2016 Political Highlights

[rowan]

Republican candidate Donald Trump surprisingly wins the US election, defying mainstream media predictions and surprising many, myself included. This follows a similar shock in Europe where Britain votes to leave the EU, leading to the resignation of prime minister David Cameron. Brazilian leader Dilma Rousseff is forced to step down after being impeached on corruption charges, a situation many have described as a "coup" led by former vice-president Michel Temer, who was revealed as a former CIA informer by Wikileaks and is now facing corruption charges himself. Revolutionary hero and long-serving former Cuban leader Fidel Castro passes away a few months after his 90th birthday. Colombians vote against bringing an end to the half century-old conflict with FARC rebels, the government's concessions apparently viewed as too genorous, though president Juan Santos perserveres, and is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Rodrigo Duterte takes over in the Philippines and immediately declares war on organized crime and drug dealers, encouraging his citizens to simply 'kill' them. Myanmar's war on its Rohingya Muslim minority continues, with more than a hundred killed in the latest round of violence, and hundreds more fleeing to Bangladesh, drawing accusationsof 'ethnic cleansing' from Humans Rights Watch. Long-serving Uzbekistani dictator Islam Karimov dies, leaving a legacy of slaughter and political oppression. An aborted coup attempt takes place in Turkey, allowing president Tayyip Erdogan to strengthen his grip on power and persecute all his enemies. Saudi Arabia continues to bomb civilian targets in Yemen, as the Shi'ite Houthi rebels cling to power after removing the corrupt Sunni regime by force, America resumes bombing in war-torn Libya as rebels threaten control of the oil-fields. Military efforts are made to free both Aleppo in Syria and Mosul in Iraq from terrorists, who have taken the civilian populations hostage. The former is liberated by the Syrian army with support from Russia, while efforts are ongoing in Mosul. The United Nations finally declares Israeli settlement projects on Palestinian territory illegal, as the US abstains from voting. Hundreds of protestors are killed in Ethiopia where the Oromo people, almost forty per cent of the population, are being uprooted from their homelands by the minority Tigray government. Tribal warfare continues to brink on genocide in South Sudan, fives years after its break away from the north. Nigerian soldiers gun down 150 Biafra independence protestors, reviving memories of the genocide which took place in Africa's most populous nation in the late 1960s. Christians and Muslims continue wage war on one another in the Central African Republic. Gambia votes in a new leader, Adama Barrow, who ends the two decade-reign of Yahya Jammeh. But Joseph Kabila is refusing to step down in Congo after 15 years in power, despite the end of his two term mandate. Egypt becomes the second biggest recipient of US aid in the world after Israel, with Washington pledging 38 billion to the Abdel el-Sisi dictatorship. & former Chadian tyrant Hissene Habre becomes the first leader to be convicted by the African Court in Senegal, receiving a life sentence for the torture and deaths of tens of thousands of political prisoners in the 1980s.

[kk67]

A lot of people are making a lot of money by virtue of a lot of people dying.
The global diasporas this creates is not their problem. There's big money in war, mineral assets are the primary goal but the ancillary industries all benefit.

The munitions industry would not exist without the guns being fired, Dude.

[rowan]

A lot of people are making a lot of money by virtue of a lot of people dying.
The global diasporas this creates is not their problem. There's big money in war, mineral assets are the primary goal but the ancillary industries all benefit.

The munitions industry would not exist without the guns being fired.

The Military Industrial Complex is behind it all. America became the world's major economic and military power by selling arms to both sides in WWII, and was not about to give up this highly lucrative practice afterward. Remember, they had just come out of a crippling depression themselves. So they've basically been creating endless wars ever since, and that is the primary source of American wealth.

[kk67]

WASP USA love a bit of war.

[Len]

Globalisation rejection and populist idealogy on the rise. WW1 pt 2 yeah boi.

[morepork]

A lot of people are making a lot of money by virtue of a lot of people dying.
The global diasporas this creates is not their problem. There's big money in war, mineral assets are the primary goal but the ancillary industries all benefit.

The munitions industry would not exist without the guns being fired.

The Military Industrial Complex is behind it all. America became the world's major economic and military power by selling arms to both sides in WWII, and was not about to give up this highly lucrative practice afterward. Remember, they had just come out of a crippling depression themselves. So they've basically been creating endless wars ever since, and that is the primary source of American wealth.

No American wealth. A handful of rich dudes. Those profits don't exactly get earmarked for public transport and school libraries, if you know what I mean.

[rowan]

A lot of people are making a lot of money by virtue of a lot of people dying.
The global diasporas this creates is not their problem. There's big money in war, mineral assets are the primary goal but the ancillary industries all benefit.

The munitions industry would not exist without the guns being fired.

The Military Industrial Complex is behind it all. America became the world's major economic and military power by selling arms to both sides in WWII, and was not about to give up this highly lucrative practice afterward. Remember, they had just come out of a crippling depression themselves. So they've basically been creating endless wars ever since, and that is the primary source of American wealth.

No American wealth. A handful of rich dudes. Those profits don't exactly get earmarked for public transport and school libraries, if you know what I mean.

Fair comment. Not all of them are Americans either. It's more of an international cartel.

[caldeyrfc]

2016 Political Highlights??
There wasn't any highlights just more and more depressing lowlights

[rowan]

Mostly low lights unfortunately. That seems to be the nature of international politics in the world today. But there were certainly some positive to take away from that, notably Habre's conviction, Barrow's election, Santos' Nobel Prize, the liberation of Aleppo and the condemnation of Israeli settlements. One might also view Karimov's death, Cameron's resignation and the non-election of a proven war criminal in the US as highlights too, without wanting to sound unduly callous with regards to the former.

[Sandydragon]

Mostly low lights unfortunately. That seems to be the nature of international politics in the world today. But there were certainly some positive to take away from that, notably Habre's conviction, Barrow's election, Santos' Nobel Prize, the liberation of Aleppo and the condemnation of Israeli settlements. One might also view Karimov's death, Cameron's resignation and the non-election of a proven war criminal in the US as highlights too, without wanting to sound unduly callous with regards to the former.

The liberation of Aleppo. Strange how Assad opposition are looking to liberate Syria from his dictatorship. Still, the word liberation hides nicely the multiple war crime committed in the process, and the fact that other areas of Syria are falling to IS due to the Syrian and Russian preoccupation with keeping Assad in power rather than fighting the most dangerous extremists.

[rowan]

Mostly low lights unfortunately. That seems to be the nature of international politics in the world today. But there were certainly some positive to take away from that, notably Habre's conviction, Barrow's election, Santos' Nobel Prize, the liberation of Aleppo and the condemnation of Israeli settlements. One might also view Karimov's death, Cameron's resignation and the non-election of a proven war criminal in the US as highlights too, without wanting to sound unduly callous with regards to the former.

The liberation of Aleppo. Strange how Assad opposition are looking to liberate Syria from his dictatorship. Still, the word liberation hides nicely the multiple war crime committed in the process, and the fact that other areas of Syria are falling to IS due to the Syrian and Russian preoccupation with keeping Assad in power rather than fighting the most dangerous extremists.

America and its allies have killed 10 million Muslims with their wars in the Middle East over the past 25 years, but you seem to be most angered by the liberation of Aleppo amid 'alleged war crimes.' Well, one thing is for sure - if it had been Russia accusing America of war crimes, the Western media and public alike would have taken little notice. We know this because it has occurred over and over and over. & what do you think is going on in Mosul and Yemen right now? So Syria and Russia are to blame for ISIS as well now, are they? That's the epitome of irony, and only exposes your socially ingrained prejudices.

[morepork]

How big of a clusterfuck would be the vacuum left if Assad were removed from power right now? Or is it all about competing oil gas pipelines? A few million displaced Syrians would love to know.

[Digby]

How big of a clusterfuck would be the vacuum left if Assad were removed from power right now?

A few people in Europe and the USA would like to know that too, and the Russians are clearly sold it'd be a huge problem. This does though appear a ituation wherein what one might want and the reality of what's possible are some ways apart, I'd almost support the Russian approach were it not needlessly brutal

[Sandydragon]

How big of a clusterfuck would be the vacuum left if Assad were removed from power right now? Or is it all about competing oil gas pipelines? A few million displaced Syrians would love to know.

I think those Syrians who wanted to get rid of him for being a brutal dictator don't much care about oil pipelines. This started as an internal affair.

If Assad is maintained in power, then this will be rerun in a generations time, this isn't the first slaughtering of the Syrian population by its government. Better to remove him and put some sort of transitional government in place, supported by a UN peacekeeping force than let the current situation endure.

[rowan]

How big of a clusterfuck would be the vacuum left if Assad were removed from power right now?

A few people in Europe and the USA would like to know that too, and the Russians are clearly sold it'd be a huge problem. This does though appear a ituation wherein what one might want and the reality of what's possible are some ways apart, I'd almost support the Russian approach were it not needlessly brutal

Strange you have never accused America of being 'needlessly brutal,' though its wars are estimated to have killed 10 million Muslims since the start of the 90s. This is obviously due to your socially ingrained prejudices.

[rowan]

Nice one, Cornel!

Eight years ago the world was on the brink of a grand celebration: the inauguration of a brilliant and charismatic black president of the United States of America. Today we are on the edge of an abyss: the installation of a mendacious and cathartic white president who will replace him.

This is a depressing decline in the highest office of the most powerful empire in the history of the world. It could easily produce a pervasive cynicism and poisonous nihilism. Is there really any hope for truth and justice in this decadent time? Does America even have the capacity to be honest about itself and come to terms with its self-destructive addiction to money-worship and cowardly xenophobia?

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Herman Melville – the two great public intellectuals of 19th-century America – wrestled with similar questions and reached the same conclusion as Heraclitus: character is destiny (“sow a character and you reap a destiny”).

The age of Barack Obama may have been our last chance to break from our neoliberal soulcraft. We are rooted in market-driven brands that shun integrity and profit-driven policies that trump public goods. Our “post-integrity” and “post-truth” world is suffocated by entertaining brands and money-making activities that have little or nothing to do with truth, integrity or the long-term survival of the planet. We are witnessing the postmodern version of the full-scale gangsterization of the world.

The reign of Obama did not produce the nightmare of Donald Trump – but it did contribute to it. And those Obama cheerleaders who refused to make him accountable bear some responsibility.

A few of us begged and pleaded with Obama to break with the Wall Street priorities and bail out Main Street. But he followed the advice of his “smart” neoliberal advisers to bail out Wall Street. In March 2009, Obama met with Wall Street leaders. He proclaimed: I stand between you and the pitchforks. I am on your side and I will protect you, he promised them. And not one Wall Street criminal executive went to jail.

We called for the accountability of US torturers of innocent Muslims and the transparency of US drone strikes killing innocent civilians. Obama’s administration told us no civilians had been killed. And then we were told a few had been killed. And then told maybe 65 or so had been killed. Yet when an American civilian, Warren Weinstein, was killed in 2015 there was an immediate press conference with deep apologies and financial compensation. And today we still don’t know how many have had their lives taken away.

We hit the streets again with Black Lives Matter and other groups and went to jail for protesting against police killing black youth. We protested when the Israeli Defense Forces killed more than 2,000 Palestinians (including 550 children) in 50 days. Yet Obama replied with words about the difficult plight of police officers, department investigations (with no police going to jail) and the additional $225m in financial support of the Israeli army. Obama said not a mumbling word about the dead Palestinian children but he did call Baltimore black youth “criminals and thugs”.

In addition, Obama’s education policy unleashed more market forces that closed hundreds of public schools for charter ones. The top 1% got nearly two-thirds of the income growth in eight years even as child poverty, especially black child poverty, remained astronomical. Labor insurgencies in Wisconsin, Seattle and Chicago (vigorously opposed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a close confidant of Obama) were passed over in silence.

In 2009, Obama called New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg an “outstanding mayor”. Yet he overlooked the fact that more than 4 million people were stopped-and-frisked under Bloomberg’s watch. Along with Carl Dix and others, I sat in a jail two years later for protesting these very same policies that Obama ignored when praising Bloomberg.

Yet the mainstream media and academia failed to highlight these painful truths linked to Obama. Instead, most well-paid pundits on TV and radio celebrated the Obama brand. And most black spokespeople shamelessly defended Obama’s silences and crimes in the name of racial symbolism and their own careerism. How hypocritical to see them now speak truth to white power when most went mute in the face of black power. Their moral authority is weak and their newfound militancy is shallow.

The gross killing of US citizens with no due process after direct orders from Obama was cast aside by neoliberal supporters of all colors. And Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Jeffrey Sterling and other truth-tellers were demonized just as the crimes they exposed were hardly mentioned.

The president’s greatest legislative achievement was to provide healthcare for over 25 million citizens, even as another 20 million are still uncovered. But it remained a market-based policy, created by the conservative Heritage Foundation and first pioneered by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts.

Obama’s lack of courage to confront Wall Street criminals and his lapse of character in ordering drone strikes unintentionally led to rightwing populist revolts at home and ugly Islamic fascist rebellions in the Middle East. And as deporter-in-chief – nearly 2.5 million immigrants were deported under his watch – Obama policies prefigure Trump’s barbaric plans.

Bernie Sanders gallantly tried to generate a leftwing populism but he was crushed by Clinton and Obama in the unfair Democratic party primaries. So now we find ourselves entering a neofascist era: a neoliberal economy on steroids, a reactionary repressive attitude toward domestic “aliens”, a militaristic cabinet eager for war and in denial of global warming. All the while, we are seeing a wholesale eclipse of truth and integrity in the name of the Trump brand, facilitated by the profit-hungry corporate media.

What a sad legacy for our hope and change candidate – even as we warriors go down swinging in the fading names of truth and justice.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... p_Facebook

[cashead]

How big of a clusterfuck would be the vacuum left if Assad were removed from power right now?

A few people in Europe and the USA would like to know that too, and the Russians are clearly sold it'd be a huge problem. This does though appear a ituation wherein what one might want and the reality of what's possible are some ways apart, I'd almost support the Russian approach were it not needlessly brutal

Strange you have never accused America of being 'needlessly brutal,' though its wars are estimated to have killed 10 million Muslims since the start of the 90s. This is obviously due to your socially ingrained prejudices.

And you are lynching negroes.

[fivepointer]

How big of a clusterfuck would be the vacuum left if Assad were removed from power right now?

A few people in Europe and the USA would like to know that too, and the Russians are clearly sold it'd be a huge problem. This does though appear a ituation wherein what one might want and the reality of what's possible are some ways apart, I'd almost support the Russian approach were it not needlessly brutal

Strange you have never accused America of being 'needlessly brutal,' though its wars are estimated to have killed 10 million Muslims since the start of the 90s. This is obviously due to your socially ingrained prejudices.

10 million deaths in 26 years.

Any independent, authoritative source for this claim?

[rowan]

Also a good piece:

President-elect Donald Trump will face pervasive doubts about his legitimacy from the day he takes office. Trump’s opponents will assert that he is governing in unprecedented and reckless ways. The best response to that charge is to open the books to reveal how the Obama administration stretched its power far beyond what most Americans realized.

Trump should follow the excellent precedent set by Barack Obama. In 2009, shortly after he took office, Obama released many of the secret Bush administration legal memos that explained why the president was supposedly entitled to order torture, deploy troops in American towns and cities, and ignore the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on warrantless, unreasonable searches. Those revelations proved that the Bush administration was far more of an elective dictatorship than most people suspected. The disclosures signaled a new era and helped give Obama – at least temporarily – a reputation as a champion of civil liberties.

Turnabout is fair play. Trump should quickly reveal the secret memos underlying Obama’s “targeted killing” drone assassination program. Administration lawyers defeated lawsuits by the ACLU and New York Times seeking disclosure of key legal papers on how the president became judge, jury, and executioner. Obama sought to codify a presidential right to kill that would have mortified earlier generations of Americans. His program has been cloaked in secrecy and sanctimony from the start and most of the media have shown little curiosity and no outrage even when the feds admitted that innocent civilians were killed. A Trump administration could disclose the memos and legal rationales on the program without endangering anything other than the reputation of the soon-to-be former president and his policymakers.

At the end of Obama’s presidency, the United States is bombing seven foreign nations – but most of the actions have been cloaked in secrecy, often supplemented by deceit. Opening the files at the Pentagon, CIA, and State Department on U.S. intervention in the Syrian Civil War might explain why the U.S. plunged deeper into that morass. Pentagon-backed Syrian rebels have openly battled CIA-backed rebels. The U.S. has armed and bankrolled Al Qaeda-linked groups in Syria despite federal law prohibiting providing material support to terrorist groups. The U.S. dropped 12,192 bombs on Syria last year – at a time when much of the Washington establishment and media was vilifying Obama for not intervening. We need the bureaucratic smoking guns on this policy.

Likewise, revealing the paper trail behind the U.S. bombing of Libya in 2011 – which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton labeled “smart power at its best” – could preempt cheerleading for similar follies in the future. The purported rationales for this debacle have never passed the laugh test. Obama told Americans that “the democratic values that we stand for would be overrun” if the U.S. did not join the French and British assault on the Libyan government. Obama asserted that one goal of the U.S. attack was “the transition to a legitimate government that is responsive to the Libyan people.” But there was no sober reason to expect a happy ending from blasting that regime. What did the U.S. government know and when did it know it regarding the likely effects of toppling Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi?

It is naive to assume that “truth will out” from federal bureaucracies. It is vital for a Trump White House to compel disclosures because the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has become largely a mirage in recent years. While Obama boasted of “the most transparent administration in history,” federal agencies slammed the door on routine requests – especially from the media. The Associated Press reported last year that the Obama administration “set a record again for censoring government files or outright denying access to them” under FOIA. Federal agencies were also hit by a record number of lawsuits contesting FOIA denials in 2015.

If Hillary Clinton had won the presidency, some people would have blamed the State Department’s “slow walking” of FOIA requests for her emails (which she improperly kept on a private server). The FBI worked through 650,000 emails from Anthony Weiner’s computer in eight days but the State Department claimed it needed 75 years to fully answer a FOIA request on Hillary Clinton’s aides’ emails. The State Department delayed for more than five years answering a simple request from the Associated Press for the schedule and meetings attended by Ms. Clinton. A fFederal judge and the agency’s Inspector General slammed its FOIA stonewalling.

The Department of Homeland Security also has a dreadful FOIA record. That agency permitted political appointees to stifle FOIA responses in a process that “reeks of a Nixonian enemies list,” according to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa (R-Cal.) Under Obama, the Transportation Security Administration, part of DHS, became far more intrusive and abusive. TSA launched “enhanced patdowns” that, as USA Today noted, “require screeners to touch passengers’ breasts and genitals.” Millions of butts and boobs have been squeezed but no terrorists have been caught. TSA conceals almost all information over its groping with a “sensitive security information” FOIA designation that justifies perpetual secrecy. Congress has been utterly feckless at exposing the excuses behind TSA abuses. Ending TSA coverups and reining in the agency would create a bounty of early good will for the Trump administration. (TSA is foot-dragging on a FOIA request I filed in 2015 to see the agency’s files on me.)

Similar coverups and rascality permeated some areas of domestic policy. The Obama administration endlessly revised the Affordable Care Act – often based on closed-door calculations that could not have survived sunlight. For instance, a vanload of senior IRS financial managers were summoned in 2014 to the Old Executive Office Building and only permitted a peak at a secret Office of Management and Budget memo explaining why the Obama administration was entitled to spend $4 billion on subsidies for consumer health insurance. As the New York Times reported last year, the IRS officials “were told they could read it but could not take notes or make copies. The O.M.B. officials left the room to allow their visitors a moment to absorb the document, and then returned to answer a few questions.” The Obama administration acted as if its rationales for spending tax dollars deserved the same level of secrecy as a handy-dandy guide to building nuclear warheads. Federal judge Rosemary Collyer recently slammed the administration’s Obamacare consumer subsidies as unconstitutional.

Recent polls show that fewer than 20% of Americans now trust the federal government. As Attorney General Ramsey Clark warned in 1968, “Nothing so diminishes democracy as secrecy.” Regardless of the policies that Trump pursues, it would be a booster shot for democracy for Americans to learn the back story of the Obama era.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/09/ ... -of-power/

[cashead]

Attempting to write off any criticism of the Russian government as "socially ingrained prejudice" and a c+p of a counterpunch article

2 boxes in the rowan bingo.

[rowan]

Playing the man rather than the ball, & constantly singling out Russia for criticism when the countries responsible for most of the human carnage and suffering in the world are NATO and their closest allies, principally the Saudis and Israelis.

2 boxes in the Cashead bingo.

[Digby]

10 million deaths in 26 years.

Any independent, authoritative source for this claim?

Apart from anything else it seems overtly racist, in that the muslims killing muslims can't be thought responsible for their own actions and that they're only akin to befuddled children doing as their American overlords dictate.

[rowan]

10 million deaths in 26 years.

Any independent, authoritative source for this claim?

Apart from anything else it seems overtly racist, in that the muslims killing muslims can't be thought responsible for their own actions and that they're only akin to befuddled children doing as their American overlords dictate.

Muslims are a religion, not a race, Einstein. If they were a race, your comment condemning them for being turned into jam by NATO bombs would have been the most racist thing I had read on the forum today. Oh, and while you are trying in your confused way to accuse me of whitewashing the crimes of Muslim nations themselves, you might want to take a look at the demographics for Saudi Arabia, which I also mentioned . . .

[cashead]

Playing the man rather than the ball, & constantly singling out Russia for criticism when the countries responsible for most of the human carnage and suffering in the world are NATO and their closest allies, principally the Saudis and Israelis.

2 boxes in the Cashead bingo.

Hahahaha, good shit, bro.

[rowan]

Wow, this is truly shocking

The U.S. dropped an average of 72 bombs every day — the equivalent of three an hour — in 2016, according to an analysis of American strikes around the world.

The report from the Council of Foreign Relations comes as Barack Obama finishes up his presidency — one that began with promises to withdraw from international conflicts.

According to the New York City-based think tank, 26,171 bombs were dropped on Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan during the year.

CFR warned that its estimates were "undoubtedly low, considering reliable data is only available for airstrikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya, and a single 'strike,' according to the Pentagon's definition, can involve multiple bombs or munitions."

Related: U.S. Airstrikes Kill Twice the Civilians Previously Thought

Some 24,287 bombs were used in Iraq and Syria, where the U.S. is helping drive ISIS militants from swaths of both countries. In 2015, the U.S. dropped 22,110 bombs in Iraq and Syria, CFR reported.

Last year saw a sharp uptick in strikes in Afghanistan, with 1,337 compared with 947 in 2015, CFR found.

The study, which drew data from a variety of military and press sources, showed that three bombs were dropped on Pakistan during 2016, 14 in Somalia and 34 in Yemen.



http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-b ... ia-n704636