Posts Tagged ‘Chris Hayes’

Jimmy Dore Show: US Begins Bombing in Somalia Again, Because Oil Found

April 19, 2017

This is yet another video about the expansion of the American war machine and war propaganda by the Jimmy Dore Show. In this video, he discusses the report that AFRICOM, the part of American High Command responsible for Africa, has decided to put troops back into Somalia after 24 years. The troops are apparently there at the request of the Somalian government, and will be there for training purposes. The article does reveal that American troops have also been deployed several times within that space of 24 years in minor missions, such as scouting for bombing sites.

The US troops are being deployed to help the Somali government against the Islamist group, al-Shabaab. The article states that al-Shabaab, although sharing a similar Islamist ideology with ISIS and al-Qaeda, aren’t actually part of those organisations. Most of the time, they’ve been confined to Somalia. They arose after a long period of stable anarchy ended when a new government fought a war to gain power. It was this war that produced them. On those rate occasions when al-Shabaab has spread abroad, it’s mostly been into Kenya in reprisal for attacks made by the Kenyans and the African Union.

Dore makes the point that they’re not part of ISIS and al-Qaeda, but the American government has claimed that they are so that they can used the license granted to George Bush to fight terrorism. Dore states that this is indeed Orwellian. It’s endless war for endless peace, one of the slogans of Oceania in 1984.

So if al-Shabaab aren’t really an international terrorist organisation, what’s the real reason Trump’s sending troops there? You need to ask! It’s oil. Massive reserves have been found by BP off the country’s coast. In Puntland province, the reserves are sufficient to make the country one of the top 20 oil producing countries. Dore against makes the point that whenever there’s a war in the Middle East or Somalia, it’s all sponsored by Saudi Arabia about the petrodollar.

Dore is joined on the programme by Steffi Zamora and Ron Placone, whose voice can be heard off-screen. They make the point, with Dore, that there is no anti-war party in America. Both Republicans and Democrats are strongly in favour of war. The Democrats so much so, that when anti-war protesters turned up at their convention they turned the lights out and sound cannons on them, and painted them as riotous – throwing chairs around – and misogynist. But as Steffi Zamora reminds Dore’s viewers, the people of America are very strongly opposed to war. But the media does not want to show this. MSNBC, and news anchors like Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes are not going to say anything against more war. Dore also makes the point that YouTube are also trying to drive out those voices on the internet that oppose the war by demonetising them, in order to starve them of the advertising revenue that sustains them. What they’re getting isn’t sufficient to support their show, but they thank everyone who is supporting them. And, faced with silence about the war from the mainstream media, he asks the rhetorical question if it’s any wonder people are now getting their news from YouTube.

Vox Political: How Many Deaths Have Tory Welfare Cuts Caused?

February 12, 2015

Mike over at Vox Political the other day published this article, How many deaths have Tory evidence-free policies caused?. It reports the Guardian’s article on Labour MP Anne Begg’s questioning of Esther McVile and Chris Hayes of the DWP over whether they actually carried out any studies into how this would affect the benefit claimants on whom it was inflicted. Mike writes

Yesterday’s Guardian article by Zoe Williams about evidence-free government is strangely muted about the main headline-grabber: The fact that she is writing about policies that kill.

“Recently, Dame Anne Begg had some questions for the employment minister, Esther McVey, on the Welfare Reform Act of 2012,” the article states.

“She wanted to know about cuts to benefits, having carefully gathered evidence from charities and food banks in advance. ‘Minimum JSA [jobseeker’s allowance] sanction,’ she began, ‘went from two weeks to four weeks and the maximum went from six months to three years. These are quite sizeable lengths of time, so what evidence did you have on the likely impact on claimants that these extended sanction periods would have?’

“Were there any reasonable grounds that could be shared with any reasonable person to think this policy would be effective – any attempt to visualise how it would look?… There were not. There was a lot of faffing, and some broad and extraneous evidence about sanctions in general. ‘I take it from your failure to answer the question that you did not do any research,’ the chair finally concluded, having grilled McVey and the DWP’s Chris Hayes for long enough.”

Mike then gives his estimate of the number of people dying per year due to government sanctions, based on the available figures and the examples of two claimants, who died within two weeks of each other after being sanctioned by Ashton-Under-Lyme Jobcentre. One died of starvation and exposure, the other joins a long list of people, who took their own lives. Given these examples, Mike suggests the number being killed is 53,040 people per year. This is more people than were killed by William the Conqueror during the Harrowing of the North following the Norman Conquest of 1066. The north had been the centre of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Scandinavian resistance to the Norman invasion. The north of England had been a Viking kingdom, the Kingdom of Yorkshire, and still retained strong Viking sympathies for the Danish kings. In response William’s troops razed whole villages, reducing vast tracts to wasteland. The result was massive famine. William’s repression of the north was so severe, that even centuries later the villages razed by the Normans were depopulated. Mike’s comparison of the government’s attack on the poor and disabled with William the Conqueror’s Harrowing of the North isn’t a piece of romantic historical hyperbole. It graphically shows the depths of despair and deprivation that this government is forcing on its citizens.

He also quotes Samuel Miller, an academic who has researched the effect of the welfare reforms, who states that there was very little investigation of just how the benefit changes would affect people. This did not, however, stop the creation of the harshest sanctions system in the developed world.

To add insult to injury, Iain Duncan Smith has now crawled out of whichever festering pit he calls home, to spew out another self-aggrandising lie. This time he claims his benefit cuts have saved £50bn.

He’s a liar and genocide. It’s long past time he was thrown out of government, along with the rest of this cruel, corrupt and thoroughly degenerate administration.

Mike’s article can be read at: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2015/02/10/how-many-deaths-have-tory-evidence-free-policies-caused/.