U.S. "Floating Prisons"

US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships

The Guardian, Monday June 2 2008

An amphibious assault vehicle leaves the USS Peleliu, which was used to detain prisoners, according to the human rights group.

An amphibious assault vehicle leaves the USS Peleliu, which was used to detain prisoners, according to the human rights group Reprieve. Photograph: Zack Baddor/AP

The United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.

Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.

Information about the operation of prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners.

The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped.

It is the use of ships to detain prisoners, however, that is raising fresh concern and demands for inquiries in Britain and the US.

According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as "floating prisons" since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed.

Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the UK and the Americans.

Read further here. Also here.

Going To War with Iraq Was Wrong, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd Admits

Published on Monday, June 2, 2008 by Telegraph/UK

In an admission that will make uncomfortable reading in London and Washington, the Labour leader dismissed one-by-one the reasons used by his predecessor, John Howard, to join the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq five years ago.

“Have further terrorist attacks been prevented? No, they have not been, as the victims of the Madrid train bombing will attest,” Mr Rudd told parliament.

“Has any evidence of a link between weapons of mass destruction and the former Iraqi regime and terrorists been found? No.

“Have the actions of rogue states like Iran been moderated? No … Iran’s nuclear ambitions remain a fundamental challenge.

“After five years, has the humanitarian crisis in Iraq been removed? No it has not.”

Mr Rudd, whose campaign for election last November included a pledge to withdraw Australian combat forces from Iraq, said pre-war intelligence had been “abused” by the Howard government.

He said there had been a “failure to disclose to the Australian people the qualified nature of the intelligence - for example, the pre-war warning that an attack on Iraq would increase the terrorist threat, not decrease it”.

Mr Rudd, a former diplomat, also dismissed his predecessor’s argument that Australia had been obliged to send troops to Iraq because of its long-standing alliance with the United States.

He said while he valued the alliance highly, it did not mean that Canberra should automatically accede to US requests for military support.

His comments came a day after Australia’s 550-strong combat force began leaving its base at Tallil, 185 miles south of Baghdad.

Mr Howard, who has kept a low profile since being ousted from office six months ago, said he was still convinced that being part of the 2003 invasion of Iraq was justified.

“I firmly believe it was the right thing to have done,” he said, while acknowledging that it was the hardest decision he made as prime minister and that the cost of the war had been “very, very heavy and much greater than anybody would have liked”.

His decision to send troops was deeply influenced by the fact that he was in the US on an official visit on September 11, 2001, when terrorists struck New York and Washington.

Mr Howard was one of four leaders who supported the US-led coalition but who are all now out of office: Tony Blair, Jose Maria Aznar of Spain and Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski.

One of Mr Howard’s former senior officials said the government had been fully briefed on the fact that invading Iraq would damage US prestige, foster anti-Western sentiment, require a massive troop presence and destabilise the wider Middle East.

“All that was predictable and I don’t think the benefits of the West going in were worth the cost,” the official, who declined to be named, told the Sydney Morning Herald.

“That was my judgment at the time and that hasn’t changed.”

Australia will still have about 800 military personnel in and around Iraq, including a 110-strong diplomatic security detachment in Baghdad, sailors on board warships in the Persian Gulf and Royal Australian Air Force crew.

The White House, however on Monday rejected Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's charges of "abuse" of pre-war intelligence on Iraq, saying "the entire world" agreed on the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

"We acted on the intelligence that we had, and that the entire world had," spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters after Rudd alleged "abuse of intelligence information" on the regime in Baghdad.

"No-one else in the world, no other government, had different information and so we acted based on what was the threat that was presented to us. When the intelligence community presents you with their concerns, you'd better take them seriously," said Perino.

The real question is, if all agreed, why then was President George W. Bush unable to secure the approval of the U.N. Security Council, without which an armed attack on another country is illegal under international and U.S. law?

Among “coalition of the willing” leaders not named Bush, only the faith-based former British Prime Minister Tony Blair hangs on pathetically to the notion that “everyone” believed Saddam Hussein had WMD.

This is particularly odd since Blair acknowledges the authenticity of the (in)famous Downing Street Memos. Perhaps his conversion to Catholicism will prompt him to confess that he lied – a reality long beyond dispute.

Advocating the Destruction Of Palestine - An Advertisement of Haaretz,com

"Our land is not Arab land": An advertisement on the front page of Haaretz.com leads to a website advocating genocide and terrorism."

Haaretz.com, the website of the Israeli newspaper often cited as an example of Israel's liberal, critical media carries paid advertisements from a website openly advocating the total destruction of the Palestinian people, the murder of large numbers of Muslim civilians, the assassination of the family members of Arab rulers, and the use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons against dozens of countries.

The website, Samson Blinded, claims that Google banned its advertisements from its adwords program. If that is true, it would be consistent with Google's policy that prohibits advertising promoting violence or advocating against any group based on race, ethnic or national origin or religion. Yet the Samson Blinded advertisements appear prominently on the main page and article pages of Haaretz's website. For example the ad appeared on the front page of Haaretz.com on 1 June, and also prominently on an article page headlined "Who didn't attend New York's pro-Israel march? Israelis" on the same date.

Samson Blinded, whose publishers keep their identities secret, calls on Israel to eliminate all Palestinians from the territory it controls and to annihilate their culture. The site demands that Israel "destroy the Palestinian settlements [sic] and exile them far away -- not to refugee camps in neighboring Arab countries, or the conflict would be perpetuated." It argues that "Forced cultural assimilation of Palestinians should accompany deportation," adding that "With demise of Palestinians, Arab Israeli conflict would lose its impetus [sic]."

The hate site advertised on Haaretz incites religious war, exploitation of children, and terrorism. It states for example that "Slavery is not an option in the modern world, but Israel adopting children from the poorest countries, indoctrinating them with anti-Islamism, and training them for low-rank military service in Israel Defense Forces may be feasible." It also proposes that "Israel could invite Western Christian radicals to police the Palestinian territories" as "they would be happy to get a training ground in Israel for their militia."

The site adds that "To succeed, Israeli violence against Arabs should be immediately overwhelming. Israel should show itself a bloodthirsty monster to scare the Arabs into submission." Among the violence advocated by the site is the unprovoked wholesale murder of relatives of the rulers of Arab countries, civilians, and prisoners of war.

The site even calls for nuclear strikes against neighboring countries: "Israel should legislate that a nuclear attack against her from whatever source means immediate, simultaneous nuclear destruction by Israel Defense Forces of everything Muslim -- capitals, temples, population centers -- by the hundred or so nuclear weapons in Israel's possession. Islamic terrorists who plan to use nuclear weapon against Israel must understand that the Jewish state will be commemorated with a really big bang."

The website's call for the destruction of the Palestinians appears to violate the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The convention defines as genocide acts including killing, expulsion and causing bodily and mental suffering "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."

The Convention, adopted in the wake of the Nazi holocaust, also defines as crimes "Direct and public incitement to commit genocide" and "Complicity in genocide." The treaty, ratified by over 130 countries including Israel and the US, calls for the prosecution and punishment of these acts whether the individuals committing them "are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals."

Contacted by EI, Osnat Kohali, the manager of Haaretz.com stated that the newspaper and its website have a clear policy of not allowing any advertisements that include "incitement against any side." In reaction to some of the statements on the Samson Blinded site quoted in this article, Kohali noted that the offensive statements were on the advertised website itself rather than in the advertisements that appeared on Haaretz. Kohali added, "We don't go through each and every website and make a complete review about what it says." However she undertook to review the Samson Blinded advertisements noting that "mistakes can be made."

But the Samson Blinded ads are not the only case of Haaretz apparently profiting from extremism; its website has often carried advertisements for an organization called "The Jerusalem Summit" which also advocates the removal of the Palestinians from their homeland and holds that "the de-legitimization of the Palestinian narrative becomes a vital prerequisite to any comprehensive resolution of the Palestinian issue."

This kind of militant Jewish extremism has been making steady inroads into Israel's political mainstream, as numerous parties openly advocate the "transfer" (expulsion) of Palestinians and Israeli leaders have done little to marginalize and discourage it. What is surprising is that the widely respected Haaretz, which publishes jointly in Israel with The International Herald Tribune, would profit from hate groups and their possibly criminal incitement.

In 2006, the German newspaper publisher M. DuMont Schauberg bought a 25 percent stake in Haaretz, a move German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised as an instance of German reconciliation with Israel. In Germany, as in many other European countries, incitement to racial hatred is illegal.

The Hypocrisy of Zionist

The Zionists are grabbing more land. Read further the news below.

Israel to build hundreds of homes in East Jerusalem
CNN - June 1st, 2008

Israel plans more settler homes
BBC News, Jerusalem - June 1st, 2008

Personally, I doubt whether there will ever be a peaceful solution to the situation in Palestine. The land-grubbing Zionists will continue to get away with their crimes until someone makes them stop. All of their whining about how the Palestinians refuse to recognize the State of Israel, but all the while they refuse to recognize a Palestinian state and keep on stealing more land.

The amount of lying and misinformation that has been spread about such things as the Oslo Accords is mind-boggling. The Israelis launched an illegal invasion of Lebanon in 2006, in which they intentionally targeted civilian areas and infrastructure, which they justified because two Israeli soldiers were "kidnapped" (which is what the spineless media calls it when an Israeli soldier gets captured). This propaganda trick gained them sympathy in some parts of the world, since people were either seemingly unaware or totally apathetic about the fact that Israel had (and still has) hundreds, if not thousands, of Palestinians that it has "kidnapped" and held in prison without trial for years. The only good sign is that the brazen hypocrisy of it all is becoming obvious to a lot more people.

Bush - Guilty of Murder?

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