US hypocrisy

 

I expect the Libyan response to be belly laughs.

Oh, this is a good look!

On the 2020 campaign trail, Biden had promised to make the kingdom a "pariah" over the journalist Jamal Khashoggi's murder, which the CIA said Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had likely ordered.

[...]

However, Biden and the White House have since softened on Saudi Arabia, a shift culminating with reports last week that Biden will visit Saudi Arabia in July.

[...]

The US banned Russian oil imports in February and subsequently pleaded with Saudi Arabia to pump more as prices started to rise at home. (Gas prices hit a high of $4.87 a gallon on Monday.)

However, the kingdom denied those requests and later said it was committed to production levels agreed with the oil-producers group OPEC+, with MBS reportedly ignoring Biden's phone calls about boosting production.

Since then, a stream of senior US officials have flown to Saudi Arabia for discussions about oil.

  MSN

And yet...

The Biden administration has made a final decision against inviting the governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua to a regional summit this week.

[...]

The US choice regarding the Summit of the Americas that President Joe Biden is hosting in Los Angeles is based on concerns about the lack of democracy and respect for human rights in the three countries.

  Yahoo

Unlike Saudi Arabia?

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

We're with them

But they can't come here.  They're Muslims.

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

No surprise here

I wonder why they thought they had to put that in writing.

Three months into his tenure as secretary of state, Rex Tillerson alarmed veteran diplomats with remarks that sounded like a potential shift in American foreign policy: The U.S., he said, should be careful not to let values like human rights create "obstacles" to the pursuit of its interests.

  Politico

"Shift in American foreign policy"? Where have these people been?

Two weeks later, a top Tillerson adviser wrote up a short tutorial, in the form of a confidential memo to his boss, recapping “the debate over how far to emphasize human rights, democracy promotion, and liberal values in American foreign policy.”

He thought he had to spell that out for Tillerson? An Exxon Mobil CEO?

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

Pot meets kettle

Demonstrators chanted anti-government slogans in several cities across Iran on Friday, as protests against alleged corruption and rising prices turned into the largest wave of demonstrations since nationwide pro-reform unrest in 2009.

[...]

An official said a few protesters had been arrested in Tehran, and videos posted on social media showed a heavy police presence and demonstrations in a number of othercities.

The US State Department said it “strongly condemns” the arrests and was monitoring the protests.

  Guardian

That's pretty rich coming from a country who just put a half dozen people on trial (who fortunately beat the charges) with the threat of decades in jail who merely witnessed and recorded a protest against the inauguration of a would-be despot who lost the popular vote by over a million.

The world has a hard time seeing anything with your fat ass hogging up all the publicity.

And 'fat ass' is not a slander.  It's a sad fact:

I call that second picture 'Lard Ass in Elevator Shoes'.

Is he going to use that wacko "doctor" for his January 12 annual physical that he had write him an excuse going into the job?

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

UPDATE:

Sad!

Oh, For Crying Out Loud

Donald Trump will on Friday announce new restrictions on trade and travel to Cuba on Friday, but will not entirely reverse Barack Obama’s 2015 rapprochement with Havana.

Diplomatic relations will remain, and so will commercial flights, but travel to Cuba will be more tightly monitored and business will face restrictions aimed at ensuring that Cuban military and intelligence organisations do not benefit.

[...]

Trump will declare the new policy in Miami, at the heart of the Cuban exile community in Little Havana, fulfilling an election campaign promise.

  Guardian

So that's one. But it's benefiting the American Latin community, so there's that.

Officials briefing journalists about the new policy were asked why human rights concerns had led to punitive measures in Cuba’s case but were not playing a role in the administration’s policy to other notable human rights offenders, like the Philippines and Saudi Arabia. One official said the difference was that Trump had specifically promised to take action on Cuba to a rally of the Cuban diaspora last year in Florida, a state which Trump won.

Bingo. Sometimes they don't realize they're being honest.

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

He's New at This

When Paul Ryan excused Donald Trump's inappropriate conversations with James Comey by saying "he's new at this", all I could think was: So when he's had some more time under his belt, he'll be doing worse things?

US president Donald Trump accused Qatar of "historically" funding "terrorism at a very high level" - an allegation Qatar denies.

The US president has not provided any evidence for his accusation.

[...]

Mutlaq Al Qahtani [Qatar's foreign minister] said the Gulf country hosted the Taliban "by request by the US government" and as part of Qatar's "open-door policy, to facilitate talks, to mediate and to bring peace".

He added that Qatar "was facilitating the talks between the Americans, the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan".

[...]

In a statement on Friday, Qatar said it was leading the region in attacking what it called the roots of "terrorism", including giving young people hope through jobs, educating hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees and funding community programmes to challenge agendas of armed groups.

[...]

He added that the country focuses on "preventive diplomacy, trying to solve conflict, using our good offices, trying to bring people and civilisations with different faiths to mutual understanding, coexistence and tolerance, while also paying a lot of emphasis on unemployment, because we believe unemployment is one of the causes of terrorism or one of the root causes of violent extremism that could lead to terrorism".

  alJazeera

That's so crazy it just might work.

It's not, however, the American way.

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

Sanctions Against Venezuelans

The White House on Monday announced the imposition of new sanctions on various Venezuelan officials, pronouncing itself “deeply concerned by the Venezuelan government’s efforts to escalate intimidation of its political opponents”: deeply concerned. President Obama also, reportedly with a straight face, officially declared that Venezuela poses “an extraordinary threat to the national security” of the U.S. — a declaration necessary to legally justify the sanctions.

[...]

Absolutely nobody expects the “deeply concerned” President Obama to impose sanctions on the Saudis — nor on any of the other loyal U.S. allies from Egypt to the UAE whose repression is far worse than Venezuela’s.

[...]

As for Obama’s decree that Venezuela now poses an “extraordinary threat to the national security” of the United States, is there anyone, anywhere, that wants to defend the reasonability of that claim? That nothing is more insincere than purported U.S. concerns over political repression is too self-evident to debate. Supporting the most repressive regimes on the planet in order to suppress and control their populations is and long has been a staple of U.S. (and British) foreign policy. The real question is this: if concern over suppression of political rights is not the real reason the U.S. is imposing new sanctions on Venezuela (perish the thought!), what is?

[...]

In essence, Venezuela is one of the very few countries with significant oil reserves which does not submit to U.S. dictates, and this simply cannot be permitted (such countries are always at the top of the U.S. government and media list of Countries To Be Demonized). Beyond that, the popularity of Chavez and the relative improvement of Venezuela’s poor under his redistributionist policies petrifies neoliberal institutions for its ability to serve as an example; just as the Cuban economy was choked by decades of U.S. sanctions and then held up by the U.S. as a failure of Communism, subverting the Venezuelan economy is crucial to destroying this success.

[...]

[E]very country in the hemisphere except for the U.S. and Canada have united to oppose U.S. sanctions on Venezuela.

  Glenn Greenwald

Dick Cheney: “So what?” We don’t even care if Canada opposes us.

Irony Rules

Barack Obama challenged India’s record on religious tolerance and women’s rights on Tuesday in a parting speech to students in Delhi that contrasted with the at-times saccharin feel of a state visit designed to highlight the closeness of the two countries.

Though careful to acknowledge inequality in the US, the president devoted a substantial part of his speech to a lecture on the importance of empowering women in society.

[...]

“Every daughter deserves the same chance as our sons,” he added. “And every woman should be able to go about her day – to walk the street, or ride the bus – and be safe and be treated with the respect and dignity that she deserves.”

[...]

“India will succeed so long as it is not splintered along the lines of religious faith.”

  The Guardian

This, after praising Saudi Arabian king Abdullah.

“He took bold steps in advancing the Arab Peace Initiative, an endeavor that will outlive him as an enduring contribution to the search for peace in the region. At home, King Abdullah’s vision was dedicated to the education of his people and to greater engagement with the world.

[...]

”I always valued King Abdullah’s perspective and appreciated our genuine and warm friendship. “

  White House

The [Saudi Arabia] law introduced last April allows authorities to also persecute people who are non-believers, who are treated as enemies of the state.

The legislation considers a terrorist anyone who "calls for atheist thought in any form, or calls into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based."

[...]

[W]omen are still forced to cover in public, they must be accompanied by a male guardian and are banned from driving.

 IBTimes

What you say doesn't matter any more.  Only when and where you say it.

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

What?.

The US has an ambassador for war crimes???!!!

Well, if not us, who? We're at least as skilled and knowledgeable as anyone else.

You can't make this shit up.

The U.S. State Department has concluded that up to 10 European citizens have been tortured and killed while in the custody of the Syrian regime and that evidence of their deaths could be used for war crimes prosecutions against Bashar al-Assad in several European countries.

  Bloomberg

Unbelievable.

The new claim, made by the State Department’s ambassador at large for war crimes, Stephen Rapp, in an interview with me, is based on a newly completed FBI analysis of 27,000 photographs smuggled out of Syria by the former military photographer known as “Caesar.” The photos show evidence of the torture and murder of over 11,000 civilians in custody.

[...]

While it’s unlikely that multilateral organizations such as the United Nations or the International Criminal Court will pursue cases against Assad in the near term, due to opposition by Assad’s allies including Russia, legal cases against the regime could be brought in individual countries whose citizens were victims of torture and murder.

[...]

For Caesar and his support team, the hope is that European countries will see their citizens’ murders as further evidence that the West must reject any notion of allowing the Assad regime to remain in power or being a de facto partner with the West against extremist groups such as the Islamic State.

This is not – repeat NOT – an Onion article, although it reads like one.

“It’s incredibly important for the international community to treat the fact that Europeans were tortured to death by the Assad regime with the same seriousness that they treated the fact that two American journalists were beheaded for going inside Syria and covering the suffering of the Syrian people,” said Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, an American nongovernmental group that runs State Department programs inside Syria.

Let me guess, aka the CIA.

The New York Times reported that months after Caesar appeared in Washington and met with top White House officials, there has been little action to follow up on his revelations. The people helping Caesar think the Obama administration has been slow to follow up on the evidence.

I imagine they have more than one reason for that.

Rapp promised that the State Department will continue to fight for the evidence to be verified, exposed and then used to hold Assad and other regime figures accountable.

What He Said

After the meeting today between President Obama and King Abdullah, a “senior administration official” told CNN that, despite policy differences over Iran and Syria, “the United States and Saudi Arabia are ‘very much aligned.’” Moreover, “Obama and Abdullah steered clear of international complaints of human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia” (they also presumably “steered clear” of human rights abuses in the U.S., although CNN – which likely does not recognize the existence of such abuses – did not indicate whether this was the case). So all in all, it sounds like it was a very harmonious and constructive meeting between these two close, long-time allies and partners.

[...]

The purpose of this trip: “trying to smooth relations with Saudi Arabia without making the longtime US ally seem like an afterthought.” Indeed, “top presidential advisors say the visit is an ‘investment’ in one of the most important US relationships in the Middle East.”

If you want to justify all of this by cynically arguing that it benefits the US to support repressive and brutal tyrannies, go ahead. At least that’s an honest posture. But don’t run around acting as though the US is some sort of stalwart opponent of political repression and human rights violations when the exact opposite is so plainly true. And if you’re someone who has worked extensively to provide the world’s worst regimes with all sorts of vital support, don’t hold yourself out as the leader of the mob condemning others for expressing support for far more benign governments.

  Glenn Greenwald

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

How They See Through Us

If your Spanish is rusty, what Atilio is saying is that after more than three months since Venezuela's President Maduro won the election, Obama still hasn't (officially) recognized the victory.  After Carmona's (short-lived) coup (against the elected Chavez presidency), the US recognized him within hours.

May 6:

President Barack Obama avoided recognizing the government of Venezuela during a recent interview with Univision, explaining that he was concerned about recent "crackdowns" against members of the Venezuelan opposition. He also said that recent news reports suggest that basic principles of democracy and human rights are not being fully observed by Venezuela's government.

Obama's statements on Venezuela came about during an interview with Univision anchor Maria Elena Salinas, who met up with the U.S. President during his recent trip to Mexico.

  ABC

Here's a John Pilger report from a few years back regarding Venezuela and the US stance against it:

Hypocrisy? Irony? Absurdity?

The conviction on Thursday of Aleksei A. Navalny, a prominent leader of the opposition to Mr. Putin, on embezzlement charges further underscored the deepening divide between the two countries as the White House pronounced itself “deeply disappointed” at what it called a trend of “suppressing dissent and civil society in Russia.” The verdict and five-year sentence came a week after the posthumous conviction of Sergei L. Magnitsky, a lawyer investigating official corruption who was arrested and died in custody.

“We call on the Russian government to cease its campaign of pressure against individuals and groups seeking to expose corruption, and to ensure that the universal human rights and fundamental freedoms of all of its citizens, including the freedoms of speech and assembly, are protected and respected,” said Jay Carney, the White House press secretary.

  NYT

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

The President's Hypocrisy and Photo Op

Here's Glenn Ford (Black Agenda Report - from the "black left" in America) talking about Obama's recent visit to Nelson Mandela's old prison cell:

President Barack Obama, a man of infinite cynicism, made a great show of going on pilgrimage to Nelson Mandela’s old prison cell on Robben Island, where the future first Black president of South Africa spent 18 of his 27 years of incarceration. With his wife and daughters in tow, Obama said he was “humbled to stand where men of such courage faced down injustice and refused to yield…. No shackles or cells can match the strength of the human spirit,” said the chief executive of the unchallenged superpower of mass incarceration.

[...]

True sociopaths, like the commander-in-chief who updates his Kill List every Tuesday, have no sense of shame, much less irony. Obama feigns awe at Mandela’s suffering and sacrifice in the prisons of apartheid South Africa, yet presides over a regime that, on any given day, holds 80,000 inmates in the excruciating torture of solitary confinement. During Nelson Mandela’s nearly three decades of imprisonment by the white regime, he spent a total of only about one week in solitary confinement.

[...]

At U.S. high security facilities, the slightest evidence that an inmate is of a political bent of mind is cause for him to be condemned to a solitary existence for decades – a social death alien to the human species. At California’s Pelican Bay and the state prison at Corcoran, thousands of inmates are held in isolation, 80 of them for more than 20 years, the very definition of barbarism.

[...]

On his trip to South Africa, Obama proclaimed that “the world is grateful for the heroes of Robben Island.” And, that’s certainly true, although it was a U.S. intelligence agent who lured Nelson Mandela into a trap in 1962 that ultimately led to his capture and imprisonment. Obama has no sympathy, however, for political prisoners of any race in his own country. Former Black Panther Herman Wallace is thought to be the longest-serving prisoner in solitary confinement in the United States, having spent 40 years alone in a cell in Louisiana’s notorious Angola Prison. Obama could free him at any time, but of course, he won’t. He could emancipate Black Panther captive Russell Maroon Shoatz, who has spent nearly 30 years in solitary, or Republic of New Africa political prisoner Mutulu Shakur or any and all of the scores of other aging political prisoners – people whose dedication to human freedom is no less than Mandela’s, yet have been subjected to far worse treatment at American hands. Instead, Obama has doubled the bounty on Shakur’s comrade and sister, Assata, in exile in Cuba. She might even be on Obama’s Kill List – which is the real and authentic legacy of this country’s First Black President.

  Black Agenda Report

Out of Africa

The Pentagon is deepening its military involvement across Africa as it confronts an expanding array of terrorist movements and guerrilla groups. In doing so, the U.S. government has become dependent on several countries with checkered democratic records.

[...]

“The countries that cooperate with us get at least a free pass,” acknowledged a senior U.S. official who specializes in Africa but spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retribution. “Whereas other countries that don’t cooperate, we ream them as best we can.”

  WaPo

Not to put too fine a point on it.

The official said the administration of former president George W. Bush took the same approach in Africa. Many U.S. diplomats and human-rights groups had hoped Obama would shift his emphasis in Africa from security to democracy, but that has not happened, the official added.

“There’s pretty much been no change at all,” the official said. “In the end, it was an almost seamless transition from Bush to Obama.”

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

Here's How It Works

I would take more seriously all of this very inspirational, newfound worry about Ecuadorian press freedoms and Russian free speech rights [aiming accusations of hypocrisy at Julian Assange] on the part of Western media figures if they evinced any similar interest in infringements and abuses by their own governments and their allies.

[...]

[A]ttacks on protesters by US-supported regimes in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are typically described by western media outlets with the innocuous-sounding, both-sides-are-to-blame term "clashes with rebels", while villain-of-the-moment regimes in Iran, Syria or Libya are said to be slaughtering their own citizens. [...A]rming Syrian rebels to enable them to defend against regime oppression is conventional wisdom, whereas arming Palestinian rebels to defend against Israeli violence is criminal.

The classic case of this dynamic is the outburst of indignation in 2003 over – all together now – Saddam's "gassing of his own people": something he had done 15 years earlier, in 1988, when the US was arming and funding him and had multiple interests in its relationship with Iraq, and thus evinced little care about any of that. It was only when it was time to demonize Saddam in order to justify the attack did western governments and their media outlets suddenly discover their retroactive rage over those crimes.

[...]

For seven years, the US imprisoned an al-Jazeera cameraman, Sami al-Haj, at Guantánamo with no charges and spent most of that time interrogating him not about al-Qaida, but about al-Jazeera. With very few exceptions, American media figures failed even to mention, let alone condemn, the due process-free imprisonment of this journalist by their own government. The same silence characterized their reaction to the imprisonment of other Muslim journalists over the last decade by the US government.

By very stark contrast, when Iran imprisoned the Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi on espionage charges before releasing her five months after her arrest, countless American journalists and self-styled human rights advocates in the media were so very proud of their bold denunciation of the distant Iranian regime, turning the Saberi case into a cause celebre. Exactly the same thing happened with the 2009 conviction and imprisonment by North Korea of American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling: American journalists so courageously condemned the tyranny of North Korea.

  Glenn Greenwald

Greenwald also points out the west's media outrage at the recent sentencing of the Russian band Pussy Riot for its protest against Putin while giving a pass to the US authority's violent treatment of the peaceful protesters of the Occupy movement here.

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

Illustrated by Matt Bors

And How Many Drones Has China Deployed?

Obama, speaking at a press conference in Washington on Monday, said he would not address the specifics of the Chen Guangcheng case, but then went on to call for Beijing to address its human rights record.

  UK Guardian

Something about the mote in your own eye.

The US has not confirmed whether blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, who escaped house arrest last week and is believed to be under US protection in Beijing, is in its diplomatic quarters.

Speaking on Monday, US President Barack Obama declined to comment on the situation, but said he believed China would become stronger and more prosperous as it advanced human rights.

The issue is threatening to eclipse a visit by Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, who is expected to arrive in China on Wednesday.

  alJazeera

"Atrocity Prevention Board"

Or as it will probably be known forthwith: APB. I suppose that's under the Homeland Security Dept, like all the other alphabets these days.

The world is in chaos, war is breaking out all over, there’s blood flowing in the streets of cities from the Middle East to Africa, but not to worry – we’ve got an “Atrocity Prevention Board”! Now doesn’t that make you feel much better?

[...]

The announcement of this new bureaucratic instrument of war was made by Obama at a recent speech delivered at the Holocaust Museum in Washington .

[...]

The atrocities this board is supposed to prevent are those that are not committed by the US: our atrocities, you understand, are really “humanitarian” acts, as opposed to their atrocities, which are … well, just plain old atrocities.

[...]

Obama singled out South Sudan and Libya as monuments to this policy of “atrocity prevention” – Libya, whose Islamist government is jailing, murdering, and otherwise repressing its own people, and South Sudan, a completely made-up “nation” that owes its very existence to Western intervention, routinely arrests opposition figures and journalists, and is currently involved in putting down local and tribal insurgencies in the majority of its provinces (with our help, you can be sure).

[...]

Our drones roam the world, wreaking random havoc on innocents and “terrorists” alike – oh, but that isn’t an “atrocity.” It’s “fighting terrorism.”

[...]

Where oh where does the authority to set up such a board come from? There’s no mention of it in the Constitution – but, then again, you don’t want to be labeled a “constitutional fundamentalist,” do you? So please shut up about that, and go on to the next question: did Congress ever authorize the creation of such a board? Well, who cares if they did or not? Because we don’t even need Congress to approve a declaration of war before the President calls out the troops – he can do so all on his own. [...] The Founders would be horrified – but who cares about those old white racists, anyhow? They would have been horrified by so much we take for granted that they might as well be aliens from another dimension: we can safely file their imagined objections away under “horse-and-buggy” and be done with them forever.

[...]

The hypocrisy and duplicity of our ruling elites is boundless, and they don’t shy away from Orwellian phraseology: after all, who else would set up an “Atrocity Prevention Board” when they are themselves the single greatest perpetrators of atrocities on earth?

  Justin Raimondo

But we must be free, because people like Justin Raimondo can still print negative reviews of the government.

What Are These People Smoking?

And what are the rest of us smoking to sit by and let them get away with it?  I know we're a nation of hypocrites, but this is Twilight Zone.  First, Hillary, now this.

US President Barack Obama will issue an executive order Monday allowing sanctions to be imposed against foreigners who use technologies to carry out human rights abuses, The Washington Post said.

The order would target those found to have used technologies including cellphone tracking or the Internet to carry out violations.

Citing unnamed officials, the newspaper said the governments of Syria and Iran have used social media and cellphone technology to crack down on dissent and conduct surveillance.

  Raw Story

What, technologies like the internet surveillance the Bush administration instigated and the Obama administration is expanding? Technologies like the data gathering he's about to increase to hitherto unimagined volumes?  Technologies like tracking cell phones of protesters?  Technologies like drone surveillance over America?

The executive order, which Obama will announce during a Monday speech at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, will also target companies and individuals assisting the governments of Iran and Syria, the paper said.

What, like AT&T in the US?

Justice isn't blind in this country, it's dead. 

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