Thursday, March 27, 2014

on legitimate, free, and fair elections...,


medialens | Prior to the March 16 referendum, the BBC website reported:

'Crimeans will vote on whether they want their autonomous republic to break away from Ukraine and join Russia.'

The title of the news report indicated the focus:
'Is Crimea's referendum legal?'

The answer:

'Ukraine and the West have dismissed the referendum as illegal and one that will be held at gunpoint, but Russia supports it.'

Legality was not an issue in BBC coverage of the January 2005 election held in Iraq under US-UK occupation. This was accepted on the main BBC evening news as 'the first democratic election in fifty years'. (David Willis, BBC1, News at Ten, January 10, 2005)

And the Iraq election was not merely 'held at gunpoint'; it was held in the middle of a ferocious war to crush resistance to occupation. Just weeks before the vote, American and British forces had subjected Iraq's third city, Fallujah, to all-out assault leaving 70 per cent of houses and shops destroyed, and at least 800 civilians dead. ('Fallujah still needs more supplies despite aid arrival,' www.irinnews.org, November 30, 2004)

The US 1st Marine Division alone fired 5,685 high-explosive 155mm shells during the battle. The US 3rd Marine Air Wing contributed 709 bombs, rockets and missiles, and 93,000 machine gun and cannon rounds. There was much else besides, of course, and not just in Fallujah.

In the same month as the election, an Iraqi doctor, Ali Fadhil, reported of the city:

'It was completely devastated, destruction everywhere. It looked like a city of ghosts. Falluja used to be a modern city; now there was nothing. We spent the day going through the rubble that had been the centre of the city; I didn't see a single building that was functioning.' (Fadhil, 'City of ghosts,' The Guardian, January 11, 2005)

The BBC made no mention of the argument that the deaths of 100,000 Iraqis as a result of the invasion over the previous two years made a nonsense of the claim that the election was free and fair.
The US had in fact rigged the rules to ensure US-friendly Kurds had 27% of the seats in the national assembly, although they made up just 15% of the population. In a rare departure from mainstream propaganda, Naomi Klein commented in the Guardian:

'Skewing matters further, the US-authored interim constitution requires that all major decisions have the support of two-thirds or, in some cases, three-quarters of the assembly - an absurdly high figure that gives the Kurds the power to block any call for foreign troop withdrawal, any attempt to roll back Bremer's economic orders, and any part of a new constitution.' (Klein, 'Brand USA is in trouble, so take a lesson from Big Mac,' The Guardian, March 14, 2005)

Washington-funded organisations with long records of machinating for US interests abroad were deeply involved in the election. The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI) were part of a consortium to which the US government had provided over $80 million for political and electoral activities in Iraq. NDI was headed by former Secretary of State Madeleine 'We think the price is worth it' Albright, while IRI was chaired by Republican Senator John McCain. (Lisa Ashkenaz Croke and Brian Dominick, 'Controversial U.S. Groups Operate Behind Scenes on Iraq Vote,' www.newstandardnews.net, December 13, 2004)

16 comments:

BigDonOne said...

Meshugenahs -- OMG!! -- Is Subrealism making fun of some ethnicity...??
(It's easy to do when there is actually a basis for it...)

Tom said...

It means nuts.

makheru bradley said...

Hypocritical speech, and lying speech is their native tongue. In most instances before the bullets start flying, US NGOs have been on the ground trying to manipulate outcomes.

“It was almost ten years ago when, before the House International Relations Committee, I objected to the U.S. Government funding NGOs to meddle in the internal affairs of Ukraine. At the time the “Orange Revolution” had forced a regime change in Ukraine with the help of millions of dollars from Washington.

At that time, I told the Committee:

We do not know exactly how many millions—or tens of millions—of dollars the United States government spent on the presidential election in Ukraine. We do know that much of that money was targeted to assist one particular candidate, and that through a series of cut-out non-governmental organizations (NGOs) — both American and Ukrainian—millions of dollars ended up in support of the presidential candidate...

I was worried about millions of dollars that the U.S. government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its various related organizations spent to meddle in Ukraine’s internal affairs. But it turns out that was only the tip of the iceberg. “ -- Ron Paul

[The National Endowment for Democracy, a central part of Ronald Reagan’s propaganda war against the Soviet Union three decades ago, has evolved into a $100 million U.S. government-financed slush fund that generally supports a neocon agenda often at cross-purposes with the Obama administration’s foreign policy. NED is one reason why there is so much confusion about the administration’s policies toward attempted ousters of democratically elected leaders in Ukraine and Venezuela. Some of the non-government organizations (or NGOs) supporting these rebellions trace back to NED and its U.S. government money, even as Secretary of State John Kerry and other senior officials insist the U.S. is not behind these insurrections.]

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/02/27/a-shadow-us-foreign-policy/

Meanwhile, right here in the land of “free” elections, a rising star in Afrikan American politics has bitten the dust.

http://bit.ly/1gFO4ht

CNu said...

lol, it helps to remember he's doing the very best he can...,

CNu said...

Hypocritical speech, and lying speech is their native tongue. In most
instances before the bullets start flying, US NGOs have been on the
ground trying to manipulate outcomes.



I recall watching one of Coors ultra-refrigerated trucks careening down a west texas highway at 80mph in 105 degree August weather about a generation ago, and thinking to myself, "That right'thurr is the very quintessence of American-ness and it can/will/must be maintained by any means necessary" - after that - accounting for everything else I see is just taking notes..., I haven't seen one of the those trucks in a many, many moons, I'm guessing that even as a marketing ploy that whole ultra-refrigerated schtick was unsustainable.

BigDonOne said...

Right...an uncomplimentary descriptor has been egregiously and shamefully assigned here to an ethnicity...
(BD had looked it up - Urban Dictionary says "Crazy")

CNu said...

With regard to the busted 2nd/3rd line inheritor scumbag, I wonder if this one had one Q brand or two?

if I was the 21st century J. Edgar Hoover, I'd simply jack the membership roster of the dvine nine and the boule, do a social network node analysis
http://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/new-in-9/social-network-analysis/ - set an arbitrary minimum baseline for corruption and uselessness with
special emphasis on lawyers and politicians - and then commence to rounding up the whole stinking lot of them exceeding my arbitrarily defined minimum baseline.

Vic78 said...

The Barackalypse is here. http://dreamandhustle.com/2013/06/the-african-american-guide-to-surviving-the-barackalypse-after-celebrating-a-pyrrhic-victory/

It's happening a little earlier than predicted, but that's what we're seeing right here. You could call it divine justice.

Tom said...

You know, this is a tangent but for 6 weeks I've been doing mostly rice instead of wheat, and tea instead of coffee. No garbage like chips. I am feeling better and getting more done.


And when I backslide and eat some garbage, I immediately feel like crap.


Jury's out on whether wheat vs rice is a big deal for me, but so far so good.

BigDonOne said...

Your BD-wisdom item for the day---> ...why even the urban *pigeons* are disproportionately black http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/03/why-dark-pigeons-rule-streets

CNu said...

It's a HUGE deal - for some of us. It's been years since I was free of pain in my knees and shoulder, with tendencies to joint pain in my left hand. After a full three months of gluten-free eating, I'm now completely free of the pain in my knees and in my hand. The feeling of locomotion with zero pain has me getting ready to start running again, and it has restored my tennis game. I don't know exactly what happened to me, but I had a series of matches last summer with my arch nemesis from STL. (nothing worse than two middle-aged men playing anything like their lives depended on it) Anyway, after my last match with him last August, both my knees just went haywire. Every day was pain walking, pain at night sleeping(or not) and the only thing that gave me any relief was the juice of two limes daily.

So, once I heard from a good friend of mine - who is a lifelong surgical nurse and who was up visiting for the holidays - that she'd lost a lot of weight and finally gotten free of years of joint pain by going gluten free, and, knowing what the effects of the lime juice are on fascia physiology - I'm like "what do I have to lose" besides bread, cake, cookies, crackers (love me some cheez-its), pasta, cereals, pizza, etc...,

I don't even miss it now. know how to make a passable cake with potato starch, a decent pizza crust with chickpea flour, I'd never even consider going back. Wheat, spelt, rye are NOT our friends. The yeastie addicts in your small intestine jonesing for their gluten fix are little phukkers who gotta go, gotta go, gotta go, cause they set up colonial outposts in other areas of the body via the fascial interorgan system, and they wreak havoc to such an extent that it mimics genuine mechanical injury on joints subject to repetitive use - there's just no telling what other kinds of visceral phukkery they're up to. Bottomline, I have no intention of being an unwilling and impaired host organism for non-benign biota.

CNu said...

lol, BD promoting the global system of black supremacy...., accept no substitutes!

BigDonOne said...

BD will see your Mudslide, and raise you KansasCityZoo Apes---> http://stuffblackpeopledontlike.blogspot.com/2014/03/american-exceptionalism-when-animals-at.html

Tom said...

Oh, yeah, also I'm having much more luck controlling the calories on the rice thang. The rice itself has the same calories but I don't keep on eating it addictively.

CNu said...

That's the other dead giveaway about the glutenous cereals, cut them out, and all manner of biota-driven "impulsive" urges get magically choked out right along with them.

Vic78 said...

It looks like people are starting to see reason. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/03/can_israeli_business_leaders_push_netanyahu_toward_a_palestinian_peace_deal.html

Master Arbitrageur Nancy Pelosi Is At It Again....,

🇺🇸TUCKER: HOW DID NANCY PELOSI GET SO RICH? Tucker: "I have no clue at all how Nancy Pelosi is just so rich or how her stock picks ar...