Month: September 2015

If there was ever any doubt that the US doesn’t have a good handle on who the ISIS leadership is, it should be exemplified by the new reports of US officials openly talking about, in their effort to “destroy ISIS,” assassinating people whose Twitter accounts are seen as too pro-ISIS.

There appears, at the very least, to be some debate among counter-terror officials on the matter, though none seem to be questioning whether or not it’s appropriate to assassinate people on the basis of speech, and are simply arguing over whether or not it’s worthwhile.

The opponents see it as “wasting time” on “low level guys,” and believe the US should spend more time trying to assassinate actual ISIS leaders, instead of just killing Tweeters and declaring them “propagandists.”

One unnamed US official in favor of killing Tweeters, who ominously started his argument by declaring “we are the angel of death” like he’s some comic book villain, argued that since the ISIS war is a “propaganda war” and a “war of ideas” it’s entirely appropriate to kill people who are forwarding ideas they object to, saying he sees no reason to limit the killing to “military leaders.”

Lt. Gen. Michael Barbero was also a proponent of assassinating people on social media, saying ISIS has a “huge competitive advantage” on Twitter and that with little intelligence on the actual leadership of ISIS, you “attack what you can,” which means people on Twitter.

Another official, perhaps even more ominously than “angel of death” guy, talked up the killing of US-born cleric Anwar Awlaki as an example of the US assassinating people for speech, declaring “shoot your mouth off all you want. Eventually we are going to kill you.”

Former Prime Minister Kim Campbell once said “an election is no time to discuss important issues.” But surely the opportunity to free up $40 billion while making the world a safer place ought to spark a discussion about the Canadian Navy’s role in the world.

Four years ago the Conservatives announced the National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy, a $30-$40 billion effort to expand the combat fleet over three decades. But, the initiative is stalled and this is a perfect time to consider other priorities, such as putting the money into a national daycare program, building co-op/public housing, investing it in light rail or using it to make higher education more affordable.

Let’s have a debate and let Canadians choose.

The first step is understanding how the Canadian Navy uses it warships.

People seldom think of Canadian foreign policy when the term “gunboat diplomacy” is used, but they should. It is not just the USA, Great Britain, France or other better-known imperial powers that have used naval force as a “diplomatic” tool.

Nearly a century ago the Royal Bank loaned $200,000 to unpopular Costa Rican dictator Federico Tinoco just as he was about to flee the country. A new government refused to repay the money, saying the Canadian bank knew the public despised Tinoco and that he was likely to steal it. “In 1921,” Canadian Gunboat Diplomacynotes, “in Costa Rica, [Canadian vessels] Aurora, Patriot and Patrician helped the Royal Bank of Canada satisfactorily settle an outstanding claim with the government of that country.”

Continue reading “Canadian Gunboat Diplomacy”

The Ukrainian city of Uman, in the Cherkasy Province, is an historical site of pilgrimage for Hasidic Jews, which often draws tens of thousands of pilgrims during Rosh Hashana. The pilgrimage centers around the burial site of an important religious leader of the late 18th century.

This year, it’s going to be tough going for the Hasidim, however, as the massive tent city the local Jewish community erected to house the pilgrims was wiped out over the weekend by Ukrainian nationalist fighters.

The Ukrainian nationalist groups often style themselves as neo-Nazis, and have been demonized by the pro-Russian east because of this. They remained embraced in large by Western nations, who were pleased at their violent rallies ousting the former pro-Russian government of Ukraine. However much Western governments try to shore up the image of these groups as “democratic,” they continue to engage in ethnic and religious violence, as evidenced over this weekend.

The locals say the attack in Uman was scheduled for the Sabbath, knowing that the Hasidim would be unable to quickly respond. Police were informed and responded, but stood by and watched as the nationalists caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.

The local government is generally favorable to the nationalists, they say, as the “mayor” of Uman was installed, not elected, after the ouster of the pro-Russian government by leaders of the far-right Svoboda movement, the same group that just a week ago attacked parliament.

Since being in charge in Uman means being supported by the far-right, it is seen that they attacks are not just religiously motivated, but also attempts by the organizers to curry political favor in the lead up to October’s elections.

Chinese ships are near Alaska, US Predator drones are near Russia in Latvia. Are the Russians going into Syria or is that just disinformation? Everywhere it seems little brushfires threaten to become conflagrations. Are we in great danger of a major war, or might things cool down? Tune in to today’s Liberty Report:

Reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

In mid-July, the Obama Administration publicly announced that they weren’t going to “publicly blame” China for the OPM hack, despite saying, publicly, that they believe China did it.

This was because there was no good evidence for China having done it. Indeed, the FBI mentioned them as a possibility, leading media outlets to treat that as an allegation, leading Congress to declare that as proof China did it, leading other media outlets to say Congress confirmed the story, and so on. By the end of July, despite not “publicly blaming” China, US officials were openly talking about “revenge” against them.

Shortly thereafter, a hack against the Pentagon’s unclassified email system happened, and the entire process was repeated again, only this time it was Russia who wasn’t formally blamed, who no evidence existed to really prove was behind it, and who the US was still mad at.

Fast forward another month, and we are at the present, with US officials now talking up the possibility of announcing sanctions against both Russia and China over these “cyber-attacks,” which again, they have not offered any public evidence were committed by either nation.

While officials treat this as a totally consequence-free option, the reality is that the sanctions are almost certain to provoke retaliatory sanctions, and tit-for-tat moves that will worsen relations and harm trade. And again, all this to “punish” people we really shouldn’t be so sure did it in the first place.

It is interesting that Americans do not invoke Malcolm X the way they invoke other civil rights leaders.  Where ideas about American militarism go, X’s contributions were piercingly insightful but lamentably overlooked when the man lived. For that they deserve greater attention today.

But first a word on X’s sporadic anti-Semitism and anti-white fulminations, both of which lead some people to ignore everything else X had to say. If we believe it fair to judge historical figures on the basis of their most contemptible sympathies alone, then X is indeed irredeemable.  But then, so too are Gandhi, Plato, and Aristotle irredeemable for some of their nefarious beliefs. For that matter, the ideas of four of the United States’ first five presidents are worthless, and for much greater reason than X’s are; after all, Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe all owned human beings, whereas X did nothing so barbaric.

If we instead opt to examine X in his nuanced totality, we find not a kook but a winsome human rights activist with a lot of wisdom to share. As a black nationalist during the Cold War, he took no stock whatever in American militarists’ humanitarian pretensions. When many others did not, X questioned the “integrity” and “sincerity” of leaders who tackled problems that were not theirs to solve. Even “liberal” interventionists who genuinely desired progress in foreign lands were not heroes in X’s book. The American meddlers “minding somebody else’s business way over in South Vietnam,” X declaimed, were unhelpful at best and dangerous at worst.

Malcolm saved his admiration for Africans vying to “establish their own independent nations” and working to “create a future for their people” without the involvement of intruders. He noted positively that when “the people in Africa and Asia get some power of their own, they get a mind of their own. They start seeing with their own eyes and listening with their own ears and speaking with their own mouth.” He admired leaders like Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, a CIA target whose anti-colonial disposition disturbed the departing Belgians in 1960. X went so far as to call Lumumba “the greatest black man who ever walked the African continent,” for Lumumba “didn’t fear anybody. He had those people so scared they had to kill him.” X also commended members of the Organization of African Unity for trying to extinguish colonial “vestiges of oppression and exploitation being suffered by African people.”

Continue reading “Malcolm X Understood Empire”