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john mccain
'A Breath of Fresh Air' as Pamela Anderson Takes Meghan McCain to Task Over US War Crimes
"Pamela Anderson talking about how war crimes need to be punished and of course Meghan McCain is crying about it."
Sep 06, 2019
Friday's edition of The View became the site of an argument about war crimes, the U.S. military, and WikiLeaks as actress Pamela Anderson and program co-host Meghan McCain battled during Anderson's appearance on the hit daytime talk show.
The dispute began when View hosts attacked Anderson for her unwavering support of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. McCain pounced, claiming that Assange is merely a "cyber terrorist."
"He hacked information," McCain said. "His leaks included classified documents that put our national security at risk, our military, and the lives of spies and diplomats at risk."
Anderson replied by pointing out that the U.S. military, not WikiLeaks, is responsbile for the deaths of many innocent people around the world.
"How many people have the American government killed innocently and how many has Wikileaks?" Anderson asked. "The military has put many innocent lives at risk."
That response spurred a cheer from the audience.
"Oh, calm down, sir," McCain snapped at one boisterous supporter.
Later in the discussion, McCain extolled the virtues of American spies and intelligence officers and asked if Anderson was concerned for their safety from Assange leaking information to the public.
"Well, there's no evidence he's put anyone at risk," said Anderson. "And I think people like Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning are heroes."
Progressive reaction online to the argument focused on Anderson's effective batting away of McCain's right-wing talking points.
"What a breath of fresh air!!" Splinter managing editor Katherine Kreuger wrote in her recap of the argument.
"Pamela Anderson talking about how war crimes need to be punished and of course Meghan McCain is crying about it," said Twitter user @Millerheighlife.
In a rare omission, Meghan McCain did not mention that her father was late war hawk Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) during the discussion.
Watch Anderson's appearance:
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Trump's "Go Back" Racist Epithet; Oh, So Familiar
Trump has dived deep into the septic tank before. But, folks, this is truly a new low
Jul 16, 2019
white person telling a person of color to "go back" to where they came from (usually Africa) is, unfortunately, as common as it is racist.
It's also such a dumb thing to say--especially in a nation where the majority of us came from somewhere else. It's an epithet that often issues from the lips of knuckle-draggers who can't think of a more subtle way to spew their racism.
In the years prior to Hitler's "Final Solution," his first solution was to tell Germany's Jewish population to go back to their "home" country.
Israel? Umm, no. Nazis being Nazis, they held tight to the (incorrect) theory that Jews originated from the island of . . . drum roll please . . . Madagascar!
Nazis held tight to the (incorrect) theory that Jews originated from the island of . . . drum roll please . . . Madagascar.
Now we have the President of the United States joining in the fun. The same weekend that Donald Trump had scheduled wholesale deportation raids of thousands of undocumented immigrants, he tweeted that four "Democrat Congresswomen" should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came." He added that, as far as he was concerned, they "can't leave fast enough."
In fact, three of the four Congresswomen--Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts--were born and raised in the United States. The fourth--Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, born in Somalia--is like the others an American citizen. Literally the only thing that distinguishes them from others in Congress is their non-whiteness, making Trump's racist intention perfectly clear.
Sure, Trump has dived deep into the septic tank before--leading the birther nonsense, calling white supremacists "good people," declining to condemn the KKK, and intentionally conflating Hispanic immigrants with violent criminals. But, folks, this is truly a new low.
I was reminded of the famous jury deliberation scene in 12 Angry Men in which, after two hours of dropping hints, Ed Bagley's character suddenly explodes in an unequivocally racist rant, exclaiming, "They're no good, there's not a one of them that's any good!" As Bagley continues to spew, each juror gets up and slowly turns away in repulsion, until Henry Fonda's character famously says, "Sit down and don't open your mouth again."
Unfortunately, there are no fellow jurors turning their back on Trump or demanding that he shut up. Most Republicans in Congress could muster nary a peep of protest over the President's remarks. Virtually the sole exception was Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who, in an interview on Fox News, offered this tepid response:
"We all know that A.O.C. and this crowd are a bunch of communists. They hate Israel, they hate our own country." But, he went on to allow, the four "are American citizens" who "won an election."
With defenders like these, who needs racist Presidents?
With defenders like these, who needs racist Presidents?
We'd all like to believe that if John McCain was still around, he might be the "Henry Fonda" in the room, but for now, his daughter, Meghan McCain, will have to do. She has bluntly denounced Trump's tweets as "racist" while also decrying the "cowardice" in other Republicans for not standing up to Trump.
Somewhere, Richard Spencer, the white supremacist leader who attended the 2016 Republican convention in support of Trump and "sipped Manhattans as he matter-of-factly called for removing African-Americans, Hispanics and Jews from the United States," is smiling triumphantly.
"Trust me. Trump thinks like me," Spencer told AP reporter Steve Peoples back then. "Do you think it's a coincidence that everybody like me loves Trump and supports him?"
No, Dick, we don't think it's a coincidence at all.
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War Begets War... and Nothing Else
The U.S. government contains a terrible void where it ought to have sanity
Jun 20, 2019
Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran . . .
Thanks, John McCain! Let's mix a little humor in with war. It's so much easier to take when we do. By the way, have you noticed that we're always on the verge of war?
"The bombing will be massive, but will be limited to a specific target." So said a U.N. diplomat recently, according to the Jerusalem Post. Guess which country he was referring to.
An act of war is how we "send messages." So the Trump hawks (this term may or may not include Donald himself) are thinking -- if the paper's sources have any credibility -- of bombing an Iranian nuclear facility as an act of punishment because Iran "has announced that it intends to deviate from the nuclear agreement signed in 2015 and to enrich uranium at a higher level than the maximum it has committed to within the framework of the nuclear deal."
This is all hush-hush, of course. War has to be planned in secret. The public's role is definitely not to be part of the debate in the lead-up process or to question the facts that justify taking action. Its role is to cheer loudly when the hostilities begin, fervently hating the specified enemy and embracing the new war as a necessary, last-resort action to protect all that we hold dear.
"War-making must be renounced. It is past time for the paradigm shift. We have one planet and we must see ourselves as one and we must take a stand."
Its role is definitely not to question war itself or to bring up the inevitability of unintended consequences, whether that be the death of babies or the poisoning of the environment. Its role is not to suggest that creating peace is essentially the opposite of waging war, or to cry out:
"War-making must be renounced. It is past time for the paradigm shift. We have one planet and we must see ourselves as one and we must take a stand."
These are the words of Dud Hendrick of Veterans for Peace, and I pause here and let the words settle -- in all their complexity -- into the collective consciousness.
Perhaps what is most stunning about them is their complete absence from the corridors and smoke-filled rooms of American government. Instead, in virtually every story I read about one aspect or another of national security, what I hear is the echo of John McCain's humorous chant. National security is always seen, in the corridors of power, as a matter of striking back against some enemy or other, an attitude that strikes me as both stupid and cowardly.
I'm not saying security -- either national or personal -- is in any way a simple concept, or that acknowledging "we are one planet" leads to some obvious course of action. Indeed, the opposite is the case. Striking back is the simple course of action, and jumping on its bandwagon requires ignoring the absolute certainty of unintended consequences that will result from a bombing campaign or an invasion or a cyberwar or the imposition of sanctions.
Welcome to the 21st century: the century of endless war.
The absence of "we are one planet" voices at the highest levels of government guarantees that the government will pretty much always make simple, impulsive -- wrong -- decisions about national security. The absence of such voices in the mainstream media, at least in its geopolitical reportage, guarantees that there will be no long-term accountability for such decisions or any memory of the resulting consequences. Welcome to the 21st century: the century of endless war.
Thus:
"Over the past few months," Politico reports, "senior Trump aides have made the case in public and private that the administration already has the legal authority to take military action against Iran, citing a law nearly two decades old that was originally intended to authorize the war in Afghanistan."
The law in question is AUMF: the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed in 2001, in the wake of 9/11, which gave the Bush administration permission to go on a hunting spree for terrorists without the need for ongoing congressional approval. Critics at the time argued that this gave dangerous leeway to the executive branch to wage war whenever it felt like doing so, without any sort of accountability to the requirements of democracy -- such as making a case that the war in question is necessary.
And so the Politico story quotes Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who, upon leaving a closed-door briefing in May held by acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, noted: "What I heard in there makes it clear that this administration feels that they do not have to come back and talk to Congress in regards to any action they do in Iran."
Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran . . .
Or whatever.
As Medea Benjamin, and Nicolas J. S. Davies point out: "Whether in Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea or one of the 20 countries under the boot of U.S. sanctions, the Trump administration is using its economic weight to try to exact regime change or major policy changes in countries around the globe."
And the New York Times informs us that the United States and Russia are currently fighting a "daily digital Cold War" -- each country playing nasty little games with the other's power grid. The Pentagon even has an arm called the United States Cyber Command, which "runs the military's offensive and defensive operations in the online world" -- and it's getting more aggressive.
"But now the American strategy has shifted more toward offense, officials say, with the placement of potentially crippling malware inside the Russian system at a depth and with an aggressiveness that had never been tried before. It is intended partly as a warning, and partly to be poised to conduct cyberstrikes if a major conflict broke out between Washington and Moscow.
"The commander of United States Cyber Command, Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, has been outspoken about the need to 'defend forward' deep in an adversary's networks to demonstrate that the United States will respond to the barrage of online attacks aimed at it."
Somehow the existence of this crazy game doesn't make me feel safer. And the president, the story points out, doesn't even know about it: "Pentagon and intelligence officials described broad hesitation to go into detail with Mr. Trump about operations against Russia for concern over his reaction -- and the possibility that he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials, as he did in 2017 when he mentioned a sensitive operation in Syria to the Russian foreign minister."
The U.S. government, I fear, contains a terrible void where it ought to have sanity.
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