American Horror Story

Barack Obama’s legal justification for bombing countries with which the US is not at war has at last been spelt out. I wonder what Chrissie Hynde makes of it.

Obama had previously declared that deploying drones against targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, etc. was legal – but national security dictated that the advice this was based on could not be divulged.  
Now Counterpunch website has gotten its hands on a 16-page document by a White House lawyer, titled ‘The White Paper’. The legal precedent it cites is the bombing of Cambodia launched by Richard Nixon in 1969 without Congressional approval.
Obama, likewise, did not seek Congressional backing for 320 drone strikes in Pakistan alone which have caused upwards of 3,000 deaths, at least 1,000 of them civilian, including a minimum of 176 children.
In June 1971, the so-called ‘Pentagon Papers’ were leaked to The New York Times by Daniel Ellsberg, providing a narrative account of US involvement in Indochina, including Nixon’s unauthorised carpet-bombing of Cambodia. Ellsberg was charged with 12 felonies, all eventually dismissed on account of the use of wiretap evidence.
Nixon’s administration made desperate efforts to cover up the truth and then cover up the cover-up, but were rumbled by journalistic sleuths and White House aides who had had enough.
In June 1974, Nixon became the first US President ever forced to resign.
This is the precedent Obama says entitles him to examine a list of suggested drone targets every Tuesday and tick off those selected for assassination.
The attack on Cambodia had sparked nationwide protest. On May 4, 1970, 2,000 students gathered at Kent State, Ohio. They refused orders to disperse. The National Guard opened fire. Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer and Will Knox Schroeder were struck by bullets and died. Among those watching was the teenage Chrissie Hynde, a friend of Jeffrey Miller, from Akron about 12 miles away.
The experience must have played some part in the creation of ‘Revolution’.
‘The world is getting stranger/ But we’ll never lose heart/ We can’t just wait for the old guard to die/ Before we can make a new start/ Bring on the revolution/ Keep the pressure on/ I want to die for something/ Bring on the revolution/ Don’t want to die for nothing’.
Today’s closest equivalent of Daniel Ellsberg is Bradley Manning, who, through Wikileaks, alerted the world to the crimes of the US administration and of other regimes that reckon they can kill at will.
Obama put Manning in chains. Wire-taps are legal now. The NY Times believes that bombing other countries without approval of Congress is a minor infringement at most.
I wonder if Chrissie Hynde ever looks back on the darker days of her shining youth. I wonder what she makes of Obama.
 
I am surprised and a little disappointed that David Beckham has not yet been made a knight.
It’s not that I’ve upended my attitude to knights, earls, vicunts and the like. Just that I relish the prospect of angry snobs grinding their teeth as they are forced – and don’t doubt she will force them – to address the willowy Posh as ‘Lady Victoria’. Go girl!
Beckham was a far better footballer than the grouches admit. Six Premier League titles, one La Liga title, one Ligue 1 title, one Champions League, two FA Cups, four times voted onto the PFA team of the year, 1999 European Footballer of the Year.
All that counts for little with “real football people” who can’t believe that a man who advertises underpants could be a fine football player, too.
The moment I realised he was an excellent role-model came when he was asked what he thought of Sir Ian McKellan saying he fancied him. “Well,” he replied after a pause, “it’s nice to be liked by someone like that.”
Try to think of another English player – or Irish for that matter – who would have responded with such grace.
I suspect it goes against him most of all that he is gorgeous. It’s understandable the gnarled community feels resentful.

Surveillance drones and helicopters will flitter and buzz in the Fermanagh skies when the G8 gathers on the banks of Lough Erne on June 17.
The deployment of drones was agreed “without dissent” by the DUP, Sinn Fein, the lesser parties and independents at a policing board meeting on April 11.
An extra 3,500 cops are being flown in from Britain. Plus an 800-strong contingent from the private security company G4S, whose contribution to the London Olympics provided the world with a week of laughter.
For the G8, courts will sit on Sunday and late into the night; 350 cells have been readied to receive arrested desperadoes; all road-works across the North will stop for 11 days; roads within a 20-mile radius of Enniskillen will either be closed or have access restricted by PSNI checkpoints; armed British soldiers, including “special forces”, will be on hand throughout; the police will guard 200 empty Belfast buildings to prevent them being occupied by anarchists.
All this to protect representatives of the elites of eight major capitalist countries as they coordinate plans for continued domination of the planet.
Anybody who believes that these extraordinary measures will be dismantled once Obama, Putin, Merkel etc. have left Fermanagh is either a political knave or a naïve fool.
But hey, Michelle and the kids are coming, too! Staying at the Shelbourne! ‘Tis a grand day for Ireland, wha?