women and detainees.”

According to HRW’s 2013 Iraq Report, the torture and rape of women detainees in pre-trial detention has continued with impunity under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government, but the United States is partly responsible. “The failure of the US and UK to hold their troops accountable for abuses in detention and extra judicial killings during their presence in the country seems to have paved the way for the current government to make excuses for abuses, failure of law and order, and lack of accountability,” argues HRW.

Conclusion: the War is Not Over

As for the U.S. declaration that the occupation of Iraq is over, OWFI’s president strongly disagrees. “We know that poverty is here to stay, Islamist extremism is here to stay and women are the targets of this whole deal. There is absolutely no vision of when it will end and who will help us,” laments Mohammed, before adding some damning words in response to President Bush’s proclamation that he “liberated” the women of Iraq.

“[Bush] empowered the extreme religious parties to turn women into second-class citizens. Women are living in extreme poverty and are subject to Sharia law. The same powers that started 9/11 in the U.S., the same Islamists are now ruling in Iraq,” she said.

“This is his legacy.”

 

*Rania Khalek is an independent journalist whose work has appeared in The Nation, Salon and In These Times and elsewhere. Visit her blog Dispatches from the Underclass and follow her on Twitter @RaniaKhalek.

What You Won’t Hear About the #IraqWar in Establishment Media

Rania Khalek

As we mourn the tenth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, the establishment media elite seem to agree that the Iraq war was a mistake. But that is about as far as they will go in their criticism.

Meanwhile, the mainstream rarely reports on the suffering of the Iraqi people or the U.S.-led pillaging of their resources and infrastructure. The press can’t even get the number of Iraqi deaths right despite knowing the exact amount of US soldier’s killed. And I have yet to see any establishment voices use the words “illegal” or “war crime” to describe the mass slaughter that was launched in 2003. In fact, much of the focus over last few days has been on whether or not the war was “worth it” for the United States.

So, for those interested in what the media isn’t saying about the Iraq war, I highly recommend checking out Muftah’s special Iraq war issue, featuring articles by some of my favorite writers.

Iraq: The Cradle of Civilization & Graveyard of Imperial Intentions by Roqayah Chamseddine 

Ten Years After Iraq, Media Advocates For War Are Still With Us by Murtaza Hussain

The Iraq War & the Desperation of Capitalism by J.A. Myerson

The U.S. Invasion of Iraq: Strategic Consequences for Iran by Muhammad Sahimi

Dances of Resistance from Iraq to Palestine by Bilal Ahmed

I also contributed a piece examining the deterioration of women’s rights under the US-backed post-invasion Iraqi government (spoiler alert: The US-backed regime makes Saddam Hussein look like a feminist!).

Was Life for Iraqi Women Better Under Saddam? by Rania Khalek

And, in case your interested, I created a Storify showing the sickening attitudes publicly expressed by the architects of the Iraq War. Ten years on, these war criminals have no regrets and would do it again if given the opportunity.  Can you imagine any other scenario where a violent criminal could get away with mass murder and then brag about it to the national press?

Capriles Radonski Announces His Candidacy with Attacks on President Chávez and His Memory

With Electoral Defeat Looming Capriles loses the plot. The United States abandons any hope of defeating Chavismo on April 14th

Henrique Capriles Radonski was crushed in his bid for president of Venezuela to President Chávez on October 7, 2012. Last night he announced his futile candidacy to run again against Interim President Nicolás Maduro in the April 14 presidential elections with an attack on President Chávez, his family and the Venezuelan people.

Arturo Rosales vía Jamahiriya News Agency

Last night Henrique Capriles Radonski offered a press conference around 0745pm local time to accept or decline his nomination to the candidate for the right wing parties in the upcoming Venezuelan elections on April 14th. His announcement was covered on all Venezuelan television stations.

However, before announcing his decision he made a few “remarks”. These “remarks” were in fact a deliberate attempt to cause a storm of indignation in the Venezuelan population currently in deep mourning for the passing of President Chávez. They consisted of a series of hate-filled observations with no backing evidence in which he:

• Insulted the mother, family, sons and grandchildren of President Chávez.
• Stated that President Chávez had died much earlier in Cuba and that the government and family of Chávez had played a political game with Chávez’s body, concealing it, to give presidential candidate Maduro “more time” to embark on and prepare his election campaign.
• Accused interim President Maduro of taking acting classes in Cuba to help his campaign.
• Stated coldly, “Chávez is gone and he won’t be back” in the face of a people whose beloved president is with them now more than ever.Note: In his late night television program, La Hojilla, Mario Silva responded to Radonski’s statement last night with,  “¿Qué quiere decir?…..Todos somos Chávez” ¡Somos todo el Chávez! (“What does he mean? We are all Chávez!) Silva’s response follows the ubiquitous slogan Chavistas have created for themselves, “Yo Soy Chavez.”
• Insulted the Supreme Court, stating their decision to transfer the presidency to the Vice President was unconstitutional since Chavismo controls all the state powers from the Executive. Once again the only evidence of this rumor is in the opposition anti-Chávez media campaign now running for 15 years.
• Insulted the President of the National Electoral Council of playing politics in her remarks when announcing the date of the elections.
• Insulted the Minister of Defense calling him a “national disgrace” after he had declared his support for President Chávez, his memory and the Venezuelan people in their time of pain and mourning.
• Implied that everything had been planned by the government from the announcement of Chávez’s death to the declaration of the elections date.
• As proof of this Capriles maintained that all the election posters for Maduro had been ready weeks ago to give him advantage without presenting any evidence whatsoever.

Political speeches are fine but when it comes to insulting the late President’s family accusing them of “playing politics” with Chávez’s corpse, this goes beyond the pale. It was not simply bad taste but it also might have caused riots, looting, killing and burning in the streets as extremely sensitive Chávez supporters could have reacted to this repugnant calumny.

But this is what Capriles and his right wing fascist / Neo Nazi cohorts want since they know that they will be wiped from the political map on April 14th when chavista voters will go in their masses to the polls to carry out the last order of Chávez on December 8th – vote for Nicolás Maduro as President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

The Reply

Interim President Maduro slammed Radonski for the incendiary remarks he made last night and called for peace, discipline and calm among all Venezuelan people.

In less than hour interim President Maduro was on state TV replying to Capriles’ shameless diatribe explaining the reasons why Capriles had little option but to act in this way. He told us that the aim is to destabilize the country, spark violence which could lead to an intervention in the country. The only thing wanted by Capriles’ was for his US imperialist backers to gain control of the largest oil reserves in the world, even surpassing those of Saudi Arabia.

Maduro appealed for calm saying this was tantamount to a “declaration of war” against the memory of Chávez and the Venezuelan people but the response would be to defeat this provocation with PEACE, firmness, cohesion with the Constitution leading the way.

He also stated that the Chávez family would be taking legal action against Capriles for his remarks which were a defamation of the character of the family of Chávez and of the late President’s memory.

“When the country is in flames, Capriles will be on his private jet on his way to the US”, stated a visibly angry Maduro. He also asked the private media not to show automatic solidarity with Capriles in this disgusting scenario; otherwise they would be regarded as direct collaborators of this plan to destabilize the country.

The interim President put the armed forces on alert in case of any forays by disgruntled citizens into the streets so as to maintain the peace in the nation.

Capriles will postulate himself this afternoon at the National Electoral Council but with no supporters present since they are “mourning”. He is sure to receive a frosty reception.

With election defeat looming it looks as if Capriles handlers in Washington are giving him his orders and have him on a short leash. To all intents and purposes the gringos abandon – yet again – any hope of election victory and just try to sow hatred and dissention in the country with the goal of destabilization.

Other matters

After dealing with Capriles’ planned fiasco of destabilization Maduro went on to announce the following:

• Chávez’s remains will be moved to the Military Museum in the populous 23 de Enero barrio on Friday morning. This is extremely symbolic as it was from here that Chávez directed his almost quixotic military rebellion on February 4th 1992.
• Chávez’s offices and rooms in Miraflores Palace where he lived and worked will be converted into a museum and left as they were on Chávez’s last day there on December 9th.
• The National Assembly will start the process of a Constitutional amendment on Tuesday March 12th which will permit Chávez to be finally laid to rest next to his mentor and guide, the Liberator Simon Bolivar, in the National Pantheon. This has been demanded by the Venezuelan people all over the country and so the chavista deputies will carry it out.

Today, March 11th, I went to Los Próceres with the idea of standing in line to try and pay my respects to President Chávez in the Military Academy. At 0900am I arrived at the corner where the Procurator General’s building is located on Avenida de Los Ilustres, facing the bridge that crosses the freeway leading to the Bandera bus passenger terminal. The line to see the President lying in state stretched over the bridge and past the bus station and further into the distance down the Avenida Nueva Granada. This was about a mile, plus another mile to the start of Los Próceres, then another 2.5 – 3 miles to the Military Academy. At least an eight hour wait – and this on the sixth day of mourning.

The whole area was buzzing with activity – music, hawkers, giant TV screens, people gathering in groups to talk and many people outraged with Capriles disrespectful performance last night. This will only steel the resolve of the chavistas “to bring everyone out on April 14th to vote and crush this slimy rich boy from the high bourgeoisie like the cockroach he is for disrespecting our President and his family”, as one angry patriot told me.

We will be publishing more on Bolivar and his heritage and how Chávez revived Bolivarianism and formed it into a social movement which was then transformed into Chavismo for application in the modern day multi-polar world.

¡Chávez vive, la lucha sigue!

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AXIS OF LOGIC COLUMNIST, ARTURO ROSALES

© Copyright 2013 by AxisofLogic.com

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Missing from the Drone Debate: Americans Aren’t the Only Ones Worthy of Human Rights

Rania Khalek

As the debate over drone strikes and targeted killings finally breaks into the mainstream, there remains a key aspect of the kill program that has been virtually ignored even by its most ardent detractors.

I’ve noticed that many of the people outraged over the kill program focusing solely about its potential impact on American citizens, which implies that it’s perfectly acceptable to subject non-Americans to due-process free execution. But what about the non-citizens at the other end of our drones and signature strikes? Don’t they deserve basic rights, too?

And let’s get real, we’re not talking about Canadians or Europeans, but ”Yemeni parents, Pakistani uncles and aunts, Afghan grandparents and cousins, Somali brothers and sisters, Filipino cousins”, as Falguni Sheth puts it. In other words, we’re routinely killing brown “others” whose lives have little value in the eyes of the American public. Otherwise there would have been an outcry following the a December 17, 2009, US strike in Yemen that wiped out entire families:

Among those killed that day were 22 children. The youngest, Khadje Ali Mokbel Louqye, was just one year old. A dozen women also died, five of them reportedly pregnant.

Yet these numbers mask the many individual families annihilated in the attack. Mohammed Nasser Awad Jaljala, 60, his 30-year-old wife Nousa, their son Nasser, 6, and daughters Arwa, 4, and Fatima, aged 2, were all killed.

Then there was 35-year old Ali Mohammed Nasser Jaljala, his wife Qubla (25), and their four daughters Afrah (9), Zayda (7), Hoda (5) and Sheikha (4) who all died.

Ahmed Mohammed Nasser Jaljala, 30, was killed alongside his 21-year old wife Qubla and 50-year old mother Mouhsena. Their daughter Fatima, aged 13, was the only survivor of the family, badly injured and needing extensive medical treatment abroad.

The Anbour clan suffered similarly catastrophic losses. Abdullah Mokbel Salem Louqye died with his wife, son and three daughters. His brother Ali Mokbel Salem Louqye’s seven-strong family were also wiped out.

Sheik Saleh Ben Fareed, a tribal leader, went to the area shortly after the attack and described the carnage to Al Jazeera reporter Scahill: ‘If somebody has a weak heart, I think they will collapse. You see goats and sheep all over. You see heads of those who were killed here and there. You see children. And you cannot tell if this meat belongs to animals or to human beings. Very sad, very sad.’

Our government has been terrorizing these communities for quite some time and aside from a handful of journalists and human rights organizations, barely anyone cared. But as soon as Americans became a target, things changed. And that’s not just speculation (emphasis mine):

A majority of Americans [59 percent] support using drones to kill high-level terrorism suspects overseas, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll. But support drops [to 43 percent] when those suspects are American citizens.

Meanwhile, people laughed yesterday when Rand Paul expressed concerns that Americans could be targeted while “eating dinner” at home or “at a cafe.” But this isn’t a difficult scenario to imagine considering the routine targeting of funerals, weddings and even rescuers who come to the aid of victims in the aftermath of a (the infamous “double-tap“). As the Huffington Post points out:

Newspaper reports have identified signature strikes as the predominant type of drone attack. And because this type of strike targets behavior, such as clustering in groups, rather than individuals, they are prone to kill civilians.

A study last year by human rights researchers at Columbia University found that signature strikes make reliable tallies of the drone civilian death toll impossible to count. Even without deaths, the report added, the practice results in “constant fear” among citizens in Pakistan and Yemen, since they can never reliably know if their “behavior will get him killed by a drone.”

Children have been traumatized by this experience, researchers have reported — both by witnessing drone strikes and by living where they are common and seemingly random occurrences.

Administration officials, Brennan chief among them, have denied that drone strikesresult in civilian deaths, in part by relying on a metric that considers every military-age male to be a combatant unless definitively proven otherwise.

“Our children’s blood is not cheaper than American blood and the pain of losing them is just as devastating. Our children matter too,” writes Yemeni blogger Noon Arabia. Indeed, Americans aren’t the only ones who deserve basic human rights.

To those who object, perhaps you should look at the following pictures taken by Pakistani photojournalist Noor Behram to awaken your conscious:

UPDATE: The White House does not have the authority to target Americans with drone strikes on US soil, said US Attorney General Eric Holder in a letter to Senator Rand Paul. The letter was short and blunt:

It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: “Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?” The answer to that question is no.

Again, if it’s not okay on US soil, why is it acceptable anywhere else? Keep in mind that we never declared war on Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia or the Philippines, all of which have been targeted with drone strikes. If this isn’t a double standard, I don’t know what is.

Obama’s Evil Empire

Sean Fenley
with editing by Nina Westbury

A thrilling scene took place recently with the United States Senate playing host as its backdrop. John Brennan, Barack Obama’s kill-list aficionado, had to overcome a Mr. Smith-style filibuster. He had to do this in order to get the Attorney General to rescind his fatuous explanation for why American citizens could be killed on US soil — with a predator drone. Only it wasn’t led by Jimmy Stewart this time around, but instead by the shifty junior Kentucky Senator, Dr. Rand Paul. This particular fight of evil battling versus itself must go down in the history books as one of the most classic examples of it, perhaps of all time. By this I am not referring to the good fight on the drones, for which Senator Paul deserves some commendation, but the entire portfolio of work, as well as belief system, of the junior Kentucky Senator.

Dr. Rand Paul is a man who had endorsed the rapacious asset stripper of the unholy, bestial, base and degenerate Bain Capital. The governor and asset stripper who stood against so many of the views of Rand Paul’s father, such that one could easily fill an encyclopedia with. And so therefore I place this particular Dr. Paul as a neo-”libertarian”, because with a taste of power — which corrupts absolutely — he seems to have little of the principle that his father consistently, and perpetually had. (Though his father did at one point in his career throw the 9/11 Truth movement under the bus, a movement that he had ever so disingenuously ostensibly taken up the banner for, and wooed.) Whatever one thinks of some of the imbecilic, cretinous and/or nonsensical views and opinions on many positions that Rand Paul’s father held; at least the father committed few, if any, of these egregious power-grabbing sins of the ravenously ambitious son.

Nevertheless, the Mr. Smith-style filibuster was an aforementioned case of evil fighting against itself. It juxtaposed the Wall Street Democrat/mascot Obama versus the neo-libertarian ideologue of the John Galt school. Does anyone anywhere (except those brain-dead, wantonly ignorant, tuned into to Faux News and such) have any doubt as to what constitutes the evil empire of this world? Do the last remaining folks who see Amerika as some kind of beacon need it spelled out for them? Obama is a corporatist, what’s not on the page of the Constitution he extemporizes in his day to day activities in furtherance of his abominable ends! And he can lead the so-called GWOT (Global War on Terrorism) with the most wretched of them, but when it comes to fighting the American plutocracy, and the radical austerity program of America’s far unhinged Reich-wing his entreaties are: absolutely feckless, weak and; for certainty, profoundly unsound too. [1]

Obama is currently using another one of Paul Ryan’s deranged federal budget extrapolations, as something that he can “play off of” so to speak — or use as a foil — in order to make savage; pleasing to American barbarous uber-elites like Peter G. Petersen; and unneeded “entitlement” cuts. [2] And so therefore maybe then he will go down as a pragmatist, and a “guy who can get things done” (in the duly, rightly, and properly recorded history books). Never mind that they might be ignoble and wholly repugnant things, apparently, just that he got them done, though. In my opinion Obama plans to meet the lunatic Ryan halfway. That way he won’t gouge the working and middle classes as bad as a Tea Party Republican such as Paul Ryan shamelessly would! Nevertheless, Obama deserves shame for these utterly vulgar, iniquitous, and contemptible acts that he is plotting withal!

For shame Obama! I never bought your phony hope and change Madison Avenue construction, but; undoubtedly, you’ll be twisting the knife on so many who did! They believed your Pepsi Cola act and marketing campaign, notwithstanding, that you had much — if not mainly — duplicity planned for them after all! Instead, of socking it to Wall Street, and incarcerating those who perpetrated the crimes of the crash of 2008, you’ve largely left them off the hook, and are now coming for the common folks! With fangs gnashing, and finding a backbone where nay there has ever been one before!

The fact that Obama seems to relish a (sic) grand bargain on these hard-earned “entitlements” that so many do (or will) rely upon, is — there’s just no other way to put it — absolutely nuts. But as I’ve said Obama may be thinking of his place in history, rather than prioritizing any other scheme (or ruse), and this may be the driver for his unquestionably low-minded, Machiavellian current pursuits, and deeply inauspicious ends. The kill granny/cat food policies cannot be used self-interestedly, to create a legacy for the cruel-minded, prestige seeking, as well as vainglorious Obama! The 99% must come together again to fight these immoral, impertinent, wrongheaded and moreover wholly unethical aims!

Just as it took an unlikely hero to stop Obama’s rapacious advance in killing Americans (on US soil) with drones, there can also be heroes to emerge to confront Obama’s voracious whittling away at the indispensable social safety net — which is already one of the most tightfisted, miserly, and Lilliputian of them all in the Western world! And so thusly, it cannot be whittled away any more! Particularly, in advancement of President Obama’s myopic, short-sighted and self-aggrandizing disreputable goals! A backstab that he finds imperative in order to secure himself a place in the protruding, and commonly recollected contrivances of the preeminent historical tomes. Though, probably even by the hagiographers, who love nothing more than to be obsequious to, and to sniff the potentate’s throne; Obama should know it will only be for infamy, and for evil that he will ultimately go down! And so therefore his current strategy is without question; undeniably, one that must be fully, utterly, and entirely rebuked.

Notes:
[1] http://www.georgewbushlibrary.smu.edu/
[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2013/03/11/the-insiders-paul-ryan-is-young-enough-to-make-the-same-mistake-twice/

Sean Fenley is an independent progressive, who would like to see some sanity brought to the creation and implementation of current and future, US military, economic, foreign and domestic policies. He has been published by a number of websites, and publications throughout the alternative media.