America's inexorable march toward authoritarianism

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

We don't need no steenkeen international law

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Friday that the United States would restrict visas of any International Criminal Court (ICC) staffers who investigate actions by U.S. military personnel.

The move signifies an effort by the Trump administration to increase pressure on the ICC over its proposed inquiry into alleged U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan.

[...]

“This includes persons who take or have taken action to request or further such an investigation. These visa restrictions may also be used to deter ICC efforts to pursue allied personnel, including Israelis, without allies' consent.”

  The Hill

We're covering Israel, too.

Pompeo declined to provide details on the number of visas that could be affected but said the administration had already begun implementing the policy. He described the restrictions as “part of a continued effort to convince the ICC to change course with its potential investigation and potential prosecution of Americans.”

[...]

The Trump administration had already threatened stern action against the court. John Bolton, President Trump’s national security adviser and a longtime critic of the ICC, said in September that the administration was prepared to impose sanctions on the court if it continues with the Afghanistan probe — something Pompeo reiterated on Friday.

International law is for the rest of you losers, not the United States.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What whataboutism isn't: When is it appropriate to bring up America's faults?

Wherein Jeremy Scahill gets exercised on Citations Needed podcast.  (Jeremy comes on the cast at the 23:22 mark.

American Exceptionalism and NPD

So Hillary Clinton says the United States is THE indispensible nation on earth. Apparently, it's true.

Speaking at a campaign event in Colorado two days ago, President Obama, in the course of prattling on about all the things America's the best at (weirdly, he didn't mention income equality, social mobility, health care, poverty, basic education, longevity, or literacy, but never mind), also said this:

"And so no matter what the naysayers tell us, no matter how dark the other side tries to make things look, the fact is there is not another country on Earth that would not gladly trade places with the United States of America."

  Barry Eisler

Let's take a world-wide poll, shall we?

Read the rest...

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

A Fine One to Talk

Obama spoke to some political journalists.

“It’s not because around the world people have not seen crazy politics. It is that they understand America is the place where you can’t afford completely crazy politics,” he said.

  Guardian

Yeah, nobody cares whether other countries have crazy politics. They're unimportant in the grand scheme. Only America matters.

He said the media landscape has changed since his first presidential campaign in 2008, when “there was a price if you said one thing and then did something completely different”.

It apparently didn't matter in 2008, because he was re-elected in 2012. He should have gone back a little further.

“The number one question I’m getting as I travel around the world or talk to world leaders right now is, what is happening in America about our politics?” Obama said, describing international alarm over whether the United States will continue to function effectively.

Well, if by "effectively" you mean create a mess of the world's political and environmental structures, then, yes. I don't think you need to worry.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE3/30:

The last person in the world who should be lecturing journalists on how to do journalism is President Barack Obama.

[...]

What makes Obama’s speech so unstomachable is the way he praises reporters at an award ceremony by calling their work “indispensable,” “incredible,” “worth honoring” and essential to democracy while simultaneously blocking honest press queries with all the formidable energies of his office.

[...]

Under his administration, the U.S. government has set a new record for withholding Freedom of Information Act requests.Obama’s “Insider Threat Program” has turned employees across the government—from the Peace Corps to the Social Security Administration to the Department of Agriculture—into information-squelching snitches.

[...]

AP Washington Bureau Chief Sally Buzbee has decried the “day-to-day intimidation of sources” by the Obama administration, judging it worse than the Bush administration on that score.

[...]

As ProPublica has reported, at the same time the Obama administration has been paying lip service to protecting whistleblowers, it has pursued national security leaks to the press with a vehemence unmatched by any previous administration, using the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers who leak to journalists more times than all previous administrations combined.

[...]

Obama’s White House has perfected the [in-house media shop], with a 14-member operation called the White House Office of Digital Strategy that bypasses the press corps with tweets, YouTube videos, Facebook postings and more.
[...]

You’d expect this sort of contradictory behavior from Trump, whom Obama savaged (by implication) repeatedly in the speech. At one point, Obama complains about an unnamed politician (I think you can guess who) receiving billions in free media, and bemoans the fact that no “serious accountability” comes with it. But hasn’t Obama been doing the same grift from a different location for the past seven to arrange the same deal for himself?

[...]


Shame on Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications for allowing Obama—a documented opponent of the press—to pontificate on journalistic practice.

[...]

The deeper you study Obama’s relationship with the press, the more you want to ask what business he has giving out a press award. Was Trump himself busy that night?

  Politico

Transformative Drones

This “uncomfortable truth” has been obvious for so long. So often, the U.S. government shoots missiles at buildings, cars and homes outside of “battlefields” without having any idea who it will kill. Despite this fact — that not even the government itself knows who it is killing — the U.S. media routinely and reflexively describes victims of U.S. drone strikes as “militants.”

[...]

How can people killed by the U.S. government regularly be described as “militants” or “terrorists” when nobody has any idea who they are?

[...]

Foreign Muslims are so dehumanized, so invisible, that they are just equated with Evil Threats even when nothing is known about them. Indeed, Obama officially re-defined the term “combatant” to mean “all military-age males in a strike zone.” In other words, as The New York Times reported in 2011, all males between 18 and (roughly) 54 killed by U.S. drones are presumed to be combatants — terrorists — “unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.” That mentality is the ultimate in dehumanization.

  Glenn Greenwald

Indeed

We'll Show Them

We previously discussed the ignoble effort of the Obama Administration and U.S. airlines to claim an exemption to the European pollution taxes that applies to all other airlines. They have now lost their case before the European Court of Justice — and the Obama Administration is promising to retaliate.

The Europeans have always sought to force internalization of pollution costs to encourage companies to reduce emissions or pay for the damage caused by their activities. The idea that the U.S. airlines should get a pass on such emissions has caused condemnations through the continent.

In response, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the US “will be compelled to take appropriate action” if the EU goes ahead with the scheme. It appears that “appropriate action” does not involve committing to carbon reductions.

  Jonathan Turley

No. It doesn’t. Not here.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.