Libya vs. Bahrain

Tuesday at the White House, President Obama justified the illegal war in Libya by repeating the U.S. claim that our actions are "protecting the Libyan people from potential slaughter." Some slaughters are justifiable in the eyes of the U.S. government of course. Conventional wisdom places those our forces commit and those committed by our allies in a special category. The Bahrain monarchy's assault on Shiite pro-democracy protestors is one recent example of this double standard.

On the very same day Obama defended NATO's "humanitarian" intervention in Libya, he held a meeting at the White House with Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa - the Crown Prince of Bahrain. Bahraini troops recently attacked protesters in several villages. The monarch just lifted the country's three-month long emergency rule on June 1st and two days ago 23 doctors and 24 nurses who treated wounded anti-government protestors were charged "with attempting to topple the kingdom's monarchy." Human rights groups have pointed out that our close ally's move against the medical workers violates the Geneva Convention. Democracy Now! reported that the official White House statement regarding the meeting with the Crown Prince unsurprisingly failed to mention the government's recent harsh crackdown. Bahrain also happens to be the headquarters of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet.

WikiLeaks: Haiti's U.S. problem

The Obama administration wanted to keep Haiti's minimum wage at 24 cents/hour.

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Obama's war on whistleblowers

In a sane society, an individual who exposes fraud and illegality within a government agency would be made a hero. Perhaps a parade would be thrown or a film penned by Aaron Sorkin chronicling the whistleblower's courageous endeavors would win an Oscar.

We of course do not live in such a world. We reside in the upside down world of Bush-Obama continuity where the exposure of illegal spy programs result in immunity for the masterminds and their telecommunications accomplices. Prosecutions are reserved for the pesky whistleblowers. 

Jane Mayer's piece for The New Yorker on Thomas Drake, former National Security Agency analyst being prosecuted by the Obama Department of Justice for leaking classified information about the N.S.A. to the Baltimore Sun, shows the Obama administration's attack on whistleblowers to be unprecedented.    

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cluster bombs

Yesterday CNN reported that Libya's using cluster bombs on civilians even though many nations have outlawed the weapon. What the network didn't point out is that the U.S. uses these very same weapons in Afghanistan, but that would probably just confuse the propaganda machine.

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Gaddafi's use of cluster bombs is inhumane. In the hands of the U.S. the bombs are "legitimate weapons that provide a vital military capability."


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Eisenhower was a goddamned socialist

Barack Obama is the most pro-war president in living memory (video)

 Stop The War Coalition video:

BP oil spill - one year later

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