“Support the Troops”? End bloodshed, body bags, wars

US
OVER HERE

Abby Martin’s Compelling Veterans Day essay

Excerpt, editing, brief comments interspersed by Carolyn Bennett

“T

he rhetoric that those in uniform are protecting freedom is hammered into the psyche of Americans at every turn” – yellow ribbon magnets, patriotic anthems at sports games, and corporate marketing campaigns – “but no war fought by the US military has ever been about freedom.”

Year after year, “the Establishment hijacks Veterans Day – not only to audaciously commemorate the war criminals that send our brothers and sisters off to needlessly die – but to justify decades of bloodshed and militarism while paving the way for decades more.…” 

Neither Communism then nor Terrorism now is a threat to the United States of America. “The only reason Empire has ever fought wars is to maintain empire.”

Sons, daughters continue dying for lies.

People do not “join the military to be called heroes or because they think they are fighting evil incarnate … [and] calling all soldiers heroes, undermines those who actually are.” People who “throw themselves into the line of fire to save their battalions should not be generalized alongside those who pillage, rape and murder.” Contrary to any motive of heroism, “most people join the military because there are no jobs and no hope….” And they fall while trying to better themselves and support their relations.

W

ars in Afghanistan and Iraq have left “more than 6,800” US soldiers dead and Washington keeps sending men and women to die for a lie. Wars over there were the leading cause of soldier deaths up to 2011. Then soldiers started killing themselves at a rate of 22 a day.  “In 2012 and 2013,” soldiers were committing suicide “faster than they were dying [over there].” That means, Martin explains, “a veteran commits suicide every 65 minutes -- or twenty-two every single day.”

Care less Character: Use, abuse, discard

Thousands of US soldiers wounded mentally and physically are simply “thrown back into society” to sink or swim, to fend for themselves, set adrift homeless under bridges, in homes where they seem no longer to fit in. A local Rochester, New York, merchant insultingly offers veterans “free haircuts” on Veterans Day. Thanks for your service, your sacrifice; we don’t need you any longer.

US
OVER THERE

After that comment of mine, Martin continues laying out the evidence of America’s (the Washington elite’s) carelessness: 

·         Back in March, the backlog of Veterans benefits was a staggering 400,000 cases with an average wait time of 125 days to process the claims, according to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

·         At least one million servicemen and women have been injured in Iraq and Afghanistan, compared to 300 thousand during the Vietnam War, despite the lack of a draft.

·         The number could be even higher, but the VA abruptly stopped publishing the number of injured troops, citing national security reasons for the censorship.

‘The disgraceful way veterans are treated in this country exemplifies how little this government actually values life.

US
OVER THERE

“A

midst all the ritualistic pageantry immortalizing fallen soldiers, we lose sight of the military mind, one that dominates policy and breeds new generations of sadists who are taught that other human beings are of lesser value than they (the sadists). This toxic mindset seeps into every facet of American society, teaching every citizen that force is the answer to every problem.…”

Real heroes, Martin says, are those who resist war. Wars will cease when soldiers refuse to fight them. Hope begins in the minds of men and women when peace (nonviolence) is chosen over violence. All of us can contribute to this.

Martin suggests that the next time you hear people reciting the “Support the Troops” mantra, “Ask what they are doing to ensure that there will be no more senseless bloodshed. No more body bags. No more war.”

Sources and notes

“The Order to “Support the Troops” is Killing Veterans,” Abby Martin at Media Roots and RTs Breaking the Set, broadcast, November 12, 2014, http://www.mediaroots.org/how-supporting-the-troops-is-killing-veterans/

Abby Martin | @abbymartin

Abby Martin

Oakland, California, native Abigail Suzanne (Abby) Martin is a US journalist, artist and activist, and host of “Breaking the Set” on RT America network, working at the bureau in Washington, DC; earlier she was a correspondent for RT America. Martin is joint founder of the citizen journalism website, Media Roots; and a member of the Board of Directors for the Media Freedom Foundation, which manages Project Censored. She was co-director of “99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film.” Martin took her academic credentials at San Diego State University (concentrations Political Science and Spanish) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abby_Martin

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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

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Is so-called “Democracy” really democracy?

How does slavery fit
within construct, practice of
Democracy

Insight in Press TV doc “The Origin of Democracy”

Editing by Carolyn Bennett

“People do not like to have their knowledge questioned but I know that I do not know” – saying leading to Socrates' death in Athens. He was, said his student, Plato, “the first victim of democracy.”

From before the Common Era Fifth Century forward, Democracy underwent numerous ups and downs and varieties of interpretations, recalls the documentary's narrator: In some periods, it adopted the opposite of its original meaning.

These changes were part of the concept of democracy since the beginning – since its Athenian days, at the time when Socrates gathered young people in the Athens’ bazaar and encouraged them to doubt their gods, values, and themselves.

But the Athenian democracy could not tolerate any doubts in its principles, and [so democracy] sentences Socrates to death.

If democracy had let Socrates’ voice be heard at that time, perhaps we would have had a different world today. 

Athenian/Greek model

 

Dictators, Noblemen, Rich
rule ...

Though ancient Greece may be viewed as the model of democracy, a form of governance in which absolute authority vests in the people and moreover this authority consists in the people’s right to choose their leaders and make laws, this is not entirely true or reflective of reality, then or now. Classical Athens’ political system limited “democratic citizenship to an elite class of free men” and denied “political participation [to] slaves and women.”

Those who were allowed to participate were “noblemen, those who had Athenian origin,” Law History Expert Mohammad zaman Dariabiari said. “Women and slaves were excluded from decision-makings and taking part in determining their own political, social, economic and cultural fate.” Athenian democracy, Karim Mojtahedi said, “belonged to one-eighth of the people.”

“Democracy”, “Demagoguism” devoid of crucial Qualification

“Socrates believed that just as a shoemaker or mason needed skills to do his job, a governor [also] needed to be skilled, to have the political knowledge to rule.”

... Slaves, Women
need not apply

Socrates ridiculed Greece’s democracy. He “believed that competence and eligibility were needed for a government.”

However, “the biggest claimants to that eligibility were Athenian noblemen and wealthy people who thought their origin and pedigree [of itself] already provided them with that competence.…

“Socrates believed that this competence and knowledge [was] achieved by training and education.”

Western Philosophy Teacher Karim Mojtahedi said that this creates a situation in which “the reins of affairs [are given] to a bunch of people who are thirsty for fame, position and money; and they are destroying the main role of traditions.” Socrates believed the Athenian version of democracy was another form of Demagoguism.” Demagoguism [or demagoguery, making use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises to gain or retain power] is in fact the opposite form of democracy, Mojtahedi said.

None of these people “wanted to have anything to do with morality or justice. They wanted to have nothing to do with intelligence or knowledge. They wanted only power and a system based on the fight for political survival, even based on lies and deception.”

Is so-called “Democracy” really democracy”

Democracy
5th C BC
Athens and Greece
2014
USA
beyond the pale

Although “we remember the Athenians for their democracy,” the narrator says, “this is not their reality. Athens had three social groups: the rich and nobles (the rulers), the craftsmen and traders, and the farmers.” The “nobility and land owners” did almost nothing. Athens remained standing “by the labor of the slaves.” And social inequality and class difference sparked the first wave of change.

Using the example of Rome and Greece, “the problem of power, slavery, social advantages, slave exploitation, arrogance and dictatorship,” says philosophy and history researcher Behrooz Farno, was more prominent in the West than in the East. “Even in newer periods, in spite of the fact that people are supposedly involved in choosing their government, this public opinion is always inclined in favor of rich and powerful people, and it is power and wealth that defines public votes.”

Mohammadzaman Dariabiari reminds us that the most important concepts inherent in or crucial to democratic reality are “freedom of human beings and equal rights for human beings to decide their own destiny in social, economic, cultural and political affairs.”

Given these requisites and existing conditions then and now, Karim Mojtahedi asks, “Can we really say that the system in Fifth Century BC, known as the Greek democracy” [or now known Western democracy or US democracy] really was [or now is] “democracy?”

I

 t is imperative that we ponder this question, answer it honestly. Then make substantive corrections in our own belief system, in our behavior, and in our governmental systems. 

Sources and notes

“The Origin of Democracy” Synopsis/Transcript [Synopsis: “Aristocracy or the rule of the elite is in [turn] the antonym of democracy.

“But while theoretically these definitions are in opposition, in practice the distinction has been blurred historically.

“Ancient Greece is perhaps viewed as the epithet of the origin of democracy; a form of governance where the mastership of the people is an absolute authority. And this authority consists in the people’s right to choose their leaders and legislate whatever laws they want.

“But is it really that simple?

“The political system of Classical Athens, for example, granted democratic citizenship to an elite class of free men and excluded slaves and women from political participation.

“This documentary takes a look at the not so benign origins of democracy and compares it to the government of Greece’s Easter neighbor: the Great Persia Empire.”], November 8, 2014, http://www.presstvdoc.com/Default/Detail/12954

Karim Mojtahedi: Iranian philosophy professor at Tehran University, Karim Mojtahedi is credited with more than 20 books on philosophy. He was awarded UNESCO’s Avicenna Prize for Ethics in Science at the 4th International Farabi Festival and has received a plaque of honor from Iran’s Cultural Luminaries Association. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karim_Mojtahedi

Socrates

Classical Greek (Athenian, 470/469 BC – 399 BC) philosopher credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates

Plato

Classical Greek philosopher and mathematician (428/427 or 424/423 BCE – 348/347 BCE), influential figure in Western philosophy; student of Socrates, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato

BCE

BCE is the abbreviation for Before the Common/Current/Christian Era (an alternative to Before Christ, abbreviated BC). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era

Centuries-old non-democratic, employed constructs: “Anno Domini (AD or A.D., Medieval Latin translated ‘In the year of the Lord’) and Before Christ (BC or B.C.) are designations used to label or number years used with the Julian and Gregorian calendars,” the latter the most widely used calendar in the world. “For decades, it has been the unofficial global standard, adopted for pragmatic interests of international communication, transportation, and commercial integration, and recognized by international institutions such as the United Nations and the Universal Postal Union. There is no year zero in this scheme, so the year AD 1 immediately follows the year 1 BC. This dating system was devised in 525, but was not widely used until after 800.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_Domini

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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

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Faces facing high crime in high finance

Some Gov't lawyers place them
Out of reach of  Arm of Law

Cowards and the Courageous ● Care takers of public trust and the care less ● Criminals and catchers of criminals ● Whistleblowers and whitewashers

Editing, excerpt, brief comment by 

Carolyn Bennett

T

oday on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez were writer Matt Taibbi and whistleblower and finance lawyer Alayne Fleischmann. This is some of the salient insight from their discussion.

FACE OF COURAGE

CARE TAKING of public trust

The whistleblower says “at some stage …, sometimes you are involved in something that is bigger than you personally. 

Attorney Alayne Fleischmann

“…Right now there are still all sorts of suits out there by private investors, retirement funds, pension plans, trying to get their money back. In a lot of cases, they don’t know that I have information; so I now have in my email contacts [people] coming in, asking for help from me so that they can get this money that was stolen from their investors, [get it back to] those retirees.

“For me that is more important than anything that’s going to happen to me.”

The decision to blow the whistle was not kneejerk, not easy, not immediate. “For a long time,” Alayne Fleischmann said she believed "… the government would do their investigation and come forward with it. It has taken a really long time for me because … it is a little bit of an incredible thing to believe [government's failure to expose and prosecute those who have committed crimes].

“After watching all of these cases over and over again,” she says, “at some stage I am in the position where if I keep silent and the statute of limitation runs, or they do one of these agreements where they whitewash everything, then it’s too late – which is what’s happened over and over again so far.” She says, even when there have been “really strong cases—e.g., the JPMorgan-Madoff case, HSBC—no matter how strong the case, they still just get hushed away.”

Fleischmann sums up what she sees as her responsibility. She says she is “trying to change the pattern and come out first, so that they have to either follow these cases properly, the way they would for any other criminal defendant; or explain why they’re not doing it.”

FACE OF CORRUPTION

FACE OF COWARDICE

‘I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy. And I think that is a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become too large. Again, I’m not talking about HSBC; this is just a more general comment. I think it has an inhibiting influence—impact on our ability to bring resolutions that I think would be more appropriate.’ – Top US law enforcement officer, Attorney General Eric Holder

W

Soon to be former
US Attorney General
Eric Holder

riter Matt Taibbi assesses Holder’s carelessness.

“It is a crazy thing when the leading law enforcement official in the nation comes out and says, ‘Well, some companies are just so big that we can’t prosecute them no matter what they do.’

“In that case, [the attorney general] was testifying in the wake of a settlement the government had entered into with the biggest bank in Europe and the biggest bank in Great Britain, HSBC  (or Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation), which had admitted to laundering over $800 million for a pair of Central and South American drug cartels.”

Taibbi continues, “If you cannot send someone to jail for laundering $800 million of drug money… because the company is too big— clearly something is very seriously wrong.”

Writer Matt Taibbi 

However, “this became sort of the unofficial official policy of the US Department of Justice and this greatly affected the way they dealt with companies like JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup and Bank of America. They [the US government] tried to find a way to effect some kind of resolution that

did not involve criminal charges;

did not involve penalties to individuals; and also

did not put the facts of any of what they had actually done out into the public.

  

CRIMINALS AND WHITEWASHERS

With their smart lawyers and Ivy League learning, officials in the US government did not have to but they did permit, encourage, even create impunity – thus making themselves into co-conspirators in crime.

Alayne Fleischmann explains, “There is very little difference between civil securities fraud and criminal securities fraud or even how you can do this as a wire fraud case. Once you have that strong of a civil fraud case, the only real difference is that you need a little more intent … and you have to prove it to a higher standard.” And looking at these cases, she says, “These are some of the easiest white-collar crime cases that you are ever going to see.”

  

Referencing generally his Wall Street sources, Taibbi raps the US head of state for failing to seize “an incredible opportunity” on acceding to the presidency in 2008.

“With his communication skills,” Taibbi says, the president “could have gone to the American people and explained to them exactly what happened and said, ‘This is why the economy is bad. This is why you’re losing your job. There was massive criminal activity. It’s not just an accident.’ 

“He could have then gone and put a few people in jail and really put some teeth behind those words.

“Instead, they [the Obama government] swept it all under the rug.” And the American people have not been altogether fooled.  

In the light of this Midterm elections’ results, Taibbi concludes that “even if people do not completely understand what happened, they sense that nothing was done” to expose the truth, repair the injury, and bring the criminals to justice. “It is important to understand that,” he says.

INDEED.

Sources and notes

“Matt Taibbi and Bank Whistleblower on How JPMorgan Chase Helped Wreck the Economy, Avoid Prosecution” (Democracy Now Exclusive interview)  Program intro: “A year ago this month the US Department of Justice announced that banking giant JPMorgan Chase would avoid criminal charges by agreeing to pay $13 billion to settle claims that it had routinely overstated the quality of mortgages it was selling to investors.

“But how did the bank avoid prosecution for committing fraud that helped cause the 2008 financial crisis?

“Today [Democracy Now speaks with] JPMorgan Chase whistleblower Alayne Fleischmann in her first televised interview discussing how she witnessed ‘massive criminal securities fraud’ in the bank’s mortgage operations. Fleischmann is profiled in Matt Taibbi’s new Rolling Stone investigation ‘The $9 Billion Witness: Meet the woman JPMorgan Chase paid one of the largest fines in American’” Friday, November 7, 2014,

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/11/7/matt_taibbi_and_bank_whistleblower_on

Alayne Fleischmann

Alayne Fleischmann (at http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/alayne-fleischmann/4a/873/32): Lawyer, Securities, M&A, Corporate Governance, Corporate Finance, Regulatory; Vancouver, British Columbia, CanadaLaw Practice; previously: Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP, Scotiabank, Bingham McCutchen ● Education: Cornell Law School

Alayne Fleischmann, attorney, Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP (Calgary, Canada)

Alayne Fleischmann Employment History at http://www.zoominfo.com/p/Alayne-Fleischmann/419097181; at www.gowlings.com: Associate, McKee Nelson LLP; Associate, J.P. Morgan & Co.; Capital Markets Associate, Cadwalader , Wickersham & Taft LLP ● Education: J.D./LL.M. , Cornell Law School; B.A. , philosophy, University of British Columbia

Matt Taibbi

Author and journalist Matthew C. (Matt) Taibbi (/taɪˈiːbi/) has reported on politics, media, finance, and sports for Rolling Stone and Men’s Journal; and edited and written for The eXile, the New York Press, and The Beast. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Taibbi

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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

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Rampant disease no surprise amid Anachronistic relations with Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa

21st century Colonialists go home; Give up gutting, gunning and running

Editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

E

mira Woods is Global Client Principal for Social Impact Programs at a technology firm committed to social and economic justice (ThoughtWorks). From 2003 to 2014, she was co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies and an expert on US foreign policy with a special emphasis on Africa and the developing world. She has written and interviewed in a variety of media on a range of issues from debt, trade and development to U.S. military policy. She is a member of the Board of Directors of Africa Action (Chair), Just Associates, Global Justice and the Financial Policy Forum. She is also a member of the advisory committee of the Zimbabwe Alliance, the Humanity United/Trustafrica Liberia program, and the Network Council of Jubilee USA.

Emira Woods’ many subject/issue interests include Africa, Debt Relief, Democratization, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Financial Flows and Investment, Food Aid, Foreign Aid, G8, International Financial Institutions, International Gender Issues, International Monetary Fund, Liberia, Organization for African Unity (OAU), US State Department, Structural Adjustment, Sudan, treasury, US Agency for International Development (USAID), US Economic/Trade Policy.  Emira Woods took academic credentials at US universities, Columbia and Harvard.

 

Colonial past meets “Modernity”

In the days of colonialism, European colonizers looked to Africa’s resources to drive Europe’s (the British Empire’s) economies and “the quest to dominate” expressed itself “most directly through military power and military might,” explains Emira Woods. And in contemporary times there is “a thirst for key resources for the global economy and access and control of those resources have often been the key determinant of foreign policy” — an old happening.

What is happening is “not a new phenomenon,” Woods says, “but it is increasingly worrisome in this twenty-first century that the dependence on vital resources, particularly natural resources coming from Africa – this dependence is not only a US dependence; but also European and Chinese and many other countries “looking to Africa’s resources as a means of growing their own economies.”

Rising oil and gas

Rising extraction

Rising aggression

In a January 2013 interview with Press TV, Emira Woods said there has been “an extended US military footprint in and around the African continent that coincides with the increased significance of resources from Africa over the past few years.”

Although countries of the continent such as South Africa, Algeria and Nigeria have opposed the militarist deployment of US Africa Command (AFRICOM) and the command has moved its headquarters to Stuttgart, Germany, US-Africa policy has grown in militarism commensurate with Africa’s growing significance as producer of oil, natural gas, and other vital resources. “The programs of AFRICOM,” Woods said, “have extended from training and equipping African armies to … increased use of drone technology — not only for intelligence gathering but also, particularly in places like Somalia, for more lethal purposes.”

War/Conflict-Forced Migration
Poverty
Disease

As the colonialists of old, the Americans today take (plunder, pillage) using lethal occupation, force and threat of force; yet Woods persists in asking the rhetorical “if”, “If the ultimate objective here is to secure African natural resources, whatever happened to investing within the economy, opening it to foreign market and investment?”

H

ad Europe, the British Empire, the United States, any one of these, invested in vital infrastructures on the continent of Africa, there would be no dire poverty today, no preventable and curable disease, no deplorable living conditions on the continent. What the West has done, and continues to do against the peoples of Africa is brutal, UNCONSCIONABLE. This is my opinion.

Africans are disappointed with the Obama tenure. What this government has done and failed to do, Woods says more moderately than I, has caused “concern and actual resentment.”

Africans’ “high hopes have been … dashed” in the absence of “bold leadership needed to actually change the status quo of how the United States engages with Africa to create a truly mutually beneficial relationship” – a mutually respectful foreign relations ethic “where Africa’s rise  …is actually supported and bolstered by visionary US leadership from the White House and beyond.”

 

Beyond colonialist past

The United States is out of step with the contemporary world and needs to embrace real change, Woods has suggested in other contexts.

If the United States wants to be in step with the twenty-first century and centuries to come, she says, its leaders must not only “pay attention to Africa,” but must also adopt new approaches: “trade and investment” policies with the continent that step “away from policies that favor extraction of Africa’s resources and militarization of the continent.”

Sources and notes

Emira Woods bio brief, http://www.ips-dc.org/authors/emira-woods/

Press TV

“Oil-hungry US planning drone bases across Africa: Emira Woods” Press TV interview with Emira Woods, January 29, 2013, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/01/29/286251/us-militarizing-africa-in-pursuit-of-oil/

Real News

“Is Obama’s Trip to Africa about Investment or the Extraction of African Resources?”  

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10366

“For Africa Trip, Obama Urged to Prioritize Development” – WASHINGTON, June 24, 2013 (IPS) – “Advocacy groups here are urging U.S. President Barack Obama to focus on more than just economic development during his upcoming trip to Africa” by Cydney Hargis, http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/06/for-africa-trip-obama-urged-to-prioritise-development/

______________________________________________________________________

A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

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Eland judges “good”, "bad" US presidential leadership

Whom would you judge “good” or “bad”? Why?

Does this matter? Why? Why not?

Editing by Carolyn Bennett

US defense analyst Ivan Eland is author of Putting ‘Defense’ Back into U.S. Defense Policy; The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed; Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty; and Partitioning for Peace: An Exit Strategy for Iraq. Eland is also Senior Fellow and Director of the Independent Institute’s Center on Peace and Liberty. This week one of Eland’s articles poses and answers the question “Is Barack Obama the Worst President in American History?” 

R

eferencing one of his books, Eland chooses list A as America's worst presidents. Others have chosen list B. You might want to reflect on your choices of good and bad US presidential leadership and legacy and the reasons underlying your choices.

 A

James Knox Polk: 11th president of the United States (1845–1849). Under his leadership the United States fought the Mexican War (1846–1848) and acquired vast territories along the Pacific coast and in the Southwest. Polk’s beginning and ending: b. November 2, 1795, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina; d. June 15, 1849, Nashville, Tennessee.

William McKinley: 25th president of the United States (1897–1901). Under his leadership, the United States went to war against Spain in 1898, acquiring global empire including Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. McKinley’s beginning and ending: b. January 29, 1843, Niles, Ohio; d. September 14, 1901, Buffalo, New York.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson (American scholar, statesman remembered for his legislative accomplishments and high-minded idealism): 28th president of the United States (1913–1921). Wilson’s leadership took the United States into World War I and “became the creator and leading advocate of the League of Nations (Nobel Peace laureate recipient 1919). His second term saw passage and ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Woman Suffrage (White American women’s right to vote). While seeking American public support for the Treaty of Versailles (October 1919), Wilson was incapacitated by a stroke, which lasted for the rest of his term and “caused the worst crisis of presidential disability in American history.” Wilson’s beginning and ending: b. December 28, 1856, Staunton, Virginia; d. February 3, 1924, Washington, D.C.

Harry S. Truman: 33rd president of the United States (1945–53). His leadership took the United States through “the final stages of World War II and through the early years of the Cold War, vigorously opposing Soviet expansionism in Europe and sending U.S. forces to turn back a communist invasion of South Korea.” Truman’s beginning and ending: b. May 8, 1884, Lamar, Missouri; d. December 26, 1972, Kansas City, Missouri.

I

n his choice of four worst U.S. presidents Ivan Eland concludes that these presidents “led the country into needless wars that changed America for the worse.”

He says, “Polk purposefully started a war with a weak state, Mexico, to steal a third of its land and, in doing so, aggravated regional tensions that eventually led to America’s most searing and cataclysmic war – the Civil War.”

McKinley’s blemish, Eland says, was undertaking “the Spanish-American War to launch the United States, which had revolted against the British Empire, into its own imperial role by acquiring colonies and beginning the long, interrupted trajectory toward America as an interventionist superpower.”

He condemns Truman for “convert[ing] a local war in Greece into an expensive worldwide Cold War against the Soviet Union, which began with a stalemated hot war in non-strategic Korea that led to the creation of the national security state, the imperial presidency, and the shelving of the traditional requirement that the American people, rather than its leader, would decide if war was needed.” 

 

As to America’s 28th president, Woodrow Wilson, Eland says, he “ignor[ed] America’s tradition of staying out of Europe’s wars, took the nation into World War I, which laid the seeds for the Bolshevik Revolution, Hitler’s rise, World War II, and the Cold War.”

Therefore, by comparison, Eland says, the current US president, though “a bad president whose stock is dropping, … because his war against ISIS” is likely to exacerbate “Islamic radicalism and terrorism” is not the worst president in US history. For that dishonor, Eland chooses Woodrow Wilson for having, Eland says, “ruined the 20th century and is now working on the 21st.”

B

 

Franklin Pierce (nickname, Young Hickory): 14th president of the United States (1853–57). His leadership “failed to deal effectively with the corroding sectional controversy over slavery in the decade preceding the American Civil War (1861–1865).” Pierce’s beginning and ending: b. November 23, 1804, Hillsboro, New Hampshire; d. October 8, 1869, Concord, New Hampshire.

James Buchanan: 15th president of the United States (1857–1861). His leadership tried but “failed … to find a compromise in the conflict between the North and the South to avert the Civil War (1861–1865).” Buchanan’s beginning and ending: b. April 23, 1791, near Mercersburg, Pennsylvania; d. June 1, 1868, near Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Warren Gamaliel (G.) Harding (nostalgic promises won presidency by largest popular-vote margin): 29th president of the United States (1921–1923). His leadership “accomplished little of lasting value [and] soon after his death a series of scandals doomed the his presidency” causing it to be “judged among the worst in American history.” He died during his third year in office. Harding’s beginning and ending: b. November 2, 1865, Caledonia [now Blooming Grove], Ohio; d. August 2, 1923, San Francisco, California

Herbert Clark Hoover (lauded as a humanitarian earned during and after World War I as he rescued millions of Europeans from starvation): 31st president of the United States (1929–1933).  His leadership was unable to alleviate domestic (US) “widespread joblessness, homelessness, and hunger during the early years of the Great Depression.” Hoover’s beginning and ending: b. August 10, 1874, West Branch, Iowa; d. October 20, 1964, New York, New York.

 

W

hat do you think?

Sources and notes

Biographical briefs on US President, Britannica: (2013). Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Deluxe Edition.  Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.

Eland bio, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Eland

“Is Barack Obama the Worst President in American History?” Ivan Eland, November 4, 2014,

http://original.antiwar.com/eland/2014/11/03/is-barack-obama-the-worst-president-in-american-history/

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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

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Ida Wells, Fannie Lou Hamers still rising from US Deep South—Hon. Stacey Abrams: “sacred right” of citizenry

Voting Rights shall not be abridged or denied

Editing by Carolyn Bennett

Fannie Lou Hamer
1917-1977Voting Rights Champion
1962 -
Leader, Mississippi
Freedom Democratic Party

Background: Rep. Abrams

H

ouse Minority Leader for the Georgia General Assembly and State Representative for the 89th House District, Stacey Y. Abrams is the first woman to lead either major political party in the Georgia General Assembly and the first Black American to lead in the House of Representatives. She has been recognized nationally by Governing magazine as one of ‘12 Rising Legislators to Watch’, by Georgia Trend (2012, 2013, 2014) as one of the ‘100 Most Influential Georgians’, and by EMILY’s List (2014) as the inaugural recipient of the Gabrielle Giffords ‘Rising Star Award’.

Georgia politician
Hon. Stacey Abrams

Stacey Abrams is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Next Generation Fellow of the American Assembly at Columbia University on U.S. Global Policy and the Future of International Institutions, an American Marshall Memorial Fellow, an American Council of Young Political Leaders Fellow, a Council on Italy Fellow, a British-American Project Fellow, a Salzburg Seminar – Freeman Fellow on U.S.-East Asian Relations and a Salzburg Seminar Fellow on youth and civic engagement.

Abrams took her academic credentials at Yale Law School (.JD); LBJ School of Public Affairs (University of Texas-Austin, Masters of Public Affairs in public policy); and Spelman College-Atlanta (Bachelor of Arts degree, Interdisciplinary Studies: Political Science, Economics, Sociology). Stacey Y. Abrams is an American civic leader, politician, business owner, initiator, and public servant.  She is founder of The New Georgia Project.

Woman
Suffragist
through 1920

Ida B. Wells
1862-1931
Mississippi to Tennessee
to Illinois
Teacher, Journalist,
Rights Activist;
Woman Suffragistthrough 1920

Representative Abrams speaking today on Democracy Now

Stacey Abrams said she founded The New Georgia Project as an offshoot of a nonprofit organization she had launched 16 years ago. Last year, in the course of conducting an investigation concerning the Affordable Care Act in southwest Georgia, the group found that many people had no health coverage and also a large majority of these citizens were not registered to vote.

A

s the Project delved into the voter registration issue and the larger issue of “civic engagement,” Abrams said, they realized that “more 800,000” of Georgia’s “unregistered African-American, Latino and Asian voters …needed to be registered.” And in 145 days and visits to 151 of 159 Georgia counties, the New Georgia Project “collected registration forms from 146 counties” and secured registrations of “more than 86,000 people.”

Rights now Challenged

In the course of their work, Abrams said, the Project found “deep flaws embedded in our [electoral] system” and dark deeds surrounding it.  

I

n the state of Georgia, she said, the Office of the Secretary of State has “unfettered power to make decisions that negatively affect voters.” Moreover, she says, as others have said, that “a system called the ‘Interstate Crosscheck’ is being used by this Secretary of State (as in other states) “without notifying the Legislature.”

Decisions taken that purge hundreds of thousands of citizens from voter rolls “are deeply problematic,” she says, but the examples of rights infringement also bring to light the greater need:

…to better define and control the voting system – because the right to vote is a sacred and basic right of people in a democracy.

 

What’s the citizen to do today?

Go to the polls – “whether you have received your precinct card or not, whether you have information or not,” Georgia State Representative Abrams says.

“Go vote …. Show up.”

Sources and notes

Hon. Stacey Abrams, Georgia State Rep., grew up in Mississippi and a Georgian since 1989, http://staceyabrams.com/

Also at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stacey_Abrams

http://www.house.ga.gov/representatives/en-US/Member.aspx?Member=58

“‘40,000 Voters Missing in Georgia’ (?) After Registration Drive in Areas of Color, Names Left off Rolls,” November 4, 2014,

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/11/4/40_000_voters_missing_in_georgia

Also: “New Voter Suppression Laws Could Decide Key Races, and Turn Back the Clocks for Years to Come,” Tuesday, November 4, 2014 FULL SHOW | HEADLINES | NEXT: “The Priciest Midterms Ever, Brought to you by ‘Dark...,’” http://www.democracynow.org/

A

lso on Interstate Crosscheck

Greg Palast: “Look up your Name on the Crosscheck Voter Purge-List” Thursday, October 30, 2014, by Greg Palast, http://www.gregpalast.com/look-up-your-name-on-the-crosscheck-voter-purge-list/

The Palast team has ripped the lid off ‘Interstate Crosscheck’ – a system used by 27 states, almost all under Republican control, which claims to find illegal ‘double voters,’ those who vote in the same election in two different states.

It took us months, but we got our hands on 2.1 million of the names of the so-called ‘double voters’ accused by Crosscheck. [Greg Palast]

 __________________________________________________

A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

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