Friday, May 30, 2008

Less Historian Himself

George W. Bush may not be much of a president but his latest comments comparing his Iraq war to World War II indicate he is even less of a historian.

In a speech to more than 1,000 graduates of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Bush links the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to postwar Germany and Japan six decades ago. Also reported here.

“After World War II we helped Germany and Japan build free societies and strong economies (and) …today we must do the same thing in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Bush asserts. The flaw in this analogy is that it is Bush who is the aggressor in the Middle East, not the conquering liberator out to generously rebuild vanquished foes. Bush will go down in history with Germany’s Hitler and Japan’s Tojo as a war-starter, not as anybody’s redeemer. Besides, it’s hard to rebuild a country whose people keep shooting at your “liberators.”

Bush, the war-maker, lied to gain public support for his attack on Iraq just as Hitler lied to the German people when he attacked Poland.

After World War II, the peoples of Germany and Japan at least had the decency to acknowledge their responsibility for their slaughter of innocents. Yet Bush admits to no such crimes. It’s as though he didn’t start the war in Iraq that has turned the country into a killing zone and claimed perhaps 1 million civilian lives, wounded several million others, and forced two million from their homes, ad nauseum. It is as though he does not stoop to torture and murder.

Another tiny flaw in Bush’s analogy is that where the exhausted German and Japanese publics welcomed the American post-war occupation, the people of Iraq have overwhelmingly tell pollsters they want America “out.”

And where the U.S. actively helped Japan and Germany rebuild their economies after World War II, Bush is out to plunder Iraq’s oil reserves. He is, according to some reports, having the devil’s own time getting the Iraqi government to sign over their oil resources to Western oil companies at bargain prices.

As for rebuilding, Bush’s hand-picked, no-bid contractors, at best, have done shoddy work; billions of dollars for reconstruction have mysteriously disappeared; and Bush is now saying let the Iraqis pay for rebuilding their own country as if he wasn’t responsible for making the war in the first place.

In his talk to the airmen, Bush said, “These (rebuilding) efforts took time and patience, and as a result Germany and Japan grew in freedom and prosperity and are now allies of the United States.” Yes, such close allies they refuse to commit any substantial force to the Iraq war. After all, their leaders know they will be driven from office if they do, just as Tony Blair was ousted by the British public.

In a memoir, reported in Yahoo News, that will be published this coming Monday, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception,  Scott McClellan (the veteran campaign and White House aide to George W. Bush) portrays his former boss and those around him as permanent campaigners who frequently sacrificed the good of the country to achieve dubious political and policy goal. He also state that 

“History appears poised to confirm what most Americans today have decided: that the decision to invade Iraq was a serious strategic blunder,” 
“No one, including me, can know with absolute certainty how the war will be viewed decades from now when we can more fully understand its impact. What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary."
Accusing the president of engaging in “self-deception” when it came to the facts from the Middle East, McClellan explains that Bush “and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war.”

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Bush plans Iran air strike by August


By Muhammad Cohen as reported in Asia Times.

NEW YORK - The George W Bush administration plans to launch an air strike against Iran within the next two months, an informed source tells Asia Times Online, echoing other reports that have surfaced in the media in the United States recently.

Two key US senators briefed on the attack planned to go public with their opposition to the move, according to the source, but their projected New York Times op-ed piece has yet to appear.

The source, a retired US career diplomat and former assistant secretary of state still active in the foreign affairs community, speaking anonymously, said last week that the US plans an air strike against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The air strike would target the headquarters of the IRGC's elite Quds force. With an estimated strength of up to 90,000 fighters, the Quds' stated mission is to spread Iran's revolution of 1979 throughout the region.

Targets could include IRGC garrisons in southern and southwestern Iran, near the border with Iraq. US officials have repeatedly claimed Iran is aiding Iraqi insurgents. In January 2007, US forces raided the Iranian consulate general in Erbil, Iraq, arresting five staff members, including two Iranian diplomats it held until November. Last September, the US Senate approved a resolution by a vote of 76-22 urging President George W Bush to declare the IRGC a terrorist organization. Following this non-binding "sense of the senate" resolution, the White House declared sanctions against the Quds Force as a terrorist group in October. The Bush administration has also accused Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapons program, though most intelligence analysts say the program has been abandoned.

Iran's options
Iran could flex its muscles in any number of ways. It could step up support for insurgents in Iraq and for its allies throughout the Middle East. Iran aids both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Israel's Occupied Territories. It is also widely suspected of assisting Taliban rebels in Afghanistan.

Iran could also choose direct confrontation with the US in Iraq and/or Afghanistan, with which Iran shares a long, porous border. Iran has a fighting force of more than 500,000. Iran is also believed to have missiles capable of reaching US allies in the Gulf region.

Iran could also declare a complete or selective oil embargo on US allies. Iran is the second-largest oil exporter in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and fourth-largest overall. About 70% of its oil exports go to Asia. The US has barred oil imports from Iran since 1995 and restricts US companies from investing there.

China is Iran's biggest customer for oil, and Iran buys weapons from China. Trade between the two countries hit US$20 billion last year and continues to expand. China's reaction to an attack on Iran is also a troubling unknown for the US.

Three for the money
The Islamic world could also react strongly against a US attack against a third predominantly Muslim nation. Pakistan, which also shares a border with Iran, could face additional pressure from Islamic parties to end its cooperation with the US to fight al-Qaeda and hunt for Osama bin Laden. Turkey, another key ally, could be pushed further off its secular base. American companies, diplomatic installations and other US interests could face retaliation from governments or mobs in Muslim-majority states from Indonesia to Morocco.

Read further the news in Asia Times.
Also in:
Day One - The War With Iran
The Iran War Buildup
Israel laying foundation for Iran war
War With Iran: What Would It Look Like?

No Argument against Allah

A show case of Aad remains in Rab-ul-Khaalee in the south east region of Saudi Arabia. Uleema Kiram of Saudi Arabia believes that this body belongs to the Aad nations of which Allah have destroyed them when they rejected the call to Islam. The people of Aad is believe to be tall. Look at the size of it.




[7:65] To `Aad we sent their brother Hud. He said, "O my people, worship GOD; you have no other god beside Him. Would you then observe righteousness?"
[7:66] The leaders who disbelieved among his people said, "We see that you are behaving foolishly, and we think that you are a liar."
[7:67] He said, "O my people, there is no foolishness in me; I am a messenger from the Lord of the universe.

The 25 prophets in Islam are listed below:
Qur'an 4:163-165
163 Lo! We inspire thee (Muhammad) as We inspired Noah and the prophets after him, as We inspired Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the tribes, and Jesus and Job and Jonah and Aaron and Solomon, and as we imparted unto David the Psalms;
164 And messengers We have mentioned unto thee before and messengers We have not mentioned unto thee; and Allah spake directly unto Moses;
165 Messengers of good cheer and off warning, in order that mankind might have no argument against Allah after the messengers. Allah was ever Mighty, Wise.
Qur'an 6:84-86
84 And We bestowed upon him Isaac and Jacob; each of them We guided; and Noah did We guide aforetime; and of his seed (We guided) David and Solomon and Job and Joseph and Moses and Aaron. Thus do We reward the good.
85 And Zachariah and John and Jesus and Elias. Each one (of them) was of the righteous.
86 And Ishmael and Elisha and Jonah and Lot. Each one of them did We prefer above (Our) creatures
Qur'an 21:85-88
85 And (mention) Ishmael, and Idris (Enoch), and Dhul-Kifl (Ezekiel). All were of the steadfast.
86 And We brought them in unto Our mercy. Lo! they are among the righteous.
87 And (mention) Dhun Nun (Jonah), when he went off in anger and deemed that We had no power over him, but he cried out in the darkness, saying: There is no God save Thee. Be Thou glorified! I have been a wrong-doer.
88 Then We heard his prayer and saved him from the anguish. Thus We save believers.
Qur'an 7:73
And to (the tribe of) Thamud (We sent) their brother Salih. He said: O my people! Serve Allah. Ye have no other God save Him. A wonder from your Lord hath come unto you. Lo! this is the camel of Allah, a token unto you; so let her feed in Allah's earth, and touch her not with hurt lest painful torment seize you.
Qur'an 26:123-125
123 (The tribe of) Aad denied the messengers (of Allah),
124 When their brother Hud said unto them: Will ye not ward off (evil)?
125 Lo! I am a faithful messenger unto you,
Qur'an 7:85
To the Madyan people We sent Shu'aib one of their own brethren: he said: "O my people! worship Allah; Ye have no other god but Him. Now hath come unto you a clear (sign) from your Lord! Give just measure and weight nor withhold from the people the things that are their due; and do no mischief on the earth after it has been set in order: that will be best for you if ye have faith.
Qur'an 21:107
And We did not send you (O Muhammad) except as a Mercy to the worlds.

Israel Has ‘150 or More’ Nuclear Weapons: Carter

Israel has “150 or more” nuclear weapons, former US president Jimmy Carter said at a press conference over the weekend, a spokesman for the literary festival at which he was speaking confirmed.Asked how a future US president should deal with the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, the 83-year-old said: “The US has more than 12,000 nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union (sic) has about the same; Great Britain and France have several hundred, and Israel has 150 or more.”

“We have a phalanx of enormous weaponry, not only of enormous weaponry, but of rockets to deliver those missiles on a pinpoint accuracy target,” he said at a press conference in Hay-on-Wye, in Wales, on Sunday, according to a spokesman for the Guardian Hay Festival.

Israel is widely believed to be the only nuclear power in the Middle East but has a policy of neither confirming nor denying its arsenal.

At the same press conference, Carter described Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip as “one of the greatest human rights crimes now existing on Earth” and the Nobel Peace Prize winner also said the European Union’s failure to support the Palestinian cause was “embarrassing”.

Jimmy Carter’s willingness to tell the world the size of Israel’s nuclear arsenal, as he did this week, is just the latest sign of his desire to say what his fellow American politicians find unsayable about US policy in the Middle East.

In his book in 2006, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, earned him accusations of gratuitous offence in comparing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians with the white South African regime’s treatment of black people.

This week at the Hay book festival, despite asserting that Israel’s security was his prime concern, his criticism of Israel’s actions on the West Bank and Gaza was far beyond sentiments ever issued by a leading US politician in office. “It is politically impossible for anyone holding public office or running for it to be critical of Israel,” he said, while accusing European governments of a “supine” approach.

The Carter Centre homepage is here.

Condemning the Evangelising of Muslims in UK

The Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, accused the Church of failing in its duty to "welcome people of other faiths" ahead of a motion at July's General Synod in York urging a strategy for evangelising Muslims. The Pakistan-born Dr Nazir-Ali told the Mail on Sunday that, while Church leaders had rightly shown sensitivity to British Muslims, "I think it may have gone too far."

He added: "Our nation is rooted in the Christian faith and that is the basis of welcoming people of other faiths. You cannot have an honest conversation on the basis of fudge."

However, his comments were condemned by senior figures within the Church. The Rt Rev Stephen Lowe, the former Bishop of Hulme and the newly appointed Bishop of Urban Life and Faith, said: "Both the Bishop of Rochester's reported comments and the synod private members' motion show no sensitivity to the need for good inter-faith relations. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs are learning to respect one another's paths to God and to live in harmony. This demand for the evangelisation of people of other faiths contributes nothing to our communities."

A Church of England spokesman added: "We have a mission-focused Christian presence in every community, including those where there are a large number of Muslims. That engagement is based on the provisions of Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides for freedom of thought, conscience and religion."


Reported here.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

The Selective Freedom of Speech - You can say about others, but you cannot say about us.

Reported in Guardian UK.


JERUSALEM - Norman Finkelstein, the controversial Jewish American academic and fierce critic of Israel, has been deported from the country and banned from the Jewish state for 10 years, it emerged yesterday.Finkelstein, the son of a Holocaust survivor who has accused Israel of using the genocidal Nazi campaign against Jews to justify its actions against the Palestinians, was detained by the Israeli security service, Shin Bet, when he landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday.

Shin Bet interrogated him for around 24 hours about his contact with the Lebanese Islamic militia, Hizbullah, when he travelled to Lebanon earlier this year and expressed solidarity with the group which waged war against Israel in 2006. He was also accused of having contact with al-Qaida. But Finkelstein rejected the accusations, saying he had travelled to Israel to visit an old friend.

“I did my best to provide absolutely candid and comprehensive answers to all the questions put to me,” he told an Israeli newspaper in an email exchange.

“I am confident that I have nothing to hide. Apart from my political views, and the supporting scholarship, there isn’t much more to say for myself: alas, no suicide missions or secret rendezvous with terrorist organisations. I’ve always supported a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders. I’m not an enemy of Israel.”

Finkelstein is one of several scholars rejected by Israel in the increasingly bitter divide in academic circles, between those who support and those who criticise its treatment of Palestinians.

Last year, Israel’s most contentious “new historian”, Ilan Pappe, left his job as senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa after he endorsed the international academic boycott of Israeli institutions, provoking the university president to call for his resignation.

Finkelstein was also refused tenure last year at Chicago’s DePaul University for attacking several staunch Israel supporters and academics such as Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel said the deportation of Finkelstein was an assault on free speech.

Sunday, May 25, 2008

The Tortured Continue

The hand of a prisoner with tasbih at Guantanamo Bay.


The Office of Inspector General (OIG) report describes accounts of naked, sleep-deprived detainees - individuals frequently shackled, put into strenuous positions, exposed to loud music and extreme temperatures. The report also records a variety of other physical and psychological abuses.

Human rights and other advocacy groups have fiercely criticized the Department Of Justice (DOJ), Congress, and the Bush administration for doing little to prevent interrogation abuses, especially given the extensive evidence of improper treatment of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

"Today's OIG report reveals that top government officials in the Defense Department, CIA and even as high as the White House turned a blind eye to torture and abuse and failed to act aggressively to end it," said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in a recent press release.

Romero also stressed, "Moreover, the country's top law enforcement agency - the FBI - did not take measures to enforce the law but only belatedly reported on the law's violations. It's troubling that the government seems to have been more concerned with obscuring the facts than with enforcing the law and stopping the torture and abuse of detainees.

The lengthy OIG report, scattered with redacted sections, relies, in part, on a "war crimes" file that was initiated by FBI agents in 2002, but was later shut down by FBI officials who felt, according to the report, "investigating detainee allegations of abuse was not the FBI's mission."

The 438-page report details frequent shifts in Department of Defense (DOD) policies, confusion of military personnel as to proper interrogation protocol and accounts of brutal interrogation that departed from prior military procedures described in the Army Field Manual.

The FBI's Legal Handbook for Special Agents states, "It is the policy of the FBI that no attempt be made to obtain a statement by force, threats, or promises." Furthermore, the FBI's Manual for Administrative and Operational Procedures specifies that "no brutality, physical violence, duress or intimidation of individuals by our employees will be countenanced...."

Recent ACLU-compelled disclosures of previously concealed DOJ documents reveal many of the details of what has been long known: that the highest levels of the Bush administration secretly implemented an illegal torture regime.

In December, 2007, The Washington Post reported that the Bush administration, beginning in 2002, repeatedly briefed leading Congressional Democrats on the Senate and House Intelligence Committees — including, at various times, Jay Rockefeller, Nancy Pelosi, and Jane Harman — regarding the CIA’s "enhanced interrogation methods," including details about water-boarding and other torture measures. With one exception (Harman, who vaguely claims to have sent a letter to the CIA), these lawmakers not only failed to object to these policies, but affirmatively supported them.

Oil - The Power Has Changed Sides

The time is long gone when Standard Oil of New Jersey, Anglo-Persian, Gulf Oil and their four other "sisters" dominated the world market. When President Roosevelt got King Ibn Saud to open Saudi wells to foreign companies in exchange for American military protection (1945). When Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh - guilty of nationalizing hydrocarbons - could be overthrown with impunity (1953). When one could pretend to believe that oil is an inexhaustible cornucopia.

Market power has changed sides. It has slipped away from consuming countries and from Big Oil (Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP ...). The development of the price per barrel ($128), is being determined behind the scenes in the Kremlin and in the meanders of the Iranian government, in Nigerian mangroves and on the banks of the Venezuelan Orinoco, in OPEC's Viennese corridors and in the halls of the New York Mercantile Exchange. And, above all, in Saudi palaces.

The world is experiencing a third oil shock - slower than those of 1973 and 1980. The barrel, the price of which has increased six times in as many years, is more expensive in constant dollars than it was in the beginning of 1981. Its price may ebb by some $10 or $20 in coming months, but nothing is less certain. Analysts as respected as those of investment bank Goldman Sachs see the price going to an average of $141 in the second half of 2008 and to $148 in 2009. OPEC no longer rules out $200.

The Saudi kingdom, the only country able to put a million additional barrels on the market, balks at that idea. It even stiffened its tone recently, when it announced that between 2009 and 2020 it would limit daily production to 12.5 million barrels a day to preserve its reserves and the interests of future generations along with them. "Every time there are new discoveries, leave them in the ground, for our children will need them," the king has resolved.

Nothing induces the Saudis to open the spigots. They consider the market to be well-supplied and stocks of crude and gas to be at good levels. They are especially worried about the United States' energy policy, which aims to reduce US "dependency" on Middle Eastern oil - a watchword launched by Mr. Bush and re-echoed in a single voice by presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama. All that's necessary to understand the stakes is to hear the Saudi energy minister's denunciations of the bio-carburants being developed on the other side of the Atlantic. On top of that, comes certain American congress people's desire to submit the oil market to the anti-cartel rules of international trade, even to suspend arms sales if Riyadh doesn't increase its oil production. These initiatives worry and exasperate OPEC. The strategy of the Vienna cartel - which has given up setting a price range since 2003 - seems simple: supply the market to avoid any break, reduce the "security cushion" to a minimum (2 million barrels a day) and thus maintain the highest prices possible without compromising economic growth. With three-quarters of global reserves, the thirteen OPEC member states have the means to enforce their policy.

Text taken from here.

Little to nothing

It's striking how the Bush administration has redefined the term "lame duck presidency." Considering the recent (non) involvement in the Middle East, it would certainly be an understatement to say that the United States is just watching from the sidelines these days.

In Israel, the Bush administration has tried listlessly to push the two sides towards a peace deal. No serious progress has been made. Settlement construction continues in Palestinian lands; a frustrated Mahmoud Abbas has recently threatened to quit; and Olmert, while talking a good game to a visiting American president and Secretary of State, pushes forward on roadblock construction. Despite the high rhetoric of the PR show known as the Annapolis Conference, progress towards peace seems to be going backwards, if anywhere at all.

Meanwhile, as events unfolded in Lebanon in the past two weeks, the Bush administration did next to nothing. While American interests are certainly at stake in the country, there appeared to be a clear understanding that American leverage over the parties is weak at best, and that American direct involvement would achieve little-to-nothing. Indeed, it was the not-so-powerful Qatari monarchy (led by the reformist ruler Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani) which brokered the deal to end the fighting.

Then, just a few days ago, Bush dropped by the Islamic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to talk with King Abdullah about the price of petroleum. Despite the entreaties of a former oilman and family friend, the Saudi monarch refused to up production in order to appease his American guest. Most recently, news has come out that Turkey - not the United States - has been engaged in third-party efforts to mediate a Syrian-Israel peace deal. In a major snub from both the Olmert government and our (albeit tenuous) AKP allies over in Turkey, the Bush administration's calls for isolating Syria have been blatantly rebuffed.

And the list could go on. 


Text taken from On the sidelines.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Convert to Islam Witness by Thousands - Allahu Akbar

Watch the video.

Dick Cheney and Halliburton: The Personifications of a War Profiteer


Published on Thursday, November 17, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

by Tom Turnipseed

Questions persist about Vice-President Cheney’s role in the ongoing investigation and scandal swirling about the White House. His chief of staff and confidante Lewis “Scooter” Libby has been indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice. Let’s take a look at some personal incentives for Cheney’s selling war to our country.

Cheney has pursued a political and corporate career to make himself very rich and powerful. He is the personification of a war profiteer who slid through the revolving door connecting the public and private sectors of the defense establishment on two occasions in a career that has served his relentless quest for power and profits.

As Defense Secretary, Mr. Cheney commissioned a study for the U.S. Department of Defense by Brown and Root Services (now Kellogg, Brown and Root), a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton. The study recommended that private firms like Halliburton should take over logistical support programs for U.S. military operations around the world. Just two years after he was Secretary of Defense, Cheney stepped through the revolving door linking the Department of Defense with defense contractors and became CEO of Halliburton. Halliburton was the principal beneficiary of Cheney’s privatization efforts for our military’s logistical support and Cheney was paid $44 million for five year's work with them before he slipped back through the revolving door of war profiteering to become Vice-President of the United States. When asked about the money he received from Halliburton, Cheney said. "I tell you that the government had absolutely nothing to do with it."

The Bush administration has dished out lucrative reconstruction contracts in Iraq to favored U.S. based corporations including Halliburton and denied contracts to many Iraqi and foreign based companies. To the conquerors go the spoils was the message on December 11, 2003 when Bush said, “The taxpayers understand why it makes sense for countries that risk lives to participate in the contracts in Iraq, It's very simple. Our people risk their lives, friendly coalition folks risk their lives, and therefore the contracting is going to reflect that.”

Bush’s statement is a stunning admission of how much corrupt corporations control our foreign policy. Under Cheney’s leadership Halliburton out did Enron in using offshore subsidiaries as tax shelters to hide profits to bilk U.S. taxpayers. Halliburton also utilized off-shore subsidiaries to contract for services and sell banned equipment to rogue states like Iran, Iraq and Libya. This would be illegal if done directly by Halliburton.

At last count Halliburton had 58 offshore subsidiaries in Caribbean tax havens. With Cheney at the helm Halliburton’s tax payments to the U.S. went from $302 million in 1998 to zero in 1999, when they also received a refund of $85 million from the Internal Revenue Service.

During Cheney’s tenure as CEO from 1995 to 2000, Halliburton Products and Services set up shop in Iran. The Halliburton subsidiary does approximately $40 million a year worth of oil field service work for the Iranian government. 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl visited the subsidiary in the Cayman Islands and found that it had no office and no employees. The mailing address was a local bank with which the subsidiary is registered. Stahl was met there by the bank’s manager who informed her that all mail to the subsidiary is forwarded to Halliburton headquarters in Houston. Halliburton had created the subsidiary to allow itself to do illegal business with a rogue state and to skip out on its taxes in the process.

With Iran’s president vowing to destroy Israel and being accused by the Bush administration of harboring and aiding al-Qaeda operatives, Cheney’s company is doing business with Iran through a subsidiary and dodging its tax obligations to the U.S.

Halliburton has been more closely associated with the invasion of Iraq than any other corporation. Before the Iraq War began, it was 19th on the U.S. Army's list of top contractors and zoomed to number 1 in 2003. In 2003 Halliburton made $4.2 billion from the U.S. government. Cheney stated he had , "severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest."

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) recently asserted that Cheney's stock options which were worth $241,498 a year ago, are now valued at more than $8 million-- for an increase of 3,281% . Cheney has pledged to give the proceeds to charity. Cheney continues to received a deferred salary from the company. He was paid $205,298 in 2001; $162,392 in 2002; $178,437 in 2003; and $194,852 in 2004.

The Congressional Research Service has concluded that holding stock options while in elective office does constitute a “financial interest” whether or not the holder of the options donates the proceeds to charities, and deferred compensation is also a financial interest.

Calling on Cheney to sever his financial ties to Halliburton, Lautenberg points out that the company has already raked in more than $10 billion for work in Iraq, and was handed some of the first Katrina contracts. The company has been criticized by auditors for its handling of no-bid contacts in Iraq, and there have been numerous allegations of over charging for services. Auditors found the firm marked up meal prices for troops and inflated gas prices in a deal with a Kuwaiti supplier. The company also built the American prison at Guantanamo Bay. Lautenberg said, "It is unseemly for the Vice President to continue to benefit from this company at the same time his Administration funnels billions of dollars to it.”

Read further
Inside the world of war profiteers - From prostitutes to Super bowl tickets, a federal probe reveals how contractors in Iraq cheated the U.S.
War Profiteering
Top Ten War Profiteers of 2004
The 10 Most Brazen War Profiteers

How Do You Proof You Are Winning - Snipes the Quran?

Genei Nesir Khudair al-Janabi, an Iraqi vegetable farmer, walked down to the ramshackle pump house along the banks of the Euphrates. Each day at midmorning, he would start the seven-horsepower pump to water his crops. What happened after that?

Three snipers with exemplary military records from the 1st Battalion of the 25th Infantry Division's 501st Regiment were charged in Khudair's killing. They were tried by the military judicial system in Iraq beginning in 2007.

The killing of Genei Nesir Khudair al-Janabi took place on May 11, and it was the final kill for which snipers were prosecuted. But Khudair was, in fact, at least the fourth unarmed Iraqi the snipers had killed in the short time since Hensley took over leadership of the sniper section in March 2007. Each incident illustrates the ways in which the rules of engagement, the pressure to produce, the mysterious extra equipment, and the inherent difficulties of their jobs landed the snipers in court.

The first incident occurred on April 7, 2007. Sgt. Anthony Murphy's sniper team was hiding in a shallow ravine. Through his rifle scope, Murphy watched a lone Iraqi man approaching through some bushes, his figure distorted by a heat mirage. The man appeared and then disappeared again, winding through nearby ravines. Soon, he was 50 meters away and Murphy was sure the man had spotted the team's satellite communications gear through the brush.

In another court, a military jury convicted an Army sniper of murder and sentenced him to 10 years in prison for killing an Iraqi civilian who wandered into the hiding place where six soldiers were sleeping.

U.S. Army Sgt. Evan Vela in Baghdad, Iraq, on Feb. 10, 2008.

Sgt. Evan Vela, 24, was found guilty of murder without premeditation, of aiding and abetting in planting an AK-47 on the dead man's body and of lying to military investigators about the shooting. He had faced a possible life sentence.

Vela showed no emotion when the verdict was read, but he asked the jury for mercy before it broke to decide his sentence. He apologized to the court, the Army and one of the sons of Genei Nasir al-Janabi, the man he shot with a pistol in May.

"When I came to Iraq, I didn't come to do anything wrong," Vela said, reading from a handwritten statement. "I failed my standards, your standards and the standards of the Army. All I can say is I'm sorry and ask for mercy."

But the most important question raised by his death remains unanswered. Why would these elite American soldiers kill an unarmed prisoner in cold blood?

The answer: pressure from their commanding officers to pump up a statistic straight out of America's last long war against an intractable insurgency.


A review of thousands of pages of documents from the legal proceedings obtained by Salon shows that in the months prior to Khudair's death, the young snipers, already frustrated by guerrilla tactics, were pressed to their physical limits and pushed by officers to stretch the bounds of the laws of war in order to increase the enemy body count. When the United States wallowed in Vietnam's counterinsurgency quagmire decades ago, the same pressure placed on soldiers resulted in some of the worst atrocities of that war. A paratrooper who remembered the insidious influence of body counts in Vietnam warned Salon in 2005 that the practice could also ensnare good soldiers in Iraq. "The problem is that in Iraq, we are in a guerrilla war," said Dennis Stout. "How do you keep score? How do you prove you are winning?"

The pressure from above for more bodies was also toxic in Iraq, where the isolated, outnumbered and outgunned snipers of the 1st Battalion had to make split-second life-or-death decisions. When those decisions landed them in a military court, it was the lowest-ranking soldiers, not the brass, who paid the price, and a sergeant who said he was pushed into taking a fatal shot who wound up with a long prison sentence. It was battalion commander Lt. Col Robert Balcavage, who pushed for a higher body count, who initiated the prosecution of three of the battalion's snipers. "Yes, the chain of command deserves to burn in hell," one sniper who served with the unit wrote Salon in an e-mail. "But I am not going on record saying that, well, cause I am still in the fucking Army."

The body-count pressure on the 1st Battalion's sniper section began to build in early 2007. In an insurgency like Vietnam or Iraq, it's hard to point to achievement of a military objective or conquest of a town or region as success. Instead, commanders find themselves relying on numbers, which is how body counts began to creep into the Iraq war, despite their explicit disavowal by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2003 ("We don't do body counts"). In need of a positive metric, commanders of the 1st Battalion reached for body counts, since the metrics they did have were moving in the wrong direction. At the time, U.S. casualties from invisible roadside bombs were mounting. In the six months before the snipers arrived in country from Alaska in late October 2006, 426 U.S. service members had died in Iraq. In the six months between the 1st Battalion's arrival and the day Khudair was killed, May 11, 2007, nearly 590 service members died in Iraq. It was one of the bloodiest periods of the Iraq war. At the time there was a new commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, who was talking about winning hearts and minds. The snipers' commanders were talking about bodies. The battalion commander, Lt. Col. Balcavage, and top noncommissioned officer Command Sgt. Maj. Bernie Knight sent a clear message to the battalion's snipers. Spc. Alexander Flores, a sniper, described it this way in a hearing: "Get more bodies. Raise the morale of the battalion."

The snipers remained nervous because, at best, the guidelines they were getting from their commanders were nebulous. The snipers felt they were being pressured to interpret "hostile intent" loosely to justify kills. During testimony, sniper Spc. Joshua Michaud said that Lt. Col. Balcavage and Command Sgt. Maj. Knight "constantly pushed for 'If you feel threatened, you know, obviously eliminate the threat.' But they kind of said it in a manner in which a lot of us took it like, 'Hey, you need to go out there and you guys gotta start getting kills.'"

At worst, the rules explicitly allowed the killing of unarmed Iraqis under certain circumstances, a particularly dicey concept given an enemy that does not wear a uniform and hides among civilians. Specifically, the snipers were allowed to shoot unarmed people running away from explosions or firefights. The chain of command was particularly frustrated by insurgents fleeing after attacks from roadside bombs, called improvised explosive devices. The notes from Army agents who later investigated the shootings said the battalion leaders, Balcavage and Knight, worried that the snipers had "let a lot of guys go after IED explosions." The snipers called these fleeing, sometimes unarmed Iraqis "squirters." Of course, it's not unusual for innocent people to run from explosions.

The bullet-riddled Qur'an was found with graffiti inside the cover on a small-arms range near a police station in the village of Radwaniya.(AMSI photo)

In the latest event, an American soldier has been removed from Iraq after using a copy of the Qur'an as a target in a shooting practice, riddling the Muslim holy book with bullets. The soldier, who remained unnamed, was sent home for using the Qur'an for target practice in a predominantly Sunni area west of Baghdad. The action, which happened on May 9, was discovered two days later when Iraqi police found the bullet-riddled Qur'an with graffiti inside the cover on a small-arms range near a police station in the village of Radwaniya.

The apologetic American commanders were met by hundreds of angry Iraqi protestors.

"Yes, yes to the Qur'an" and "America out, out," the demonstrators chanted as they carried banners and slogans condemning the American troops.

In a speech on behalf of Radhwaniya tribal leaders, Sheikh Hamadi al-Qirtani called the incident "aggression against the entire Islamic world."

Sunni preachers on Friday denounced the shooting of a Quran, by a U.S. sniper in Iraq despite a series of apologies by American commanders and U.S. President George W. Bush.

The use of Islam's holy book for target practice has triggered an angry response in Iraq and protests in Afghanistan even as U.S.-led forces are working to maintain their alliance with Sunni Arabs who have turned against al-Qaida in Iraq.

"The enemies of Islam have launched their campaign against Islam and the Prophet Muhammed and recently against the holy Koran," said Sheik Omar Mohammed during his sermon at a Sunni mosque in Baghdad.
"A bullet that might have shot at an Iraqi believer, was directed toward the holy Koran instead," Mohammed said. "Do not think this is a defeat for us, but it will crate enthusiasm to stand up more for this religion."

There was no immediate reaction from the government of Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki.

Is this the way you are proofing winning the war in Iraq by shooting the Holy Quran?

Read further 
Killing by the numbers.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Honour Killing - Nothing to do with Islam

A dark pool of dried blood and a fallen red scarf mark the place where Ronak, who had fled to a woman's shelter in the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah when she was accused of adultery by her husband, was shot three times by a man hiding on the roof of a nearby building.

Ronak was wounded by bullets in the neck, side and leg and only survived after a four-hour operation. She was the latest victim of a huge increase across Iraq in the number of "honor" killings of women for alleged immorality by their own families.

Many are burnt to death by having petrol or paraffin poured over them and set ablaze. Others are shot or strangled.
Amina Said, 18, and her sister Sarah, 17, were found shot multiple times in a cab outside a suburban Dallas hotel. Police found them after one of the girls called 911 from a cell phone and said she was dying. A capital murder warrant has been issued for Yaser Said, 50, who has not been seen since the Lewisville High School students were found dead.

The little piece of examples shown above are frequent in some islamic countries and also among muslim immigrants in U.S. and Western countries. Hundreds, if not thousands, of women are murdered by their families each year in the name of family "honor." It's difficult to get precise numbers on the phenomenon of honor killing; the murders frequently go unreported, the perpetrators unpunished, and the concept of family honor justifies the act in the eyes of some societies.


Human Rights Watch defines "honor killings" as follows:
Honor crimes are acts of violence, usually murder, committed by male family members against female family members, who are held to have brought dishonor upon the family. A woman can be targeted by (individuals within) her family for a variety of reasons, including: refusing to enter into an arranged marriage, being the victim of a sexual assault, seeking a divorce — even from an abusive husband — or (allegedly) committing adultery. The mere perception that a woman has behaved in a way that "dishonors" her family is sufficient to trigger an attack on her life.
According to the UN:
"The report of the Special Rapporteur ... concerning cultural practices in the family that are violent towards women (E/CN.4/2002/83), indicated that honor killings had been reported in Egypt, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Turkey, Yemen, and other Mediterranean and Persian Gulf countries, and that they had also taken place in such countries as France, Germany and the United Kingdom, within migrant communities."
Although largely a feature of the distant past within the Christian communities, there are isolated instances of Christians living within parts of Africa and the Near East, such as sections of Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine, carrying out this crime.

In the Hindu historic practice of sati, or widow-burning, in parts of India and South Asia can be considered a form of honor suicide in those instances when (at least theoretically) the act is voluntary, with a deceased man's widow immolating herself on his funeral pyre as an act of pious devotion and to preserve her and her family's honor.

Reports submitted to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights show that honor killings have occurred in Bangladesh, Great Britain, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Pakistan, Morocco, Sweden, Turkey, and Uganda. In countries not submitting reports to the UN, the practice was condoned under the rule of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, and has been reported in Iraq and Iran.

In Islam, it maintains the protection of life and does not sanction any violation against it. In the Glorious Qur’an, Allah, Most High, says, “Whoso slayeth a believer of set purpose, his reward is Hell for ever. Allah is wroth against him and He hath cursed him and prepared for him an awful doom.” (An-Nisa’: 93)

There is no such concept in Islam that is called “honor killing”. Islam holds every soul in high esteem and does not allow any transgression upon it. It does not allow people to take the law in their own hands and administer justice, because doing so will be leading to chaos and lawlessness. Therefore, based on this, Islam does not permit such killings.

First of all, in order to sanction killing, it must be through a binding verdict issued by an authoritative law court. Individuals themselves have no authority either to judge cases or pass judgments. Therefore, a Muslim should not sanction such killing because doing so will be leading to the rule of the law of the jungle. A civilized society cannot be run by such laws.”

The so-called “honor killing” is based on ignorance and disregard of morals and laws, which cannot be abolished except by disciplinary punishments.

In Islam, there is no place for unjustifiable killing. Even in case of capital punishment, only the government can apply the law through the judicial procedures. No one has the authority to execute the law other than the officers who are in charge.

Honor killing could be a wrong cultural tradition. It is unjust and inhumane action. The murderer of that type deserves punishment.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

The Nasty Double Standard

The cyclone devastating Myanmar. The act of Nature.


The Europeans are calling for a forced intervention, and some US members of the House of Representatives are imploring president George Bush to intervene in Myanmar.

The Europeans, US, and Canada are complicit with Zionists in the starvation of Palestinians. This is in addition to demolishing homes, carrying out assassinations, withholding money transfers, destroying vital utilities, etc. in Gaza, and yet they are calling for an intervention elsewhere.

French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert called for immediate action in Myanmar: “We are shifting from a situation of non-assistance to people in need to a situation that could lead to a true crime against humanity if we go on like that.”

One might wonder why the British and French “leaders” wail and moan about disaster-stricken Myanmar but are silent about disaster-stricken New Orleans. Almost three years after Hurricane Katrina struck the coast of Louisiana, people in New Orleans are waiting on assistance.

The 43 US representatives calling for intervention in Myanmar are apparently unaware of the tardy US response to the victims of Katrina or that the US regime rejected aid from certain countries, such as Cuba.

Venezuela, which contributed generously to the victims of Katrina, was reportedly rebuffed initially by the Bush administration. An excuse proffered by a senior State Department official, according to the Washington Post, was that “unsolicited offers can be ‘counterproductive.’”

And, where are the voices of British and French government figures about the genocide Israel perpetrates against Palestinians? Obviously, these western government figures are selectively speaking out on man-made catstrophes and crimes against humanity.

A sampling of corporate media headlines reveals an animus toward the Myanmar government:

Aid stymied off Myanmar shores and borders,” International Herald Tribune
Myanmar Neighbors Seek Ways To Press Country on Cyclone Aid,” Wall Street Journal
International Pressure on Myanmar Junta Is Building,” New York Times
Diplomats tour cyclone zone, but Myanmar still refuses aid,” Euronews.net

That the corporate media would go into a frenzy over Myanmar while ignoring the man-made catastrophes in Palestine and in Iraq is telling.

In the case of Myanmar, the western corporate media is behaving as it should: criticizing a non-democratic regime and, supposedly, putting the interests of the Myanmarese people front and center.

The devastated Palestine. The acts man-made.


But one must ask: why is this same media falling over itself to celebrate 60 years in power by Jewish segregationists who contrived and meted out a catastrophe (al-Nakba) to the Palestinians? Why has this same media remained so quiescent over the travails that still bedevil the citizenry of New Orleans? Why does the same media collaborate in the ultimate international crime of aggression-occupation against Iraq?

The contrasting response to cyclone-ravaged Myanmar with other contemporary disasters — whether man-made or acts of nature — scathingly exposes the nasty double standards of western governments and their corporate media.

Monday, May 19, 2008

Olbermann to Bush - "Cold blooded killers"

Keith Olbermann unleashed what may well have been his angriest, most blistering Special Comment yet, aimed squarely at his favorite target: President Bush. Olbermann was responding to Bush's claim that he had given up golf in honor of the Iraq war — and his assertion that a Democratic president withdrawing from Iraq would "eventually lead to another attack on the United States" — a statement Olbermann called "ludicrous, infuriating, holier-than-thou and most importantly bone-headedly wrong."

Olbermann turned Bush's reference to "cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives" around and threw it back at him, saying that such killers were "those in -- or formerly in -- your employ, who may yet be charged some day with war crimes." It didn't get any milder — saying that, to Bush, "freedom is just a brand name," and pointing out that al Qaeda in Iraq was a result of the invasion: "Terrorism inside Iraq is your creation, Mr. Bush!" Olbermann also criticized Bush's statement that he was "told by people" that there were WMDs in Iraq: "People? What people?... Mr. Bush, you destroyed the evidence that contradicted the resolution you jammed down the Congress's throat, the way you jammed it down the nation's throat."

Olbermann saved his most vicious scorn for Bush's no-golf pledge. "Golf, sir? Golf sends the wrong signal to the grieving families of our men and women butchered in Iraq?...You, Mr. Bush, let their sons and daughters be killed. Sir, to show your solidarity with them you gave up golf?" He then went on to lambaste Bush for failing to keep to that pledge — ostensibly made in August 2003 — and showing photos of Bush playing golf in October 2003. "Mr. Bush, I hate to break it to you 6 1/2 years after you yoked this nation and your place in history to the wrong war, in the wrong place, against the wrong people," said Olbermann (using slightly odd math), "But the war in Iraq is not about you....It is not, Mr. Bush, about your grief when American after American comes home in a box." The directive to "Shut the hell up!" came soon after.

Watch the clip.

Israel: 60 years of denial

This month Israel marks the 60th anniversary of its founding. But amidst the festivities including visits by international celebrities and politicians there is deep unease -- Israel has skeletons in its closet that it has tried hard to hide, and anxieties about an uncertain future which make many Israelis question whether the state will celebrate an 80th birthday.

Official Israel remains in complete denial that the birth it celebrates is inextricably linked with the near destruction of the vibrant Palestinian culture and society that had existed until then. It's not an unfamiliar dilemma for settler states. 

As the noted Israeli historian and staunch Zionist Benny Morris put it in 2004, "a Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them." He went on, "there are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing."

But if one is not prepared to openly justify ethnic cleansing, there's only two real options: to deny history and take comfort in an airbrushed story that paints Israelis as brave, divinely inspired pioneers in a desert devoid of indigenous people and beset by external enemies, or to own up to the consequences and support the enormous redress needed to bring justice and peace.

Just before Israel's founding, Palestinians of all religions made up two thirds of the settled population of historic Palestine, while Jewish immigrants, recently arrived from Europe, made up most of the rest.

Early in 1948, on 7 February, Israel's founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion told members of his party, "From your entry into Jerusalem, through Lifta-Romema, through Mahane Yehuda, through King George Street and Mea Shearim -- there are no strangers [i.e. Arabs]. One hundred percent Jews." So it was that the Palestinians became "strangers" in the land of their birth.

Since that time millions of refugees and their descendants who lost their homes, farms, groves, livestock, factories, stores, tools, automobiles, bank accounts, art work, insurance policies, furniture and every other possession have lived in exile, many in squalid refugee camps maintained by Israel and Arab states. Over 80 percent of the Palestinians now besieged and starved in the Gaza Strip are refugees from towns now in Israel. But what Palestinians could never be forced to part with -- and this we do celebrate -- is their attachment to their homeland and the determination to see justice done.

But Palestinians, like many other people, did see themselves as a unique group linked historically to a specific geographic entity. All That Remains by Professor Walid Khalidi is one leading volume which documents a thriving pre-Israel history of Palestine and the Palestinian people. Such history is often overlooked, if not entirely dismissed. Some choose to believe that no other civilization ever existed in Palestine, neither prior to nor between the assumed destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE until the founding of Israel in 1948. But what about irrefutable facts? For example, the Israeli Jerusalem Post was called the Palestine Post when it was founded in 1932. Why Palestine and not Israel? Whose existence, as a definable political entity, preceded the other? The answer is obvious.

It isn't the denial or acceptance of Israel's existence that concerns me. Israel does exist, even if it refuses to define its borders, or acknowledge the historic injustices committed against the Palestinian people. The systematic and brutal ethnic cleaning of the majority of Palestinian Christians and Muslims from 1947 to 1948 is what produced a Jewish majority in Palestine and subsequently the 'Jewish state' of Israel.

Also worth remembering are the equally systematic attempts at dehumanising Palestinians and denying them any rights. When Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time, compared Palestinians in a Jerusalem Post interview (August 2000) to “crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more,” he was hardly diverting from a consistent Zionist tradition that equated Palestinians with animals and vermin. Another Prime Minister, Menahim Begin referred to Palestinians in a Knesset speech as “beasts walking on two legs.” They have also been described as “grasshoppers”, “cockroaches” and more by famed Israeli statesmen.

Disturbingly, such references might be seen as an improvement from former Prime Minister Golda Meir's claim that “there were no such thing as Palestinians...they did not exist." (June 15, 1969)

To justify its own existence, Israel has long subjugated its citizens to a kind of collective amnesia. Do Israelis realise they live on the rubble of hundreds of Palestinian villages and towns, each destroyed during a most tragic history of blood, pain and tears, resulting in an ethnic cleansing of nearly 800,000 Palestinians?

As Israel celebrates its 60th birthday, nothing is allowed to blemish the supposed heroism of its founding fathers or those who fought in its name. Palestine, the Palestinians, and an immeasurably long relationship between a people and their land hardly merit a pause as Israeli officials and their Western counterparts carry on with their festivities.

While some conveniently forgot many historic chapters pertinent to the suffering of Palestinians, Israeli leaders — especially those who took part in the colonization of Palestine — were fully aware of what they did. David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, warned in 1948, We must do everything to insure they (the Palestinians) never do return. By ensuring that Palestinians were cut off from their land, Ben Gurion has hoped that time will take care of the rest. The old will die and the young will forget,” he said.

Moshe Dayan, a former Israeli Defence Minister also had no illusions regarding the real history beneath Israel's momentous achievements. His speech at the Technion in Haifa (April 4, 1969) was quoted in the Israeli daily Haaretz thus: “We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs and we are building here a Hebrew, a Jewish state; instead of the Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. You even do not know the names of those villages, and I do not blame you because these villages no longer exist. There is not a single Jewish settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab village.”

Israel has, since its foundation, laboured to undermine any sense of Palestinian identity. Without most of their historic land, the relationship between Palestinians and Palestine could only exist in memory. Eventually though, memory managed to morph into a collective identity that has proved more durable than the physical existence on the land. “It is a testimony to the tenacity of Palestinians that they have kept alive a sense of nationhood in the face of so much adversity. Yet the obstacles to sustaining their cohesiveness as a people are today greater than ever,” reported the Economist (May 8, 2008).

Living in so many disconnected areas, removed from their land, detached from one another, fought with at every corner, Palestinians have not just been oppressed physically by Israel, but physiologically as well. There are attempts from all angles to force them to simply concede, forget, and move on. It is the Palestinian people's rejection of such notions that makes Israel's victory and 'independence' superficial and unconvincing.

Sixty years after their Catastrophe (Nakba), Palestinians still remember their past and present injustices. Of course more than mere remembrance is necessary; Palestinians need to find a common ground for unity — Christians and Muslims, poor and rich, secularist and the religious — in order to stop Israel from eagerly exploiting their own disunity, factionalism and political tribalism.

For 60 years, the Palestinian refugees have been denied their internationally guaranteed right to return to their homes. While the State of Israel is celebrating its independence, the fate of the Palestinian refugees and those subsequently expelled over the course of Israel’s 40 years of occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, remains unresolved.

But, despite Israel's hopes and best efforts, the Palestinians have not yet forgotten who they are. And no amount of denial can change this. 






Bush had addressed the Israeli parliament, on Israel's 60th anniversary, saying the establishment of Israel had been "the redemption of an ancient promise given to Abraham and Moses and David - a homeland for the chosen people Eretz Yisrael".

By portraying the creation of Israel as a biblical fulfilment, he bestowed divine legitimacy on the process of its establishment and also cast the Palestinians' narrative, along with their rights, outside of the realm of history.

Not surprisingly, some right-wing Knesset members reacted by hailing Bush as being "more Zionist than Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert".

Bush was vowing to support and preserve the Zionist dream.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Lies of Aggression

Early this month, the George W. Bush administration's plan to create a new crescendo of accusations against Iran for allegedly smuggling arms to Shiite militias in Iraq encountered not just one but two setbacks.

The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki refused to endorse US charges of Iranian involvement in arms smuggling to the Mahdi Army, and a plan to show off a huge collection of Iranian arms captured in and around Karbala had to be called off after it was discovered that none of the arms were of Iranian origin.

The news media's failure to report that the arms captured from Shiite militiamen in Karbala did not include a single Iranian weapon shielded the US military from a much bigger blow to its anti-Iran strategy.

The Bush administration and top Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus had plotted a sequence of events that would build domestic US political support for a possible strike against Iran over its "meddling" in Iraq and especially its alleged export of arms to Shiite militias.

On May 15, the White House Moron, in a war-planning visit to Israel, justified the naked aggression he and Olmert are planning against Iran as the only alternative to "the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

But the White House Moron has the roles reversed. It is not Iran that is threatening war. It is Bush. It is not Bush who is appeasing. It is Iran.

Iran has not responded in kind to any of Bush's warlike moves and provocations. Iran has not sunk a single one of the sitting duck ships and has not given the Iraqi insurgents any weapons that would easily turn the tide of war against the US.

It is Bush, not Iran, who sounds like Adolf Hitler blustering and threatening. It is Bush's American Brownshirts, the neocons, who express the view: "what's the good of nuclear weapons if you can't use them."

It is the US that is funding assassination teams inside Iran and using taxpayer dollars to fund dissident and violent organizations opposed to the Iranian government. Iran is doing no such thing in U.S.

It is members of the Bush Regime and US generals who continue to lie through their teeth about Iranian support for insurgents, for which they can supply no evidence, and about Iranian nuclear weapons programs, for which the IAEA inspectors can find no sign.

It is the US print and TV media that serves the Bush Regime as propaganda ministry for its lies of aggression.

Energy Geopolitics...... the U.S. getting worried

Although the current crisis has in large part been due to speculators moving out of the sub-prime crisis and into commodities there are however a number of Geopolitical factors and trends and we should be aware of that will shape the global situation. The age of oil, produced its own technology, its balance of power, its own economy and its pattern of society. The future of energy security will play a key role on the global balance of power.

These factors are four:

1. The Eastern threat - The Middle East is gradually shifting from being a unipolar region in which the US enjoys uncontested hegemony to a multipolar region. The US will face more competition from China and India over access to Middle East oil. Soaring global demand for oil is being led by China’s continuing economic boom and, to a lesser extent, by India’s rapid economic expansion. Both are now increasingly competing with the US, the European Union and Japan for the lion’s share of global oil production.

This additional demand comes at a time of continuing production problems in a number of oil-producing nations. Production is down in Nigeria after continues attacks on pipelines by anti-government militants, while Iraqi exports through the north of the country have been hit by renewed cross-border raids by Turkish forces against Kurdish insurgents.

Economists warn that continuing high oil prices will impact on the global economy, hitting growth and fuelling inflation. More importantly it will impact America’s ability to fuel its own economic growth and in turn become more reliant on China for cheap goods. The American economy used to be the world’s powerhouse, but today it is being left behind by emerging economies. To compound its problems, The demand for greater oil is affecting America’s ability to pull itself out of its downturn and is creating inflation across the Western world. If China at any time in the future should develop its political will and ambition, it is in a relatively strong economic position to substantially weaken America.

2. The Russian threat - Russia, the leading producer of natural gas and one of the leading oil producers, is the global winner. The relationship between the European Union and Russia is now dominated by Russia and will in the future make Europe dependent on Russian oil and gas. The oil shocks of the 1970s had different effects on different European countries. Britain had some North Sea oil and the prospect of more, as did Norway. Germany and France had little or no oil of their own. Differential shocks in the coming period of oil shortage will make it harder to maintain the Euro-zone.

Vladimir Putin has already used oil and gas as a diplomatic weapon against the European states, which have had to fall into line in June 2007 after making grandiose demands against Russia. Russia even made veiled threats against Britain during the famous spy poisoning case. Russia has also in the last year stopped supplying energy to its neighbours to quell dissent and ensure political allegiances.

Unlike China and India, Russia has a history of political strength and maturity, and the evidence over the last two years is that Russia has begun re-inventing itself as a regional power, after winning back Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan from the American grip and managing the stop the influence of the three revolutions in that region. America is becoming increasingly worried about the growing economic and political influence of Russia.

3. Oil and Petrodollars. One of the achievements of the US in the 1970’s was to peg the price of oil to dollars. This meant that oil transactions are carried out in dollars only. This has allowed the US to maintain the dollar as the world premier currency and the currency of choice for foreign reserves.

However one of the key factors behind the rise in the price of oil is the devaluing of the dollar. Now trading countries want more dollars for oil simply because the dollar is worth less - this would have increased the price of oil regardless of the increasing demand for it.

Today the European Union led by Britain and Germany are increasingly calling for pegging oil to the Euro; thereby stabilising the price of oil, and giving a stable revenue to oil producing countries. However, this severely impacts the dollar as a currency and if this was to happen would perpetuate America’s economic crisis as the dollar would devalue even more.

Although this is not yet an impending threat, if America cannot bring itself out of its severe downturn, this threat may become more real - particularly if China was to add to this growing call.

4. The importance of the Middle East. Despite current supply shortages of oil around the world and the future restrictions, the importance of the Middle East, will not lessen. In fact it will become the most crucial area in the world.

This is because 66% of the world’s oil reserves are in the Middle East. “Proved” oil reserves are those quantities of oil that geological information indicates can be with reasonable certainty recovered in the future from known reservoirs. Of the trillion barrels currently estimated, 6% are in North America, 9% in Central and Latin America, 2% in Europe, 4% in Asia Pacific, 7% in Africa, 6% in the Former Soviet Union. Today, 66% of global oil reserves are in the hands of Middle Eastern regimes: Saudi Arabia (25%), Iraq (11%), Iran (8%), UAE (9%), Kuwait (9%), and Libya (2%).

Currently of the 11 million barrels per day (mbd) the US imports 3 million barrels per day from the Middle East. But in the years to come dependence on the Middle East is projected to increase by leaps and bounds. The reason is that reserves outside of the Middle East are being depleted at a much faster rate than those in the region. The overall reserves-to-production ratio — an indicator of how long proven reserves would last at current production rates – outside of the Middle East is about 15 years comparing to roughly 80 years in the Middle East. It is for this reason that George Bush said last April, U.S. dependence on overseas oil is a “foreign tax on the American people.”

This is on of the most volatile region in the world; and its importance will only grow stronger. The US is currently very worried about political developments in this region.

Friday, May 16, 2008

President Bush should be impeached for war crimes

By Prof. Bill Wickersham


In June 2004, the Bush Administration issued a statement that detailed its rationale and legal stance for denying terror suspects the protection of international humanitarian law. The statement included hundreds of pages of White House communications intended to counter widespread criticism that George W. Bush had personally endorsed the plans used to justify the interrogation abuses of U.S. prisoners held in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and other worldwide locations. At that time Bush said, “I have never ordered torture.” Ordered or not, it is now clear from recent reports that Bush was well aware of, and approved plans for, the questioning of known and alleged al-Qaida prisoners being held by the CIA.

On April 9, 2008, ABC News reported that Bush’s National Security Council Principals Committee had dozens of top-secret talks and meetings at the White House to review interrogation procedures to be used by the CIA on al-Qaida suspects. Condoleezza Rice chaired the committee, which included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Collin Powell, George Tenet and John Aschroft. According to ABC, the principals discussed and approved specific details of “enhanced interrogation techniques” — “CIA-Speak” and “Pentagonese” for torture, including face slapping, pushing, sleep deprivation and the simulated drowning technique known as “waterboarding.”

According to a recent article by Dan Eggen of the Washington Post, Bush publicly defended the principals’ torture policies and decisions saying, “Well, we started to connect the dots in order to protect the American people. And, yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue, and I approved.” As previously noted, Condoleezza Rice chaired the Principals Committee and played a key role in development of policies that cleared the way for U.S. torture practices. In 2004, the CIA sought additional assurance by the administration for use of torture on “high value” CIA captured suspects. In addressing this episode, ABC News reported about Rice: “Despite growing policy concerns — shared by Powell — that the program was harming the image of the United States abroad, ... (she) did not back down, telling the CIA: ‘This is your baby; Go do it.’”

When stories regarding detainees at the Abu Grahib prison in Iraq became public, blame for the illegal crimes was placed on “a few rotten apples in the barrel,” low-ranking U.S. soldiers, some of whom are now serving jail sentences. It is now very clear that there were also “bad apples” in barrels at the White House, the Pentagon and in Langley, Va., at CIA headquarters. Much of the torture that has occured is the result of orders fully approved by the White House. Thus, the neo-conservative Bush administration, which purportedly invaded and occupied Iraq to free its people of Saddam’s heinous atrocities, is now guilty of its own, including the killing of innumerable Iraqi citizens via aerial bombardment and house-to-house invasions.

In addressing the torture policies of the National Security Council Principals Committee, University of Illinois Professor Francis A. Boyle, one of the world’s foremost authorities on international humanitarian law, said, “Clearly this was criminal activity at the time they committed it. At the very least, it violated the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture, The War Crimes Act, and the federal anti-torture statutes. Clearly these are impeachable offenses.”

Given the “high crimes” committed by top administration officials in violation of the U.S. Constitution, what is to be done? From the first revelations of the Bush/Cheney war crimes, many writers, including Professor Boyle and I, have strongly called for impeachment of the president. Thus far, Nancy Pelosi and other key members of Congress have failed to live up to their oath of office by failing to defend the Supreme Law of the Land. On June 10, 2008, Missourian writer David Rosman wrote a very informative piece citing many reasons to avoid the impeachment process. However, I continue to disagree with Rosman’s position that somehow health care, deficit spending, education, trade, the war and so on take precedence over concern for criminal violations of the basic provisions of the U.S. Constitution, including Article VI section 2 of that revered document. In terms of war, there would have been no war had Bush fulfilled his obligation to defend the Constitution. And the impeachment process, even without conviction of the president and vice-president, would offer a warning to future U.S. leaders that they must obey the laws of war.

Having said this, I certainly do agree with Rosman’s view that “when Bush and Cheney are once again civilians, then file criminal charges against the former holders of the executive office for treason and high crimes against the people. Jail time sounds so much better.” I favor impeachment and jail time for Bush and Cheney and the filing of criminal charges against all of the top officials involved in the planning and approval of prisoner interrogation crimes.

Bill Wickersham is an Adjunct Professor of Peace Studies at MU, a member of Veterans for Peace and a member of the national steering committee of Global Action to Prevent War.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Bush gives up golfing because of Iraq war

In a new interview with the Politico today, President Bush says that he has given up golf because of the Iraq war, to show “solidarity” with U.S. troops and their families. He added that “playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal”

Now watch this clip.



Now, "Bush has spent more time on vacation than any other president. . . . He's never attended a slain soldier's funeral. He's spent time fishing and endlessly clearing brush on his ranch, and attending his daughter's lavish wedding, among other things. But golf? Well, that would just send the wrong signal to the thousands killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and their families.

The last but not the least, to "War supporters take note - put away your golf clubs. It's just disrespectful."

Friday, May 9, 2008

The Provocation in Lebanon

The leader of Hezbollah has said the Lebanese government's decision to close down its private telecommunications network was a "declaration of war".

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah warned that the move was "for the benefit of America and Israel" and vowed to "cut off the hand" that tries to dismantle it. This is plainly meant as a provocation: Hezbollah, which fought off the Israelis during the 2006 war, is not about to give up its communications infrastructure. After all, it was Hezbollah, not the Lebanese army, that resisted the Israelis when they rained bombs down on Lebanese civilians, killing and maiming thousands, destroying homes, factories, and houses of worship. The army stayed in its barracks while Hezbollah fought for Lebanon. But no matter. The Lebanese government – with the Americans and the Israelis behind it – clearly wants a fight.

The first comes the provocation, the catalyzing incident that creates a "crisis" atmosphere and inspires our warmongers – and theirs – to act.

Lebanon is a tinderbox, the Balkans of the Middle East, and the "government" – which is not quite a government, since it lacks a president – has lit the fuse. For 17 months, the two sides have been locked in a confrontation with little prospect for a peaceful resolution, and foreign hands – the Americans, the Israelis, the Iranians, the Syrians, the Saudis – are stirring the pot.

Amid all this tumult and drama, as armed factions engage in street battles and a country that was once the jewel of the Middle East is blackened in the flames of war, what is the American interest?  Who benefits from such a war? Is it another Israel plot?


The U.S. has tried almost everything in its efforts to de-fang Hizballah: designating it a terrorist organization; securing a UN Security Council resolution calling for it to disarm; encouraging Israel to invade Lebanon in 2006; and finally, pushing the Lebanese government into unsustainable game of brinkmanship with the Shia Muslim militant group.

Unable to isolate the entire country, the U.S. and Israel will begin thinking about their military options. There aren't many. The last time the US sent troops here the expedition ended badly, with the bombing of the Marine Corps barracks in 1982. But the Israeli army, which has been re-training furiously since its Lebanon debacle in 2006, may want feel less restraint from going to war with a country now dominated by its adversaries.


At this time of blogs line, fierce clashes raged in Beirut on Thursday after the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah said the U.S.-supported Lebanese government had declared war by targeting its military communications network.

Security sources said at least 11 people had been killed and 30 wounded in three days of battles between pro-government gunmen and fighters loyal to Hezbollah, a Shi'ite political movement with a powerful guerrilla army.

The European Union, Germany and France urged calm and a peaceful resolution. Syria said the issue was an internal Lebanese affair while Iran blamed "the adventurist interferences" of the United States and Israel for the violence.

While fears that the political conflict in Lebanon could escalate into sectarian conflict were heightened, Mohammed Rashid Kabbani, Lebanon's Sunni grand mufti, spoke agasint Hezbollah for the fist time.

"Sunni Muslims in Lebanon have had enough," Kabbani said in a televised address from his office.

The Sunni spiritual leader refered to Hezbollah as "armed gangs of outlaws that have carried out the ugliest attacks against the citizens and their safety".