Shed no tears for Kirstjen Nielsen

The departing head of the Department of Homeland Security, who oversaw and implemented the cruel policy that separated children from their parents and placed them in cages, is following the familiar dual-track path of all fired Trump administration employees: publicly sucking up to Trump so as not to anger his base while leaking to the media that she was actually a restraining force that opposed his vicious policies. She is undoubtedly hoping that the latter will result in her reputation being recovered from the gutter where it currently is.
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Iran plays tit-for-tat with the US

The US government feels that it has the right to intervene in the affairs of other countries to the extent of destabilizing them, supporting insurgent groups, creating coups, and even invading them. But it denounces anyone that fights back. For example, Afghans who attack US troops in that country are accused of being terrorists and charged as such. But if a foreign country were to ever invade the US, would Americans who take up arms against the invaders be called terrorists? And what of countries that provide support to Americans fighting the foreign invaders? Would those countries be labeled as state supporters of terrorism? To ask the question is to reveal the hypocrisy.
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The hidden, ugly face of US empire

The radio program On The Media this week had an absolutely gripping interview with Daniel Immerwahr, author of How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States. It begins at the 3:30 mark and lasts for about 50 minutes, laying out in great detail the hypocrisy of claiming to be a republic while actually being an empire that denied rights to the large populations under its control.
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John Bercow is not leaving the building anytime soon

It appears that I am not the only one taken by John Bercow, the speaker of the British House of Commons. As a result of the intense attention paid to the parliamentary maneuverings over Brexit, he has apparently become a cult figure in Europe and Der Spiegel interviewed him, where I was relieved to hear him saying that the rumor of him stepping down this summer was unfounded.
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Australian politics on TV

I recently watched two television series produced and set in Australia. One was Secret City and the other was Rake. The former is a political espionage drama while the latter is a comedy-farce. How they both portray the Australian political-legal-police-internal security systems in less than flattering, to put it mildly, showing them as utterly corrupt and venal. Both shows portray the Australia-China relationship as a highly fraught one, and in Secret City, the US is shown manipulating Australia to serve its own foreign policy ends.
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The imperial mindset of the US on full display

Via a commenter, I received this news item of how the US has denied the entry visa of the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court because she had the quaint notion that Americans were subject to the same international laws as people of other countries, especially pertaining to war crimes. She vows to carry on regardless.

US authorities revoked International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s entry visa to the United States, her office and the US State Department confirmed Friday.

“It is our understanding that should not have an impact on the Prosecutor’s travel to the US to meet her obligations to the UN, including regular briefings before the UN Security Council,” her office said in a statement.

“The Office of the Prosecutor has an independent and impartial mandate under the Rome Statute of the ICC. The Prosecutor and her Office will continue to undertake that statutory duty with utmost commitment and professionalism, without fear or favor,” it said.

A State Department spokesperson reiterated that the US would “take the necessary steps to protect its sovereignty and to protect our people from unjust investigation and prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC).”

UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said Friday that they “expect the United States to live up to the agreement to allow for the travel of ICC staff members to do their work at the United Nations.”

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The entitlement mentality of the wealthy

If you want to see the sense of entitlement that rich people have, you could do no better than the affidavit submitted by an FBI agent in support of the indictment. The affidavit contains verbatim transcripts of wiretapped conversations that the parents had with those scheming to falsely create credentials for their children. The transcripts include conversations involving Gordon Caplan, who before the scandal broke, was co-chairman of a major international law firm, and who yesterday issued a statement saying he would plead guilty to fraud for faking his daughter’s disability in order to enable her to get special testing conditions under which she not only got extra time but also enabled the proctor to change her answers to give her a higher score.
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How the debate over minimum wages has changed

It is interesting how ideas that less than four years ago were portrayed as controversial have now become mainstream. Republicans used to demand the repeal of Obamacare but now they claim that they oppose any lifting of the ban on denying people insurance because of pre-existing conditions. The idea of people being able to keep their children on their plans until they reach the age of 26 is also very popular. Bernie Sanders’ proposal of Medicare for All has been adopted by pretty much all the Democrats running for president.
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Congress votes to cut US support for war in Yemen

In a welcome move, both houses of Congress have passed a joint resolution to withdraw support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. The House of Representatives voted 247-175 in favor of the resolution yesterday and the US Senate voted 54-46 in favor in March. The resolution “directs the president to remove U.S. armed forces from hostilities in or affecting Yemen within 30 days unless further engagement is authorized by Congress.” In the House, 16 Republicans voted in favor and no Democrats voted against while in the Senate seven Republicans voted in favor and no Democrats voted against.
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