Trump is Expanding the US Empire

 

NYT: CIA Currently Committing Torture & Murder

 

But the units have also operated unconstrained by battlefield rules designed to protect civilians, conducting night raids, torture and killings with near impunity, in a covert campaign that some Afghan and American officials say is undermining the wider American effort to strengthen Afghan institutions.

C.I.A.’s Afghan Forces Leave a Trail of Abuse and Anger

George H.W. Bush: War Criminal

 

George H.W. Bush: War Criminal, CIA Spy, Oil Tycoon, Embodiment of US Elite

The US-Led Genocide and Destruction of Yemen

[Photo: WhatsuPic, “Expanded War, Hunger, Disease, Death in Yemen. No Big Deal to US”.]

By David William Pear

October 12, 2018

 

“Only God can save our children”, say Yemeni fathers and mothers as they can do nothing but watch their children die, try to comfort them in their final agonizing hours, and pray for God to spare them from death. The fathers and mothers watch and pray, as one by another their children die from cholera, dehydration and starvation.

Where is God? He cannot get through the total US blockade of Yemen to save the children. A cholera epidemic is a man-made disaster. Since 2015 the cholera epidemic has been spread by biological warfare against Yemen. US bombs dropped by Saudi pilots destroyed Yemen’s public water and sewage systems. The parts, chemicals and fuel to operate Yemen’s water purification and sewage plants are blockaded. Potable water, cholera vaccine, and even individual water purification tablets cannot get in. The resulting cholera epidemic was predictable.

The sewage from non-working treatment plants overflows into streams that run onto agricultural land, thus contaminating vegetables before they go to market. Sewage flows into the cities, residential areas and the refugee camps. Flies swarm over the sewage and spread cholera everywhere. The International Committee of the Red Cross, the Red Crescent, and Doctors Without Borders; hospitals, clinics and disaster relief organizations, and human rights workers have been deliberately bombed.

The US dominated United Nations adds a fig leaf of legality to the blockade, and a one-sided weapons embargo against Yemen. To ask why there is no UN arms embargo against Saudi Arabia is, of course, a rhetorical question.

The UN wrings its hands about a humanitarian crisis, and the worst cholera epidemic in human history. The UN does nothing to stop the US-led Saudi genocide and destruction of Yemen, and it puts out knowingly phony underreported numbers of the civilian deaths.

The former US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley threw a temper tantrum when the UN dared to even voice mild criticism against the US, when it moved its embassy to Jerusalem. She spoke of the UN “disrespecting” the US, and she threatened financial retaliation against the UN and countries that voted contrary to US wishes. The UN is not an honest broker, because it is dominated and fears the US displeasure.

President Donald Trump cut funding to humanitarian UN agencies, did not try to stop Israel from gunning down thousands of unarmed Palestinians, withdrew the US from the UN Human Rights Council, and thumbed his nose at the UN International Court of Justice. Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton said that the US plans on withdrawing from more treaties that are the foundation of international law.

In other words, Bolton is confirming that the US is a rouge state; it makes a mockery of the United Nations. From the beginning of the Bush-era War on Terror, the US showed contempt for the Geneva Conventions. Obama too violated customary international law with impunity. Obama assassinated US citizens, droned Afghan wedding parties and funerals, and destroyed Libya. He invaded Syria in an illegal war of aggression. Obama was really good at killing. He allegedly said so himself.

Purposely causing a cholera epidemic is biological warfare. Yemen is not an unprecedented case of US use of biological-chemical warfare. During the 1950’s Korean War the US was accused convincingly of biological warfare. In the Vietnam-American War the US sprayed millions of gallons of Agent Orange, which poisoned the soil, rivers and people. Agent Orange, 50 years later is still “causing miscarriages, skin diseases, cancers, birth defects, and congenital malformations”.

The US contaminated Bosnia, Afghanistan, and the Middle East with so-called depleted uranium. Depleted uranium can cause cancer, birth defects, and as yet other unknown health effects. The US knows it. It has put out a health warning to US Iraq war veterans.

In 1995, Madeleine Albright was interview by Lesley Stahl on the TV show “60 Minutes”. That interview should live in infamy in a hall of shame for eternity. Stahl asked Albright if the death of over 500,000 Iraqi children caused by US sanctions was “worth it”. Albright’s answer was, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.” (Whoever the “we” is, Albright did not elaborate.) It is now known that “we” purposely used biological warfare to kill those 500,000 Iraqi children.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM0uvgHKZe8

How many more children did Albright, the Bill Clinton administration and “we” continue to kill because “we” thought it was “worth it”? Hundreds of thousands, according to a study of the partially declassified Defense Intelligence Agency document “IRAQ WATER TREATMMENT VULNERABILITIES” [emphasis in original]. The partially declassified document was discovered in 1998 on an official website of the Military Health System. In 2001 the Association of Genocide Scholars released the study referred to above: The Role of “Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities” in Halting One Genocide and Preventing Others.

During the 1991 First Gulf War the US purposely targeted all of the water purification plants and sanitation works in Iraq, which is itself a war crime. The “Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities” document produced by the US Department of Defense and implemented in1991, was continued under President Bill Clinton. Even after Albright’s admission on “60 Minutes” that the US sanctions regime had killed 500,000 Iraqi children, “we” continued the draconian embargo of water purification equipment.

The Department of Defense and Madeleine Albright’s “we” knew that without potable water that the rate of waterborne diseases, such as cholera, would sicken and kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Depriving an entire population of the essentials of life is genocide, and it is a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Degrading of the water supply to knowingly cause epidemics, such as cholera, is biological warfare.

Economic sanctions and trade embargos are barbaric siege warfare against civilian populations. There is no way to pretty them up as surgically targeting a regime or being humanitarian. Now think about the millions of people of Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Syria, Burma and, Côte d’Ivoire that are suffering under a US embargo today.

The “Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities” document reveals the diabolical intention of a sanctions regime, even when authorized by the UN. It is for these and other reasons that The International Committee of the Red Cross has often raised concerns , including concerns about UN authorized sanctions regimes. Not even the UN has the authority to violate the Geneva Conventions, and the UN oversteps its authority when it does so.

The US has also overstepped the UN’s authorization by imposing a total blockade of Yemen. Just as predictably as in Iraq, children are dying in Yemen from cholera. Tens of thousands of civilians have died from starvation, disease and the lack of medicine. Twenty million human beings are starving to death in a famine caused by the US, and its proxy, the so-called Saudi coalition.

For three years, starting with the Obama administration the US has been passing Saudi Arabia the bombs, ammunition, fuel, and most importantly it is the US military at the command and control center of the war on Yemen. Other war-profiteering countries, such as the UK, EU countries, and Canada have their hands dripping with the blood and cholera infected feces of Yemeni children, too.

 

[Photo: Nora Al-Alwaki, an American citizen killed by Navy SEALs when they raided her Yemeni village on January 29, 2017.]

US Special Forces, Seal Team 6, and the CIA carry out night raids and assignations, such as the one that killed 8 year old Nora, pictured above. She was an American citizen who lived with her grandparents in a Yemeni village.

 

Repost – Columbus: Slavery, Rape and Genocide

Columbus letter to King Ferdinand 1493:

“They have no other arms than spears made of canes, cut in seeding time, to the ends of which they fix a small sharpened stick. Of these they do not dare to make use… They refuse nothing that they possess, if it be asked of them; on the contrary, they invite any one to share it and display as much love as if they would give their hearts. They are content with whatever trifle of whatever kind that may be given to them, whether it be of value or valueless… So all came, men and women alike, when their minds were set at rest concerning us, not one, small or great, remaining behind, and they all brought something to eat and drink, which they gave with extraordinary affection… But especially, in this Espanola, in the situation most convenient and in the best position for the mines of gold and for all trade as well with the mainland here as with that there, belonging to the Grand Khan, where will be great trade and profit… Highnesses can see that I will give them as much gold as they may need, if their Highnesses will render me very slight assistance… and slaves, as many as they shall order, and who will be from the idolaters… And thus the eternal God, Our Lord, gives to all those who walk in His way triumph over things which appear to be impossible, and this was notably one…”

Columbus letter to Doña Juana de Torres 1500:

“Now that so much gold is found a dispute arises as to which brings more profit, whether to go about robbing or to go to the mines.  A hundred castellanos are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general, and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand, and for all ages a good price must be paid.”

Lies My Teacher Told Me:

“Diseases new to the Indians played a role, although smallpox, usually the big killer, did not appear on the island until after 1516. Some of the Indians tried fleeing to Cuba, but the Spanish soon followed them there. Estimates of Haiti’s pre-Columbian population range as high as 8,000,000 people. When Christopher Columbus returned to Spain, he left his brother Bartholomew in charge of the island. Bartholomew took a census of Indian adults in 1496 and came up with 1,100,000. The Spanish did not count children under fourteen and could not count Arawaks who had escaped into the mountains. Kirkpatrick Sale estimates that a more accurate total would probably be in the neighborhood of 3,000,000. “By 1516,” according to Benjamin Keen, “thanks to the sinister Indian slave trade and labor policies initiated by Columbus, only some 12,000 remained.” Las Casas tells us that fewer than 200 Indians were alive in 1542. By 1555, they were all gone.”

Ralph Nader on Trump’s War Crimes in Yemen

On Trump Administration’s Action in Yemen

 

 

WASHINGTON, July 6, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Ralph Nader today sent a letter to President Trump criticizing the administration’s actions in Yemen. Text of the letter follows:

President Donald Trump

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW

Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Trump:

It has become overwhelmingly clear that your Administration has supported with arms sales, refueling, daily operational logistics and other ways and means the governmental actors opposing the rebels in the Yemeni Civil war.

The bombing raids and blockades combine to produce what international relief organizations are calling the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today. With an estimated 8 million people on the brink of starvation, with the largest cholera epidemic in the world, Yemen is suffering daily deliberate war crimes affecting civilians, children, homes, schools, hospitals, drinking water installations, food supplies, and other critical infrastructures. These war crimes violate our Constitution, federal statutes, and international treaties, including the Geneva Conventions.

As President, you know full well what is going on and yet you keep getting our country deeper into this deadly quagmire. By any standard of international law, you are a knowing aider and abettor of these war crimes at a level of complicity that approximates being a backroom partner in the broad range of military operations against millions of innocent Yemeni families.

Have you no compassion? Have you no desire to put a stop to this war on civilians, a deliberate war to destroy the life-sustaining goods and services that keep millions of Yemenis alive. Just this week, your allies blew up a new Doctors Without Borders clinic that was about to open. Some of the doctors are Americans. Have you no decency left even to protect American relief workers who display immense courage and love for their fellow human beings? In its July 2018 three part on the ground series about the War in Yemen, the PBS News Hour showed unexploded bombs with the label, “Made in Garland, Texas,” as just one concrete indication of U.S. involvement.

What are the specific legal authorizations? Has Congress appropriated funds for and authorized military intervention in Yemen? Did you not swear to uphold the Constitution when you took office after being selected by the Electoral College in 2016?

History will judge you harshly for not even seeking to be a serious peacemaker, using the major levers you have in this conflict.

What is your response to the American people?

Sincerely, 

Ralph Nader

Yemen Crime Against Humanity: Red Cross Evacuates

 

US/Saudi “coalition” of evil is killing civilians and aid workers.

We've pulled 71 staff members out of #Yemen.

In recent weeks, our activities have been:
*blocked
*threatened
*directly targeted

The security of our staff is a non-negotiable prerequisite for our work in the country: https://t.co/LeZwt5czv6#notatarget pic.twitter.com/jqFBg7Bol4

— ICRC (@ICRC) June 8, 2018