Firearm(s) no "right" but wedge distracting from underlying issues

Self-immolation

America burning: righteous self-immolation

Editing, comment by 

Carolyn Bennett

U.S. Constitution provides no right of individuals to keep and bear arms guns 

A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed thus reads the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

T

he National Rifle Association (not unlike religionists) cherry picks texts without regard for contexts, historical and otherwise ─ “right of the people to keep and bear arms.” Even more ridiculously, their mantra: lock and load, arm all of “us,” everybody else is a “terrorist,” shoot to kill, take no prisoners. “Keep me and mine safe.”     

But the Supreme Court of the United States and appeals courts have focused on ‘well-regulated militia’ and ‘security of a free State’ to rule that Second Amendment rights are reserved to states and their militias – what are today National Guards.

“Since the Supreme Court’s unanimous Miller decision in 1939,” Jeff Cohen wrote in a 2000 article, “all federal appeals courts, whether dominated by liberals or conservatives, have agreed that the Second Amendment does not confer gun rights on individuals.”

U.S. v. Miller legacy

Since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in U.S. v. Miller [307 U.S. 174, 1939], the meaning of the Second Amendment, as a matter of law, has been settled.

I

n Miller, the Court ruled that the ‘obvious purpose’ of the Second Amendment was to ‘assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness’ of the state militia. And since Miller, the Supreme Court has addressed the Second Amendment twice more, upholding New Jersey’s strict gun control law in 1969 and upholding the federal law banning felons from possessing guns in 1980. Furthermore, twice (1965 and 1990), the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the term ‘well-regulated militia’ refers to the National Guard.

 In the early 1980s, the Supreme Court addressed the Second Amendment issue again, after the town of Morton Grove, Illinois, passed an ordinance banning handguns (making certain reasonable exceptions for law enforcement, the military, and collectors).

After the town was sued on Second Amendment grounds, the Illinois Supreme Court and the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that not only was the ordinance valid, but there was no individual right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment (Quillici v. Morton Grove). In October 1983, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of this ruling, allowing the lower court rulings to stand.

  

In 1991, former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger, a Minnesotan who identified himself as “a gun man,” addressed the Second Amendment drama:

U.S. Supreme Court
interior view

The subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word ‘fraud’ on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime... [the NRA] ha(s) misled the American people and, I regret to say, they have had far too much influence on the Congress of the United States than, as a citizen, I would like to see.

The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon...

[S]urely the Second Amendment does not remotely guarantee every person the constitutional right to have a ‘Saturday Night Special’ or a machine gun without any regulation whatever.

There is no support in the Constitution for the argument that federal and state governments are powerless to regulate the purchase of such firearms...

U.S. Supreme Court
Chief Justice
Warren Earl Burger

Fifteenth Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court - Warren Burger

Described as a justice with conservative leanings considered an “originalist,” who delivered a variety of “transformative” decisions during his tenure, Warren Earl Burger (b. September 17, 1907, d. June 25, 1995) was Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1969 to 1986.

He was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the son of Swiss German descendants, his father a traveling salesman and railroad cargo inspector, his grandfather an immigrant from Switzerland who at 14 age had joined the Union Army, was later wounded in the Civil War, and received the Medal of Honor.

W

arren Burger grew up on the family farm near the edge of Saint Paul, graduated high school then attended University of Minnesota night school, while selling insurance life; and in 1931, graduated magna cum laude from William Mitchell College of Law (then St. Paul College of Law) and entered private law practice.

In 1952, at the Republican convention, Burger played a key role in Dwight D. Eisenhower’s nomination by delivering the Minnesota delegation. After he was elected, President Eisenhower appointed Burger as the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Division of the Justice Department. In 1956, Eisenhower appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Burger remained on the Court of Appeals for thirteen years. In 1969, President Richard M. Nixon nominated Burger to the Chief Justice position. On September 26, 1986, Burger retired and led the campaign to mark the 1987 bicentennial of the United States Constitution. He commissioned the construction of the Constitution Bicentennial Monument (The National Monument to the U.S. Constitution). 

Inheritors dispense with reason and foolishly wedge, divide, undermine

Despite a prevailing truth in law, special interest groups continue to generate tremendous support for individual right to keep and bear arms while claiming that no Article of the Bill of Rights is more important to the preservation of human liberties. They have succeeded in making the Second Amendment one of the most controversial legal issues in this country.

 

“As a result,” Media critic and author Jeff Cohen concludes, “the United States remains the only nation whose citizens can still, to a broad extent, exercise the right to keep and bear arms”; and this right “has cost the United States dearly in lives of persons killed by the disaffected, the unstable and the emotionally ill.”

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ays-God-Guns wedging evades critical underlying issues.

Concerning the right-left black-white dance over guns, Jeff Cohen writes, while “a correlation between gun laws and gun deaths is too obvious to ignore; mainstream journalists often ignore another key factor” that contributes to the United States’ inordinately high violent crime rate: poverty.  

But there many other underlying issues: poverty, violence (not all shooters are insane, clinically impaired or “criminals” ─ why are they so angry or paranoid or in a state of hatred?); bribery and influence peddling in government; Americans’ self-important penchant for blaming, deepening the social divide  ─ instead of coming together and confronting and solving critical human problems for the common good.

I

t is interesting to me that Chief Justice Warren Burger was considered conservative, was appointed to the high court by Republican presidents;  and also led the U.S. Supreme Court in some of most progressive rulings in U.S. history. Though Burger held for Georgia cases against sodomy (1986) and reinstatement of the death penalty (1976), he led the Supreme Court’s:

Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971), a unanimous ruling supporting busing to reduce de facto racial segregation in schools

United States v. U.S. District Court (1972), another unanimous ruling against the Nixon Administration’s desire to invalidate the need for a search warrant and the requirements of the Fourth Amendment in cases of domestic surveillance

Furman v. Georgia (1972), a 5-4 decision invalidating all death penalty laws then in force, (although he dissented from the decision).

U.S. Supreme Court
Chief Justice
Warren Earl Burger

Roe v. Wade (1973) voting with the majority to recognize a broad right to privacy that prohibited states from banning abortions

Emphasized maintenance of Checks and Balances between the branches of government

United States v. Nixon (July 24, 1974), in a unanimous 8-0 decision in against President Nixon’s attempt to keep several memos and tapes relating to the Watergate Affair private.

Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha (1983), Burger held for the majority, that Congress could not reserve a legislative veto over executive branch actions.

One of the reasons American society overall fails to make continuous progress is that Americans in all matters deal in blacks and whites, distortion and misrepresentation, right, righteous, and wrongs. There is no discussion, no give and take, no real debate, no deliberation or self-reflection in this country. Everybody and his or her group engage in grandstanding and selfish self-perpetuation, pushing sound bites and grabbing a penny’s worth of fame.

  

Sources and notes

“Gun Control, the NRA and the Second Amendment” (By Jeff Cohen, a version of this appeared in Brill's Content, February 2000), http://fair.org/article/gun-control-the-nra-and-the-second-amendment/

Jeff Cohen

Associate professor in journalism, author, media critic and lecturer Jeff Cohen is founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College (New York). Cohen is 1986 founder the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) in 2011 the online activist group RootsAction.org.

Cohen was senior producer of MSNBC’s Phil Donahue primetime show until it was terminated three weeks before the Iraq invasion. His latest book is Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.

“RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS” http://www.lincoln.edu/criminaljustice/hr/Arms.htm

Continued: Since the Miller decision, lower federal and state courts have addressed the meaning of the Second Amendment in more than thirty cases. In every case, up until March of 1999 (see below), the courts decided that the Second Amendment refers to the right to keep and bear arms only in connection with a state militia.

Even more telling, in its legal challenges to federal firearms laws like the Brady Law and the assault weapons ban, the National Rifle Association makes no mention of the Second Amendment.

Indeed, the National Rifle Association has not challenged a gun law on Second Amendment grounds in several years.

More about right to keep and bear arms Websites:

Legal Theory of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms

The Right to Keep and Bear Arms

The Second Amendment and the Historiography of the Bill of Rights

The Second Amendment and the Ideology of Self-Protection

Second Thoughts on the Second Amendment

The Second Amendment Foundation

Historic Supreme Court Decisions

http://www.lincoln.edu/criminaljustice/hr/Arms.htm

Lincoln University Criminal Justice Program, Lincoln University, PA 19352, http://www.lincoln.edu/criminaljustice/

 Warren Burger biographical brief, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_E._Burger

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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Spiraling harm affluent nations inflict on Middle East, Africa’s children must stop

Mali's people
Refugees

War-made witnesses to slaughter, wandering refugees

 Re-reporting, editing, comment by Carolyn Bennett

These are some of the regional crises created by officials of the United States, France and England in their endless wars against peoples, generations of the Middle East (South Central Asia) and Africa.

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t this rate, the people of these countries will NEVER advance. This is in essence the meaning of poverty (what indifference routinely dismisses as “the poor” and why the UN Millennium Goals will never be met) ─ poverty that is created and sustained by affluent, nuclear-powered,  consumerist, plundering nations such as the United States, Britain and France.

Syria's children
Refugees 

SYRIA (circa 1.1 million refugees)

children’s refugee crisis.

“Refugees pour across borders day and night,” says U.N. Refugee Agency regional coordinator Panos Moumtzis. “More than half of the refugees are children.

This is a children’s refugee crisis.

It is heartbreaking when we see these children arriving and particularly what we see in the days that follow.

T

urkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt have been flooded with tens of thousands of refugees, says Moumtzis; 30 percent of these refugees are housed in camps, the rest are outside camps in villages and towns.

These children have experienced and witnessed some of the most horrific scenes, seeing their parents or loved ones killed, their homes destroyed, schools affected. Many are withdrawn. “We hear from the parents about bedwetting, Moumtzis told the press.

Endlessly homeless
crossing borders
wandering
refugees

“More than half the 642,000 refugees who have sought refuge from the Syrian conflict in neighboring countries are children and the number of people fleeing could almost double by June of this year.”

JORDAN (refugees)

An estimated 350,000 Syrians have sought refuge in Jordan from the fighting, with 36,000 coming since the beginning of 2013. These pressures are adding to already grievous social pressures in Jordan. In one of the harshest winters on record, the living conditions of these refugees are said to be “appalling.”

According to the International Rescue Committee ─

The majority of the refugees are living outside the refugee camps—in cities and towns where social services, schools and even trash and waste systems are not equipped to meet the needs of a suddenly inflated population.

Desperate, these people have come despite the [Jordanian] government’s strict rules on who can enter the country and controls on refugee movements outside the camps…

D

 uring the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, King Abdullah of Jordan compared the militant threat in Syria with Afghanistan and acknowledged that the situation in the region would be “catastrophic and something that we would be reeling from for decades to come.”

The United States proxy war to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, financed and armed by Washington’s Sunni allies in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, and trained and supported with military intelligence by Jordan and Israel ─ is said to be “fraught with dangers” for the Jordanian king. An overthrow of Syria’s president “at the hands of the rival Islamist gangs now fighting in Syria could result in the fragmentation of the country, with consequences that would spill over into Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.”

MALI AND NIGER (refugees)

Since Friday January 11, Mauritania has received 4,208 Malians, Niger 1,300 refugees from Mali, and Burkina Faso 1,829. These numbers, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), brought the total number of Malian refugees in neighboring states to 147,000.

Thousands more people of Mali have become refugees since France began military operations against “Islamic rebels in the north of the country.”

People are fleeing to neighboring countries already struggling to provide food and water for earlier waves of refugees.

[

U.S. drone wars ─ an anonymous source has allegedly told Agence France Presse that U.S. officials plan “to consolidate the U.S. position in Africa with a new drone, robotic unmanned aircraft, outpost in Niger, on the eastern border of Mali” where French forces are engaged.

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ast week, Washington sent approximately 100 military trainers to nations that are prepared to or have already deployed troops to Mali. These nations include Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Togo, and Ghana.]

KENYA (refugees harassed)

AlertNet reports a refugee telling the group Refugees International ─

We left our homeland against our will. We thought we could save our lives by running to another country. We thought we would be protected. But now we face the same harassment here as we faced in our homeland, because of the Kenyan government’s directive. These past few weeks in Nairobi, we are feeling that the security forces are treating us like war captives rather than refugees.

“Refugees International (RI) is deeply concerned about Kenya’s recent decision to move 100,000 city-dwelling refugees into camps” and has called on the Government of Kenya “not to pursue this relocation plan and to ensure that the rights of all refugees are respected.”

The RI team in Nairobi had interviewed refugees who described conditions consequent to Kenya’s decision – violence, harassment, and extortion suffered at the hands of Kenyan security services.

CHAD (refugees, protracted humanitarian crisis)

Chad is one of the poorest countries in the world, ranked as number 183 out of 187 countries on the Human Development Index. 

Sixty-four percent of the population lives below the national poverty line. It is estimated that 4.4 million people will be in need of humanitarian assistance in Chad in 2013

C

had has continued to host refugees from the Central African Republic and from the Darfur conflict in Sudan together with caring for its own internally displaced people (IDPs) resulting from internal conflict.

Refugees are dependent on humanitarian aid, former IDPs need support for better conditions for re-integration, and host communities are affected by the degradation of the environment caused by deforestation, over-exploitation of groundwater and pressure on scarce natural resources.

Millennium Development Goals

In September of the year 2000, leaders of 189 countries met at the United Nations in New York and endorsed the Millennium Declaration, a commitment to work together to build a safer, more prosperous and equitable world. The Declaration was translated into a road map setting out eight time-bound and measurable goals to be reached by 2015, known as the Millennium Development Goals: 

1. 1.    Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger 

1. 2.    Achieve universal primary education 

1. 3.    Promote gender equality and empower women 

1. 4.    Reduce child mortality 

1. 5.    Improve maternal health 

1. 6.    Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases 

1. 7.    Ensure environmental sustainability 

1. 8.    Develop a global partnership for development

T

hese goals are meaningless in the absence of nonviolence in international relations, an embrace of the original intent of the United Nations and a balance of power therein, and nonviolence in mediation and relations between, among and within individual and regional countries and nations

Sources and notes

“More than half Syria refugees are children, says UN” (By Michelle Nichols, Source: reuters // Reuters), January 17, 2013, http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/more-than-half-syria-refugees-are-children-says-un/

Photo image AlertNet: An internally displaced child looks on as others watch cartoons in a classroom of a school in Kafranbel in Idlib province January 16, 2013. REUTERS/Giath Taha

  

“Jordan on the brink of disaster… Far from ushering in a period of reform, last week’s elections in Jordan resulted in a large majority for tribal leaders, pro-monarchy loyalists and businessmen …” [and] Jordan’s King Abdullah speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos “called for the major powers to come together ‘decisively’ to end the bloodshed and come up with a solution to the crisis in Syria, a thinly veiled demand for direct imperialist intervention” (By Jean Shaoul, RT), January 29, 2013,  http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/01/29/jord-j29.html

  

“Malian refugees face dire conditions in neighboring states” (Source: alertnet // Katie Nguyen), January 22, 2013, http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/malian-refugees-face-dire-conditions-in-neighbouring-states/

Photo Image: Malian sisters Takia, 20, (L) and Fatimata Wallet Mohammed, 18, pose in their shelter at Mbera refugee camp in southern Mauritania, May 23, 2012. REUTERS/Joe Penney

“U.S. considering new drone base in Africa – report,” January 29, 2013, http://rt.com/news/us-drone-base-africa-945/

  

“Kenyan Plan to Force Refugees Into Camps Leads to Abuse, Violates International Law” (Source: member), January 23, 2013, http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/kenyan-plan-to-force-refugees-into-camps-leads-to-abuse-violates-international-law/

“ACT Alliance Alert: Towards sustainable recovery: Assistance to refugees, former IDPs and host communities in eastern and southern Chad” (Source: member // ACT Alliance – Switzerland), January 10, 2013,  http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/act-alliance-alert-towards-sustainable-recovery-assistance-to-refugees-former-idps-and-host-communities-in-eastern-and-southern-

The Millennium Development Goals

In September of the year 2000, leaders of 189 countries met at the United Nations in New York and endorsed the Millennium Declaration, a commitment to work together to build a safer, more prosperous and equitable world.

The Declaration was translated into a roadmap setting out eight time-bound and measurable goals to be reached by 2015, known as the Millennium Development Goals, namely: 

The Millennium Development Goals Eight Goals for 2015

9.       Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
10.   Achieve universal primary education
11.   Promote gender equality and empower women
12.  Reduce child mortality
13.   Improve maternal health
14.   Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
15.   Ensure environmental sustainability
16.   Develop a global partnership for development
 http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/mdgoverview.html
For more information, please visit: www.un.org/millenniumgoals

http://www.un.org/en/mdg/summit2010/pdf/List%20of%20MDGs%20English.pdf

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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Flags burning no applause ─ dark legacy of top “diplomat” HRC

Students protest U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton,
Lahore, Pakistan

Behavior unbecoming, Criminal hypocrisy, 
incessant wars

Editing, ending comment by Carolyn Bennett

Most reckless element denied: war as only response in foreign relations

Following a Sunday Sixty Minutes performance by U.S. President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, journalist Don Debar observed in an interview today with Press TV: “The United States is now at war with more nation states than it has been since 1945.

“A

Muslim women protest
U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton

nd whether you consider drone attacks and active war under the old rules, certainly drone attacks are taking place in countries that are not included in that total ─ so the world is more at war than it’s been since 1945

In terms of the number of people who die every day,

In terms that they get blown up,

In terms of assertion of one extrinsic national interest over other national interests on the ground.

Libya

Don Debar recalled the United States’ involvement in Libya ─ eight months’ bombing by NATO, the United States and its allies ─ “killing thousands of people, devastating homes and infrastructure that had been built over the past 40 years.”  Given this, he commented concerning the death of a U.S. agent/diplomat, no one should be surprised “that there would be people who were angry over that, that might want to kill those they identify as being responsible.” Yet the Clinton/Obama Sunday performance and the content of media in recent weeks have been quite different from reality on the ground.

Libyans burn
U.S. flag

“H

illary Clinton’s husband,” Debar said, “was the premier Republican president of the late 20th century. He did away with welfare as we knew it; he started war again in Europe; he did away with possibility of keeping down the military after the fall of the Soviet Union.” And Hillary Rodham Clinton [together with her president] continued the Hawkish trend during her tenure as the U.S. Secretary Of State, he said.

Unmentioned behavior unbecoming called to account (or was it?)

Lawmakers in the Republican Party had demanded for months that Secretary of State Clinton “explain in person the many missteps that an independent review panel found in her department’s handling of the Benghazi (Libya) crisis. Clinton’s appearance was delayed by a prolonged illness and a concussion, though some right-wing critics accused her of trying to wriggle out of her commitment to testify.”

A Washington power broker being hauled before the Congress to give an accounting of her stewardship is not the preferred way to end a career but Clinton finally faced, belligerently, a congressional committee.

Libya

“On Wednesday [January 23, 2013], Clinton reminded a [congressional] committee that the [Accountability Review Board] had found that direct responsibility for the deficiencies highlighted during the Benghazi assault [on her watch] began at the level of assistant secretary and below. Four State Department managers were placed on administrative leave as part of disciplinary actions related to the report’s findings; one of them resigned.…” 

The Accountability Review Board had found [on her watch] “grossly inadequate” security procedures at the U.S. mission” or “consulate” in Benghazi.

Coverup

Tunisians burn
U.S. flag at U.S. Embassy

“Obviously, the report by the Accountability Review Board [ARB] illustrates that there is clearly a cover-up by the White House surrounding the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that resulted in the death of Ambassador [Chris] Stevens,”  Detroit political commentator Abayomi Azikiwe reflected in an interview with Press TV.

“The cover-up stems from several factors, Abayomi Azikiwe said, “the most significant of which was the role of Ambassador Stevens on behalf of the United States government in Libya…

“

A lot of these militias that are operating in Libya and in other countries in North Africa and the Middle East have had relationships with the United States.”

As developments in Syria show, “We can see clearly that some of these organizations that today may be cooperating with the United States; tomorrow may be labeled as terrorists.

“The report reflected poorly, Azikiwe said, “on the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The State Department was guilty of gross negligence and [actions] related to intelligence as well as security in regard to U.S. interest.”

Burning U.S. , Israeli Flags
Rafah, Southern Gaza
Occupied

Criminal hypocrisy

Palestine, Syria, Iran

Electronic Intifada co-founder and journalist Ali Abunimah last spring assessed the criminal foreign relations hypocrisy of the Obama government’s state secretary.

“U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (the article was published March 12, 2012) gave a stirring UN Security Council speech on the virtues of democracy, human rights, and U.S. support for them. She contrasted the purity of American motives with those of regional adversaries:

When a country like Iran claims to champion these principles in the region – and then brutally suppresses its own people and supports suppression in Syria and other places — their hypocrisy is clear to all.

 

But Hillary Clinton, he wrote, “did not examine the hypocrisy of U.S. support for dictatorships in the region that also purport to support democracy but only in Syria, while brutally suppressing their own people.”

The previous Friday (March 8), he said, “millions of voters in Iran – men and women – chose new legislators from among thousands of candidates in parliamentary elections. Critics may be quite right that the elections are ‘nothing more than a selection process amongst the ruling conservative elite’ (cf. U.S. elections currently underway), but that is much more than citizens in some U.S.-backed states ever get the opportunity to do.”

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ven worse, Abunimah said, “It was on Gaza that [the U.S. Secretary of State’s] hypocrisy truly shone. She said regarding Syria:

Now the United States believes firmly in the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all member-states, but we do not believe that sovereignty demands that this council stand silent when governments massacre their own people, threatening regional peace and security in the process. And we reject any equivalence between premeditated murders by a government’s military machine and the actions of civilians under siege driven to self-defense.

“Clinton was explicitly supporting the right of Syrians to use armed struggle to resist the government, and even claimed that such armed struggle is morally superior. …

“What did she say about Gaza, which has been under unprovoked Israeli bombardment for five days, killing more than twenty people and injuring dozens? …  Not one word of sympathy for the families of Palestinian civilians killed in the Israeli attacks.…

“Israel [had] carried out an extrajudicial execution of people in an occupied territory whom it accuses of a crime; [and] unlike even China and Iran, Israel does not bother to try Palestinians it has sentenced to death in secret and in absentia. It merely jumps straight to the execution phase.

“This is all perfectly fine” for Hillary Clinton – in her remarks at the UN, “she didn’t even mention it.” What the U.S. Secretary of State offered was “the same old tired slogans: The only way for Palestinians to achieve anything, she insisted – even as Israel bombs and besieges them, executes them, and seizes their land for Jewish-only colonies – is through rigged ‘negotiations’ that have gone nowhere precisely because the United States has its mighty hands on the scale in favor of Israel.”

L

U.S. opposed at
United Nations

ate in 2012 Josh Ruebner seconded Ali Abunimah’s thoughts in recounting the U.S. Secretary of State’s International Human Rights Day remarks, “[stating] that the United States works to advance ‘the universal freedoms enshrined’ in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which includes the ‘right to life, liberty and security of person’ and ‘When governments seek to deny these liberties through repressive laws and blunt force, we stand against this oppression and with people around the world as they defend their rights.’

“Yet,” Ruebner wrote, “when it comes to U.S. policy toward Palestinians, this rhetoric rings hollow. The United States arms Israel to the teeth, fails to uphold U.S. human rights laws when Israel uses U.S. weapons to commit abuses of Palestinians and, up to this point, has thrown around its diplomatic heft in international forums to shield Israel from the war crimes prosecutions advocated by Human Rights Watch and others.…

Palestinians
protest wall

“While [U.S. Secretary of State] Clinton offered platitudes about standing against aggression on International Human Rights Day, the Pentagon was busy that same day notifying Congress that it hopes to ship to Israel 6,900 Joint Direct Attack Munitions tail kits, which ‘convert free-fall bombs into satellite-guided ordnance,’ and more than 10,000 bombs to accompany them.

On November 18, an Israeli air force pilot flying a U.S.-made F-16 fighter jet fired a missile at the four-story home of the al-Dalu family in Gaza City, killing ten members of the family and two from the al-Muzannar family next door.

 

“An on-site investigation conducted by Human Rights Watch concluded that the attack was a ‘clear violation of the laws of war’ and demanded that those ‘responsible for deliberately or recklessly committing a serious violation of the laws of war should be prosecuted for war crimes.’”

  

I

t is past time for Hillary Rodham Clinton to go home not only from foreign service; but from public service anywhere, for any reason within or on behalf of the United States of America.

Sources and notes

“Obama-Clinton ‘show’ … ‘U.S. at war with more states than it’s been since 1945’, January 28, 2013, http://rt.com/news/obama-clinton-praise-libya-919/

“‘We came, we saw, he died’ The real Hillary Clinton exposed, war crimes which mainstream media can't mention, the ambassador killed in Benghazi's buried cable, and the new defense secretary won't invade Iran, or let Israel invade Iran – exclusive. Seek truth from facts with Senator Mike Gravel, Ilana Mercer, author of the book "Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa", Rethink Afghanistan director Robert Greenwald, New York journalism professor Jeff Cohen, international consultant Adrian Salbuchi, Igor Khokhlov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and independent journalist Joseph Farah.” The Truthseeker, January 25, 2013, http://rt.com/programs/the-truthseeker/benghazi-clinton-new-iran/

“Clinton on Benghazi: defiance — and distress… Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was combative at times in congressional testimony on security lapses in the attacks in the deadly Sept. 11 attack on U.S. posts in Libya that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans” (By Hannah Allam, McClatchy Newspapers) Originally published January 24, 2013 at 6:44 AM | Page modified January 24, 2013 at 4:18 PM, http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2020203586_benghaziclintonxml.html?syndication=rss

“U.S. covers up facts about attack on consulate in Benghazi: Abayomi Azikiwe,” December 20, 2012, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/12/20/279161/us-hiding-truth-about-consulate-attack/

“Obama's Libya lies and how the United States ambassador really died ─ Critics of the Libya intervention warned that dropping bombs in a country and killing civilians, would produce blowback in the form of those who would then want to attack the U.S.”  (Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian), September 20, 2012, http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/libya/1891-obamas-libya-lies-and-how-the-us-ambassador-really-died

“Hillary Clinton, Gaza and the right of civilians to self-defense ─Today at the UN, Hillary Clinton once more gave Israel a blank check to do as it wishes, assured of impunity and full US support” (Ali Abunimah's blog submitted by Ali Abunimah on Monday, March 12, 2012,

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/hillary-clinton-gaza-and-right-civilians-self-defense

“Did Clinton sabotage a Palestinian reconciliation?” (Hasan Abu Nimah and Ali Abunimah), March 4, 2009, http://electronicintifada.net/content/did-clinton-sabotage-palestinian-reconciliation/8111

Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006).

Hasan Abu Nimah is the former permanent representative of Jordan at the United Nations.

“How the United States supports Israel's war crimes in Gaza ─Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. taxpayer-funded military aid and these weapons are used by Israel to commit systematic human rights abuses against Palestinians” (Josh Ruebner) December 27-28, 2012, http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/palestine-and-israel/2149-how-the-united-states-supports-israels-war-crimes-in-gaza

THE REAL HILARY CLINTON EXPOSED, The Truthseeker, January 25, 2013, http://rt.com/programs/the-truthseeker/benghazi-clinton-new-iran/

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