Counterpunch:
"[Donald Rumsfeld and Bechtel]. On the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, Bechtel, the gargantuan global construction firm based in San Francisco, issued its revenue numbers for 2004. While the situation continued to deteriorate for the US military forces in Iraq, Bechtel reported more fragrant news.
Although the privately-owned company doesn’t disclose its profits, Bechtel did announce that its income was soaring to new heights not seen since the 1960s when the company was damming some of the world’s most glorious canyons, building some of the most dangerous nuclear plants and constructing military bases for the staging of the war on Vietnam.
For the year 2004, Bechtel brought in more than $17.4 billion, a record haul for the company. That makes two record years in a row. Last year [2003] Bechtel earned more than $17 billion for the first time. Both peaks were all the more impressive given the senescent condition of the economy. Much of that robust income stream [came] from its operations in Iraq, where Bechtel is the king of contractors."
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/07/04/straight-to-bechtel-when-donald-rumsfeld-laid-pipe/
-->While the major media focuses on Donald Rumsfeld's personality quirks, the rest of the story is carefully avoided. Much of that story involves Bechtel, one of the largest US war, nuclear and oil construction firms, as well as Rumsfeld's dirty dealings on its behalf over the last half century. One can't understand US disastrous wars abroad without looking at this country's war machine and how government officials are paid off to make it grow.
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Aljazeera:
"Israeli settlements amount to ‘war crime.’ ... A top UN rights expert has called for Israeli settlements to be classified as war crimes, urging the international community to demand accountability for a practice it has long deemed illegal.
Presenting his latest report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Michael Lynk, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, said the settlements constitute a 'violation of the absolute prohibition against settler implantation'. ...
'I submit to you that this finding compels the international community … to make it clear to Israel that its illegal occupation, and its defiance of international law and international opinion, can and will no longer be cost-free,' Lynk told the Geneva rights forum."
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/9/israeli-settlements-amount-to-war-crime-un-rights-expert
-->Strangely enough, the NYT offered readers a story entitled "U.N. Rights Council Orders Inquiry Into Israel After Gaza Strife," but the newspaper is less forthcoming about news stories that actually state that Israel is committing war crimes against the Palestinians.
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Black Alliance for Peace:
"The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) condemns the arrogance and illegality of United Nations Special Envoy for Haiti Helen La Lime’s July 8 statement that Haitian Prime Minister Claude Joseph will be the new president, just one day after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.
The decision was announced to the press after a closed-door UN Security Council meeting had been called on Haiti. But BAP asks: Who gave the United Nations special envoy the power to make that kind of determination for the people of Haiti? ...
BAP is concerned the political situation the United States created by supporting a dictatorship in Haiti is quickly replicating the moment when the United States swept in to colonize the predominantly African/Black country after the 1915 assassination of Haiti’s president, Vilbrun Guillaume Sam."
https://blackallianceforpeace.com/bapstatements/haitiswhiterulers
-->Our mainstream media never questions the right of the US military to step back into Haiti, occupy the country and set up its next government. The history of US military invasions and occupations of this sovereign nation is never part of the story told to the US public.
