Facebook en Twitter verwijderen nu volledige accounts.........

Caitlin Johnstone publiceerde afgelopen zaterdag een artikel waarin ze verder ingaat op de zuivering van het internet door Facebook en Twitter. Waar aanvankelijk naar de inhoud van berichten werd gekeken zijn nu de accounts van o.a. Anti-Media, WSWS (World Socialist Web Site) en PoliceThePolice volledig verwijderd van deze 2 platforms........

Ofwel Facebook en Twitter fungeren als censuuragenten voor de overheid...... Terecht stelt Johnstone dat de overheid in de VS (en elders in het westen) nog maar weinig geloofwaardigheid over heeft, het is dan ook zaak dat organisaties als Facebook en Twitter de functie van censuuragent op zich nemen, immers als de overheid dit openlijk had gedaan, waren de rapen gaar geweest.......

Het is echter vrijwel zeker dat de VS overheid platforms als Facebook en Twitter aanstuurt wat betreft de keus voor te censureren accounts, ook gezien een conferentie eerder dit jaar, waar WSWS over berichtte op 5 oktober jl. Het gaat hier om een conferentie van de United States Special Operations Command, een sectie van het ministerie van 'Defensie' (zou het ministerie van Oorlog genoemd moeten worden), die supervisie heeft over de US Special Forces. De conferentie droeg de naam 'Sovereignty in the Information Age' en ondanks de vage titel, ging het er tijdens die conferentie over hoe alternatieve nieuws- en opiniesites te censureren...... Mensen lees ook dat artikel en de haren zullen je ten berge rijzen....*

Internet Censorship Just Took An Unprecedented Leap Forward, And Hardly Anyone Noticed

by Caitlin Johnstone

While most indie media was focused on debating the way people talk about Kanye West and the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an unprecedented escalation in internet censorship took place which threatens everything we all care about. It received frighteningly little attention.

After a massive purge of hundreds of politically oriented pages and personal accounts for "inauthentic behavior", Facebook rightly received a fair amount of criticism for the nebulous and hotly disputed basis for that action. What received relatively little attention was the far more ominous step which was taken next: within hours of being purged from Facebook, multiple anti-establishment alternative media sites had their accounts completely removed from Twitter as well.

As of this writing I am aware of three large alternative media outlets which were expelled from both platforms at almost the same time: Anti-Media, the Free Thought Project, and Police the Police, all of whom had millions of followers on Facebook. Both the Editor-in-Chief of Anti-Media and its Chief Creative Officer were also banned by Twitter, and are being kept from having any new accounts on that site as well.

"I unfortunately always felt the day would come when alternative media would be scrubbed from major social media sites," Anti-Media's Chief Creative Officer S.M. Gibson said in a statement to me. "Because of that I prepared by having backup accounts years ago. The fact that those accounts, as well as 3 accounts from individuals associated with Anti-Media were banned without warning and without any reason offered by either platform makes me believe this purge was certainly orchestrated by someone. Who that is I have no idea, but this attack on information was much more concise and methodical in silencing truth than most realize or is being reported."

Lee Camp [Redacted]

✔@LeeCamp

UPDATE on the massive Purge of 800 dissident voices happening in the U.S.

Banned from Facebook yesterday:
-Antimedia
-FreeThoughtProject
-PoliceThePolice
-Minds social media

Suspended from Twitter:
-Antimedia + editors
-FreeThoughtProject + editors
-PoliceThePolice + editors

12:58 AM - Oct 13, 2018

• 2,403
• 2,358 people are talking about this

It is now clear that there is either (A) some degree of communication/coordination between Twitter and Facebook about their respective censorship practices, or (B) information being given to both Twitter and Facebook by another party regarding targets for censorship. Either way, it means that there is now some some mechanism in place linking the censorship of dissident voices across multiple platforms. We are beginning to see smaller anti-establishment alternative media outlets cut off from their audiences by the same sort of coordinated cross-platform silencing we first witnessed with Alex Jones in August.

This is about as acute a threat to our ability to network and share information with each other as anything you could possibly imagine. If new media outlets are beginning to silence dissident voices together in unison, that means we can see entire alternative media outlets not just partially silenced but thoroughly silenced, their ability to grow their audiences and get information out to heavily populated parts of the internet completely crippled.

This is huge, this is dangerous, and this is being under-reported. When I was removed from Twitter in August for "abusing" John McCain, there was a large and outraged uproaron Twitter, and my account was quickly restored with an apology. The phenomenon of multiple high-profile alternative media outlets suddenly being silenced in unison by the two biggest social media platforms should be generating more outrage than some ornery Australian blogger losing her Twitter account, not less. People should be legitimately freaked out by this, because it affects us all.

Daniel McAdams@DanielLMcAdams

 · Oct 12, 2018

Replying to @caitoz @InmanAlex

The entity that is making censorship decisions for Facebook, as publicly announced, is the Atlantic Council, a partly US government-funded entity. At what point will the extremely tight ties between these companies and the US government end the "they are private" argument?

Daniel McAdams@DanielLMcAdams

Is this a private entity? pic.twitter.com/5oGABYjMqz

3:26 PM - Oct 12, 2018

 

Any time you try to talk about how internet censorship threatens our ability to get the jackboot of oligarchy off our necks you'll always get some guy in your face who's read one Ayn Rand book and thinks he knows everything, saying things like "Facebook is a private company! It can do whatever it wants!" Is it now? Has not Facebook been inviting US government-funded groups to help regulate its operations, vowing on the Senate floor to do more to facilitate the interests of the US government, deleting accounts at the direction of the US and Israeli governments, and handing the guidance of its censorship behavior over to the Atlantic Council, which receives funding from the US government, the EU, NATO and Gulf states? How "private" is that? Facebook is a deeply government-entrenched corporation, and Facebook censorship is just what government censorship looks like in a corporatist system of government.

Speaking of the Atlantic Council, it recently published a very interesting 21-page document about a US military conference detailing, in present tense, how Silicon Valley tech giants are being used to nullify the threat that the new media landscape poses to the US power establishment.

Of this document, World Socialist Website writes the following:

Enter the social media companies. The best mechanism for suppressing oppositional viewpoints and promoting pro-government narratives is the private sector, in particular “technology giants, including Facebook, Google, YouTube, and Twitter,” which can “determine what people see and do not see.” 

Watts adds, “Fortunately, shifts in the policies of social media platforms such as Facebook have had significant impact on the type and quality of the content that is broadcast.” 

The private sector, therefore, must do the dirty work of the government, because government propaganda is viewed with suspicion by the population. “Business and the private sector may not naturally understand the role they play in combating disinformation, but theirs is one of the most important…. In the West at least, they have been thrust into a central role due to the general public’s increased trust in them as institutions.”

#FreeAssange! (tweets by campaign)@JulianAssange

A securocrat's vision for state censorship (as channeled through the Atlantic Council)https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/10/05/pers-o05.html …

8:45 AM - Oct 5, 2018

The US military’s vision for state censorship

The Atlantic Council, a key partner in social media companies’ drive to censor the internet, has published a summary of a US special forces conference outlining a plan for systematically gutting the...

wsws.org

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• 97 people are talking about this

The best way to deal with a manipulative sociopath is to point and make a lot of noise every time they do something weird and creepy. The more you let them abuse you in private, the more they can rope you in and get you playing along with their sick agendas. If you notice them doing something weird, the best way to nullify all the tools in their wicked little toolbox is to point and yell "Hey! What are you doing?? Why are you doing that? That's weird!" Get people looking, because such beasts can't advance their manipulations with a lot of critical eyes on them.

Propaganda and censorship operates very much the same way. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of the Streisand effect, I encourage you to begin to acquaint yourself with it. Named for an incident in which Barbara Streisand attempted to suppress online photographs of her Malibu residence and thereby inadvertently drew far more attention to them, the Streisand effect describes the way attempts to hide and censor information can be used to draw more attention to it if the coverup attracts the interest of the public eye. Every censor needs to prevent this from happening in order to do their job effectively; if it looks like removing something from public view would draw more attention to it, then they cannot practice censorship in that case.

So let's Streisand this thing up, hey? Let's make a big angry noise about this new cross-platform escalation in internet censorship, and let's make a big angry noise any time anyone makes a move to silence dissident political speech in the new media environment. Manipulators can only function in darkness, so let's never give them any. Anything they try, we need to make a ton of noise about it. That by itself would be throwing an enormous stumbling block in their path while we find new ways to clear a path for more and more networking and information sharing. These bastards have controlled the narrative for too long.

Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal,buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.

Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

=====================================

* Zie: 'The US military’s vision for state censorship'

Zie ook:
'Facebooks departement voor censuur: een hoognodige uitleg over een maatregel die alleen in een dictatuur thuishoort'

'Twitter weert waarheid: Paul Craig Roberts in de ban, Roberts >> de grote criticus van de illegale oorlogen die de VS voert'

'Facebooks zuivering van de alternatieve (nieuws) media staat nog in de kinderschoenen'

'Israël en VS werken samen in tegenwerken van critici op beleid t.a.v. Palestijnen'

'Facebook censureert de waarheid over Columbus en de verovering van de Amerika's.......'

'Facebook censuur gestuurd door het westers militair-industrieel complex en de NAVO in het bijzonder..........'

'Why the Coordinated Alternative Media Purge Should Terrify Everyone' (Tyler Durden op Zero Hedge)

'First They Came for Alex Jones — We Told You We Were Next — We Were' (Matt Agorist op The Free Thought Project)

'Facebook (en Twitter) onderdrukt meningsvorming door het verwijderen van (echt) onafhankelijke media'

'CNN, de grote brenger van 'fake news!!!''

'Wie het nieuws controleert, controleert de wereld......'

'Facebook en Twitter verwijderen de eerlijke journalistiek en oprechte opinie >> censuur.....'

Facebook verlaat 'tranding news' voor 'brekend nieuws' van 80 reguliere mediaorganen, ofwel nog meer 'fake news.....''

'Facebook komt met nieuwsshows van betrouwbare media als CNN en Fox News.... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Censuur op het internet met vliegende start in de VS, 'het land van het vrije woord....''

'Facebook en NAVO werken samen in censuur op niet welgevallig nieuws......'

'Facebook helpt Saoedi-Arabië: doodstraf door onthoofding van vrouw die het waagde kritiek te uiten.....'

'Aanval op alternatieve media 'succesvol': meer en meer sites worden van het net geweerd.........'

'ThinkProgress eiste censuur van Facebook en werd inderdaad gecensureerd.... ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'VS staatscensuur op Facebook (ook in de EU)'

'Facebook stelt perstituee van New York Times aan als censuur-agent...... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Het echte Facebook schandaal: manipulatie van de gebruikers en gratis diensten voor eertijds presidentskandidaat Obama.......'

'Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook doneerde aan de politici die hem in de VS aan de tand voelden >> in het EU parlement maakte hij gebruik van megalomane EU politici.....'

'Facebook wil samen met door Saoedi-Arabië gesubsidieerde denktank censureren.... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Media Too Busy Defending John McCain to Report the News That Actually Affects You' Onder andere aandacht voor PRISM.

'Westerse massa misleiding in aanloop naar WOIII......'

'VS gebruikt sociale media om 'fake comment' te verspreiden en de bevolking te hersenspoelen met leugens, ofwel 'fake news....''

'Eis een nee tegen censuur op het internet!' 

'Facebook e.a. hebben lak aan AVG (GDPR), misbruik persoonsgegevens gaat gewoon door.......'

'Jeremy Corbyn wordt gedemoniseerd als antisemiet.......'

'VS gebruikt sociale media om 'fake comment' te verspreiden en de bevolking te hersenspoelen met leugens, ofwel 'fake news....''

'Facebook: verrijking van oliemaatschappijen en andere grote bedrijven, plus wereldwijde corruptie.......'

'Rusland krijgt alweer de schuld van hacken, nu van oplichters Symantec en Facebook....... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

Pentagon rapport geeft aan dat VS zich voorbereidt op totale oorlog

Onder andere uit door het Pentagon vrijgegeven documenten blijkt dat de VS zich voorbereidt op een oorlog met Rusland en China, ofwel de VS wil WOIII starten......

Lees het volgende artikel van Andre Damon, eerder geplaatst op WSWS (World Socialist Web Site) door mij overgenomen van Information Clearing House (en huiver....):

Pentagon Report Points To US Preparations For Total War

By Andre Damon

October 11, 2018 "Information Clearing House" -  Over the past two weeks, with next to no media coverage, the United States has moved substantially closer toward open military confrontation with both Russia and China, the second- and third-ranked nuclear powers in the world.

On October 3, the United States threatened, for the first time since the Cold War, to directly attack the Russian homeland. UN Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison accused the country of violating the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty by developing a nuclear cruise missile and said that Washington was preparing to “take out” the weapon with a US strike.

This statement came just three days after a Chinese warship set a collision course with a US destroyer carrying out a so-called “freedom of navigation” operation in the South China Sea, forcing the American ship to maneuver to avoid a collision and the potentially deadliest military clash in the Pacific in decades.

Behind such hair-raising incidents, the United States is undertaking serious, long-term preparations to restructure the American economy to fight a major war with a “peer” adversary, entailing radical changes to American economic, social and political life.

This is the essential content of a 146-page document released by the Pentagon last Friday, titled “Assessing and Strengthening the Manufacturing and Defense Industrial Base and Supply Chain Resiliency of the United States.” It makes it clear that Washington is preparing not just for isolated regional clashes, but rather for a massive, long-term war effort against Russia and China under conditions of potential national autarchy.

The document made clear that a major restructuring of the American economy will be necessary to reach the United States military’s stated goal of being prepared to “fight tonight” against a “peer adversary.” The United States must “retool” for “great-power competition,” the document declared.

“America’s manufacturing and defense industrial base,” observes the report, creates the “platform and systems” upon which “our Warfighter depends.” This complex encompasses not just the government, but the private sector, as well as “R&D organizations” and “academic institutions.” In other words, the entire economy and society.

It warns that “The erosion of American manufacturing over the last two decades… threatens to undermine the ability of U.S. manufacturers to meet national security requirements. Today, we rely on single domestic sources for some products and foreign supply chains for others, and we face the possibility of not being able to produce specialized components for the military at home.”

Correcting this strategic deficiency, the report concludes, means that “support for a vibrant domestic manufacturing sector, a solid defense industrial base, and resilient supply chains is a national priority.”

The report squarely targets China, declaring, “China’s economic strategies, combined with the adverse impacts of other nations’ industrial policies, pose significant threats to the U.S. industrial base and thereby pose a growing risk to U.S. national security.”

The promotion of US manufacturing dominance, in other words, is vital for promoting military dominance.

The protection of heavy industry goes together with the administration’s efforts to defend America’s high-tech sector, the source of a vast portion of US profitability.

As the report notes, “One of the Chinese Communist Party’s primary industrial initiatives, Made in China 2025, targets artificial intelligence, quantum computing, robotics, autonomous and new energy vehicles, high performance medical devices, high-tech ship components, and other emerging industries critical to national defense.”

It warns that “Chinese R&D spending is rapidly converging to that of the U.S. and will likely achieve parity sometime in the near future,” and worriedly points to the fact that the Chinese manufacturer DJI dominates the commercial aerial drone market.

The Pentagon’s plans for protecting and expanding the US high-tech sector include its backing for the administration’s efforts to limit the admission of Chinese students to US universities through visa restrictions. The report complains that, with as many as 25 percent of “STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics] graduates in the U.S. being Chinese nationals… American universities are major enablers of China’s economic and military rise.”

The vision in the document, in other words, is the concrete expression of the conception outlined in the latest US national security strategy, calling for “the seamless integration of multiple elements of national power—diplomacy, information, economics, finance, intelligence, law enforcement and military.”

A leading element of this equation is the American corporate technology sector, which has scrambled for fat Pentagon contracts to develop the latest generation of weapons systems. In exchange for these payouts, and aggressive protection from their international rivals, they have worked closely to implement what one leaked internal Google document called a “shift towards censorship” in cooperation with the demands of the US military and intelligence agencies.

The logic of this growing fusion between the repressive apparatus of the state and increasingly powerful monopolies is the necessary correlation between “total war” and a “totalitarian” society, in which key constitutional provisions are rendered effectively meaningless.

The central target of such measures will be the forcible suppression of the class struggle in the name of promoting “national security.” The escalation of global US militarism has coincided with a major upsurge in the class struggle, including the rejection of a concessions contract by workers at UPS, the logistics giant whose powerful workforce is capable of crippling not just America’s industrial base, but substantial sections of the wartime economy.air

This article was originally published by "WSWS" -

========================================

Zie ook:
'VS heeft drone aanval van terreurgroep Jabhat Fateh al-Sham op Russische doel in Syrië gecoördineerd.......'

'Oekraïne het toneel van grootschalige luchtmachtoefeningen met VS en NAVO, naast een enorme militaire VS/NAVO oefening in Noorwegen'

'Duitsland doet mee in het koor van de wolven: Russische cyberterreur!'

'VS heeft Rusland al 3 keer met oorlog gedreigd, de laatste 2 keer in de afgelopen 1,5 week.....'

'Idlib: akkoord Turkije – Rusland leidt tot grote aanval op Syrië....'

'VS zendt tegen wil van de bevolking in 1.500 militairen naar Duitsland, opbouw voor WOIII?'

'Groot-Brittannië bezig met volk voor te bereiden op oorlog tegen Rusland'

'NAVO kan WOIII beginnen waarschuwt de baas van de NAVO >> Trump..... ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Stop militaire transporten van de VS en NAVO richting Russische grens >> niet nog een wereldoorlog!'

'Russische volk wordt geadviseerd zich voor te bereiden op een nucleaire oorlog.......'

'VS vergroot doelbewust de spanningen met Rusland: een enorme VS troepenopbouw langs de Russische grens..........'

'NAVO oefent op een nucleaire aanval tegen 'een denkbeeldige vijand', ofwel Rusland..........'

'Rechtse denktank waarschuwt voor een groot risico op een kernoorlog met Rusland.....'

'Estland stopt militaire oefening na een 'vergissing' >> de lancering van een raket in het grensgebied met Rusland......'

'VS op weg naar daadwerkelijk gebruik van het kernwapen..............'

'VN chef Guterres geeft alarmcode rood af voor de wereld in 2018 en niet alleen vanwege het milieu of klimaat......'

'Top VS generaal stelt dat er een grote oorlog met Rusland op komst is, ofwel: WOIII......'

'Trumps atoomknop is groter dan die van Kim Yung-un, bovendien werkt de VS knop wel....... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Trumps uitlating over de atoomknop en de onverschilligheid bij zijn achterban, een dictatuur waardig.........'

'Trumps beleid t.a.v. kernwapens brengt de VS staatsveiligheid in gevaar (en die van de rest van de wereld)'
==========================

Meer berichten over het gewelddadige karakter van de VS:
'VS vermoordde meer dan 20 miljoen mensen sinds het einde van WOII........'

'VS buitenlandbeleid sinds WOII: een lange lijst van staatsgrepen en oorlogen..........'

'List of wars involving the United States'

'VS: openlijke militaire oefening met terreurgroep in Syrië......'

'Bang voor Amerika'

'NAVO gaat VS helpen in Zuid-Amerika terreur uit te oefenen: Colombia lid van de NAVO.........'

'VS commando's vechten o.a. in Midden- en Zuid-Amerika, aldus het VS ministerie van oorlog.........'

Obama vergroot 'werkgebied' van speciale VS-doodseskaders....... De 'man' verdient nog een Nobelprijs!!

VS terreur op groter plan: Obama, de winnaar van de Nobelprijs voor de Vrede laat psychopathische moordenaars los op zo ongeveer de hele wereld! Tijd dat massamoordenaar Obama wordt aangeklaagd bij het Internationaal Strafhof!

Hier het artikel daarover op Information Clearing House van 30 november 2016 (onder dit artikel kan u klikken voor een 'Dutch' vertaling, dit neemt wel enige tijd in beslag):

Obama Extends Global Reach of US Special Operations Death Squads

By Patrick Martin

November 29, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - "WSWS" (World Socialist Web Site) - In major actions reported only briefly by the establishment press, President Obama has given vast new scope to the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), authorizing it to carry out assassinations across the globe.

The units of JSOC have long been employed by the chiefs of the six major regional military commands, such as Centcom, which covers the Middle East and Central Asia, to conduct counter-terrorism operations. One such unit, Seal Team Six, carried out the assassination of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May 2011.

Obama has approved a proposal to give JSOC independent authority to operate outside the regional commands, essentially as a globalized assassination force. JSOC units will bypass the regional commanders and report directly to Special Operations Command (SOCOM) in the Pentagon.

According to the Washington Post, “The missions could occur well beyond the battlefields of places like Iraq, Syria and Libya, where Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) has carried out clandestine operations in the past. When finalized, it will elevate JSOC from being a highly-valued strike tool used by regional military commands to leading a new multi-agency intelligence and action force.”

The mandate of the new formation, to be called the “Counter-External Operations Task Force,” or Ex-Ops in Pentagon jargon, will embrace the entire planet. This means US military death squads could be sent to virtually any location, from European cities to South American jungles, including the United States itself.

According to the Post, a reorganization making counter-terrorism an independent, global command has been discussed in the Pentagon for 15 years, since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but it was always rejected on the grounds that it would cause friction with the regional commanders and create duplication in command structures.

The newspaper did not address the question of why now, a decade-and-a-half later, the Obama administration has decided to press forward with the new global counter-terrorism initiative. The decision is likely, at least in part, a response to the debacle of the US “war on terror” from the standpoint of the global aims of American imperialism.

The US wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria and repeated drone strikes in other countries, including Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, have inflicted catastrophic levels of death and destruction, but they have not achieved the hoped-for hegemonic control of the region and its vast energy resources. Obama’s decision represents a determination to escalate US military violence in Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and beyond.

Another likely consideration is the possibility that the ongoing military offensives against Islamic State territories in Syria and Iraq, and particularly the siege of Mosul, could lead to thousands of ISIS militants turning to terrorist attacks outside the Middle East.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter traveled to Paris last month with SOCOM Commander Raymond Thomas for talks with security officials from several European countries. A major topic was the impact on Europe of a sudden weakening in the military position of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Carter told his European counterparts that JSOC “has been put in the lead” of countering ISIS external operations, the first mention of the impending Pentagon reorganization.

The Post report sought to present the Obama-approved reorganization as an effort to set limits on the operations of special forces under the incoming Trump administration, including “approval by several agencies before a drone strike and ‘near certainty’ that no civilians will be killed guidelines.” But these restrictions are for cosmetic purposes only and have not stopped the mass slaughter of civilians by drone missile warfare.

Moreover, Trump is not bound in any way by executive orders issued by Obama. The fascistic president-elect has already made his intentions clear, as far as US Special Forces operations are concerned. He has vowed to order the killing of the wives and children of suspected ISIS fighters, a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.

The latest White House orders serve to facilitate these homicidal intentions. Less than a month ago, Obama was campaigning against the election of Trump, denouncing him as unfit to be commander-in-chief and as a menace to the world. Now, as Foreign Policymagazine reported, Obama is “handing the incoming Trump team tools to wage war that no president has held before.”

In one particular theater of US counter-terrorism operations, Somalia, Obama has taken additional action to escalate the carnage by declaring the Islamist group al-Shabab to be part of the armed conflict authorized by the US Congress in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks.

The legal maneuver, reported Monday by the New York Times, demonstrates the infinitely expandable scope of the US-declared “war on terror.” The Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), passed by Congress on September 14, 2001, approved military action against Al Qaeda and associated forces, including the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

The 2001 AUMF has been interpreted by the Bush and Obama administrations as a blanket authorization for military action wherever the president claims to find a connection to Al Qaeda, no matter how tenuous. Al-Shabab was not founded until 2007, six years after the 9/11 attacks, in response to the US-backed invasion of Somalia by Ethiopian troops. It has never conducted operations outside of East Africa.

The Times noted that the Somalia decision was one of a series of Obama actions expanding the military’s authority, including broadening the scope of air strikes in Afghanistan and approving air strikes against Sirte, the Libyan city held by supporters of ISIS. More than 400 air strikes followed, pounding into rubble a city already devastated by five years of civil war following the 2011 US-NATO bombing campaign.

The preparations to reinforce the pseudo-legal basis of the war in Somalia no doubt began well before the election, when Obama expected to hand off authority to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But it has continued uninterrupted after Trump’s victory, and as the Times reported, it is “a move that will strengthen President-elect Donald J. Trump’s authority to combat thousands of Islamist fighters in the chaotic Horn of Africa nation.”

Earlier this month, the British-based Guardian reported that “Barack Obama will not tighten the rules governing US drone strikes ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration.” An Amnesty International USA official, Naureen Shah, told the newspaper, “Obama has normalized the idea that presidents get to have secret large-scale killing programs at their disposal.”

These events shed a new and sinister light over the reports of frequent closed-door discussions between Obama and Trump during the three weeks since the November 8 election. “They’ve been talking regularly on any number of issues,” Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program Sunday.

Obama was at pains, in his first post-election statement, to dismiss the bitter vituperation of the election campaign, declaring that the electoral struggle between the Democrats and Republicans was merely “an intramural scrimmage.” This is profoundly true: both parties represent the same class, the American financial aristocracy, and its global interests, defended in the final analysis by death and destruction inflicted by the American military machine.

Copyright © 1998-2016 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

Click for Spanish, German, Dutch, Danish, French, translation- Note- Translation may take a moment to load.

Zoals u kon lezen: het wachten is op de eerste illegale militaire psychopathische VS acties, middels een doodseskader, tegen burgers in de EU, ik wed, dat dit binnen een paar jaar zal gebeuren..... Sterker nog, de mogelijkheid bestaat dat dit al is gebeurd en/of momenteel plaatsvindt.........

Klik voor meer berichten n.a.v. het bovenstaande, op één van de labels die u onder dit bericht terug kan vinden, dit geldt niet voor de labels: AUFM, Ex-Ops, JSOC, R. Thomas, SOCOM en WSWS.