Tag Archives: saudi arabia

Eva Bartlett/American Herald Tribune: Investigating massive corruption at the UN: Independent journalist’s accreditation revoked

Re-blogging, with thanks, on The Everyday Concerned Citizen.

American journalist, thrown out of the UN–for reporting the truth about UN corruption? “It’s not about comfort – when they throw you out, you can’t speak to sources and report, like about Yemen—I’m working on a new story, more on UN being captured by Saudi Arabia, marginalized, in corrupt decay.

Please add your voice: “A petition demanding the restoration of Lee’s Resident Correspondent accreditation provides updates on his case.”

David Swanson/Washington’s Blog: Non-French War Deaths Matter

We are all France. Apparently. Though we are never all Lebanon or Syria or Iraq for some reason. Or a long, long list of additional places.

We are led to believe that U.S. wars are not tolerated and cheered because of the color or culture of the people being bombed and occupied. But let a relatively tiny number of people be murdered in a white, Christian, Western-European land, with a pro-war government, and suddenly sympathy is the order of the day.

“This is not just an attack on the French people, it is an attack on human decency and all things that we hold dear,” says U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham. I’m not sure I hold ALL the same things dear as the senator, but for the most part I think he’s exactly right and that sympathy damn well ought to be the order of the day following a horrific mass killing in France.

I just think the same should apply to everywhere else on earth as well. The majority of deaths in all recent wars are civilian. The majority of civilians are not hard to sympathize with once superficial barriers are overcome. Yet, the U.S. media never seems to declare deaths in Yemen or Pakistan or Palestine to be attacks on our common humanity.

I included “pro-war government” as a qualification above, because I can recall a time, way back in 2003, when I was the one shouting “We are all France,” and pro-war advocates in the United States were demonizing France for its refusal to support a looming and guaranteed to be catastrophic and counterproductive U.S. war. France sympathized with U.S. deaths on 911, but counseled sanity, decency, and honesty in response. The U.S. told France to go to hell and renamed french fries in Congressional office buildings.

Now, 14 years into a global war on terror that reliably produces more terror, France is an enthusiastic invader, plunderer, bomber, and propagator of hateful bigotry. France also sells billions of dollars of weaponry to lovely little bastions of equality and liberty like Saudi Arabia, carefully ignoring Saudis’ funding of anti-Western terrorist groups.

********************************

Please visit Washington’s Blog for the rest of this post.

David Swanson: Does the Pope Know a Boy Is About to Be Crucified?

Source: Does the Pope Know a Boy Is About to Be Crucified?

Please visit the source link above or the original source, Washington’s Blog, for the whole tragic story and commentary by the author, David Swanson.

Excerpt:

“Occasionally a particular variety of horror serves to catch people’s attention. The boy in the photo at right has been sentenced to be crucified. His crime wasboy participation in a pro-democracy rally. Now he will have done to him what the Pope’s religion says was done to Jesus Christ. He won’t be smiling blissfully like a Christ on a crucifix either. He will suffer immense pain and torment, and then die.

Who would do this? Why, Saudi Arabia, of course. And who is Saudi Arabia’s chief ally, weapons provider, and oil customer? Why, the United States Congress.”

Also:

“Saudi Arabia is dropping bombs, including U.S.-made cluster bombs, on Yemen, slaughtering children by the hundreds. Saudi Arabia is brutalizing the people of Bahrain, not to mention the people of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabians are funding ISIS and other murderers in the region. Are all of these murders acceptable even if the crucifixion isn’t? Or can we seize this opportunity to build opposition to all murder? Or might we if the Pope mentions it to Congress?

On Tuesday the Senate Armed Services Committee brought in David Petraeus to testify yet again on how to escalate more wars. Petraeus recently proposed arming al Qaeda. Senator John McCain gave Petraeus credit on Tuesday for extending the Iraq war from 2007 to 2011. Petraeus noted that the whole region is in horrible turmoil. Nobody made any connection between the U.S. wars on Iraq and Libya that have created that turmoil and the results. Nobody questioned the wisdom of using more war to try to repair the damage of war.

Well, a few of us did. The wonderful CodePink was there as always. I was there with a sign that said “Arm al Qaeda? Reagan tried that.”

The mad men who run the U.S. government have reached the point of re-arming the enemies of enemies whose blowback first drove them to radically escalate the global murder of innocent people in the name of opposing terrorism while increasing it.

The National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance had an answer to this on Tuesday, taking a protest of endless war and environmental destruction to the gate of the White House.

The Secret Service arrested the people in the photo below rather than accept a letter from them articulating their opposition to policies of massive cruelty to the earth and its inhabitants.”

Source: Does the Pope Know a Boy Is About to Be Crucified?

Please visit the source link above or the original source, Washington’s Blog, for the whole tragic story and commentary by the author, David Swanson.