by B. R. GOWANI
a decade ago, Indian music director Vishal Dadlani wrote:
“Stuck between a moron and a murderer….what now, India!?”
Dadlani was comparing BJP’s Modi & Congress Party’s Rahul Gandhi
he was right on target about Narendra Modi but was a bit harsh on Gandhi
the US is stuck between a capitalist controlled & financed two party system
whoever comes, works for corporations while screwing the working class
the choice for voters in 2024, as the norm is, is very frightening:
Joe Biden, a mass genocidal murderer, who remains un-convicted, and
the former President Donald Trump has been charged with 34 felony counts
Trump found guilty on all 34 counts was the headline all over the world
Biden has this to say about the judgement on Trump case:
“The American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed.”
“It’s reckless, it’s dangerous, it’s irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict.”
the same Biden on ICC judgement on genocidal Netanyahu:
“The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous. And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.”
so Netanyahu <1> is above the law and Karim Khan’s verdict is “outrageous”
in the United States, 34 felony counts are considered crimes
but helping Israel militarily/financially kill 37,000 Palestinians … is not
one of the jobs of US president is to war to maintain US global hegemony:
Biden lured Russia into Ukraine & refuses to stop Israel’s horrific war
philosopher Noam Chomsky on post WW II US presidents
If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged. By violation of the Nuremberg laws I mean the same kind of crimes for which people were hanged in Nuremberg. And Nuremberg means Nuremberg and Tokyo. So first of all you’ve got to think back as to what people were hanged for at Nuremberg and Tokyo. And once you think back, the question doesn’t even require a moment’s waste of time. For example, one general at the Tokyo trials, which were the worst, General Yamashita, was hanged on the grounds that troops in the Philippines, which were technically under his command (though it was so late in the war that he had no contact with them — it was the very end of the war and there were some troops running around the Philippines who he had no contact with), had carried out atrocities, so he was hanged. Well, try that one out and you’ve already wiped out everybody.
But getting closer to the sort of core of the Nuremberg-Tokyo tribunals, in Truman’s case at the Tokyo tribunal, there was one authentic, independent Asian justice, an Indian, who was also the one person in the court who had any background in international law [Radhabinod Pal], and he dissented from the whole judgment, dissented from the whole thing. He wrote a very interesting and important dissent, seven hundred pages — you can find it in the Harvard Law Library, that’s where I found it, maybe somewhere else, and it’s interesting reading. He goes through the trial record and shows, I think pretty convincingly, it was pretty farcical. He ends up by saying something like this: if there is any crime in the Pacific theater that compares with the crimes of the Nazis, for which they’re being hanged at Nuremberg, it was the dropping of the two atom bombs. And he says nothing of that sort can be attributed to the present accused. Well, that’s a plausible argument, I think, if you look at the background. Truman proceeded to organize a major counter-insurgency campaign in Greece which killed off about one hundred and sixty thousand people, sixty thousand refugees, another sixty thousand or so people tortured, political system dismantled, right-wing regime. American corporations came in and took it over. I think that’s a crime under Nuremberg.
on the other hand …
Trump is neither innocent nor are his hands without human blood as
Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani was killed by Trump for no reason
5,400 children were separated from the parents entering at the borders
24 immigrants died in ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) custody
Trump, if elected in November, will arrive as a full-fledged fascist
he’s going to make life more miserable — within and without the US
both Biden and Trump are bastards — don’t vote for either of them
if neither of them, then who?
vote for Cornel West, who is also running for US president
Note
<1> Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other premiers before him, have exerted great power in the US due to US desire to control the Middle East through Israel. Not to forget that the Israel Lobby, especially AIPAC has spread like malignant cancer. In 1996, the then President Bill Clinton told his staff:
“Who the fuck does he [Netanyahu] think he is? Who’s the fucking superpower here?”
In 2015, to embarrass President Barack Obama (a Democrat) and to derail his efforts to reach a nuclear deal with Iran, Netanyahu and Republican (US opposition party) leaders planned Netanyahu’s speech to the US Congress without informing the White House. Israel was also spying on US Iran talks and providing classified information to Republicans. In 2016, Obama raised free money which US gives to Israel to $3.8 billion annually (from $3.1 billion) for ten years.
In early 2000s, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon tried to dissuade US Secretary of State Colin Powell from visiting Syria.
Sharon: I don’t want you to go to Damascus [Syria]. I don’t think it serves the interests of peace, and we don’t like it here in Israel when you go to Damascus.
Powell: Ariel, thank you very much but I am going anyway. I am Secretary of State of the United States of America and not the foreign minister of Israel.
One could go on and on and on ….
B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.om