All the news I feel like printing

"The Starving of Yarmouk, Then the Capture"

After Bashar al-Assad’s regime spent nearly two years massacring Palestinians in Yarmouk camp, after regime bombardments destroyed nearly 70 percent of the camp, after thousands were arrested and tortured to death, and after civilians were forced to resort to scavenging through trash and weeds to ward off starvation — after all this, the world is finally paying attention to the situation in this long-suffering southern Damascus neighborhood. And all they want to talk about is the Islamic State. I think this is a disgrace.

Fellas: If you're going to commit war crimes and, unlike the Islamic State, you don't want to attract the world's attention -- make sure you shave.

"Palestinian Envoy Broke PLO Line to Agree Yarmouk Deal With Assad Regime":

The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) official who announced an agreement for a joint military operation between the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s regime and Palestinian factions against ISIS in Yarmouk refugee camp did so against PLO wishes and policies because of allegiances to the Syrian government and may be removed from his position as a consequence, Newsweek can reveal.

This week, Ahmed Majdalani, the former Palestinian Authority Labour minister, headed a delegation to the Syrian capital, Damascus, from the West Bank for talks with the Syrian government and yesterday confirmed that a “joint operation centre” will be created for Palestinian groups in Syria and the Syrian regime to coordinate an offensive against ISIS after the terror group captured large parts of the encampment last week.

However, a senior official within the PLO, speaking on condition of anonymity to Newsweek, said that members of the Palestinian executive body were “very upset” with Majdalani’s breaking of the PLO’s official line to announce cooperation with the Syrian government, claiming that he did so because the faction of which he is the secretary-general, the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front, is supported by the Assad regime.

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Another PLO official, Wasel Abu Yousef, said that the Syrian regime may destroy the encampment by bombing the site behind the claim of attacking ISIS, as eyewitnesses revealed to Newsweek yesterday that the regime had barrel-bombed the camp’s main hospital.

"We know that if the [Syrian] army, with its planes and tanks, would interfere, this would mean the complete destruction of the camp," Yousef told the Associated Press.

"Reuters Iraq bureau chief flees after death threats over story"

The Baghdad bureau chief for Reuters has left Iraq after he was threatened on Facebook and denounced by a Shiite paramilitary group's satellite news channel in reaction to a Reuters report last week that detailed lynching and looting in the city of Tikrit. The threats against journalist Ned Parker began on an Iraqi Facebook page run by a group that calls itself "the Hammer" and is believed by an Iraqi security source to be linked to armed Shiite groups. The April 5 post and subsequent comments demanded he be expelled from Iraq. One commenter said that killing Parker was "the best way to silence him, not kick him out."

Here's the story that has these Iranian-organized and U.S.-armed militias so upset. Meanwhile, from the BBC: "Karl Marx on Alienation." Gillian Anderson (yes) explains Marx's theory on how capitalism alienates workers, reducing them to cogs in the machine who only truly live a few hours a day when they're not toiling away making products they themselves can't afford so a rich person they've never met can become even richer.


Alienated though they may be, workers have not lost their humanity. "If We Left, They Wouldn't Have Nobody":

When an assisted living home in California shut down last fall, many of its residents were left behind, with nowhere to go. The staff at the Valley Springs Manor left when they stopped getting paid — except for cook Maurice Rowland and Miguel Alvarez, the janitor. "There was about 16 residents left behind, and we had a conversation in the kitchen, 'What are we going to do?' " Rowland says. "If we left, they wouldn't have nobody," the 34-year-old Alvarez says. Their roles quickly transformed for the elderly residents, who needed round-the-clock care. "I would only go home for one hour, take a shower, get dressed, then be there for 24-hour days," says Alvarez.

Finally, a blast from the not-so-distant past, when another dictator beloved by the GlobalResearch.ca pseudo-left was cozying up to the absolute worst the imperialist West has to offer. "Gaddafi wants EU cash to stop African migrants":

"Tomorrow Europe might no longer be European, and even black, as there are millions who want to come in," said Col Gaddafi, quoted by the AFP news agency. He was speaking at a ceremony in Rome late on Monday, standing next to Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. "We don't know what will happen, what will be the reaction of the white and Christian Europeans faced with this influx of starving and ignorant Africans," Col Gaddafi said. "We don't know if Europe will remain an advanced and united continent or if it will be destroyed, as happened with the barbarian invasions."

It's not the powerful people, it's the institutions of power

You've heard it before, be it from defenders of corrupt churches or wicked governments: It's not the institutions that are the problem, it's not the tremendous power we grant the people that control them, it's the few bad apples we sometimes allow to be placed in them. Replace the bad reactionary elements with liberal-minded humanitarians and one not need entertain silly talk of institutional reform or, daresay, abolition.

To proponents of this admittedly popular school of thought, allow me to introduce you to a man by the name of Harold Koh.

As dean of the Yale Law School, Koh built up a reputation as one of the fiercest legal critics of the Bush administration and the executive branch's centralization of power. In a 2008 speech on “Repairing Our Human Rights Reputation,” Koh railed against the imperial presidency and the “horror of Abu Ghraib,” “[o]ur tolerance of torture and cruel treatment for detainees” and the Magna Carta-shredding practice of “indefinite detention without trial.”

A fawning profile of Koh published around that time in the Yale Daily News noted his status as a “liberal lion” that would much-missed should he ever leave campus. “Either the Democrats will lose and Yale will keep Harold,” said law professor Kenji Yoshino, “or the Democrats will win and Yale will loan him to the country.”

Once a staunch critic of the imperial presidency, Koh, as the State Department's top legal adviser, now works for an administration that has undeniably expanded the power of the executive and institutionalized the very policies he once forcefully railed against, from the extra-judicial detention and abuse of detainees at CIA black sites in Somalia – and, one can safely assume, elsewhere – to the indefinite imprisonment without trial of dozens of men at Guantanamo Bay.

Rather than take the P.J. Crowley route and resign in protest of policies he once labeled repellent, Koh has soldiered on with an almost admirable enthusiasm, fulfilling the same role John Yoo did for George W. Bush with tortured legal arguments for every presidential whim. While U.S. law forbids extra-judicial assassinations, Koh – the Obama administration's go-to guy for legal justifications for that which it is already doing – maintains the ban does not apply to the firing of hellfire missiles from Predator drones in Pakistan and the use of cluster bombs in Yemen as such strikes are in strict “self-defense” and officials also work to ensure “collateral damage” – dead mothers and father, lifeless sons and daughters – “is kept to a minimum.”

Forty-one innocent Yemeni civilians, including 14 women and 21 children, were killed in but one such targeted strike, according to Amnesty International, which has called for those responsible for the “unlawful killings” to be “brought to justice.” The man who once delivered lectures on restoring America's human rights image in the world may, like Bush officials who signed off on torture, not even be able to travel it once he leaves office.

Most famously, Koh, who used to believe that “nothing” in the War Powers Resolution “authorizes the President to commit armed forces overseas into actual or imminent hostilities” – meaning not just a skirmish, but the mere threat one could break out – now argues that the war in Libya to which the president unilaterally committed his nation does not even rise to the status of said “hostilities.” That argument, should it be afforded the term, would perhaps fly if U.S. involvement in Libya were limited to President Obama drunk-dialing Colonel Ghaddafi at 4am and leaving nasty voicemails, as former partners are wont to do, and not ordering the dropping of heavy munitions on homes containing Ghaddafi's sleeping grandchildren.

Koh's seeming transformation has confounded his former colleagues in academia, though his time in both the Reagan and Clinton administrations hinted at his willingness to be a political action. Many of his friends “are mystified and disheartened to see their hero engaging in legalistic 'word play,'” author Paul Starobin notes in a New York Times Op-Ed published over the weekend. Mary Ellen O'Connel, a law professor at Notre Dame, captured many of their feelings when she bluntly asked, “Where is the Harold Koh I worked with to ensure that international law, human rights and the Constitution were honored during the Bush years?”

For his part, Koh denies there's any metamorphosis. In a defensive speech earlier this summer before the American Constitution Society, Koh rejected claims he had “caved to political pressure” on topics like Libya and extra-judicial killings, attributing suggestions he is a hypocrite to “obsessive” bloggers incapable of coming to terms with the fact that his views on presidential power had merely evolved over time – beginning in earnest, coincidentally, right after he joined the Obama administration.

“[I]f you hear me say something,” said a defiant Koh, “you can be absolutely sure that I believe it.”

There's no reason to doubt him. It's awful hard, after all, to get up every morning thinking what your doing is mere sophistry in the service of power. It's doubtful even Dick Cheney, after dining on the flesh of newborn babies from the developing world, looks in the mirror and says: “Damn, I'm evil.” With a tip of the hat to Upton Sinclair, it's also hard for a man to understand the error of his ways when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

Power and the privileges and prestige it offers have a strange way of changing even the most committed do-gooder.

Thus, we witness the spectacle of Koh, desperately holding the shards of his credibility, opining that word “hostilities” is “ambiguous,” as if there's anything nuanced about firing 112 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a country in a span of 24 hours. Rather than a conscious act of selling out, Koh says those who miss the “Old Harold” – the one that critiqued the expansion of executive power, as opposed to the one that provides legalistic excuses for it – need to understand his position has changed.

“I am changing roles,” he admits. “People's lives have seasons.” Indeed, they do. And this season Koh's playing for a new team where, instead of critiquing the institutions of power, he serves them. And as his friend and president of the Boston Red Sox, Larry Lucchino, notes, “he is exceptionally loyal to institutions.”

And therein lies the problem. Whether you fill the halls of power with people like John Yoo or Harold Koh, the result is the same: the powerful – also known as the people with the most money and, in the case of the military, guns – usually get what they want in the U.S. political system. Folks like Yoo and Koh, while no less culpable for their actions, are as replaceable as George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The problem isn't the people, it's the power we allow them to possess. It doesn't matter if you elect devils or saints, because when it comes to money and power, even saints are corruptible – and the same powerful institutions, from Wall Street to the Pentagon, prosper.

As one observer smartly remarked in the summer of 2008, whichever party holds the reigns of power, “its leaders will have their own reasons why they cannot change course immediately.” They will come up with the excuses as to why Gitmo will have to stay open; why the president will have to continue amassing power; why those accused of actions of terrorism can't be provided due process. That's why, he noted, “we the people cannot leave it to the politicians. For the core concern of politicians is politics, not principle.”

That observer, of course, was Harold Koh.

The problem, as history amply demonstrates, isn't the party affiliation of presidents and their legal enablers, it's the power they possess. The U.S. government is the most powerful political institution in the world, with those who run it given the awesome power to decide who gets a trial and who does not; who lives and who dies; whether we're at war or at peace. Putting anyone in that position is asking too much of someone we must not forget is still a fallible human being like you or I susceptible to the same corrupting influences of power and vanity.

Harold Koh, like many a crusading reformer before him, used to say the same thing. But now he has power.

Barack Obama loses his hat

As a candidate for president, Barack Obama was a Distinguished Constitutional Scholar. As a president waging an illegal war? He's just some guy who, gosh, isn't really in a position to talk about that there document he took an oath to uphold and defend.

At a press conference this week, NBC correspondent Chuck Todd -- presumably under strict orders not to ask about Newsweek's Princess Di cover -- questioned the erstwhile legal scholar about whether he felt the War Powers Resolution, which forbids the president from deploying troops without congressional consent except in cases of imminent danger to national security, and even then for only 60 days, passed constitutional muster.

Well, the president replied, "I'm not a Supreme Court justice, so I'm not -- I'm not going to put my constitutional law professor hat on here." And so he didn't, declaring it irrelevant -- "I don't even have to get to the constitutional question" -- as he was already abiding by the law in question, rejecting the claim his actions "in any way violate the War Powers Resolution."

But the president didn't really want to get into legal specifics, other than to point out the that the resolution was passed in the wake of the Vietnam war and probably wasn't intended to apply to countries merely having the shit bombed out of them by U.S. forces (like, say, Cambodia). There's a reason Obama didn't want to put on his "constitutional law professor hat" during the press conference: he lost it during the 2008 campaign.

Back then, ages ago I know, Obama had no qualms addressing thorny legal issues concerning executive power. "The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation," he told The Boston Globe.

You can see how such become inconvenient when you're the one unilaterally authorizing the wars.

Obama also probably didn't want to delve into the details because, when not reading the War Powers Resolution with the special goggles handed out to die-hard Democratic loyalists, it's quite clear -- indisputable, really -- that the Obama administration is violating the letter of the law. Contrary to administration claims, bombing a country and trying to assassinate its leader most certainly do qualify as acts of war, or "hostilities" in the resolution's terminology. And it's most certainly the case that by helping its NATO allies do the same, U.S. forces are being asked to "command, coordinate, participate in the movement of, or accompany the regular or irregular military forces of any foreign country or government," and that there's an "imminent threat" that those forces "will become engaged," all of which triggers the War Powers Resolution. That means Obama's roughly three-month old war is, if it wasn't illegal from the start, explicitly so since the 60 day limit on non-congressionally authorized troop deployments expired a month ago.

As for all those complaining about the blatant illegality of the latest and greatest humanitarian bombing campaign -- what Obama called  the "noise about process and congressional consultation and so forth" -- the president declared it was much ado about nothing. "I've had all the members of Congress over to talk about it," he patiently explained, maintaining U.S. involvement in the war he once said would last "days, not weeks," had. "So a lot of this fuss is politics."

Politicians being politicians, the president's assessment is no doubt partially true, though it's a two-edged sword as Obama's own unwillingness to seek what almost certainly would have been easy congressional approval of the Libya war back in March likewise had a lot to do with politics. Seeking congressional approval may have spurred a wider debate about the wisdom of entering yet another war at a time when social programs at home are being slashed and Americans are increasingly tired of being known only for burgers and bombs, and seeking an authorization to use force may have required Obama to layout an endgame scenario -- an actual plan -- rather than platitudes about freedom and America's uniquely heroic role in world affairs.

"We have engaged in a limited operation to help a lot of people against one of the worst tyrants in the world, somebody who nobody should want to defend," Obama added during the press conference, bravely taking on the influential Gaddafi Lobby in Washington. "[W]e should be sending out a unified message to this guy that he should step down and give his people a fair chance to live their lives without fear. And -- and this suddenly becomes the cause celebre for some folks in Congress? Come on."

Got that? Dissent aids the enemy. Unity is Strength. The rule of law is a campaign slogan, nothing more. And Barack Obama is George W. Bush.

Liar, liar

When he first sought to justify his undeclared, unauthorized war in Libya, President Barack Obama reassured members of Congress that the conflict, or the "heavy kinetic activity" as I guess we're calling the incineration of poor foreigners these days, would last "days, not weeks," as multiple media outlets reported at the time. The line was repeated by one of Obama's national security advisers and by the president himself at a news conference.

That was in March, more than a dozen weeks ago. That is to say -- and say it with me liberals -- Barack Obama misled his country into an illegal war.

"Obama Lied, People Died," is a chant I expect to hear at the next Democratic National Convention -- unless, of course, those Democrats who claimed to oppose lying their country into war when a Republican was in power were, and are, liars too.

The liberal defense of murder

University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole -- who I interviewed for public radio back when U.S. presidents unilaterally starting wars was still considered a bad thing -- reacts to reports that NATO bombs may have killed Muammar Qaddafi's youngest son and three of his grandchildren:

"If you hang around in a charnel house, you could end up being cremated."

Lovely.

Update: More high-minded, sophisticated commentary from Juan Cole.

(Headline borrowed from Richard Seymour)

War for NATO

Governments don't abide by the same rules that govern the rest of us. They steal. They kidnap. They kill. And they do so with impunity, possessing a monopoly over the legally sanctioned, societally condoned use of force.

So it's odd to see University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole writing of the U.S. government's commitment to a military alliance, NATO, in terms of a “moral obligation” – one to bomb Libya, no less – as if the same state that killed millions in Vietnam and Iraq possesses the desire or ability to be an upstanding moral actor. Odder still: demonstrating the existence of said “moral obligation” by citing NATO's participation in an unjust military occupation of Afghanistan that only underscores the inability of Western powers to carry out the “humanitarian" wars of liberal lore.

But that's just what Cole does in a Sunday post attempting to justify the Obama administration's decision to bomb Libya by citing the U.S.-led NATO's decision to take over the U.S.-led campaign, as if that move -- taken weeks after the initial bombing runs -- compels skeptical Americans to recognize the Rightness and Justness of the president's commitment of U.S. forces (and CIA personnel) to the latest and greatest war in a country that, coincidentally, has massive oil reserves.

“[D]oes that decision not lay a moral obligation on the U.S. to lend support to the effort of its allies?” Cole writes, directing his softball of a question to Glenn Greenwald, who's no doubt in the process of penning a 1,200-word evisceration. The U.S. had the most “robust ability” to take out Gaddafi's anti-aircraft batteries, Cole writes, so if it refused to participate in the war of choice its less-robust allies could -- potentially! -- have had their jets shot down, undermining their commitment to NATO (which would be a bad thing, apparently).

“Should the United States have said, well, too bad, we are not getting involved over there?”

The answer, of course, is "yes." That a war of choice incapable of achieving its stated end of protecting civilians might prove costly or difficult to the U.S.'s allies is no good reason to start bombing with them; as Cole would have argued were this still 2003 and a Republican was in office, real allies point out when their friends are making mistakes, they don't join in.

But in 2011, Cole adopts the opposite stance, saying NATO's commitment to a bloody war he's likened to Vietnam compels the U.S. government to join in the bombing of Libya (as if it was oh-so-reluctant to fire 193 of the first 200 missiles in that war):

I’d like to remind everyone that NATO did invoke article 5 with regard to the September 11 attacks, which led to a substantial NATO presence in Afghanistan in support of the US war on al-Qaeda and its Taliban backers. Coalition deaths in that struggle include 362 British troops, 155 Canadian troops, 55 French troops, and 40 Danish ones.

While these death tolls are smaller than the American ones, they are very large for the countries concerned, especially since their publics (with the exception of the UK) almost universally desperately did not want to be in Afghanistan. If, having made this supreme sacrifice so many times for the sake of their NATO alliance with the United States, these countries now met with a yawn from Washington and a disinterested wave saying ‘so long folks, you are on your own’ — surely it would mean the end of NATO and would likely send America’s stock in Europe into the toilet.

Thanks for the reminder, professor: NATO has long been a means for the U.S. to circumvent democratic input and gain supporting firepower for its unjust wars and brutal military occupations – wars and occupations “almost universally” opposed by the citizens on whose behalf they're ostensibly being undertaken. But are we supposed to think that's a good thing -- that an alliance that repeatedly defies the will of the public to carry out immoral wars is something to be preserved and protected, rather than undermined at every opportunity?

If Cole really cares about protecting civilians, he should be cheering “the end of NATO,” not raising the specter of its collapse as a bugaboo by which to justify another bombing campaign against a Muslim nation with oil. After all, as Cole points out, NATO is crucial to the occupation of Afghanistan, where almost every day brings news of more innocent women and children murdered by their country's occupiers. Should the alliance collapse -- as it should have two decades ago when its stated reason for existence, the Soviet Union, dissolved -- so could the occupation of Afghanistan (and the deadly drone war next door in Pakistan), an outcome that would save a lot more lives than tossing cruise missiles into Libya and prolonging a bloody civil war.

But the good professor seems more concerned with myopic imperial considerations and the playing the role of an ivory tower Kissinger -- pretending nation-states that carry out immoral wars have "moral obligations" to a military alliance -- than the big picture ramifications of bolstering an organization that regularly kills poor people who have the misfortune of living somewhere of "strategic interest." A U.S. refusal to participate in a war against Libya could anger officials in Britain and France, Cole gravely warns, which could jeopardize the very existence of the military alliance that makes the occupation of Afghanistan tenable!

And you know what? Cole could -- fingers crossed -- be right. And with respect to his support for the war in Libya, that's precisely why he's wrong.