JURIST Contributing Editor Mary Ellen O'Connell of Notre Dame Law School and panel colleagues at a recent Washburn University School of Law symposium on "The Rule of Law and the Global War on Terrorism" offer their consensus on the appropriate way forward on critical issues in international law and policy that will confront President Barack Obama's Administration when it takes office on January 20, 2009...
Washburn Consensus on Post-9/11 Principles
1. The phrase "Global War on Terrorism" should no longer be used in the sense of an on-going "war" or "armed conflict" being waged against "terrorism". Nor should it serve as either the legal or security policy basis for the range of counter- and anti-terrorism measures taken by the Administration in addressing the very real and present challenges faced by the United States and other nations in addressing terrorism.
2. The Administration should announce that it is taking immediate steps to close the interrogation and detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with a view to removing all remaining detainees by July 1, 2009.
3. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 should be repealed in its entirety, and all activities currently being conducted under the Military Commission process constituted by the Act should be terminated.
4. Persons accused of committing acts of terrorism, war crimes or other serious human rights violations should be tried, as appropriate, before Article III courts or, as provided for in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, by courts-martial or military commission.
5. The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 should be amended to ensure the application of one standard of treatment and interrogation to all detainees held in U.S. custody or control.
6. The single standard for the treatment and interrogation of all detainees held in U.S. custody or control should be that reflected in Army Field Manual 2-22.3, Human Intelligence Collector Operations.
7. Any presidential findings, statements, Executive Orders, or other forms of authorization related to detainee treatment and interrogation that sanction or authorize methods inconsistent with Field Manual 2-22.3 should be withdrawn.
8. A comprehensive investigation of alleged post-9/11 U.S.-held detainee abuse should be undertaken by an independent, expert commission with the goal of producing a 2009 report detailing both the findings and recommendations of this commission.
Text taken here.
Friday, November 28, 2008
The Way Forward: Post-9/11 Principles
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Innocent people are dying for wicked reasons
Professor James Petras has written another book — Zionism, Militarism, and the Decline of US Power — probing deeper into what he contends is a Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) that has infiltrated and largely usurped US foreign policy even using the US military for its ends in the Middle East. Petras fills his book with lots of evidence backed by sound rationales.
Petras’s thesis is that Israel — and not Big Oil — was behind the push to invade and occupy Iraq. That has already happened. What concerns Petras now is the push by the ZPC to have the United States again breach international law and launch an attack against Iran.
Petras reasons that the ZPC’s purpose is to incorporate Palestine and consolidate its hegemony in the Middle East. Strategically, gaining and holding sway over the planet’s preeminent military power has been a major plank toward this goal.
The professor provides numerous examples of the sway the ZPC wields and how it wields it: through its propaganda and media arms (Petras cites how, pre-“war,” the Lobby produced about 8,800 pro-Iraq attack pieces which were circulated to major Anglo-American media versus zero pro-Iraq attack pieces published from Big Oil spokespeople); through its academic acolytes; through involving US soldiers to fight its wars (Petras charges that the Israel Firsters “ridicule the US military precisely to instigate them to prosecute wars and thereby avoid the loss of Israeli-Jewish lives”); through the relative silence of dissenting voices, including dissenting Jewish voices in mass media; through members of the US Congress beholden through acceptance of campaign contributions form the Lobby.
That is why Petras’s thesis in Zionism, Militarism, and the Decline of US Power is important: innocent people are dying for wicked reasons.
End the Israeli Blockade and Stop the Genocide
On November 24, UN General Assembly president Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann said Israel's treatment of the Palestinians was like "the apartheid of an earlier era." His remarks were at an annual debate marking the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. He added: "We must not be afraid to call something what it is" since the UN passed the International Convention against the crime of apartheid.
Israel's response was familiar. Its UN ambassador, Gabriela Shalev, called Brockmann an "Israel hater." He's a 75-year old Catholic priest. If he were Jewish, she'd have accused him of being "self-hating."
On November 20, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay, called for an immediate end to Israel's blockade. In response, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) audaciously expressed shock at what it called a one-sided statement.
The High Commissioner's call came after mounting reports of human rights and humanitarian concerns. For its part, Israel claims its siege is a necessary response to mortar and rocket attacks on Israeli towns and military posts. They're little more than pin pricks and only occur in response to sustained and brutal Israeli attacks against Gazan civilians, including men, women and children - a long-standing practice for decades with overwhelming force against light arms and homemade weapons as well as children throwing rocks. It hardly justifies a medieval siege against 1.5 million people and the horrific fallout it causes. And for what?
Read further Israel's Slow-Motion Genocide in Occupied Palestine by Stephen Lendman.
International law expert Francis Boyle does and in March 1998 proposed that "the Provisional Government of (Palestine) and its President institute legal proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague for violating the" Genocide Convention. He stated that "Israel has indeed perpetrated the international crime of genocide against the Palestinian people (and the) lawsuit would....demonstrate that undeniable fact to the entire world."
Israel is a serial human rights international law abuser. The UN Human Rights Commission affirms that it violates nearly all 149 articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention that governs the treatment of civilians in war and under occupation and is guilty of grievous war crimes. The Commission also determined that as an occupying power Israel has committed crimes against humanity as defined under the 1945 Nuremberg Charter.
Palestinian children take part in a human chain protest, near the Erez crossing, against the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
"Shimon Peres, you're a war criminal!" say Oxford students
Despite the decision of British elites to honor the Israeli president, protestors' disgust has reached the eyes and ears of the Israeli public. Even the website of Israeli daily Haaretz showed clips of one particular intervention. Halfway through the lecture, Abdel Razzaq Takriti, a Palestinian graduate student at Oxford's Wadham College, Oxford was ejected from the hall. "Shimon Peres was making a particularly offensive remark claiming that 'you [Palestinians] could have had a state if it wasn't for your own mistakes' and that Israelis fought for their state," he told this writer, who was also participating in the protest. He then stated "We don't need your permission to exist" and got support from other students for it. Takriti explained: "So I stood up and walked towards [Peres], saying, 'how dare you say this at a time when you are besieging 1.5 million people in Gaza? 1.5 million people are starving to death! Shimon Peres, you're a war criminal. You are responsible for the massacre of hundreds of people in Qana [southern Lebanon]. You're responsible for an apartheid state. Shame on you.' so I was dragged out."
Sunday, November 23, 2008
New collapse footage of WTC7 and North Tower - Nov 2008
The video shows perhaps the clearest view yet of World Trade Center 7 as it collapses directly into its own footprint at freefall gravitational speed in the late afternoon on September 11, 2001. This collapse has long interested 9/11 researchers as the building was not struck by a plane and only had two isolated office fires burning in it that afternoon before its sudden and complete collapse, an unprecedented event in the history of modern steel-framed skyscrapers. The video of the North Tower also shows an extremely detailed view of the bottom half of the building as the collapse reaches the lower levels, including a brief, clear glimpse of the 'spire' of interior columns before they disappear into the pyroclastic dust cloud at the base of the building, a feature not found in ordinary office collapses and also seen in the wake of the WTC7 collapse. Both videos also show clear views of the blast squibs preceding the collapses, another sign of controlled demolition.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Obama Magic Words
In August 2008, the US Congress approved without any major discussion the Pentagon budget for the following 12 months a budget totaling $700 billion. US joint expenditure for Iraq and Afghanistan amount to about $12 billion per month. A month later, in September, the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury succeeded in committing another $700 billion of taxpayers' money to save Wall Street from a financial meltdown. The new president will take office with $1.5 trillion already committed by his predecessor. This is money he does not control, money that will be insufficient to win a war in Iraq and Afghanistan and save the world economy. These budgets will have to be increased.
The war will take priority over social reforms, because money is scarce and the US is running a $10 trillion deficit, which means that 70% of what will be produced in 2009 has already been spent. Obama has a few choices;
- Increase the debt hoping that the world in recession will continue to subscribe to US treasury bonds that have virtually no yield and
- Print money, worrying about inflation later;
- Drastically reduce social programs and
- Fail to meet expectations a la Clinton "sorry providing health care to everybody is a dream, so we carry on as usual," a move which will make him very unpopular. At the time of Clinton the economy was expanding and his excuse was expected, now it is contracting.
- Or President Obama could drastically cut military expenditure, bring the troops back home and focus on healing the country from the social holocaust of the Bush years.
"Wait for the Exodus" - The Real Goal of Israel's Blockade.
The U.S. and Europe agreed to the measure on the principle that it would force the people of Gaza to rethink their support for Hamas. The logic was supposedly similar to the one that drove the sanctions applied to Iraq under Saddam Hussein through the 1990s: if Gaza's civilians suffered enough, they would rise up against Hamas and install new leaders acceptable to Israel and the West.
As AbuZayd said, that moment marked the beginning of the international community's complicity in a policy of collective punishment of Gaza, despite the fact that the Fourth Geneva Convention classifies such treatment of civilians as a war crime.
The blockade has been pursued relentlessly since, even if the desired outcome has been no more achieved in Gaza than it was in Iraq. Instead, Hamas entrenched its control and cemented the Strip's physical separation from the Fatah-dominated West Bank.
Far from reconsidering its policy, Israel's leadership has responded by turning the screw ever tighter – to the point where Gazan society is now on the verge of collapse.
In truth, however, the growing catastrophe being unleashed on Gaza is only indirectly related to Hamas' rise to power and the rocket attacks.
Of more concern to Israel is what each of these developments represents: a refusal on the part of Gazans to abandon their resistance to Israel's continuing occupation. Both provide Israel with a pretext for casting aside the protections offered to Gaza's civilians under international law to make them submit.
With embarrassing timing, the Israeli media revealed over the weekend that one of the first acts of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister elected in 2006, was to send a message to the Bush White House offering a long-term truce in return for an end to Israeli occupation. His offer was not even acknowledged.
Instead, according to the daily Jerusalem Post, Israeli policymakers have sought to reinforce the impression that "it would be pointless for Israel to topple Hamas because the population [of Gaza] is Hamas." On this thinking, collective punishment is warranted because there are no true civilians in Gaza. Israel is at war with every single man, woman, and child.
In an indication of how widely this view is shared, the cabinet discussed last week a new strategy to obliterate Gazan villages in an attempt to stop the rocket launches, in an echo of discredited Israeli tactics used in south Lebanon in its war of 2006. The inhabitants would be given warning before indiscriminate shelling began.
In fact, Israel's desire to seal off Gaza and terrorize its civilian population predates even Hamas' election victory. It can be dated to Ariel Sharon's disengagement of summer 2005, when Fatah's rule of the PA was unchallenged.
An indication of the kind of isolation Sharon preferred for Gaza was revealed shortly after the pullout, in December 2005, when his officials first proposed cutting off electricity to the Strip.
The policy was not implemented, the local media pointed out at the time, both because officials suspected the violation of international law would be rejected by other nations and because it was feared that such a move would damage Fatah's chances of winning the elections the following month.
With the vote over, however, Israel had the excuse it needed to begin severing its responsibility for the civilian population. It recast its relationship with Gaza from one of occupation to one of hostile parties at war. A policy of collective punishment that was considered transparently illegal in late 2005 has today become Israel's standard operating procedure.
Increasingly strident talk from officials, culminating in February in the deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai's infamous remark about creating a "shoah," or Holocaust, in Gaza, has been matched by Israeli measures. The military bombed Gaza's electricity plant in June 2006 and has been incrementally cutting fuel supplies ever since. In January, Vilnai argued that Israel should cut off "all responsibility" for Gaza, and two months later Israel signed a deal with Egypt for it to build a power station for Gaza in Sinai.
All of these moves are designed with the same purpose in mind: persuading the world that Israel's occupation of Gaza is over and that Israel can therefore ignore the laws of occupation and use unremitting force against Gaza.
Cabinet ministers have been queuing up to express such sentiments. Ehud Olmert, for example, has declared that Gazans should not be allowed to "live normal lives"; Avi Dichter believes punishment should be inflicted "irrespective of the cost to the Palestinians"; Meir Sheetrit has urged that Israel should "decide on a neighborhood in Gaza and level it" – the policy discussed by ministers last week.
In concert, Israel has turned a relative blind eye to the growing smuggling trade through Gaza's tunnels to Egypt. Gazans' material welfare is falling more heavily on Egyptian shoulders by the day.
The question remains: what does Israel expect the response of Gazans to be to their immiseration and ever greater insecurity in the face of Israeli military reprisals?
Eyal Sarraj, the head of Gaza's Community Mental Health Program, said this year that Israel's long-term goal was to force Egypt to end the controls along its short border with the Strip. Once the border was open, he warned, "Wait for the exodus.".
This article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.
Bush and SOFA
The text of the U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) signed by U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari Monday closes the door to a further U.S. military presence beyond 2011 even more tightly than the previous draft and locks in a swift end to Iraqi dependence on the U.S. military that appears to be irreversible.
The agreement ends the George W. Bush administration's aspiration for a long-term military presence, aimed both at projecting power in the region from bases in Iraq and at maintaining that Iraqi military dependence on U.S. training, advice and support.
In May 2007 Bush declared,
"I believe setting a deadline for withdrawal would demoralize the Iraqi people, would encourage killers across the broader Middle East, and send a signal that America will not keep its commitments. Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure -- and that would be irresponsible."On November 16, 2008, Iraq's Cabinet approves the agreement, which cites the end of 2009 for the pull out of US troops from Iraqi cities, and 2011 as the fixed deadline for removal of US military presence in country. US concessions involve a ban on U.S. forces searching and raiding homes without Iraqi approval, the right of Iraqis to search shipments of weapons and packages entering the country for U.S. recipients, and the right of Iraq's justice system to prosecute American troops for serious crimes under some circumstances. The vote was passed by 27 of the 37-member cabinet, of which nine members were absent and one opposing. The agreement now goes before Parliment.
Read also Pact Will End Iraqi Dependence on US Military.
"My crime was to protest Israeli assassinations"
On January 5, 2007, the London Guardian headlined that comment in reporting on Jewish activist Tali Fahima's first interview following her release from Israeli incarceration. Sitting with her arms handcuffed to a chair's legs 16 hours a day, her captors said they wanted to teach her to be a "good Jew." She was imprisoned for 30 months for traveling to the West Bank, "meeting an enemy agent and translating a simple army document."
She explained and said her crimes were for refusing to work with Shin Bet (Israel's secret service), going to see the Palestinians, then protesting the Israeli assassinations policy. She was kept in isolation for nine months. Finally, at the urging of her lawyer, she struck a plea bargain for a shorter sentence, and ended up being "unbowed" by her experience. She learned how Sin Bet "terroriz(es)" people, both Palestinians and Jews. "About the nature of the government, how they do not want us to see what is going on in our name."
On August 8, 2004, she was arrested and placed under administrative detention in September. In December, she was charged with "assistance to the enemy at time of war." It was trumped up and false. In January 2005, the Tel Aviv district court ruled that she should be placed under house arrest during her trial. Jerusalem's high court overruled it on the grounds that she "identifie(d) with an ideological goal." In December 2005, she pled guilty under her plea bargain to meeting and aiding an enemy agent and entering Palestinian territory. In January 2006, she was released.
She felt compelled to make regular Jenin visits. Talk to hundreds of people, including Palestinian resisters, and for the first time heard their point of view and how hard things are under occupation. For showing compassion and disagreeing with Israeli policies, she was imprisoned for nearly 30 months on false charges. Not even Jews are safe from harsh state retribution against anyone showing defiance or daring to resist injustice.
Read further Extrajudicial Assassinations As Official Israeli Policy by Stephen Lendman.
Extra-judicial killings are indefensible, morally abhorrent, and illegal under international laws and norms. Article 23b of the 1907 Hague Regulations prohibits "assassination, proscription, or outlawry of an enemy, or putting a price upon an enemy's head, as well as offering a reward for any enemy 'dead or alive.'
Friday, November 14, 2008
EU parliamentarian: "Hamas is fighting an occupation"
Chris Davies. (IPS)
Davies was assaulted when he was taking part, together with several Israelis, Palestinians and people from other countries, in a protest rally against Israel's barrier that divides Palestinian farmers from their land in the central West Bank village of Bilin.
Davies slammed the United States bias towards Israel, and questioned the EU policy on Hamas.
Read further here the article by Cherrie Heywood.
Former DC appeals court judge suggests Bush detention policies amount to war crimes
According to a new Human Rights Center/Center for Constitutional Rights report, former prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay and released without charge went home with “psychological and emotional problems” and found themselves “stigmatized and shunned” and viewed either as terrorists or U.S. spies. In a forward to the report, former DC appeals court judge Patricia Wald compared the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody to the treatment Bosnian Muslims received at the hands of their Serbian captors:
The officials and guards in charge of those prison camps and the civilian leaders who sanctioned their establishment were prosecuted — often by former U.S. government and military lawyers serving with the tribunal — for war crimes, crimes against humanity and, in extreme cases, genocide.Last June, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba (ret.), the Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, also accused the Bush administration of committing “war crimes” and called for those responsible to be held to account.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
My Son Tom
In April 2003, the 21-year-old English photojournalism student Tom Hurndall was shot in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip.
The Israeli authorities absurdly claimed "that a Palestinian gunman wearing fatigues had been shooting a pistol at a watchtower and had been targeted by a member of the Israeli Defense Force ['IDF']."
His mother Jocelyn, the author of the harrowing memoir, My Son Tom - The Life and Tragic Death of Tom Hurndall (with Hazel Wood), travels to Israel. At the Soroka Hospital in Beersheva she recognizes her comatose son "despite the bandages surrounding [his] dreadfully swollen head, covering [his] eyes." She learns that one senior doctor has suggested that his wound was "commensurate with a blow from a baseball bat," and realizes that the cover-up culture is not unique to the Israeli army.
She travels to Rafah where members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) explain how Tom -- wearing the orange fluorescent jacket unmistakably identifying a peaceworker -- had witnessed children being targeted by an Israeli sniper, had picked up a little boy and brought him to safety, and was on his way back to collect two terrified girls when he was shot. She meets Salem Baroum, the child Tom rescued, who is "completely silent, utterly traumatized." Later she visits Salem's home, "a very small house only partly covered by a roof," where tea is drunk "sitting on chairs with the rain dripping in."
Eventually, having refused to meet the Hurndalls, the "IDF" issues its report: a tissue of fabrications, "ludicrous, transparent, so unprofessional it was hard to know how to respond."
At last Tom is flown back to England, where he is brought to the Royal Free Hospital. Here there is a press conference at which Jocelyn's husband Anthony openly describes the "IDF"'s report as a total fabrication, and describes that army as "unaccountable and out of control."
In the same week that the Israeli Judge Advocate General orders a military police investigation into Tom's death, the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom sends the Hurndalls an ex gratia cheque for 8,370 Pounds Sterling (about US$13,000) which bounces owing to "insufficient funds."
On 13 January 2004, Tom dies.
Read further this article "My Son Tom": Mother continues the solidarity that Israeli bullets cut short by Raymond Deane.
Encouraging for the World, Embarrassing for the U.S.
This week, 58 Catholic and Muslim scholars met at the Vatican for talks aimed at bridging divisions between the world’s two largest religions. The gathering, hosted by Pope Benedict XVI, ended with a joint declaration “renouncing any oppression, aggressive violence and terrorism, especially that committed in the name of religion, and upholding the principle of justice for all.”
Text taken from here.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Haniya : Our conflict is not with the Jews, our problem is with the occupation
The delegation of 11 from Britain, Ireland, Switzerland and Italy, managed to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza on Saturday morning after their boat, the Dignity, sailed from Cyprus to Gaza, shadowed part of the way by an Israeli naval vessel.
The group had originally tried to enter Gaza from Israel's Erez border crossing but was refused permission by the Israeli authorities to cross. Another attempt to enter the territory from Egypt's Rafah terminal was denied by the Egyptian authorities.
This was the third successful boat trip made by the Dignity into Palestinian coastal waters despite warnings by Israel that action would be taken to stop the vessel. On board was a ton of medical aid and desperately needed medical equipment.
Despite the threats of naval intervention, in the end Israel backed down after realizing it would have gained more bad publicity if it had detained and harassed a boatload of international politicians carrying humanitarian aid.
The aim of the visit was to protest Israel's economic embargo and closure of Gaza's borders, assess humanitarian conditions on the ground, and to hold talks with Ismail Haniya, the leader of Hamas.
Haniya was questioned about his organization's previous offer of a 20-year hudna or truce with Israel in exchange for the Israeli government recognizing the national rights of Palestinians.
British parliamentarian Clare Short, who served in the cabinet of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, asked the Hamas leadership to repeat the offer, which he did.
Haniya was also questioned by delegation leader Baron Nazir Ahmed, a Pakistani-born member of the House of Lords, about Hamas' relationship with Iran.
"Our ties with Iran are like those with other Muslim states. We are prepared to accept a Palestinian state within the internationally recognized borders of 1967. Our conflict is not with the Jews, our problem is with the occupation," Haniya said.'
Note that Gaza does not have an airport because the Israelis won't allow one, and that the Israelis control Gaza's borders and port, keeping out anything and anyone they like, including food and fuel.
Rubin, The Lie Factory and Taqiya
AEI, Michael Rubin
To add to Yglesias’, and Justin Logan’s posts dismantling Michael Rubin’s latest argument for bombing Iran, a bit about Rubin’s invocation of taqiya as a clever way credit Iranian statements that bolster his thesis and discredit those that don’t.
This isn’t the first time Rubin has misrepresented this Islamic concept. Back in September 2006, Rubin referred to taqiya as “religiously-sanctioned lying.”
Many Islamists feel justified saying one thing to a Western audience, and quite another to fellow Islamists. Muhammad Khatami, soon to receive an honorary degree at St. Andrew’s University in celebration of his “practical work to improve relations between Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities,” is one example. No need for Khatami to explain statements justifying murder and terror. The case of Tariq Ramadan, the Islamist scholar whom Notre Dame University tried to hire, has become a cause célèbre. Many progressives are in an uproar that the State Department this week again denied Ramadan a visa. After all, doesn’t he say the right things in academic salons? Perhaps, but beyond the window dressing and the material support for terrorists, what does Ramadan stand for?Taqiya is commonly understood as dissimulation in order to protect one’s life, family, or the faith. It developed in Shi’i jurisprudence as a defense against persecution by Sunnis or non-Muslims. It is not simply a license to lie, nor is it simply a technique to “lull an enemy,” as Rubin claims here.
The concept of taqiya has generally been looked upon with skepticism and suspicion by the vast majority of Muslims who are Sunni. Tariq Ramadan, who is Sunni, has never, as far as I know, indicated that he believes the concept is a legitimate Islamic practice, Rubin’s careless assertions notwithstanding. Ironically, sinister claims about taqiya have historically been deployed by Sunnis to stir up fear of Shias, just as Rubin deploys them here to stir up fear of Iran.
The implications of Rubin’s treatment of the concept are obvious. After all, if Muslims are encouraged to lie as a matter of religious duty, then why should we believe anything they say, ever? The right-wing blogosphere is rife with this sort of ignorant nonsense, but it’s pretty disgraceful that Rubin would use his scholarly credibility, such as it is, to feed it. Given his own past work in Doug Feith’s The Lie Factory (The inside story of how the Bush administration pushed disinformation and bogus intelligence and led the nation to war), it’s also pretty ridiculous that Rubin tries to pitch taqiya as some sort of devious occult practice, as if non-Muslim leaders never dissimulate, lie, spin, or misrepresent facts and intentions in order to achieve their political goals.Muslim clerics endorse anti-terror fatwa
Read further here.
Bush Indictment and Prosecution?
In October 1946 the victorious Allies executed ten former Nazi leaders in Nuremberg, following their trial for war crimes. Each defendant was charged with one or more of four charges: conspiracy to commit crimes alleged in other counts; crimes against peace; war crimes; or crimes against humanity, United States Chief Prosecutor Robert Jackson presiding.
Watch the clip Nazi Leaders Executed At Nuremberg.
Over 4,100 American soldiers and over 1,000,000 Iraqis were killed in George W. Bush's war against Iraq on "false pretenses", his "BIG LIES", which are "unlawful deaths", each and every one, requiring that George W. Bush be "indicted" and "prosecuted" on "murder and conspiracy to commit murder" charges, as noted and documented by renowned prosecutor and best selling author Vincent Bugliosi in his stunning, best selling true crime book "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder", Vanguard Press.
THIS IS TO IMPLORE YOU to indict, prosecute, impeach, and charge George W. Bush with one or more of four charges: conspiracy to commit crimes alleged in other counts; crimes against peace; war crimes; or crimes against humanity.
SPECIFIC CHARGES include the murders of over 4,100 American soldiers and over 1,000,000 Iraqis, pursuing an aggressive war, the brutality of the occupation and detention centers, and the use of illegal weapons.
Text taken from here.
The CIA Is Worried: Will Obama Actually Hold Them Accountable?
According to CQ, the CIA is worried that Obama won't "have their backs" when they do something wrong:
"I was with a group of intelligence officers today," Roger Cressey, a counterterrorism official in the Clinton White House, said on MSNBC Thursday night, "and I think the most important thing for the president to say is, 'We've got your back.' That 'we want you to take risks -- risks that conform with our law and our values as a country.'I doubt that there will be any problem if these "risks" actually do conform to our law and values -- and aren't stupid plans that were done without being properly understood, like the Bay of Pigs.
"What the intelligence community is afraid of more than anything is the game of 'Gotcha,'" Cressey said. "Which is, if they make a mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, the White House doesn't support them, they're left out to dry, and Congress crushes them. And then you get into that risk-averse mentality, which we saw for awhile. So that is what they want. They want support, so they know that the president is going to be behind them. But also that he's going to lead them."
This article discusses a scenario in which the CIA blows up a car they mistakenly believes contains bin Laden, and asks whether or not the Obama administration will stand by them. But that's not what this is really all about. It's important to remember that this was at the heart of what Cheney and Addington's War On Terror legal reasoning was all about. The John Yoo Torture Memo of 2002, was written at the CIA's request that the Bush administration "get their backs." Just last March Bush vetoed the bill which would have required the CIA to adhere to the rules set forth in the Army Field manual in order to protect the CIA from being held culpable for torture.
The CIA will put a lot of pressure on Obama over this. They even got the ambitious wimp McCain to vote against the Field Manual (anti-waterboarding) bill, despite what it might do to his reputation, on the heels of his earlier cave-in on the Military Commissions Act. They are dead serious about being allowed to do what they feel "needs to be done" with the full backing of the president. And they always hold the security of the United States hostage when they do it ("we'll become too 'risk averse' and then you'll all die!")
Up until now, we have been dealing with electoral necessities (or what the Democrats perceived as being electoral necessities.) Now we are going to see perceived institutional necessities coming to the fore and the Democrats are going to have a much different relationship with these issues than they had before.
On torture, there can be no more blurring of definitions. There is plenty of scholarship that shows that there are better ways of obtaining reliable intelligence. Torture is not only immoral, it's lazy and counterproductive -- and is likely used most often out of some misplaced notion that being known to be brutal and ruthless is helpful to America's reputation. That is wrong. The CIA needs to know up front that Obama will not have their back if they engage in torture -- and that the torture legal framework under Bush is no longer operative in any way. There really is no other choice on this and I expect that he will do it. He knows very well that his foreign policy will be in complete shambles the minute it is leaked -- and it will be -- that the Obama administration has sanctioned torture, either through commission or omission. His great opportunity across the world to prove that America has changed will be lost.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Blair, Bush could face probe at The Hague
TONY Blair could face the prospect of an International Criminal Court investigation for alleged coalition war crimes in Iraq.
The court's chief prosecutor said at the weekend that he would be willing to launch an inquiry and could envisage a scenario in which the British Prime Minister and US President George Bush could one day face charges at The Hague.
Luis Moreno-Ocampo urged Arab countries, particularly Iraq, to sign up to the court to enable allegations against the West to be pursued. Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations said that his country was actively considering signing up.
The US has refused to accept the court's jurisdiction and is unlikely to hand over any of its citizens to face trial. However, Britain has signed up and the Government has indicated its willingness to tackle accusations of war crimes against a number of British soldiers.
Mr Moreno-Ocampo said it was frustrating that the court was viewed in the Arab world as biased in favour of the West.
Asked whether he could envisage a situation in which Mr Blair and Mr Bush found themselves in the dock answering charges of war crimes in Iraq, he replied: "Of course, that could be a possibility … whatever country joins the court can know that whoever commits a crime in their country could be prosecuted by me."
Human rights lawyers remain sceptical about whether charges will ever be brought.
Some Muslim countries have criticised what they claim is the court's reluctance to deal with offences committed by Western governments. Sudan has called for the court to investigate coalition actions in Iraq.
Reported here.
Who is Rahm Emanuel?
Rahm Israel Emanuel, White House Chief of Staff in Obama's administration, was a strong supporter of the Iraq war.
Rahm Emanuel, an Israeli citizen and Israeli army veteran whose father, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, was a member of Menachem Begin's Irgun forces during the Nakba and named his son after "a Lehi combatant who was killed" -- i.e., a member of Yitzhak Shamir's terrorist Stern Gang, responsible for, in addition to other atrocities against Palestinians, the more famous bombing of the King David Hotel and assassination of the UN peace envoy Count Folke Bernadotte.
Obama repeatedly pledged unconditional allegiance to Israel during his campaign, most memorably in an address to the AIPAC national convention which Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery characterized as "a speech that broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning", and America's electing a black president has always been more easily imagined than any American president's declaring his country's independence from Israeli domination.
Read further The Promised Land? Obama, Emanuel and Israel.
Read also AIPAC's Man in the Obama Camp.
Bush Administration Cannot Escape Legal Responsibility
While the criminal abuse of male prisoners at Abu Ghraib is well known, child and women prisoners held there have also been tortured and raped, according to Neil Mackay of Glasgow’s “Sunday Herald.” Abu Ghraib prison is located about 20 miles west of Baghdad.
Iraqi lawyer Sahar Yasiri, representing the Federation of Prisoners and Political Prisoners, said in a published interview there are more than 400,000 detainees in Iraq being held in 36 prisons and camps and that 95 percent of the 10,000 women among them have been raped. Children, he said, “suffer from torture, rape, (and) starvation” and do not know why they have been arrested. He added the children have been victims of “random” arrests “not based on any legal text.”
Former prisoner Thaar Salman Dawod in a witness statement said, “(I saw) two boys naked and they were cuffed together face to face and (a US soldier) was beating them and a group of guards were watching and taking pictures and there was three female soldiers laughing at the prisoners.”
Iraqi TV reporter, Suhaib Badr-Addin al-Baz, arrested while making a documentary and thrown into Abu Ghraib for 74 days, told Mackay he saw “hundreds” of children there. Al-Baz said he heard one 12-year-old girl crying, “They have undressed me. They have poured water over me.” He said he heard her whimpering daily.
Al-Baz also told of a 15-year-old boy “who was soaked repeatedly with hoses until he collapsed.” Amnesty International said ex-detainees reported boys as young as 10 are held at Abu Ghraib.
German TV reporter Thomas Reutter of “Report Mainz” quoted U.S. Army Sgt. Samuel Provance that interrogation specialists “poured water” over one 16-year-old Iraqi boy, drove him throughout a cold night, “smeared him with mud” and then showed him to his father, who was also in custody. Apparently, one tactic employed by the Bush regime is to elicit confessions from adults by dragging their abused children in front of them.
The Los Angeles Times as far back as August 26, 2004, reported U.S. military police at Abu Ghraib “used Army dogs to play a bizarre game in which they scared teenage detainees into defecating and urinating on themselves.”
And reporter Hersh told the American Civil Liberties Union convention he has seen videotapes of Iraqi boys that were sodomized, “and the worst part is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking.”
Jonathan Steele, wrote in the British “The Guardian” this past Sept. 9th, “Hundreds of children, some as young as nine, are being held in appalling conditions in Baghdad’s prisons, sleeping in sweltering temperatures in overcrowded cells, without working fans, no daily access to showers, and subject to frequent sexual abuse by guards, current and former prisoners say.” Sixteen-year-old Omar Ali told the “Guardian” he spent more than three years at Karkh juvenile prison sleeping with 75 boys to a cell that is just five by 10 meters, some of them on the floor. Omar told the paper guards often take boys to a separate room in the prison and rape them.
As the occupying authority in Iraq, the Bush administration cannot escape legal responsibility for the torture crimes of Iraqi jailers or for the deplorable conditions in the prisons they operate.
Read further the article U.S. AND ALLIES TORTURED KIDS IN IRAQ PRISONS. Read also Torture in Iraq.
Do we respect human right, what Bush have said before:
"The U.S. is committed to the worldwide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the U.S. and the community of law abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating and prosecuting all acts of torture." — George W. Bush, U.N. Torture Victims Recognition Day, June 26, 2003.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
'The life of an Iraqi is worth no less than that of an American'
Barack Obama's election is to be welcomed for several reasons. Yet we must not be lulled into complacency by naive estimates of what lies ahead.
The eight years of George Bush's presidency have accustomed us to errors, lies and manipulation. Since September 2001, the Bush regime has been obsessed by "war on terror" and the "axis of evil". Over time, Americans have awakened to the emptiness of these bellicose and arrogant slogans.
Obama's roots and his multiple cultural identities could not be of a greater contrast to that of his predecessor. His understanding of the countries of the world, particularly of the global south, point to a different future. Taken together, his life and experience make hope for a new understanding of domestic and international issues possible. Obama should become the symbol of a new United States, promoting domestic policies that favour justice and equality, improve urban life, broaden opportunity, and empower citizens of all origins. The first black president's greatest achievement would be to cause people to forget his colour, and to implement more equitable social policies.
But while it now appears that the US can live with the election of an African-American, indications are that a new, virulent anti-Muslim racism has arisen in the wake of the events of September 2001. On the international stage, Obama should be able to lay to rest the deafness of the outgoing administration, which spared no effort to persuade Americans that they were "the victims" of "aggressors" who hated their civilisation. Above and beyond the condemnation of terrorist acts, which must be unconditional, the criticisms and grievances of the entire world must now be heard.
The policies of the Bush administration have produced a worldwide rejection of the US. The new president must begin with symbolic actions to demonstrate that the life of an Afghan, an Iraqi or a Muslim is worth no less than that of an American. The time has come to put an end to the language of bullying and intimidation; to close the dungeons of Guantánamo and other such prisons. Obama can no longer justify, in the name of American national security, the deaths of the innocent, legalised torture, extraordinary rendition and other discriminatory measures.
Yet his campaign has made it clear that we must entertain no illusions, or succumb to irrational hope. Change may be significant in certain areas; in others, it is bound to be limited. The Palestine-Israel conflict is central to world peace, but Obama has taken such an outspoken pro-Israel stance that significant change on this issue is extremely unlikely. Nor is much to be expected in questioning neoliberalism while dealing with the international economic crisis.
There can be little doubt that some positive change can be expected. Any such change should be welcomed; at the same time, our critical vigilance must not be relaxed, especially with regard to the sacrosanct dogmas of a political and economic establishment that cannot bring itself to acknowledge the dignity of the Palestinian people (and more globally the Africans and the Arabs), or the devastation wrought by an economic order that has plunged millions of American families into debt, and cast thousands more into the street.
Muslims in the US and around the world are mainly satisfied: they hope to see the end to the politics of fear, mistrust and polarisation of the Bush administration. Still, they have their share of responsibility: to get rid of the victim mentality, to be more consistent with their own values, to get out of their intellectual ghettos and to actively belong to this "we" that has committed itself to reform, while repeating: "Yes, we can."
Reported in The Guardian.
The Bush Doctrine is Islamophobic
The Bush Doctrine resembles earlier witch hunts like the Spanish Inquisition, the Third Reich, and the McCarthy era. In all three, a category of people is labelled as an evil, dangerous enemy in order to mobilize popular support for the elite’s ambitions to power. Institutions are created to isolate, scapegoat, and eliminate the target group. Those institutions also transform the entire society to become more doctinare, rigid, and authoritarian. Those who challenge the status quo are punished or killed. Free thought is outlawed. Inequality rises. Arbitrary decree replaces systems of justice.
Islamophobia is usually considered an attitudinal prejudice, similar to racism or anti-Semitism, as in this definition of Islamophobia:
Islamophobia refers to the fear and/or hatred of Islam, Muslims or Islamic culture. Islamophobia can be characterized by the belief that all or most Muslims are religious fanatics, have violent tendencies toward non-Muslims, and reject …equality, tolerance, and democracy. It is viewed as a new form of racism whereby Muslims …are…constructed as a race. A set of negative assumptions are made of the entire group to the detriment of members of that group.However, Bush’s Islamophobia systematically institutionalizes and actively promotes discriminatory assaults on Muslims and Muslim countries (By contrast, racism and anti-Semitism are at least formally illegal and generally condemned in the media, courts, and schools). The ‘‘war on terror’’ incorporates structures – laws, prisons, intelligence agencies, surveillance infrastructure, military and corporate contracts, bombs, etc. – which target Muslims and Arabs in particular.
Islamophobia is as central to the Bush Doctrine as anti-Semitism was to the Spanish Inquisition or the Third Reich. Both oppressions function to whip up fear, contempt, and genocidal rage against a whole people. Without this bogey-man, Bush’s “war on terror” would be exposed for what it is—a brutal, greedy grab for world conquest. As Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, recently pointed out, “There’s a lot of anti-Muslim bigotry. Some of it is based on religious chauvinism from Christians and Jews. Some of it is racist….[But]…Ultimately… public hostility toward Islam in the United States [and its allies] today is mostly a matter of geopolitics and U.S. nationalism” (Deen, 2005).
U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were justified by Islamophobic assertions that their leaders are Muslim fanatics who threaten American security. Portrayed as primitive, anti-feminist, terrorists, people labelled “Taliban” are hunted down like vermin. Those who are not bombed or shot are detained in horrendous conditions. In November, 2001, for example, CIA and U.S. Special Forces watched approvingly as 4,500 Afghani men were stuffed into truck containers where they either suffocated or were shot (Herman, 2004). Afghani and Iraqi people who presume to resist U.S. occupation (or simply to drive too quickly toward U.S. check points) are presumed to be “terrorists” and are summarily killed. The Afghan and Iraqi wars have left both countries devastated. Their people subsist under semi-permanent, military occupation, without basic infrastructure or humanitarian aid, while oil rigs and natural gas pipelines are protected.
Dick Cheney defends torture as a legitimate interrogation tool (Priest & Wright, 2005), including specific attacks on Muslims, such as wiping prisoners with menstrual blood, forcing them to eat pork, threatening them with dogs (viewed as unclean by Muslims), and flushing Qur’ans down toilets (Human Rights Watch, 2005). To bypass Geneva Conventions against mistreating and torturing prisoners, the U.S. calls non-citizen Muslim detainees “enemy combatants” or more recently “unprivileged belligerants”. And under the neologism of “extraordinary rendition”, Muslem citizens are sent off to countries like Egypt, Syria, and Jordan with which have been contracted to torture them (Johnston, 2005).
Almost 100,000 Muslim men worldwide are being detained without charges “in secretive American-run jails and interrogation centres similar to the notorious Abu Ghraib Prison” under conditions which violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions on the Treatment of Prisoners, and U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (Buncombe & Sengupta 2004; Siddiqui, 2004, p. A23).
Muslims and Arabs living in the West have also been targeted for official discriminatory treatment. After the U.S. Department of Justice passed a regulation allowing indefinite detention on September 20, 2001, nearly 1,200 Arabs and Muslims were secretly arrested and detained without charges (Coke, 2003, p.95; (Martin, 2003, p. 75). The U.S. National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) “call-in” program required male visitors from 24 Arab and Muslim countries and North Korea to register with INS offices. Even though no “terrorists” were found, over 13,000 of the 80,000 men who registered were threatened with deportation, and many were “detained in harsh conditions” (Zogby, 2005, p. 4). Overwhelmingly, the airline “no fly” lists are composed of Muslims.
Partially taken from the article ISLAMOPHOBIA AND THE ‘‘WAR ON TERROR’’: THE CONTINUING PRETEXT FOR U.S. IMPERIAL CONQUEST by Diana Ralph, Ph.D.
Obama's Choice
In 1821, John Quincy Adams warned:
"…[America] goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.... She might become the dictatress of the world…"Everything that Adams warned of has come to pass. The "dictatress of the world" has governed not with the force of argument, but with the argument of force. That means, however, that once the world stops fearing America, and once American power is shown not to be absolute, the Empire won't have a leg to stand on. Far from being an example to the world, the U.S. is now a shining beacon of warning: this is what happens when good ideas go terribly wrong.
There is a strong pragmatic argument that perpetuating an Empire of bases and satrapies around the world is choking the life out of the American economy. But the Empire does a lot more. Every act of violence abroad, every resort to tyranny and abuse in the name of expediency and national interest translates into a blow against liberty at home, to the point where this country has become something its founders would have only envisioned in their worst nightmares.It is becoming increasingly obvious that to save America, the American Empire will have to go. Otherwise, neither has much of a future. Understanding this will be the biggest challenge facing President Obama – that, and the realization that if he is to help save America, he will have to give up being Emperor. If he is capable of doing this, he may yet be deserving of the masses' adulation and near-religious belief.
Text partially taken from Obama's Choice True Change Means Abolishing Empire.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Tony Blair To The Hague For Trial - Do You Agree?
Tony Blair is out of office and Britain is a proud signatory nation to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
Blair invaded Iraq without authorization from the United Nations Security Council and he lied to Britain about Iraq's non existent threat to Britain and Iraq's non existent weapons of mass destruction.
As a consequence, Blair can be charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of all British soldiers who got killed in his war against Iraq on false pretenses, his BIG LIES.
Blair took Britain into an illegal war of aggression, the supreme crime against humanity as defined at the Nuremberg trials, United States Chief Prosecutor Robert Jackson presiding.
Blair can be charged with one or more of four charges: conspiracy to commit crimes alleged in other counts; crimes against peace; war crimes; or crimes against humanity.
He should be sent to the Hague for trial.
Reported here.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
"Don't support the British Empire!"
November 3, 2008 (LPAC)--Under this title the leading Saudi international daily Asharq Al-Awsat posted a comment by Hussein Askary on November 3 under the report of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE to force them to back the "Britain Woods" dictatorship of the IMF.
In the 170-word-limited space for commentaries on the report, which was the main story in Asharq Al-Awsat, Askary wrote: "Don't support the British Empire! Anyone who harbors the illusion that America is the sole controller of the world and that it is the power which dictates to the Arab states their policies, should carefully study what Brown is doing. He is trying to save the international financial system which is controlled by the hedge funds based in the British islands, such as the Cayman Islands, through the creation of a world government under the umbrella of the IMF and run by Britain. This would supposedly be financed by the money from the Arabs which is not enough, and will never be enough to save the global financial system which was declared dead by Lyndon LaRouche a year ago. The British Empire is not a nation. It is not England. It is a group of financial and economic interests that need nations and armies to impose their control over all nations."
The publishing of this comment, although carefully reviewed, because it took hours to be posted, does not imply that the Saudis are saying "No" to the demands by Brown to pump money into the IMF. The Saudis have not said anything, but Brown, who was in Qatar on Sunday Nov. 2, after meeting the Saudi officials on Saturday, said that he was confident the Saudis will help the IMF.
To make sure that the Arabs get the point, Brown took with him the CEOs of BAE, Rolls Royce, and British Petroleum of the Al-Yamamah affair fame, among others . The BAE-Prince Bandar Al-Yamamah operations to support and manipulate international terrorism is also capable of reaching inside the palaces and bedrooms of the kings and Sheikhs of the region. So far, one Saudi king has been murdered in his own palace. A few weeks ago, the successors of the former King Faisal bin Abdul-Aziz inaugurated a museum celebrating his life on the occasion of his assassination at the hands of a young member of the royal family in 1975 following the oil crisis of 1973. The assassin was studying in the U.S., and reportedly part of the MK-Ultra project.
One interesting irony is that Brown arrived to the region on November 2, the 91st anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, part of the Sykes-Picot plan, which promised the Jews of Europe a homeland in Palestine (see letter above, inked by James Balfour to Lord Rothchild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation, a private Zionist organization ). Since then, Southwest Asia has been a bloody cockpit of British geopolitics and destabilization, and the Jews of Israel have not enjoyed peace in the new homeland, exactly due to British policies.
Text taken from here.
Monday, November 3, 2008
How Israel helps eavesdrop on US citizens
by Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 3 November 2008
After the 11 September 2001 attacks, the United States government launched a massive program to spy on millions of its own citizens. Through the top secret National Security Agency (NSA), it has pursued "access to billions of private hard-line, cell, and wireless telephone conversations; text, e-mail and instant Internet messages; Web-page histories, faxes, and computer hard drives." In his new book, The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America author James Bamford casts light on this effort, including a detailed account of how spying on American citizens has been outsourced to several companies closely linked to Israel's intelligence services.
It is well-known that the two largest American telecom companies AT&T and Verizon collaborated with the US government to allow illegal eavesdropping on their customers. The known uses to which information obtained this way has been put include building the government's massive secret "watch lists," and "no-fly lists" and even, Bamford suggests, to deny Small Business Administration loans to citizens or reject their children's applications to military colleges.
What is less well-known is that AT&T and Verizon handed "the bugging of their entire networks -- carrying billions of American communications every day" to two companies founded in Israel. Verint and Narus, as they are called, are "superintrusive -- conducting mass surveillance on both international and domestic communications 24/7," and sifting traffic at "key Internet gateways" around the US.
Virtually all US voice and data communications and much from the rest of the world can be remotely accessed by these companies in Israel, which Bamford describes as "the eavesdropping capital of the world." Although there is no way to prove cooperation, Bamford writes that "the greatest potential beneficiaries of this marriage between the Israeli eavesdroppers and America's increasingly centralized telecom grid are Israel's intelligence agencies."
Israel's spy agencies have long had a revolving-door relationship with Verint and Narus and other Israeli military-security firms. The relationship is particularly close between the firms and Israel's own version of the NSA, called "Unit 8200." After the 11 September attacks, Israeli companies seeking a share of massively expanded US intelligence budgets formed similarly incestuous relationships with some in the American intelligence establishment: Ken Minihan, a former director of the NSA, served on Verint's "security committee" and the former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) official responsible for liaison with the telecom industry became head of the Verint unit that sold eavesdropping equipment to the FBI and NSA.
Bamford writes that "concern over the cozy relationship between the [FBI] and Verint greatly increased following disclosure of the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping operations. At the same time that the tappers and the agents have grown uncomfortably close, the previous checks and balances, such as the need for a FISA warrant, have been eliminated."
FISA -- the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 -- required the government to seek court warrants for wiretaps where at least one target was in the US. In 2005, it was revealed that the Bush administration had been flagrantly violating this law. Last July, Congress passed a bill legalizing this activity and giving retroactive immunity to the telecom companies that had assisted.
Read more here.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Revisited : A Bluff on Iraq?
A reprint edition of July 31, 2002 from here.
There is not any doubt that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz intend to go to war against Baghdad, and the signs I've seen are that they have convinced President George W. Bush to do it. Apparently the top officers in the US armed forces are unanimous in not wanting this war, but then Colin Powell initially opposed the first Gulf War, as well. Who wants to be dragged into an uncertain operation that might make you look bad? Nevertheless, if Bush orders the war, it will happen.
The varying Pentagon war plans being leaked are not a sign of unseriousness. They are a sign that different factions within the Pentagon want to do the war in different ways, and they are jockeying for position by releasing their opponents' plans with a negative spin on them. War departments always have varying scenarios for fighting a war, and often only in the actual event are the hard choices made. Those with good memories may remember that the geniuses over at The New Republic were insisting on putting 100,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan last October, and apparently there were some in the Pentagon who agreed that might be necessary (what a recipe for disaster) before the Taliban collapsed so startlingly.
The Senate and the House don't appear to be opposed to the project. And, the drumbeat of the intellectually dishonest members of the war party, such as former CIA director James Woolsey, intimating that perhaps maybe somewhere there is not impossibly a possibility that it is not unthinkable that there is an Iraq-al-Qaida connection appears to be being bought by the naive. (Of course, there is no such evidence).
The lack of enthusiasm for such a war on the part of the militarily important Powers in continental Europe, in Russia, and in the Arab World, does not mean it cannot be done, I've decided. It simply means that the U.S. will be acting almost unilaterally. Since it will need Saudi or Jordanian air space, which won't be on offer, it is entirely possible that the US will simply use it anyway, on the theory that there is nothing that the Saudis or Jordanians can do about it.
While it seems likely that Bush will go to war, the outcome of such an action is very much in doubt and could haunt him (and us) in the future. The negative possibilities include:
- Iraq could be destabilized, with ethnic forces becoming mobilized and squabbling over resources, as happened in Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion.
- Iraq could be reconstituted as an unpopular American-backed dictatorship, as happened in Iran in the 1950s. So far, close US allies in the War on Terror in the Middle East include Egypt, which is a military dictatorship that just jailed Saad Eddin Ibrahim for human rights work; Pakistan, a military dictatorship whose leader is attempting to manipulate the fall elections to keep himself in power; Saudi Arabia (nuff said); and other countries with extremely bad human rights records or which are involved in imperial occupations. A Pinochet in Iraq would potentially harm the US diplomatically for decades to come.
- The loss of civilian life will be significant, further turning much of the world against the United States and losing any sympathy generated by September 11.
- Recruitment of terrorists to strike the U.S. in the Muslim world may well be easier in the aftermath of a bloodbath in Iraq.
- The unilateral nature of the action may well provoke Europe, Russia, China and India to begin trying to find ways to unite against the U.S. on such issues in the future, so as to offset its massive military superiority by isolating it on the Security Council and in other international venues. Europe's relative economic clout could grow if war uncertainties keep the US economy weak.
- The Bush First Strike doctrine may well be emulated by other nations who fear their neighbors, producing copy cat wars that destabilize entire regions. It should be remembered that the German army in 1914 had a first strike doctrine, which dragged Europe into an unnecessary and highly destructive maelstrom.
- There may be no dividend to an Iraq war in the form of lower petroleum prices in the long run. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait both have significant excess capacity, and OPEC always has an incentive to pump less oil for higher prices, as they have done in the past. Even if Iraq could pump 5 million barrels a day instead of 2, OPEC can just reduce its output by 3 mn. barrels a day and put the price back up. They would have every incentive to do so since they could get about the same amount of income from less oil, benefiting them over time.
Why Condemning Israel and the Zionist Lobby is So Important
First some misguided beliefs:
- that the ZPC is just another lobby;
- that other nations and their leaders commit equally violent crimes and abuses;
- that criticizing Israel is anti-Semitic;
- that Israel is a democracy and the only one in the region;
- the uniqueness of Jewish suffering and the Holocaust as exclusively affecting Jews; and
- that Israel/Palestine discussion should be balanced - in complete denial of a powerful oppressive state v. a near-defenseless and persecuted people - on their own and with virtually no outside help.
- the Israeli Lobby is far and away the most powerful in America;
- criticizing Israel more than other abusive states is important because of its inordinate ability to influence US policy;
- accusation of anti-Semitism is a canard, a non-starter, a way to shift attention from real issues;
- Israel defiles democracy by granting it only to Jews and not even all of them; it disdains the less privileged much the way they're treated in America;
- exploiting the Holocaust as an exclusive Jewish issue defiles the outrage of so many others, including much greater ones; and
- the imbalance between pro-Israeli representation v. hostile or indifferent views about Arabs is pronounced.
Consider also some "big questions facing Americans as a result of the power of Israel in the United States:"
- the ZPC wants was; "has played a major role" in influencing them in the past eight years; and is very capable of pushing America into new conflicts regardless of which party in Washington is dominant;
- the big issue is "World Peace or War" and the horror of the latter;
- Israel and its Lobby harm US democracy by stifling "the right to debate, to elect (and) legislate free from coercion;" also to select political candidates strongly opposed to Israeli policies and against providing financial and military support;
- Israeli interests harm our own; further, "never in the history of the US republic or empire has a powerful but tiny minority been able to wield so much influence" over our foreign policy for the benefit of another nation;
- by doing it, the ramifications are staggering: permanent wars; massive deaths; unimaginable human misery and destruction; outrageous and ill-directed amounts of spending; a staggering amount of unrepayable debt; the alienation of the entire Muslim world; growing world indignation overall; and the demise of democracy in America - partly because of sacrificing homeland interests to serve those of a tiny foreign power.
Watch the video Rabbi Against Israel (Zionism)
Saturday, November 1, 2008
VIDEO: FOX NEWS: " We Need Another 9/11"
An Interview with Columnist Stu Bykofsky
Columnist Stu Bykofsky: We need another 9/11
Broadcast on Fox News (August 2007), Columnist Stu Bykofsky claims that America needs a new 9/11 to unite the American people, because they have "forgotten" who the enemy is. He also claims that "there will be another 9/11", and Fox News Anchorman concurs:
"Does this columnist have a valid point?"
"its going to take a lot of dead people to wake people up."
"Another attack on America is inevitable"
Courtesy from investigate911.se.
