S.M. Sharei   CUNCR

Ralph Nader / Nader.org

The Military Budget, which devours over half of the entire federal government’s operational expenditures, has been exempted by Biden and the Congressional Republicans from any reductions in the debt limit deal just reached. Also exempted are hundreds of billions of dollars in yearly diverse corporate subsidies to big business freeloaders.

Most of the cuts will slash the domestic programs that protect the health, safety, and economic well-being of the American people. Cuts will also be made to the starved I.R.S. budget, further weakening its capacity to pursue super-rich tax cheats and giant corporate tax escapees. ...

Welcome to America – Land of the Free, Home of the Brave sleepwalking its way through Sucker Land. It gets worse, People. Not only did the Pentagon, and indirectly the giant munitions corporations like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and General Dynamics get exempted, they were told by both the GOP and the Democrats to get ready, in the coming years, to receive additional tens of billions of dollars that the Generals and Biden didn’t even ask for. ...

But hey, our war machine can remotely vaporize a cluster of young men idly standing on a dusty road in Yemen with a drone operator pushing buttons in Virginia and Nevada. Over a trillion and a half dollars will be spent on upgrading our nuclear bombs with the same amount being wasted on strategically useless F-35 fighter planes.

David Barsamian & Norman Solomon / TomDispatch

David Barsamian: American Justice Robert Jackson was the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. He made an opening statement to the Tribunal on November 21, 1945, because there was some concern at the time that it would be an example of victor’s justice. He said this: “If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down the rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.”

Norman Solomon: It goes to the point that, unless we have a single standard of human rights, a single standard of international conduct and war, we end up with an Orwellian exercise at which government leaders are always quite adept but one that’s still intellectually, morally, and spiritually corrupt. Here we are, so long after the Nuremberg trials, and the supreme crime of aggression, the launching of a war, is not only widespread but has been sanitized, even glorified. We’ve had this experience in one decade after another in which the United States has attacked a country in violation of international law, committing (according to the Nuremberg Tribunal) “the supreme international crime,” and yet not only has there been a lack of remorse, but such acts have continued to be glorified.

The very first quote in my book War Made Invisible is from Aldous Huxley who, 10 years before the Nuremberg trials, said, “The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.” ...

You can indict Vladimir Putin over war crimes in Ukraine. But if you do, you’d better indict Joe Biden as well. That is the message that Professor Alfred de Zayas, world-renowned human rights and international law expert, gave “MintCast” host Alan MacLeod on today’s episode of the series.

“The double standards [with regard to Russia] are absolutely breathtaking” de Zayas said, noting how British International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan had discontinued all investigations into NATO war crimes in Afghanistan but continued those into the Taliban against NATO. Now the ICC has issued an arrest warrant against Putin, another one-sided decision that de Zayas claims has made the organization a joke:

There is no question that here, the crime of aggression has been committed, and certainly Russian troops have committed crimes in Ukraine. But you cannot prosecute one side and let the other side off scot-free. If you are going to indict a serving head of state [like Putin], then you would have to indict Joe Biden.”

The United States and NATO, he says, have been carrying out dangerous provocations in Ukraine for years, supplying weapons to militias who use them against civilians, while also carrying out similar crimes to Russia in Afghanistan, meaning that anyone with a semblance of balance or neutrality would conclude that American leaders need to be held accountable, too.

EXCERPTS

The New York Times has reliably supported every war the U.S. has waged.

Western mass media focus overwhelmingly on foreign protests against governments the United States dislikes while paying far less attention to widespread protests against U.S.-aligned governments.

The only time Trump was universally showered with praise by the mass media was when he bombed Syria, while the only time Biden has been universally slammed by the mass media was when he withdrew from Afghanistan.

Sample of some reasons mass media fails journalism:

 Below are some snapshots of the above information:

Editor: The Center for UN Constitutional Research (CUNCR) is a leading activist think tank based out of Brussels. Wars, climate change, and now AI all call for a "new UN."  THE SAN FRANCISCO PROMISE refers to the UN Charter (Article 109) which legally requires a review of the Charter, but this legal "promise" back in 1945 has yet to be fulfilled. -- R. Kotila, Ph.D. (DWF NEWS).

The Center for UN Constitutional Research, adding climate change and conventional wars to the list, calls for the 1945 Charter review of the UN according to Article 109, to enable it to deal with these existential emergencies. Follow us @S.M. Sharei on the 1001-Days campaign on a series on AI.

 Upcoming Class--Global Governance of Climate Course

The next module of the crash course on Climate Governance will examine possible government alternatives to tackle existential global issues, particularly CLIMATE EMERGENCY. This class will be in seminar format. Dr. S.M. Sharei, planetary citizen, will cover the United Nations. Antonio Argenziano, Italy, president of the Young European World Federalists (JEF) will cover the EU and the European federal model, and Professor Tim Murithi, Head of Peace Building Interventions, Free State University, South Africa, will discuss the African Union, as alternative government models for effective world governance. Moderated by Dr. Suchismita Pattanaik, India.

Date: 12 June 2023

Time: 5:00 - 6:00 PM

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