Episode 6 looks at the ongoing struggle of foreign immigrants seeking equal protection and due process guarantees of the 14th amendment. Following several court rulings extending 14th Amendment protections to non-citizens (including due process rights for immigrants entering the US illegally), President Clinton signed the Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. This law makes it legal to jail immigrants seeking asylum, as well as to deport people without a due process hearing.
The major weakness of this final episode is its failure to emphasize the historic role US corporations have played in promoting mass immigration to hold down wages.
The first example of this was the massive import of Chinese immigrant laborers in the mid-19th century to built the Trans-Atlantic Railroad. Once the tracks were completed in 1869, Chinese immigrants were less welcome. The 1871 Chinese Massacre in Los Angeles was one of the largest mass lynchings (with 19 killed) in US history.
Competition for scarce jobs grew during the 1880 economic depression only increased anti-Chinese sentiment. In 1882, Congress pass the first US immigration law, the Chinese Exclusion Act.* In the 1924 Immigration Act, Congress also established strict national origin quotas for immigrants from countries outside of Western Europe.
With the major industrial boom the US experienced in the early 20th century, US employers looked to roughly one million Mexican immigrants to fill labor shortages. When the bubble burst in 1929 (with the start of the Great Depression). the US deported upwards of 400,000 Mexican-Americans, even though 60% were US citizens. Following the recession of 1953, thousands more were deported under Operation Wetback.
Part 4 begins by introducing Bernard Kouchner, a French politician and doctor who cofounded Doctors Without Borders in 1971. Kouchner first came to public attention in 1979, when he hired a ship to rescue boat people who fled Communist Vietnam following the fall of Saigon. Kouchner was one of the first elites to declare concepts of Left and Right meaningless because “we are all one world linked as individuals.”
In 1999, the UN appointed him interim president of Kosovo, an Albanian enclave inside Serbia created via a CIA destabilization campaign* and illegal NATO bombing campaign ordered by Clinton in 1999.** At present, only 98 UN member states recognize Kosovo independence.
Curtis moves on to advent of Deng Xiaoping to the Chinese presidency in 1977 and the murder trial of Mao’s widow Jiang Xing for the deaths she instigated during the Cultural Revolution. Deng would a brief experiment with a Democracy Wall, where citizens were allowed to anonymously notices critical of government corruption, greed and nepotism. The wall was removed when someone anonymously called for Deng’s removal as president.
The film briefly traces the rise of the Chinese pro-democracy movement, which the film links to a spree of rape cases the government refused to prosecute. With the death of Hu Yaobang, the sole pro-democracy advocate withing the party leadership, the movement shifted into Tienanmen Square.***
Meanwhile in Russia, Boris Yeltsin shut down democracy in 1993 (with Clinton’s support) when he dissolved Parliament and allowed the growing oligarchy take total control of government.
According to Curtis, Clinton was the first politician to recognize the collapse of mass movements in the US (ie people had stopped joining political parties and unions) and to consciously hand over power to bankers, financial managers and corporate executives.
This supposedly represented a growing consensus among the ruling elite that the power of politicians. This was due to their unfortunate tendency to make short term decisions under pressure from their political base. What followed would be a major expansion of “non-majoritarian institutions” that were accountable to voters (eg the EU, the WTO, the IMF, World Bank, World Economic Forum)
On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality
by Ward Churchill
AK Press (2003)
Book Review
With the massive evidence compiled by the 9-11 Truth movement over the last two decades,* the book’s original premise has ceased to be relevant in 2020. Long time American Indian activist Ward Churchill took the title of this book from his infamous 2001 essay “On the Justice of Roosting Chickens.” In the latter (and in Chapter 1), Churchill argues that the 9-11 attacks were a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful US foreign policy. The essay would lead to his dismissal from the University of Colorado-Boulder in 2017.
By the time this book was published in 2003, both Thierry Meyssan (The Big Lie) and Nafeez Ahmed (The War on Truth) had published books questioning the official version of 9-11. As of February 2002, there was also a thriving 9-11 Unanswered Questions movement, which would be the precursor to 9-11. I’m a little surprised Churchill would have no knowledge of activists who were already challenging the official story in 2003.
That being said, the book’s second and third chapters are invaluable. Chapter 2 compiles all US military actions from 1776 on. Chapter three documents all known US violations of international law dating from the 1945 founding of the United Nations.
After 1947, this list includes the use of CIA interventions to overthrow lawful governments:
US invasion and occupation of sovereign Native American territories – 46
US military actions against US civilians during protests, rebellions, riots, and strikes (including WACO, Ruby Ridge, and the 1999 anti-WTO protests in Seattle) – 23
US troop deployment to put down slave revolts: 5
US military actions against
North Africa – 15
Mexico (excluding the US-Mexican War, which forced Mexico to give up have its territory) – 29
France (including 1961 attempted assassination of DeGaulle) – 4
Spain (excluding Spanish American War) – 6
Cuba (following Spanish American War) – 5
Canada – 1 (1837 border clash)
Pacific Island (excluding Hawai’i and Philippines) – 5
Greece – 3
South America – 19
China (excluding participating in civil war against Mao) – 15
Sub-Saharan Africa – 8
Turkey – 2
Central America – 19
Japan (prior to World War II) -3
Korea (prior to World War II) – 33
Hawai’i – 3
Haiti (prior to deposing Prime Minister Aristide in 1991) – 4
Philippines – 4
Dominican Republic -5
Cuba (prior to Cuban revolution – incursions following the Bay of Pigs are too numerous to count) – 2
USSR – 2
Greenland/Iceland – 1 each
Italy – 1
Iran (prior to 1953 CIA coup) – 1
Albania – 1
Syria – 1 (failed CIA coup in 1956)
Indonesia – 2
Cyprus – 1
Lebanon – 2
Grenada – 1
Australia – 1
Chapter 3 is a chronological history of UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions condemning the US. It includes censures for using napalm and Agent Orange in Vietnam, for using torture and the death penalty in US prisons, for their refusal to support the UN declaration for the elimination of racism, for their illegal blockade against Cuba, and for their illegal invasions of Angola, Panama and Nicaragua.
The chapter also includes countless Security Council and General Assembly resolutions condemning South Africa (not only for Apartheid but for the illegal invasion and occupation of Namibia and Angola) and Israel (for their illegal occupation of Palestine and the Golan Heights, their illegal invasion and 20+ year occupation of Lebanon, and their illegal deployment of nuclear weapons).
Here Churchill also covers Clinton’s illegal war against Yugoslavia, debunking most of the pro-war propaganda about alleged Serbian genocides. And finally the illegal 1972 CIA coup against democratically elected Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam (after he withdrew Australian troops from Vietnam). I was unaware prior to reading this book that John Kerr,** the Australian governor general responsible for removing Whitlam from office was a long time CIA asset.
1986: The Act, Dr Andy Wakefield’s* sequel to Vaxxed was just released last week. The price to rent the 2 1/2 hour film is steep – $US12.99. Some may want to wait until the price comes down. People can rent the film at https://7thchakrafilms.com/home-page
This documentary, simply, is a history of the 1986 US National Vaccine Injury Act. This legislation guarantees pharmaceutical companies totally immunity from liability for adverse reactions to vaccines by transferring the liability to US taxpayers. It also creates a special vaccine court to decide on the merit of the hundreds of disabled children who file claims every year. President Reagan (a strong opponent of big government) threatened to veto the bill. However he caved in and signed the law when Wyeth threatened to withdraw the Pertussis vaccine from the DPT (trivalent diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus vaccine).
The history of vaccine injury in the US is long, complicated and politically corrupt. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to learn the CIA was directly involved in suppressing public information about adverse vaccine side effects owing to some bizarre Cold War competition with the Soviets over vaccine supremacy (???).
It was largely due to CIA interference that 63 million Americans were injected with the cancer-causing SV40 between 1955-63 and thousands of children suffered from acute encephalopathy following inoculation with the cellular pertussis vaccine.** Available in other countries in 1981, the acellular pertussis vaccine wouldn’t be mandated for use in US infants until 1996. CIA interference is also implicated in the failure of the FDA to shut down polio vaccine production at Cutter Laboratories in 1954, after an NIH researcher discovered their vaccine contained live (as opposed to inactivated polio vaccine). Eventually 40,000 children would develop polio from the Cutter vaccine, 164 would experience paralysis and 10 would die.
1986 wasn’t the first year the US government assumed liability for vaccine injuries. In 1976 a swine flu vaccine was rushed to market with inadequate testing after four soldiers contracted swine flu at Fort Dix. When the insurance industry refused to issue liability insurance, the federal government assumed liability. In this case, 200 people caught swine flu with one death. In contrast the the vaccine caused 58 deaths, 532 cases of paralysis, and thousands of lawsuits against the US government.
The 1986 law provides that claims must be filed within three years of learning of the vaccine injury (especially onerous given most parents have never heard of the vaccine court). Hearings are closed to the public, have no discovery process and are run by a special master (as opposed to a judge). The Act initially included a table of recognized injuries (developed by the CDC) which were automatically compensated. In the beginning, regressive encepalopathy (in which seizures and autism are often a major outcome) was an on table condition, which meant 95% of autism/seizure cases received compensation.
After the incidence of autism began to skyrocket in the early 1990s, Clinton’s Secretary of Health and Human Services removed regressive encephalopathy and many other common vaccine injuries from the CDC table. This, in turn, forced parents to prove a direct link between the vaccine and their child’s disability, which is extremely difficult as most of the research is suppressed.
The most serious downstream effect of the total immunity 1986 Act granted pharmaceutical companies is the removal of any incentive on their part to study (and guarantee) the long term safety of their vaccines.
**In 1976, the FDA commissioned a study (which was suppressed) revealing that 1 in 300 children receiving cellular pertussis vaccine developed generalized seizures, and 1 in 214 developed other serious neurological reactions.
The World Today: False Choices – US Primaries 2016
Telesur (2016)
Film Review
This 2016 program was first broadcast the day after Super Tuesday, in which Bernie Sanders was the clear winner in three states. The documentary provides important perspective for the upcoming 2020 primares. In it, British historian and activist Tariq Ali interviews Liza Featherstone, author of False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Clinton. The latter is a collection of essays by left-leaning feminists.
Featherstone brands Clinton as an “elite” feminist – in contrast to “true” feminists, who are antiwar, anti-imperialist and and anti-racist. Featherstone also brands Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright as elite feminists, for publicly belittling young women for supporting Bernie Sanders. A massive backlash would force both women to apologize.
Both and Ali and Featherstone agree on Sanders and Trump being protest candidates against a corrupt political establishment. Neither can see much difference between Clinton and the Bushes, given they all support the same neoconservative wars of empire. Ali highlights Clinton’s deliberate vote seeking among moderate Republicans, abandoning working class voters (eventually labeling them “deplorables”) comprising the traditional Democratic Party base prior to 1980.
Ali also reminds us that Sanders is the first socialist US presidential candidate in over 100 years. He attributes the allure of socialism for US youth to post-Cold War childhood free of constant anti-communist propagandizing. He gives the example of the election of socialist Kshama Savant to the Seattle City Council in 2013 and 2015 (she was just re-elected in November 2019).
Both Ali and Featherstone correctly predict that Trump will win the Republican nomination. They erroneously predict Clinton winning the presidency.
The Price of Oslo is a two part documentary about the 1993 Oslo Accords, which according to many analysts, set the Palestinian cause back at least 20 years.
Episode 1 explores the background leading both Palestine and Israel to accept Norway as a “neutral” mediator. Israel welcomed the participation of Norway, as they replaced Iran as Israel’s primary oil supplier after the Shah was overthrown in 1977. In addition Norway’s ruling pro-Zionist Socialist Labor Party had extremely close ties with Israel’s ruling Socialist Labor Party.
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) accepted Norway’s mediator role because of close personal ties they developed with Norwegian soldiers deployed as UN peacekeepers after Israel’s 1978 invasion of south Lebanon.*
Many Mideast analysts believe the PLO was on the verge of collapse in the late 1980s, when Norway offered to set up a secret back channel for Arafat to participate in secret negotiations with the Israeli government.
The Norwegian government subsequently arranged for Palestinian and Israeli delegates to hold secret talks in Oslo and Israel under the auspices of FAFO, a Norwegian trade union think tank allegedly conducting “research” in Israel.
* The PLO was headquartered in Lebanese refugee camps prior to their expulsion from Lebanon in 1982.
Episode 2 describes how the secret FAFO negotiations took place in parallel with “official” Washington DC negotiations overseen by the Clinton administration. It also reveals how the entire Palestinian delegation disagreed with the concessions Arafat demanded they consent to. They most vehemently disagreed with Israel’s “deal breakers” that negotiations not include the status of Jerusalem, the right of return of Palestinian refugees, nor UN involvement in the ultimate peace settlement.
In the final Oslo Accords signed in August 1993, the Palestinians were granted limited autonomy (an elected Palestinian Authority) in areas of the occupied West Bank and Gaza that excluded “military zones” and Israeli settlements. In return, the Palestinians agreed to allow Israel to assume overall responsibility for “security,” to allow continued building of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine and to vigorously police “terrorist” activities carried on by anti-Israeli activists.
The only concession the PLO received was an agreement for the Israeli Defense Force to withdraw from Jericho and Gaza.**
Renowned Palestinian scholar and activist Edward Said was deeply shocked by the concessions Arafat agreed to, which he blamed on the “decay” of the PLO leadership. The Oslo Accord, according to Said, transformed the PLO from a “movement of national liberation to a municipality.” Owing to the extreme secrecy under which they occurred, Israel came out the clear winner of the Oslo negotiations. Had the Palestinian people known about the self-defeating concessions Arafat was making, they would never have allowed them to go forward.
With the Palestinian Authority brutally policing their own dissidents and activists to enforce “peace” in Israel/Palestine, the most important outcome for Israel was hundreds of millions in foreign investment.
Imposed Divide: Exposing the Roots of the Korean Conflict
RT (2018)
Film Review
This documentary dispels many myths promoted by Western media about the real purpose of US sanctions against North Korea. Predictably the real purpose of North Korean sanctions isn’t to end the North’s nuclear program but, as in Russia, Venezuela, Iraq, Syria etc., to cause sufficient civilian misery to bring about regime change – either through popular uprising or a military coup.
The film begins by describing Korea’s historical division along the 38th parallel. During World War II, the entire Korean peninsula was occupied by Japan. When the latter surrendered on August 14, 1945, Soviet troops accepted their surrender north of the parallel and US troops in the South.
While Soviet troops withdrew, US troops continued its occupation of South Korea, installing a series of puppet dictators to brutally suppress any dissent through surveillance, arrest, torture and assassination. Under US pressure, in 1948 the UN issued a declaration of two separate states – the socialist Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the north, and the capitalist Republic of Korea in the south.
In 1950, North Korea attempted to reunify Korea by invading and “liberating.” the south. They were welcomed and supported by resistance fighters opposed to US occupation. With the help of UN forces, by 1953 the Americans drove North Korean troops north of the 38th parallel. They abandoned their plan to invade the North when Communist Chinese troops entered the Korean War on the side of the North Vietnamese. Instead the US unleashed a massive carpet bombing campaign that destroyed all major North Korean towns and killed 20% of their population.
After a July 1953 truce restored the original North/South boundary, the US maintained a permanent military presence (ie occupation)* in South Korea. A growing number of South Korean civilians have joined the movement protesting continued US occupation. South Korea’s National Security Act, which criminalizes praise of North Korea, criticism of the US and all human rights campaigns and protests, is equally unpopular.
This documentary also explodes Western myths about the origin of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. The latter was the North’s response to a 1958 US decision to install tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea. They were removed in 1991 as part of President Bush Senior’s decision to eliminate America’s total arsenal of short range nuclear weapons.
In 1994 President Clinton signed an agreement to build North Korea a light water nuclear reactor in return for their commitment to end their nuclear weapons program. His Republican congress refused to ratify the treaty.
This is a fascinating documentary featuring a rare appearance by former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. It begins by examining a mutual disarmament treaty Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan negotiated in 1987. Reagan was clearly acting in opposition to the reigning military-industrial-complex, just as Trump is in his negotiations with North Korean president Kim Jong-un. This seems to be why Reagan waited to launch disarmament talks until he safely won re-election in 1984.
The arms reduction treaty had scarcely come into effect when Gorbachev’s Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (restructuring),, in concert with CIA meddling, triggered the rapid break-up of the Soviet block. By 1990, thanks to Gorbachev’s commitment to non-intervention in Soviet allies’ internal affairs, the Berlin wall had fallen and Communist governments had been overthrown in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania.
An August 1991 coup, led by (CIA-backed) hard line Communists, failed but significantly weakened the Soviet Union by strengthening the hand of CIA-backed (see US Agents Helped Yeltsin Break Coup) Russian president Boris Yeltsin.
Within months, Yeltsin conspired with the presidents of Kazakstan, Belarus and Ukraine to declare independence simultaneously with the Russian Federation. The move would lead to Gorbachev’s resignation in December 1991.
The EU, concerned about preserving the Reagan-Gorbachev arms reduction treaty, proposed a number of countermeasures to improve Russian economic stability. Among them were a proposal to integrate Russia into western Europe by admitting them to the G7 and the NATO missile defense strategy and granting them $30 billion in aid. All were vetoed by the Bush senior and his successor Bill Clinton in favor of NATO expansion.
*In his book Manifest Destiny, F William Engdahl talks about the Enterprise, a private intelligence/security network created by George H W Bush and run by Oliver North and Richard Secord. In addition to organizing illegal weapons sales to Iran (see Iran-Contra Affair), the Enterprise recruited corrupt KGB generals to help bring down Gorbachev’s government. According to Engdahl, these generals and their young proteges would become Russia’s corrupt billionaire oligarchs. The Enterprise financed the KGB generals’ coup against Korbachev in 1991 and installed Boris Yeltsin as president. The latter allowed the oligarchs, with the help of George Soros, Jeffrey Sachs and other Harvard economists to loot Russia exactly as they had looted Poland. See Russia’s Criminal Oligarchy: The Role of Bush Senior and the CIA).
This documentary is about the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. The nightly bombing went on for 78 days and killed 2,000 civilians, including 88 children. Most Americans are totally unaware of this shameful chapter in US history. Despite claims to the contrary NATO bombers clearly targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure, destroying more than 300 schools, factories and hospitals. Bill Clinton’s political justification for the bombing was “regime change,” ie the ouster of the “vicious dictator” Milosevic.
The film intersperses interviews with grieving survivors with bizarre clips from US mainstream media coverage.
Clinton’s bombing campaign on Yugoslavia constitutes a war crime as it was never approved by the UN Security Council. Russia and China both indicated they would veto a Security Council resolution – in retaliation NATO forces bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
Taliban Oil is a documentary about secret negotiations between Unocal and the Taliban to build a pipeline transporting natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India – via Afghanistan. It features interviews with the former president of Unocal (who entertained Taliban leaders in his home in Sugarland Texas), a female Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) operative who lost her security clearance for a report warning the Clinton administration for a against US collaboration with the Taliban.
This film contradicts the conventional wisdom that the US invaded Afghanistan because the Taliban refused to build the Unocal pipeline. Filmmakers maintain it was Unocal who canceled the pipeline project. Already by the late nineties, Afghanistan was suffering the ravages of a 20-years of civil war – the Taliban were extremely keen to use the $400 million/year transit fees for reconstruction. The Clinton administration was also heavily promoting the pipeline deal, arranging for Taliban leaders to meet with the State Department, CIA and NSA.
Unocal reportedly withdrew from the deal in 1998, after suicide bombers blew up US embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania. Clinton blamed the suicide bombing on Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden, who was operating jihadist training camps in Afghanistan.
In addition to attacking various training camps with cruise missiles, Clinton made 30 separate requests for the Taliban to extradite bin Laden to the US. Although supreme Taliban leader Mullah Omar opposed the training camps, bin Laden was a national hero for his role in expelling the Soviets. It would have brought great shame on the Taliban leadership to hand him over to the Americans. .
In 2001 George W Bush and Dick Cheney reiterated the requests for bin Laden’s extradition, while simultaneously making deals for their own petroleum companies to build the pipeline.
Rejecting the Taliban’s offer to expel bin Laden to a third country, in summer 2001 the Bush administration made plans to invade Afghanistan in mid-autumn. One source* quoted in the film states the jihadists were aware of the impending attack and decided to launch a preemptive strike on the Twin Towers.
*For documentation filmmakers provide an old YouTube clip from Adam Gaddan, the Jewish-born “American” al-Qaeda spokesperson. Gaddan has long been suspected of either Israeli or US intelligence links.
The Most Revolutionary Act 