One Week in July: Israel’s Human Rights Violations

Dissident Voice

By Sonja Karkar / July 31st, 2007

One could be excused for thinking that Israel’s human rights violations against the Palestinians stopped since the Palestinian factions began fighting each other. Just about every report and article written in the Western media these past weeks have focused on the rift between Fatah and Hamas and US overtures to broker a peace deal that may finally allow the Palestinians a state of sorts. Any mention of Israel is in the light of urbane diplomatic discussions between it and the other main players minus, of course, Hamas with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert showing a most remarkable willingness to agree to a peace settlement that would see the Palestinians getting back around 90 per cent of the West Bank. If only there was reason to believe that the leopard has changed its spots.

The truth of the matter is that nothing has changed on the ground for the Palestinians. Israel is rolling into the occupied Palestinian territories with its tanks and armoured vehicles and using its war planes to fire rockets on an already severely beleaguered people in Gaza. Only in this past week, there were at least twenty-nine such military incursions that ended up with four Palestinian resistance fighters being executed by Israeli soldiers while a fifth Palestinian ended up dying from tank shell wounds. Palestinian civilians always bear the brunt of such incursions and eleven people were seriously wounded including five children and an elderly woman. The daily arrest of civilians has been routine for decades, but certainly the seventy-two civilians arrested this week make a mockery of the 250 prisoners just released as Israel’s goodwill gesture to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

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Guillotining Gaza

Information Clearing House, July 30, 2007

By Noam Chomsky

THE death of a nation is a rare and somber event. But the vision of a unified, independent Palestine threatens to be another casualty of a Hamas-Fatah civil war, stoked by Israel and its enabling ally the United States.

Last month’s chaos may mark the beginning of the end of the Palestinian Authority. That might not be an altogether unfortunate development for Palestinians, given US-Israeli programmes of rendering it nothing more than a quisling regime to oversee these allies’ utter rejection of an independent state.

The events in Gaza took place in a developing context. In January 2006, Palestinians voted in a carefully monitored election, pronounced to be free and fair by international observers, despite US-Israeli efforts to swing the election towards their favourite, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party. But Hamas won a surprising victory.

The punishment of Palestinians for the crime of voting the wrong way was severe. With US backing, Israel stepped up its violence in Gaza, withheld funds it was legally obligated to transmit to the Palestinian Authority, tightened its siege and even cut off the flow of water to the arid Gaza Strip.

The United States and Israel made sure that Hamas would not have a chance to govern. They rejected Hamas’s call for a long-term cease-fire to allow for negotiations on a two-state settlement, along the lines of an international consensus that Israel and United States have opposed, in virtual isolation, for more than 30 years, with rare and temporary departures.

Meanwhile, Israel stepped up its programmes of annexation, dismemberment and imprisonment of the shrinking Palestinian cantons in the West Bank, always with US backing despite occasional minor complaints, accompanied by the wink of an eye and munificent funding.

Powers-that-be have a standard operating procedure for overthrowing an unwanted government: Arm the military to prepare for a coup. Israel and its US ally helped arm and train Fatah to win by force what it lost at the ballot box. The United States also encouraged Abbas to amass power in his own hands, appropriate behaviour in the eyes of Bush administration advocates of presidential dictatorship.

The strategy backfired. Despite the military aid, Fatah forces in Gaza were defeated last month in a vicious conflict, which many close observers describe as a pre-emptive strike targeting primarily the security forces of the brutal Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan. Israel and the United States quickly moved to turn the outcome to their benefit. They now have a pretext for tightening the stranglehold on the people of Gaza.

‘To persist with such an approach under present circumstances is indeed genocidal, and risks destroying an entire Palestinian community that is an integral part of an ethnic whole,’ writes international law scholar Richard Falk.

This worst-case scenario may unfold unless Hamas meets the three conditions imposed by the ‘international community’ — a technical term referring to the US government and whoever goes along with it. For Palestinians to be permitted to peek out of the walls of their Gaza dungeon, Hamas must recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept past agreements, in particular, the Road Map of the Quartet (the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations).

The hypocrisy is stunning. Obviously, the United States and Israel do not recognise Palestine or renounce violence. Nor do they accept past agreements. While Israel formally accepted the Road Map, it attached 14 reservations that eviscerate it. To take just the first, Israel demanded that for the process to commence and continue, the Palestinians must ensure full quiet, education for peace, cessation of incitement, dismantling of Hamas and other organisations, and other conditions; and even if they were to satisfy this virtually impossible demand, the Israeli cabinet proclaimed that ‘the Roadmap will not state that Israel must cease violence and incitement against the Palestinians.’

Israel’s rejection of the Road Map, with US support, is unacceptable to the Western self-image, so it has been suppressed. The facts finally broke into the mainstream with Jimmy Carter’s book, ‘Palestine: Peace not Apartheid,’ which elicited a torrent of abuse and desperate efforts to discredit it.

While now in a position to crush Gaza, Israel can also proceed, with US backing, to implement its plans in the West Bank, expecting to have the tacit cooperation of Fatah leaders who will be rewarded for their capitulation. Among other steps, Israel began to release the funds — estimated at $600 million — that it had illegally frozen in reaction to the January 2006 election.

Ex-prime minister Tony Blair is now to ride to the rescue. To Lebanese political analyst Rami Khouri, ‘appointing Tony Blair as special envoy for Arab-Israeli peace is something like appointing the Emperor Nero to be the chief fireman of Rome.’ Blair is the Quartet’s envoy only in name. The Bush administration made it clear at once that he is Washington’s envoy, with a very limited mandate. Secretary of State Rice (and President Bush) retain unilateral control over the important issues, while Blair would be permitted to deal only with problems of institution-building.

As for the short-term future, the best case would be a two-state settlement, per the international consensus. That is still by no means impossible. It is supported by virtually the entire world, including the majority of the US population. It has come rather close, once, during the last month of Bill Clinton’s presidency — the sole meaningful US departure from extreme rejectionism during the past 30 years. In January 2001, the United States lent its support to the negotiations in Taba, Egypt, that nearly achieved such a settlement before they were called off by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

In their final Press conference, the Taba negotiators expressed hope that if they had been permitted to continue their joint work, a settlement could have been reached. The years since have seen many horrors, but the possibility remains. As for the likeliest scenario, it looks unpleasantly close to the worst case, but human affairs are not predictable: Too much depends on will and choice.

Noam Chomsky is a professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author, most recently, of Hegemony or Survival Americas Quest for Global Dominance.

Washington's war spreads to Pakistan

Workers World

By Deirdre Griswold

Published Jul 26, 2007

Pressures from the Bush administration on the regime of Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan are pushing that country into an acute social crisis.

Pakistan-USA Freedom Forum meeting in Brooklyn, N.Y., calls for end to Musharraf dictatorship. WW photo: Deirdre Griswold

Frustrated in their efforts to conquer Iraq or even poverty-stricken Afghanistan, yet reluctant to deploy their own frazzled troops in even more combat zones, the U.S. imperialist leaders have been leaning heavily on Musharraf to attack Afghan insurgents and any Pakistanis in the border region who might be sympathetic to them.

A Reuters story filed from Miranshah, Pakistan, on July 25 reported that “Several thousand villagers fled a Pakistani tribal region on Wednesday, where an army offensive was expected any day following pressure on Pakistan from the United States to act against al Qaeda cells.”

With antiwar sentiment in the U.S. shaking up the political scene and George W. Bush’s popularity still in the cellar, the U.S. president is desperately playing the Qaeda card in all his public pronouncements, using the “fear factor” generated by 9/11 to justify his continued colonial occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

It remains a fact, however, that the aggressive thrust of the U.S. military into this oil- and gas-rich area of the world has outraged the peoples who live there and is what has inspired many to fight against the foreign invaders. Those fitting this description are not al Qaeda but the U.S. and its partner Britain, the former colonial master in much of the Middle East and South Asia.

In Pakistan, the opposition to Musharraf comes not only from militant Islamic groups—like the Lal Masjid mosque in Islamabad that was brutally attacked by the Pakistan Army on July 10 on orders from Washington, causing hundreds of casualties—but from secular, democratic forces and also from the Marxist left, which in the past was often the main target of government oppression.

Musharraf came to power in 1999 through a military coup but then managed to get himself named president. This year, according to Pakistan’s constitution, he must be reelected or stand down. He precipitated a constitutional crisis when, in March, he dismissed Chief Justice Muhammad Chaudhry. Huge demonstrations supporting Chaudhry erupted all over the country.

On July 20 the Pakistan Supreme Court reinstated the chief justice, ruling that Musharraf’s dismissal of Chaudhry had been illegal. Pakistanis at home and in the diaspora joyfully celebrated this rebuke to the regime.

However, Musharraf has the army and the backing of Washington. He has 80,000 troops in the northwest areas of Pakistan, where opposition to his rule has been most militant. And, should he falter in carrying out Washington’s wishes, the U.S. has already threatened to bomb Pakistan “back to the Stone Age,” according to Musharraf himself in an interview with “60 Minutes” last Sept. 24.

One way or the other, the war for empire begun in Iraq is surely coming to Pakistan. This rapidly deteriorating situation is just another reason why all who struggle for peace and justice should be preparing now to make the Sept. 22-29 anti-war actions in Washington a powerful effort to pull back the imperialists as they throw more troops and money into a war for global domination that even Bush admits is “endless.”

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All Hail the King: President George W. Bush

About.com

God's Appointed Leader for America, Speaks and Acts for God

Image © Austin Cline, Licensed to About; Original Poster:

All Hail the King: President George W. Bush, God's Appointed Leader for America, Speaks and Acts for God

America is supposed to be a democratic nation founded by "we the people" and based upon the will of the people. This conception of government contrasted sharply with European traditions that rulers were essentially chosen by God and thus the decisions of rulers were effectively divine mandates. Unfortunately, more than 200 years of democratic tradition have failed to extinguish the religious impulse to attribute divine agency to democratically elected leaders. There are many who believe God is responsible for George W. Bush being president -- including, it seems, George W. Bush himself.

There are reports of President Bush claiming that he was chosen by God to be president during this time in history. There are also reports of Bush claiming that he speaks to God, with God giving him instructions on foreign policy -- including the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. If Bush were alone in this it might simply be dismissed as egotistical delusions, but many of Bush's Christian supporters completely agree. They believe that Bush was placed in office by God, that Bush's authority is derived from this divine mandate, and that Bush's policies are all the Will of God.

If people believe their leader is placed in charge by gods, they are less likely to question, challenge, or oppose his decisions. This is what makes such beliefs popular with authoritarian, totalitarian, theocratic, and fascist rulers; it's also what makes such beliefs inimical to democratic systems. If God, not the people, is the sovereign power responsible for Bush being president, then it means Bush is ultimately responsible to God rather than to the people. Democracy requires the principle that citizens, not gods, choose their leaders and that the government is founded on human reason rather than divine agency.

This is fertile ground for Christian Nationalism and Christian Fascism because it allows for the excision of democracy, democratic elections, the separation of powers, constitutionally protected rights, and everything else which makes America a secular and free nation. People who say that Bush was placed in office by God are denying that Bush's authority and office derive from the will of the people. People who say that Bush is doing the Will of God are denying that the American people have any right to challenge or stop Bush. All of this is unequivocally anti-democratic.

This image is based on a World War II recruitment poster for America's Army Air Corps.

Iraq: One in seven joins human tide spilling into neighbouring countries

The Independent, July 30, 2007

Patrick Cockburn in Sulaymaniyah

Published: 30 July 2007

Two thousand Iraqis are fleeing their homes every day. It is the greatest mass exodus of people ever in the Middle East and dwarfs anything seen in Europe since the Second World War. Four million people, one in seven Iraqis, have run away, because if they do not they will be killed. Two million have left Iraq, mainly for Syria and Jordan, and the same number have fled within the country.

Yet, while the US and Britain express sympathy for the plight of refugees in Africa, they are ignoring - or playing down- a far greater tragedy which is largely of their own making.

The US and Britain may not want to dwell on the disasters that have befallen Iraq during their occupation but the shanty towns crammed with refugees springing up in Iraq and neighbouring countries are becoming impossible to ignore.

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Bush Administration Utterly Callous Toward Iraqi Refugees

The Progressive

Published on Saturday, July 28, 2007

By Amitabh Pal

New definition of chutzpah: You send a country to hell, and then you refuse to assist the millions of people you have caused to suffer.

The Bush Administration is showing the utmost callousness toward the more than two million Iraqis rendered nationless due to its misadventure. A recent conference in Amman, Jordan, to deal with the situation only highlights the crisis. An estimated 1.5 million Iraqi refugees live in Syria, and 750,000 in Jordan. (An additional two million are internal refugees-out of a population of twenty-eight million-making this a catastrophe of truly staggering proportions.)

Iraq’s neighbors, economically ill-equipped to cope with the massive population flows, are having to bear the brunt. The fact that Syria is hosting, by far, the most refugees is made even more interesting by the fact that it is on the official enemies list and has been repeatedly accused by the Bush Administration of having a negative role to play in the war. Now, the refugees have often not been treated well in these countries, but at least they have managed to find asylum there.

In contrast, what has been the sum total of Bush Administration’s efforts to alleviate the distress it has helped create? Almost zero. Since the start of the war, in four long years, the United States has allowed in just 701 refugees. The grand number of 202 Iraqi refugees were admitted to the United States in 2006, while in the first half of this year, the State Department let in sixty-eight. You read those figures right. A single town (Sodertalje: population 60,000) in Sweden (a country not exactly responsible for creating the crisis) took in last year twice as many Iraqi refugees as did the whole of the United States (population 300 million). The situation would be laughable if the effects of the Bush Administration’s pitilessness weren’t so heartrending.

In fact, the Bush Administration has limited itself almost completely to aiding the entry into the United States of Iraqis working directly with the U.S. forces in that country. This lame endeavor has also been embroiled in snafus and security checks, with even (hold your hats!) Administration officials admitting “that there remained a gap between words and action on the issue,” The New York Times states.

The consequences of inaction are grave, as a recent Amnesty International report notes.

“This is threatening to create an humanitarian crisis that could engulf the region unless concerted international action is taken now,” says Malcolm Smart, director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Program.

The numbers are so staggering that the individual stories get lost in the thicket. Nir Rosen (a contributor, I must add, to The Progressive) has a superb recent cover feature in The New York Times Magazine that lays bare many of these tales. He encounters fighters who have ironically been forced out of their country due to the violence. He tells of an Iraqi doctor named Lujai, who fled to Syria along with her family after Shiite militias killed her husband. He encounters in Cairo Muhammad Abu Rawan, who has found refuge there from the endless civil strife in Iraq. And he comes across hundreds of Iraqi Palestinians who are stranded in tents in no man’s land on the Iraqi-Syrian border.

Juxtaposed with these accounts are the heartless words of John Bolton, former ambassador to the United Nations, who is unwilling to admit even the tiniest iota of U.S. responsibility for the situation.

“Our obligation,” he tells Rosen from his air-conditioned office at the American Enterprise Institute, “was to give them new institutions and provide security. We have fulfilled that obligation. I don’t think we have an obligation to compensate for the hardships of war.”

Bolton doesn’t think that the Bush Administration should even give aid to the refugees. “Helping [them] flies in the face of received logic,” says one of the architects of the Iraq War. “You don’t want to encourage the refugees to stay. You want them to go home.”

His ex-colleagues still in the current Administration share his notions, even if they can’t afford to be as blunt as he is. “The problem is one caused by the repressive regime” of Saddam Hussein, Ellen Sauerbrey, assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, informs Rosen.

The complete lack of a moral center in this crowd is incredible.

Abbas and West Bank government drop right of resistance from platform

Global Research, July 29, 2007

Palestinian Information Center - 2007-07-28

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The prime minister of the unconstitutional PA government appointed by PA chief Mahmoud Abbas and headed by Salam Fayyad has dropped the right of the Palestinian people to resist the Israeli occupation out of its political platform. In spite of the continued IOF troops’ killing, wounding, and arresting of Palestinian citizens in Gaza Strip and the West Bank, member of that illegitimate government Ashraf Al-Ajrami has affirmed that the armed resistance option was deleted from Fayyad's government’s program. "Program of the [unconstitutional] government was very clear in ending the armed resistance because it is not related to establishing the Palestinian statehood", Ajrami alleged. Abbas had earlier issued a number of edicts outlawing the Palestinian resistance and ordering the dissolution of all armed wings of the Palestinian resistance factions, which the armed wings rejected, and drew wide popular condemnation in the Palestinian street. But Fayyad found a supporter for his “harmful” step in the person of Nemr Hammad, Abbas’s political advisor, who blessed the step, alleging, “The Palestinian resistance symbolizes an armed mess, and its is about time to stop that mess”. Fayyad's step came at a time the IOF troops were killing and wounding tens of Palestinian citizens on daily basis and refusing to end its occupation of the Palestinian land. Immediately after it was promulgated, Fayyad's step was widely welcomed by the Israeli occupation government that described it as “a positive step in the right direction” and harmonizes with the intensive diplomatic efforts to nudge the peace process forward. Meri Eisen, the spokeswoman of Israeli premier Ehud Olmert, opined, “We can feel new atmosphere on the ground from both sides, the Israelis and the Palestinians, but we still have a lot to do”. “We have to resume peace talks with the new PA government under Fayyad, especially regarding sensitive issues pertaining to the final status," said Israeli minister and one of Olmert’s close associates Haim Ramon. He was apparently wishing to exploit the presence of Fayyad's government to gain more concessions as far as the Palestinian legal rights are concerned. Top military brass of the IOF command and Israeli intelligence departments expressed satisfaction with Fayyad's government’s action against the Palestinian resistance in the West Bank that, according to them, the IOF troops weren’t able to do for many years. Well-informed Palestinian sources affirmed that security coordination between the PA security apparatuses in the West Bank and Israel reached its peak after Hamas’s takeover of Gaza Strip in mid June. According to the sources, the security coordination between the PA preventive security apparatus and Israeli intelligence departments botched at least three planned armed attacks by the Islamic Jihad and Fatah fighters inside the Hebrew state. Sources close to the Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad, also affirmed that prior to their defeat in Gaza Strip; the PA security apparatuses foiled a plan of the Brigades to capture two IOF servicemen at the Kissufim crossing point, east of Gaza Strip, more than two months ago.

Russia’s Gorbachev Says US is Sowing World Disorder

Published on Friday, July 27, 2007 by Reuters

by Guy Faulconbridge

Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev criticized the United States, and current President George W. Bush in particular, on Friday for sowing disorder across the world by seeking to build an empire.

Gorbachev, who presided over the break-up of the Soviet Union, said Washington had sought to build an empire after the Cold War ended but had failed to understand the changing world.

"The Americans then gave birth to the idea of a new empire, world leadership by a single power, and what followed?” Gorbachev asked reporters at a news conference in Moscow.

“What has followed are unilateral actions, what has followed are wars, what has followed is ignoring the U.N. Security Council, ignoring international law and ignoring the will of the people, even the American people.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Bush say they are friends but ties have been strained by U.S. plans for a missile defense shield in Europe, disagreements over Kosovo and the war in Iraq, and competition for allies in the former Soviet Union.

Many Russians view the United States as a rival and enemy.

Gorbachev, 76, who left politics after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, is deeply unpopular in Russia. Though feted abroad, he is blamed in Russia for sinking the Soviet empire and plunging millions into poverty.

“When I look at today’s world I have a worrying feeling about the growth of world disorder,” he said.

“I don’t think the current president of the United States and his administration will be able to change the situation as it is developing now — it is very dangerous,” he said.

Gorbachev said Russia’s hopes of building stronger ties with Washington had waned in the face of a series of U.S. administrations interested in building an empire.

“It is a massive strategic mistake: no single centre can command the entire world, no one,” he said. “Current America has made so many mistakes.”

He said the U.S. administration was apparently unable to adapt to a swiftly changing world and had ignored — or was unable to see — the rise of Brazil, Russia, India and China as economic heavyweights.

Treaties limiting the number of nuclear weapons should be observed, he said, adding that officials in Washington should be wary of sparking a new arms race.

Gorbachev, who became Soviet leader in 1985, battled against the conservative wing of the Communist Party to push through reforms that dismantled the one-party system, freed the press and ended restrictions on religion.

The father of “glasnost” (openness) said he supported Putin’s policies but that the pro-Kremlin United Russia party had eroded democratic rights.

He said Putin’s “seriousness” as a leader would be assured if he left office according to the constitution. Putin says he will leave office in 2008 after two terms in office.

Terrible conditions in Iraqi prisons

War In Iraq,

Thousands held in horrific conditions in Iraqi prisons

By: James Cogan on: 27.07.2007

The Los Angeles Times on July 21 revealed some of the abuses taking place inside US-monitored, Iraqi government prisons. The article documented the plight of prisoners in a Baghdad facility, which has the Orwellian name of Forward Operating Base Justice.

The prison in the suburb of Kadhimiyah was intended to house just 300 detainees, but is currently holding close to 900. Journalists touring the facility saw as many as 500 men being held in a single hall. No attempt was being made to separate prisoners according to their alleged crime or age. Some were as young as 15. To sleep, prisoners were provided with only foam mattresses or cardboard boxes. The urinals and toilets were blocked. Prisoners were forced to defecate in a solitary shower and basin, and attempt to wash themselves under a broken water pipe.

According to US military policeman Colonel Daniel Britt, these conditions were “appalling,” but conformed to “international standards”. American personnel, who visit the prison nearly every day to advise the Iraqi jailors, turn a blind eye to systematic human right violations. An Iraqi police official told the Los Angeles Times that most of the prisoners were held for at least two months before being brought before a judge and formally charged. Under Iraqi law, they must appear before a judge with 72 hours.

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What Bush wants in the occupied Palestine

RINF.com

Bush’s international peace conference: A conspiracy against the Palestinian people

By Jean Shaoul

President Bush’s July 16 announcement that he will relaunch the Middle East peace process with an international conference in New York is an attempt to use the puppet regime of Mahmoud Abbas to rubber-stamp an agreement that leaves the Palestinian masses with nothing.

Washington calculates that the Arab regimes will not only endorse a settlement that traps the Palestinian people in militarised and impoverished ghettos in parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but will join Egypt and Jordan in finally recognising Israel.

The heaviest price for any agreement will be paid in Gaza, where the Hamas government deposed by Abbas’s Fatah in a Western-backed constitutional coup is targeted for destruction.

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U.S. Soldiers Have Become Murderers

Alternet

Accustomed to Their Own Atrocities in Iraq, U.S. Soldiers Have Become Murderers

By Chris Hedges, Adbusters.

Posted July 27, 2007

After four years of war, American Marines and soldiers have become socialized to atrocity. The war in Iraq is now primarily about murder. There is very little killing.

All troops, when they occupy and battle insurgent forces, as in Iraq, or Gaza or Vietnam, are placed in “atrocity producing situations.”In this environment, surrounded by a hostile population, simple acts such as going to a store to buy a can of Coke means you can be killed. This constant fear and stress pushes troops to view everyone around them as the enemy. This hostility is compounded when the enemy, as in Iraq, is elusive, shadowy and hard to find.

The rage soldiers feel after a roadside bomb explodes, killing or maiming their comrades, is one that is easily directed over time to innocent civilians who are seen to support the insurgents. It is a short psychological leap, but a massive moral leap. It is a leap from killing — the shooting of someone who has the capacity to do you harm — to murder — the deadly assault against someone who cannot harm you. The war in Iraq is now primarily about murder. There is very little killing.

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Dozens of Afghan civilians killed in air strikes

Reuters, July 27, 2007

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Dozens of civilians, including women and children, have been killed in two air strikes by foreign troops in southern Afghanistan, residents and a member of parliament from the region said on Friday.

One of the raids by NATO hit houses in the Girishk district of Helmand province on Thursday evening, killing up to 50 civilians, a group of some 20 residents reported to journalists in Kandahar, the main city in the south.

Wali Jan Sabri, a parliamentarian from Helmand, said he had credible information that between 50 to 60 civilians had been killed in a battle between the Taliban and NATO forces in Girishk.

He said most of the victims were killed in air strikes.

“Yes, there was a battle … and most of those killed were from NATO bombardment,” he told Reuters.

District chief of Girishk, Manaf Khan, said more than 20 civilians were killed in NATO bombing when they were trying to flee the battle.

“The fighting was fierce between Taliban and NATO,” he told Reuters. “Civilians began to flee and 27 or 28 of them were killed while fleeing NATO bombing. I do not have information about the wounded,” he said.

A spokesman for British forces in Helmand said there was an on going operation in the province, but denied there had been any civilian casualties around Girishk.

“We have no reports of any such incidents in Girishk yesterday at all. There have been no people taken to the hospital … in relation to anything around Girishk,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Charlie Mayo.

“Because the Taliban don’t wear uniforms like us, as soon as they are killed, they are called civilians, the key is are they male or female and if they are male, what age are they?”

Due to the remoteness of the region it was not immediately possible to verify the information.

Some 2,000 British and Afghan army forces have been conducting an operation in the Upper Girishk valley this week to clear Taliban insurgents from the area.

The second attack hit two houses in the Char Cheno district of neighboring Uruzgan late on Thursday afternoon and killed 15 civilians there, several villagers from the area told reporters by telephone.

Antiwar MP George Galloway suspended from parliament

World Socialist Web Site

By Chris Marsden and Julie Hyland
26 July 2007

The ejection and suspension of George Galloway MP from the House of Commons on July 23 is the result of a witch-hunt aimed at intimidating and silencing all opponents of the Iraq war.

Galloway’s sole crime was to defend himself against allegations assembled by the Parliamentary Committee on Standards and Privileges, first launched in 2003, which rehash previous failed attempts to prove that the antiwar MP was in the pay of Saddam Hussein.

For more than an hour Galloway attempted to refute the committee’s charges against him, but was prevented from doing so as a result of 17 interjections by the Speaker of the House who ruled out any questioning of the political motives and legitimacy of the parliamentary equivalent of a kangaroo court.

Full article

The Arrest Of Two Leading Reformers In Saudi Arabia

Human Rights News

Authorities Should Release Activists and Peaceful Protesters

(New York, July 24, 2007) – The Saudi domestic intelligence forces arrested two of the country’s most prominent reformers, casting doubt on the government’s promises of reform, Human Rights Watch said today. Dr. Abdullah al-Hamid, a lawyer, and his brother `Isa al-Hamid, were arrested on July 19, 2007, as were a group of five women who had been peacefully demonstrating for the speedy trial of their relatives, one of them a client of al-Hamid.

It’s deeply disturbing that Saudi intelligence forces feel free to arrest a lawyer for defending his client’s rights. The security forces should be protecting people’s rights to peaceful protest, not whisking them off to jail. Sarah Leah Whitson, Human Rights Watch’s Middle East director

Saudi intelligence forces (mabahith) arrested Rima al-Juraish at her home in Buraida, capital of Qasim province, for having participated in a July 16 demonstration in front of the intelligence prison, where she and other women demanded that their relatives be brought to trial. The mabahith has held her husband, Muhammad al-Hamili, without charge or trial for between two and three years. When al-Hamili’s lawyer, Abdullah al-Hamid, demanded to see an arrest warrant, the mabahith also arrested him and his brother `Isa. They also arrested four other women who had demonstrated with al-Juraish: Manal al-`Umairini, Badriya al-`Umairini, Afrah al-Fuhaid, and Ashwaq al-Fuhaid.

“It’s deeply disturbing that Saudi intelligence forces feel free to arrest a lawyer for defending his client’s rights,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Human Rights Watch’s Middle East director. “The security forces should be protecting people’s rights to peaceful protest, not whisking them off to jail.”

Human Rights Watch has documented cases of detainees in mabahith detention without charge or trial in excess of three years, even though Saudi law stipulates that detainees must be brought to trial or released within six months of their arrest.

Saudi Arabia prohibits public demonstrations, although there is no explicit legal basis for such a prohibition. In August and September 2006, the mabahith twice detained Wajeha al-Huwaider for staging a one-woman demonstration for women’s rights. In October 2004, Saudi security forces detained hundreds of peaceful protestors in Riyadh, Jeddah and other cities, who demanded reform.

“Rima al-Juraish and her fellow protesters have the right to demonstrate peacefully,” Whitson said. “And their relatives in jail have the right to be charged with an offense and tried or be released.”

Abdullah al-Hamid spent 17 months in prison after he and two other reformers were arrested in March 2004 for writing a petition to then-Crown Prince Abdullah that called on the government to enact reforms with constitutionally guaranteed human rights.

A court sentenced him to seven years in prison, but Abdullah pardoned the three reformers upon acceding to the throne in August 2005. The government had also arrested their lawyer, `Abd al-Rahman al-Lahim, and supporters of the three detained reformers, including `Isa al-Hamid and Muhanna al-Falih, without charge but freed them eventually. In February 2007, Human Rights Watch wrote a letter to King Abdullah urging him to lift the arbitrary bans on foreign travel that the Ministry of Interior imposed on these peaceful reformers and their supporters after their release.

Prior to the latest arrests, the government had also imprisoned others demanding fair trials and an end to arbitrary arrests in Saudi Arabia. On February 2, the Saudi mabahith arrested another group of political and rights reformers in Jeddah, including former Judge Sulaiman al-Rashudi, who intended to sue the Ministry of Interior over its failure to charge and speedily try detainees in mabahith prisons. The government has not charged al-Rashudi and his fellow detainees who remain in mabahith detention, a relative told Human Rights Watch. Under Saudi law, it has until July 29, 2007 to do so, before it must legally release them.

Human Rights Watch called on the Saudi government to immediately release the men and women arrested in Buraida on July 19 and to release or formally charge those arrested on February 2. Furthermore, the government should ensure that law enforcement officers do not arrest persons for exercising their fundamental rights to peacefully demonstrate or express their opinion. It should also guarantee that lawyers for mabahith detainees have the opportunity to effectively challenge the lawfulness of their clients’ detention in a court of law.

Is the US Preparing To Attack Pakistan?

LewRockwell.Com

By Eric Margolisi
s

The Bush Administration may be preparing to lash out at old ally Pakistan, which Washington now blames for its humiliating failures to crush al-Qaida, capture its elusive leaders, or defeat Taliban resistance forces in Afghanistan.

One is immediately reminded of the Vietnam War when the Pentagon, unable to defeat North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong forces, urged invasion of Cambodia.

Sources in Washington say the Pentagon is drawing up plans to attack Pakistan’s "autonomous" tribal region bordering Afghanistan. Limited "hot pursuit" ground incursions by US forces based in Afghanistan, intensive air attacks, and special forces raids into Pakistan’s autonomous tribal region are being evaluated.

This weekend, the US national intelligence chief and other intelligence spokesmen confirmed that strikes against "terrorist targets" in Pakistan’s tribal belt are increasingly possible. These warnings were designed to both further pressure Pakistan’s beleaguered strongman, President Pervez Musharraf into sending more troops to the tribal areas to fight his own people, and to prepare US public opinion for a possible widening of the Afghanistan war into Pakistan.

Pakistan’s 27,200 sq km tribal belt, officially known as the Federal Autonomous Tribal Area, or FATA, is home to 3.3 million Pashtun tribesmen. It has become a safe haven for al-Qaida, Taliban, other Afghan resistance groups, and a hotbed of anti-American activity, thanks mostly to the US-led occupation of Afghanistan which drove many militants across the border into Pakistan. Osama bin Laden is very likely sheltered in this region, as US intelligence claims.

I spent a remarkable time in this wild, medieval region during the 1980’s and 90’s, traveling alone where even Pakistani government officials dared not go, visiting the tribes of Waziristan, Orakzai, Khyber, Chitral, and Kurram, and meeting their chiefs, called "maliks."

These tribal belts are always referred to as "lawless." Pashtun tribesmen could shoot you if they didn’t like your looks. Rudyard Kipling warned British Imperial soldiers over a century ago, when fighting cruel, ferocious Pashtun warriors of the Afridi clan, if they fell wounded, "save your last bullet for yourself."

But there is law: the traditional Pashtun tribal code, Pashtunwali, that strictly governs behavior and personal honor. Protecting guests was sacred. I was captivated by this majestic mountain region and wrote of it extensively in my book, "War at the Top of the World."

The 40 million Pashtun – called "Pathan" by the British – are the world’s largest tribal group. Imperial Britain divided them by an artificial border, the Durand Line, which went on to become, like so many other British colonial boundaries, today’s Afghanistan-Pakistan border. When Pakistan was created in 1947, the Pashtun were split between that new nation and Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s Pashtun number 28–30 million, plus an additional 2.5 million refugees from Afghanistan. Pashtuns, one of the British Indian Army’s famed "martial races," occupy many senior positions in Pakistan’s military, intelligence service and bureaucracy, and naturally have much sympathy for their embattled tribal cousins in Afghanistan. The 15 million Pashtun of Afghanistan form that nation’s largest ethnic group and just under half the population.

The tribal agency’s Pashtun reluctantly joined newly-created Pakistan in 1947 under express constitutional guarantee of total autonomy and a ban on Pakistani troops ever entering there.

But under intense US pressure, President Pervez Musharraf violated Pakistan’s constitution by sending 80,000 federal troops to fight the region’s tribes, killing 3,000 of them. In best British imperial tradition, Washington pays Musharraf $100 million monthly to rent his sepoys (native soldiers) to fight Pashtun tribesmen. As a result, Pakistan is fast edging towards civil war, as the bloody siege of Islamabad’s Red Mosque and a current wave of bombings across the nation show.

The anti-Communist Taliban movement is part of the Pashtun people. Taliban fighters move across the artificial Pakistan-Afghanistan border, to borrow a Maoism, like fish through the sea. Osama bin Laden is a hero in the region, and likely shelters there.

The US just increased its reward for bin Laden to $50 million and plans to shower $750 million on the tribal region in an effort to buy loyalty. Bush/Cheney & Co. do not understand that while they can rent President Musharraf’s government in Islamabad, many Pashtun value personal honor far more than money, and cannot be bought. That is likely why bin Laden has not yet been betrayed.

Any US attack on Pakistan would be a catastrophic mistake. First, air and ground assaults will succeed only in widening the anti-US war and merging it with Afghanistan’s resistance to western occupation. US forces are already too over-stretched to get involved in yet another little war.

Second, Pakistan’s army officers who refuse to be bought may resist a US attack on their homeland, and overthrow the man who allowed it, Gen. Musharraf. A US attack would sharply raise the threat of anti-US extremists seizing control of strategic Pakistan and marginalize those seeking return to democratic government.

Third, a US attack on the tribal areas could re-ignite the old irredentist movement to reunite Pashtun parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan into an independent state, "Pashtunistan." That could begin unraveling fragile Pakistan, leaving its nuclear arsenal up for grabs, and India tempted to intervene.

The US military has grown used to attacking small, weak nations like Grenada, Panama, and Iraq. Pakistan, with 163 million people, and a poorly equipped but very tough 550,000-man army, will offer no easy victories. Those Bush Administration officials who foolishly advocate attacking Pakistan are playing with fire.

July 24, 2007

Eric Margolis [send him mail], contributing foreign editor for Sun National Media Canada, is the author of War at the Top of the World. See his website.

Copyright © 2007 Eric Margolis

A Trap for Fools

Counterpunch, July 23, 2007

Bush's Latest, Ludicrous Doomed Plan for Israel and Palestine

By URI AVNERY

In a classic American western, the difference is as glaring as the midday sun in Colorado: there are Good Guys and Bad Guys. The good ones are the settlers, who are making the prairie bloom. The bad ones are the Indians, who are blood-thirsty savages. The ultimate hero is the cowboy, tough, humane, with a big revolver or two, ready to defend himself at all times.

George Bush, who grew up on this myth, sticks to it even now, when he is the leader of the world's only superpower. This week he presented the world with an up-to-date western.

In this western--or, rather, middle eastern--there are also Good Guys and Bad Guys. The good ones are the "moderates", who are the allies of the US in the Middle East--Israel, Mahmoud Abbas and the pro-American Arab regimes. The bad ones are Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran, Syria and al-Qaeda.
It is a simple script. So simple, indeed, that an 8-year-old can understand it. The conclusions are also simple: the good guys have to be supported, the bad guys have to bite the dust. At the end, the hero--George himself--will ride off into the sunset on his noble steed, while the music reaches a crescendo.

Full article

Statement on Executive Order Interpreting Geneva Conventions Common Article 3 as Applied to the CIA

Human Rights First, July 20, 2007

The Order contains fine sounding rhetoric that changes little and leaves dubious claims in place

More About Ending Torture

The following statement can be attributed to Elisa Massimino, Washington Director, Human Rights First:

Torture and cruel treatment by U.S. personnel happened, in the first place, because the administration applied such a flexible interpretation of the laws and standards against abuse that they became practically meaningless. That is how the United States got to Abu Ghraib.

The administration fought to get Congress to pass a law equating Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions with the prohibition against cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. Congress refused, because it feared that the administration would again interpret the legal bans in a way that would endanger the United States' military personnel, now and in future wars.

Congress has reiterated, twice in the last two years, that the law absolutely prohibits torture and other forms of official cruelty. The interrogation techniques that have been authorized for the CIA program — the so-called "alternative set of techniques" — are prohibited under current law. Nothing in today's Executive Order changes that.

But the Order fails to make clear whether interrogation techniques that had been authorized for use in the CIA program are still permitted. If the Order is interpreted by the CIA as authorization to use techniques such as waterboarding, stress positions, hypothermia, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation and isolation, it sends a powerful — and dangerous — message to the United States' current and future enemies: that this country believes these techniques can lawfully be used against our own troops without violating Common Article 3. This is the reason why more than 50 retired generals and admirals, including several former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs, urged Congress to reject the administration's attempt to redefine the Geneva Conventions standard in this way. If the CIA uses this Executive Order as authorization for what Congress refused to permit, then Congress will have to act again. As Senator John McCain, one of the sponsors of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 cautioned when the Act was passed, "In interpreting the conventions in this manner, the President is bounded by the conventions themselves. Nothing in this bill gives the President the authority to modify the conventions or our obligations under those treaties. That understanding is at the core of this legislation."

********

Human Rights First and Physicians for Human Rights' forthcoming report on the so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" examines the medical consequences of those techniques and concludes that they are prohibited under existing law. For copies of the executive summary of the report contact Krista Minteer (minteerk@humanrightsfirst.org).

Human Rights and the illegal US/UK Attack on Iraq

Transnational.org

July 15, 2005

By

Johan Galtung, TFF Associate and Transcend

July 15, 2005

This is Galtung's speech to the World Tribunal on Iraq, Istanbul Final Session, June 24-26 2005.

Distinguished Members of the Jury of Conscience, Fellow Advocate, Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends!

The testimonies have brought the reality of an Iraq tortured by the US/UK (and a coalition of willing clients) illegal attack, and illegal occupation, into our minds and hearts. With a sense of deep anger at the continued aggression and deep compassion with the victims we have witnessed the reality of crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity, including nuclear war through the use of depleted, radioactive uranium, on top of the genocidal economic sanctions, and the general "softening up" of Iraq for a quick, decisive war and remolding to the taste of the aggressors.

Members of the Jury!

What we are witnessing is the geo-fascist state terrorism of US imperialism, following the defunct British Empire, soon to follow it into the graveyard of empires. In my research-based opinion at the latest by 2020, but, past experience being a guide, there is more to come. By some counts the attack on Iraq is US aggression no. 239 after the Thomas Jefferson start in the early 19th century and no. 69 after the Second world war; with between 12 and 16 million killed in that period alone. All of it is in flagrant contradiction of the most basic human rights, like the "right to life, liberty and security of persons" (Universal Declaration, UD:3) and the condemnation of the "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" (UD:5). In a Pentagon Planner's chilling words: "The de facto role of the United States Armed Forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing". (1) And in my drier words: "Imperialism is a transborder structure for the synergy of killing, repression, exploitation and brain- washing."

I hold up against this organized atrocity - - whether attempted legitimized through packs of lies about weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda, or by invoking a divine mandate or a mandate to export democracy and human rights through dictatorship and world crimes - - a slip of paper, Article 28 of the Universal Declaration:

Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized. (UD:28)

This admirable formulation provides an excellent linkage between various levels of social organization, from the individual level at which these rights are implemented or violated, to the structure of the social and world spaces. It indicates the spaces in which these conditions may be identified. The basic needs served by human rights are located inside the individual, but the conditions for their satisfaction are social and/or international, generally speaking. UD:28 is a meta-right, a right about rights, with nothing short of revolutionary implications.

US imperialism in general, and its articulation in Iraq in particular, invokes the whole International Bill of Rights, but the focus is on the UD:3 right to life, in the context of Article 29:

Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible. (UD:29)

There are no rights without duties, and right-holder and duty- bearer may also be the same actor. The word "community" rather than, but not excluding, "country" is used. This is very realistic as human beings developed personalities long before there were countries run by states and peopled by nations in our sense. But "communities" are as old as humankind itself. To a growing part of humanity the most important are non-territorial, like the NGOs.

Continue

Haneef frame-up: Why 'terror‘ laws should be repealed

Green Left online

By Dale Mills & Tony Iltis
21 July 2007

The decision by immigration minister Kevin Andrews to throw 27-year-old Indian doctor Mohamed Haneef into immigration detention — despite a Queensland court granting Haneef bail on charges of “recklessly” (meaning not deliberately) supporting terrorism — has further exposed the Howard government’s utter disregard for civil rights and the judicial system, and the dangers inherent in its “anti-terror” laws.

Haneef, an Indian citizen working as a medical registrar at the Gold Coast Hospital, was arrested at Brisbane Airport on July 2 and detained without charge. On July 14 he was finally charged with “recklessly providing support to a terrorist organisation” in Britain.

On July 16, bail was granted to Haneef on the basis that he provide a $10,000 surety and report to police three times a week. While there is a presumption against bail under the “anti-terror” laws unless exceptional circumstances can be shown, magistrate Jacqui Payne decided that there were indeed exceptional circumstances — an extremely weak prosecution case.

The only “evidence” known to link Haneef to any alleged crime was that his cousin, Sabeel Ahmed, has been charged in Britain with withholding information that could have prevented a terrorist act and that Haneef gave Ahmed a mobile phone SIM card last September — because the card had unused credit — before Haneef left Britain to work in Australia.

Full article

Asma Jahangir, Paksitan's Human Rights Fighter

The Guardian, July 21. 2007

The Guardian, July 21, 2007

Blood and Guts

By Declan Walsh

Lunchtime yesterday, and a gaggle of lawyers in black suits crammed into a small room in the sweaty bowels of Pakistan’s Supreme Court. Balancing cigarettes and cups of tea, they savored the moment. An epic struggle was nearing its climax. The court was about to deliver its verdict on a battle that has captivated Pakistan since March, between the President, General Pervez Musharraf, and the chief justice, Muhammad Iftikhar Chaudhry. The country had never seen it before: a civilian openly challenging a military leader. After months of raucous protest, the lawyers smelled victory. But one was not sure.

Asma Jahangir, an eagle-eyed lawyer on the frontline of the chief justice’s campaign, was apprehensive. “I don’t know, I just don’t know,” she says, her voice trailing away. “I could be surprised, but it looks like there’s going to be a compromise.” We sat down to lunch, a few discs of unleavened bread and a scoop of dhal.

At five feet tall, Jahangir, 55, is not an imposing figure, but for almost four decades she has towered over Pakistan’s human rights war. She has championed battered wives, rescued teenagers from death row, defended people accused of blasphemy, and sought justice for the victims of honor killings. These battles have won her admirers and enemies in great number. But she doesn’t care, mocking the mullahs and poking a finger in the face of the barrel-chested generals. In conversations with friends, one word constantly recurs: guts. “Asma is the gutsiest woman that Pakistan has,” says Abbas Nasir, editor of Dawn newspaper and a friend. “Whatever she believes in, she has the conviction to say it publicly in a sea of complete intolerance and ignorance. In a country like this, that is fantastic.”

Full article

Bush Executive Order: Criminalizing the Antiwar Movement

Global Research, July 20, 2007 By Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

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The Executive Order entitled "Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq" provides the President with the authority to confiscate the assets of whoever opposes the US led war. A presidential Executive Order issued on July 17th, repeals with the stroke of a pen the right to dissent and to oppose the Pentagon's military agenda in Iraq. The Executive Order entitled "Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq" provides the President with the authority to confiscate the assets of "certain persons" who oppose the US led war in Iraq: "I have issued an Executive Order blocking property of persons determined to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq or undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people." In substance, under this executive order, opposing the war becomes an illegal act. The Executive Order criminalizes the antiwar movement. It is intended to "blocking property" of US citizens and organizations actively involved in the peace movement. It allows the Department of Defense to interfere in financial affairs and instruct the Treasury to "block the property" and/or confiscate/ freeze the assets of "Certain Persons" involved in antiwar activities. It targets those "Certain Persons" in America, including civil society organizatioins, who oppose the Bush Administration's "peace and stability" program in Iraq, characterized, in plain English, by an illegal occupation and the continued killing of innocent civilians. The Executive Order also targets those "Certain Persons" who are "undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction", or who, again in plain English, are opposed to the confiscation and privatization of Iraq's oil resources, on behalf of the Anglo-American oil giants. The order is also intended for anybody who opposes Bush's program of "political reform in Iraq", in other words, who questions the legitimacy of an Iraqi "government" installed by the occupation forces. Full article

Bush alters rules for CIA interrogations

Source: news.yahoo.com

By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer Fri Jul 20,

WASHINGTON - President Bush breathed new life into the CIA's terror interrogation program Friday in an executive order that would allow harsh questioning of suspects, limited in public only by a vaguely worded ban on cruel and inhuman treatment.

The order bars some practices such as sexual abuse, part of an effort to quell international criticism of some of the CIA's most sensitive and debated work. It does not say what practices would be allowed.

The executive order is the White House's first public effort to reach into the CIA's five-year-old terror detention program, which has been in limbo since a Supreme Court decision last year called its legal foundation into question.

Officials would not provide any details on specific interrogation techniques that the CIA may use under the new order. In the past, its methods are believed to have included sleep deprivation and disorientation, exposing prisoners to uncomfortable cold or heat for long periods, stress positions and — most controversially — the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding.

The Bush administration has portrayed the interrogation operation as one of one of its most successful tools in the war on terror, while opponents have said the agency's techniques have left a black mark on the United States' reputation around the world.

Bush's order requires that CIA detainees "receive the basic necessities of life, including adequate food and water, shelter from the elements, necessary clothing, protection from extremes of heat and cold, and essential medical care."

A senior intelligence official would not comment directly when asked if waterboarding would be allowed under the new order and under related — but classified — legal documents drafted by the Justice Department.

However, the official said, "It would be wrong to assume the program of the past transfers to the future."

A second senior administration official acknowledged sleep is not among the basic necessities outlined in the order.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the order more freely.

Skeptical human rights groups did not embrace Bush's effort.

Tom Malinowski, Washington director for Human Rights Watch, said the broad outlines in the public order don't matter. The key is in the still-classified guidance distributed to CIA officers.

As a result, the executive order requires the public to trust the president to provide adequate protection to detainees. "Given the experience of the last few years, they have to be naive if they think that is going to reassure too many people," he said.

The order specifically refers to captured al-Qaida suspects who may have information on attack plans or the whereabouts of the group's senior leaders. White House press secretary Tony Snow said the CIA's program has saved lives and must continue on a sound legal footing.

"The president has insisted on clear legal standards so that CIA officers involved in this essential work are not placed in jeopardy for doing their job — and keeping America safe from attacks," he said.

The five-page order reiterated many protections already granted under U.S. and international law. It said that any conditions of confinement and interrogation cannot include:

• Torture or other acts of violence serious enough to be considered comparable to murder, torture, mutilation or cruel or inhuman treatment.

• Willful or outrageous acts of personal abuse done to humiliate or degrade someone in a way so serious that any reasonable person would "deem the acts to be beyond the bounds of human decency." That includes sexually indecent acts.

• Acts intended to denigrate the religion of an individual.

The order does not permit detainees to contact family members or have access to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

In a decision last year aimed at the military's tribunal system, the Supreme Court required the U.S. government to apply Geneva Convention protections to the conflict with al-Qaida, shaking the legal footing of the CIA's program.

Last fall, Congress instructed the White House to draft an executive order as part of the Military Commissions Act, which outlined the rules for trying terrorism suspects. The bill barred torture, rape and other war crimes that clearly would have violated the Geneva Conventions, but allowed Bush to determine — through executive order — whether less harsh interrogation methods can be used.

The administration and the CIA have maintained that the agency's program has been lawful all along.

In a message to CIA employees on Friday, Director Michael Hayden tried to stress the importance and narrow scope of the program. He noted that fewer than half of the less than 100 detainees have experienced the agency's "enhanced interrogation measures."

"Simply put, the information developed by our program has been irreplaceable," he said. "If the CIA, with all its expertise in counterterrorism, had not stepped forward to hold and interrogate people like (senior al-Qaida operatives) Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the American people would be right to ask why."

For decades, the United States had two paths for questioning suspects: the U.S. justice system and the military's Army Field Manual.

However, after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration decided more needed to be done. With Zubaydah's capture in 2002, the CIA program was quietly created.

Since then, 97 terror suspects are believed to have been held by the agency at locations around the world, often referred to as "black sites."

The program sparked international controversy as details slowly emerged, with human rights groups saying the agency's work was a violation of international law, including the Third Geneva Convention's Common Article 3 protections, which set a baseline standard for the treatment of prisoners of war.

In September, Bush announced the U.S. had transferred the last 14 high-value CIA detainees to the military's detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they would stand trial. The CIA has held one detainee since then — an Iraqi who the U.S. considered one of al-Qaida's most senior operatives. He was also eventually transferred to Guantanamo.

___

Associated Press writers Deb Riechmann and Lara Jakes Jordan contributed to this report.

Big firms get rich as Iraq war escalates

Workers World

By Deirdre Griswold

Published July19, 2007

The debate over the war in Iraq has finally made it onto the agenda of the Senate! But not at a time when funding for the war is up for a vote. A majority of Congress, including most Democrats, already voted to approve those hundreds of billions of dollars.

The current debate is over an amendment, put forward by Democratic Senators Carl Levin of Michigan and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, to a new appropriations bill. The amendment would begin to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq within 180 days (six months) of enactment and complete a reduction of troop strength—but not a total withdrawal—by April 30, 2008.

This debate is finally happening after the electorate has in many, many ways expressed its utter disgust with the war, the occupation and both political parties for letting the carnage drag on despite the immense pain and suffering it has meant for the Iraqi people and many in the U.S. Especially hit here is the working class, which pays for wars in blood and taxes while the rich generally do quite well as war spending oozes through the upper layers of the economy.

The senators also must know that calls are heard more and more frequently to impeach George W. Bush and Dick Cheney because these two lied to the world about Iraq’s mythical weapons of mass destruction. Every online discussion having to do with the war or the White House—except those on bizarrely ultra-right Web sites—rings with colorful denunciations of these political figures.

Full article

A Whole Nation in Prison

Source: Press TV, July 19, 2007


By John Pilger

The Zionist Regime of Israel is destroying any notion of a state of Palestine and is being allowed to imprison an entire nation. That is clear from the latest attacks on Gaza, whose suffering has become a metaphor for the tragedy imposed on the peoples of the Middle East and beyond.

These attacks, reported on Britain's Channel 4 News, were "targeting key militants of Hamas" and the "Hamas infrastructure". The BBC described a "clash" between the same militants and Israeli F-16 aircraft.

Consider one such clash. The militants' car was blown to pieces by a missile from a fighter-bomber. Who were these militants? In my experience, all the people of Gaza are militant in their resistance to their jailer and tormentor.

As for the "Hamas infrastructure", this was the headquarters of the party that won last year's democratic elections in Palestine. To report that would give the wrong impression. It would suggest that the people in the car and all the others over the years, the babies and the elderly who have also "clashed" with fighter-bombers, were victims of a monstrous injustice. It would suggest the truth.

"Some say," said the Channel 4 reporter, that "Hamas has courted this [attack] . . ." Perhaps he was referring to the rockets fired at Israel from within the prison of Gaza which killed no one.

Under international law an occupied people has the right to use arms against the occupier's forces. This right is never reported. The Channel 4 reporter referred to an "endless war", suggesting equivalents.

There is no war. There is resistance among the poorest, most vulnerable people on earth to an enduring, illegal occupation imposed by the world's fourth largest military power, whose weapons of mass destruction range from cluster bombs to thermonuclear devices, bankrolled by the superpower.

In the past six years alone, wrote the historian Ilan Papp, "Israeli forces have killed more than 4,000 Palestinians, half of them children".
Consider how this power works.

According to documents obtained by United Press International, the Israelis once secretly funded Hamas as "a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO [Palestine Liberation Organisation] by using a competing religious alternative", in the words of a former CIA official.

Today, Israel and the US have reversed this ploy and openly back Hamas' rival, Fatah. Israel recently secretly allowed 500 Fatah fighters to cross into Gaza from Egypt, where they had been trained by another American client, the Cairo dictatorship.

The Israelis' aim is to undermine the elected Palestinian government and ignite a civil war. They have not quite succeeded. In response, the Palestinians forged a government of national unity, of both Hamas and Fatah. The latest attacks are aimed at destroying this.

With Gaza secured in chaos and the West Bank walled in, the Israeli plan, wrote the Palestinian academic Karma Nabulsi, is "a Hobbesian vision of an anarchic society: truncated, violent, powerless, destroyed, cowed, ruled by disparate militias, gangs, religious ideologues and extremists, broken up into ethnic and religious tribalism and co-opted collaborationists.

Look to the Iraq of today . . . On 19 May, the Guardian received this letter from Omar Jabary al-Sarafeh, a Ramallah resident: "Land, water and air are under constant sight of a sophisticated military surveillance system that makes Gaza like The Truman Show," he wrote. "In this film every Gazan actor has a predefined role and the [Israeli] army behaves as a director . . . The Gaza strip needs to be shown as what it is . . . an Israeli laboratory backed by the international community where human beings are used as rabbits to test the most dramatic and perverse practices of economic suffocation and starvation."

The remarkable Israeli journalist Gideon Levy has described the starvation sweeping Gaza's more than a million and a quarter inhabitants and the "thousands of wounded, disabled and shell-shocked people unable to receive any treatment . . . The shadows of human beings roam the ruins . . . They only know the [Israeli army] will return and they know what this will mean for them: more imprisonment in their homes for weeks, more death and destruction in monstrous proportions".
Whenever I have been in Gaza, I have been consumed by this melancholia, as if I were a trespasser in a secret place of mourning. Skeins of smoke from wood fires hang over the same Mediterranean Sea that free peoples know, but not here.

Along beaches that tourists would regard as picturesque trudge the incarcerated of Gaza; lines of sepia figures become silhouettes, marching at the water's edge, through lapping sewage. The water and power are cut off, yet again, when the generators are bombed, yet again. Iconic murals on walls pockmarked by bullets commemorate the dead, such as the family of 18 men, women and children who "clashed" with a 500lb American/Israeli bomb, dropped on their block of flats as they slept. Presumably, they were militants.

More than 40 per cent of the population of Gaza is children under the age of 15. Reporting on a four-year field study in occupied Palestine for the British Medical Journal, Dr Derek Summerfield wrote that "two-thirds of the 621 children killed at checkpoints, in the street, on the way to school, in their homes, died from small arms fire, directed in over half of cases to the head, neck and chest - the sniper's wound". A friend of mine with the United Nations calls them "children of the dust". Their wonderful childishness, their rowdiness and giggles and charm, belie their nightmare.

I met Dr Khalid Dahlan, a psychiatrist who heads one of several children's community health projects in Gaza. He told me about his latest survey. "The statistic I personally find unbearable," he said, "is that 99.4 per cent of the children we studied suffer trauma. Once you look at the rates of exposure to trauma, you see why: 99.2 per cent of the study group's homes were bombarded; 97.5 per cent were exposed to tear gas; 96.6 per cent witnessed shootings; 95.8 per cent witnessed bombardment and funerals; almost a quarter saw family members injured or killed."

He said children as young as three faced the dichotomy caused by having to cope with these conditions. They dreamt about becoming doctors and nurses, and then this was overtaken by an apocalyptic vision of themselves as the next generation of suicide bombers. They experienced this invariably after an attack by the Israelis. For some boys, their heroes were no longer football players, but a confusion of Palestinian "martyrs" and even the enemy, "because Israeli soldiers are the strongest and have Apache gunship".
Shortly before he died, Edward Said bitterly reproached foreign journalists for what he called their destructive role in "stripping the context of Palestinian violence, the response of a desperate and horribly oppressed people, and the terrible suffering from which it arises".

Just as the invasion of Iraq was a "war by media", so the same can be said of the grotesquely one-sided "conflict" in Palestine. As the pioneering work of the Glasgow University Media Group shows, television viewers are rarely told that the Palestinians are victims of an illegal military occupation; the term "occupied territories" is seldom explained.

Only 9 per cent of young people interviewed in the UK know that the Israelis are the occupying force and that the illegal settlers are Jewish; many believe them to be Palestinian. The selective use of language by broadcasters is crucial in maintaining this confusion and ignorance. Words such as "terrorism", "murder" and "savage, cold-blooded killing" describe the deaths of Israelis, almost never Palestinians.

There are honorable exceptions. The kidnapped BBC reporter Alan Johnston is one of them. Yet, amidst the avalanche of coverage of his abduction, no mention is made of the thousands of Palestinians abducted by Israel, many of whom will not see their families for years. There are no appeals for them.

In Al-Quds, the Foreign Press Association documents the shooting and intimidation of its members by Israeli soldiers. In an eight-month period, many journalists, including the CNN bureau chief in al-Quds, were wounded by the Israelis, some of them seriously. In each case, the FPA complained. In each case, there was no satisfactory reply.

A censorship by omission runs deep in western journalism on Israel, especially in the US. Hamas is dismissed as a "terrorist group sworn to Israel's destruction" and one that "refuses to recognize Israel and wants to fight not talk".

This theme suppresses the truth: that Israel is bent on Palestine's destruction. Moreover, Hamas' long-standing proposals for a ten-year ceasefire are ignored, along with a recent, hopeful ideological shift within Hamas itself that amounts to a historic acceptance of the sovereignty of Israel. "The [Hamas] charter is not the Quran," said a senior Hamas official, Mohammed Ghazal. "Historically, we believe all Palestine belongs to Palestinians, but we're talking now about reality, about political solutions . . . If Israel reached a stage where it was able to talk to Hamas, I don't think there would be a problem of negotiating with the Israelis [for a solution]."

When I last saw Gaza, driving towards the Israeli checkpoint and the razor wire, I was rewarded with a spectacle of Palestinian flags fluttering from inside the walled compounds. Children were responsible for this, I was told.

They make flagpoles out of sticks tied together and one or two will climb on to a wall and hold the flag between them, silently. They do it when there are foreigners around and they believe they can tell the world.


John Pilger's latest book, "Freedom Next Time", is published in the US by Nation Books and His film, "The War on Democracy", was released in the UK on 15 June.

Pakistan's chief justice reinstated

Al Jazeera, July 20, 2007

The ruling on Friday sparked celebrations by Chaudhry's supporters outside the court [AFP] Pakistan's Supreme Court has reinstated Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry as the country's chief justice, four months after he was suspended by Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president. Chaudhry became a symbol of resistance to General Musharraf after refusing to quit in the face of pressure from the president and his intelligence chiefs. Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman Ramday, head of the 13-member court, said: "The reference has been set aside and the chief justice has been reinstated." The verdict on Friday is seen as a blow to Musharraf and possibly the biggest challenge to his dominance since he seized power in a coup in 1999. It could further complicate his bid to win a new five-year presidential term this fall. The chief justice was suspended on March 9 following allegations that he abused his position, including using influence to get his son a job, fiddling petrol expenses and that he had a penchant for expensive cars. The government filed a statement in the Supreme Court last month in which it also accused Chaudhry of harassing judges, showing bias in appointments and intimidating police and civil servants. Celebrations On Friday the court wrapped up the 43-day hearing of an appeal by Chaudhry against his March 9 ouster. The announcement sparked celebrations by lawyers who had spent the day waiting outside the court for the verdict. Retired Major General Rashid Qureshi, General Musharraf's spokesman, said the court ruling reinstating Chaudhry would be honoured and respected. "The president has said the judgement of the Supreme Court will be honoured, respected, and adhered to," he said. Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan's prime minister, said the government accepted the decision but that it was "not the time to claim victory or defeat". Ramday, speaking before the ruling, said the court would not be swayed by the political sensitivities of the case and stressed its objectivity despite massive protests by pro-Chaudhry lawyers against Musharraf. "The judiciary is here not as rivals, monitors or superiors to any institution," he said. Musharraf's action against the judge sparked mass pro-democracy protests and political violence in Karachi that left more than 40 dead. Chaudhry's supporters say the president ousted the judge because he could have kept Musharraf from maintaining his grip on power and because he took on cases about people allegedly abducted by Pakistan's intelligence agencies. Musharraf, the president and army chief, hopes to get himself re-elected in uniform by the outgoing parliament this year, defying the constitution which says he should quit as head of the military by the end of 2007.General elections are due no later than early next year.

The Crisis of Imperialism

Canadian Dimension

By John Wright

Counterpunch 2007

The U.S. occupation of Iraq has spawned the reemergence of the word imperialism into the lexicon of everyday language, after an absence of five decades stretching back to the end of Second World War. U.S. military adventures since then–particularly in Korea, Vietnam and Central America–were dressed up as defensive operations against the spread and threat posed by Communism and all its evil manifestations, namely, national liberation, self determination, and social and economic justice.

The truth is, however, that imperialism has remained as constant and ever present as the changing of the seasons. The only thing which has changed is its packaging, which could be described, to paraphrase James Connolly, as old wine in a new bottle.

The U.S. ruling class emerged from the Second World War as the new imperial masters of the world. As such, they quickly recognized that the plethora of national liberation movements which had sprung up across the globe after the war, determined to shake off the yoke of colonialism, demanded new methods of control than the ones which had been utilized previously by the European powers.

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s stated aim, when formed by a small coterie of international financiers and bankers (mainly British and American, with the British by now accepting their role as junior partners in the new order of things) at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in 1944, was to rebuild Europe and stabilize the world’s financial markets after the turmoil of the Second World War.

In line with those aims, the newly independent former colonies in the Third World, which had gradually won their freedom, had to be brought to heel and controlled–for they possessed the natural and human resources necessary for expansion under this new global empire.

After suffering the ravages of colonialism, and after the hard struggle for liberation, nations of the African continent in particular were left with devastated and moribund economies which placed them at the mercy of vultures in the shape of the big international banks and financial institutions.

These banks and institutions loaned enormous sums at predatory interest rates, making it impossible for the Third World to rebuild, develop and repay their loans at the same time.

It had to be one or the other.

Things reached a crisis in the mid 1980s when, to stave off the prospect of a world depression due to the bad debts incurred by Third World countries, the IMF and WB stepped in and took over responsibility for those debts from the big private banks like Barclays, Credit Lyons, Chase Manhattan, etc., which were threatened with collapse.

It was a move which put the IMF and WB into an unassailable position of power which they have never relinquished since.

Since that time nearly 70 countries in the world have been forced to adopt Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP’s) designed and developed by the IMF and WB. These SAPs are intended to restructure the economies of said nations in order to best meet the repayment needs of aid or loans provided by the First World, represented by the IMF and WB.

This requires them to impose severe austerity programs on their already beleaguered economies, which translates into the eradication of much needed public spending on social programs in health, education, transport, agriculture, and so on.

These austerity programs pave the way for transnational corporations, always looking to reduce costs and access cheap sources of raw materials, to come in and set up their manufacturing operations, driving people, including children in many cases, from the land into factories, where they are forced to labour long hours under horrendous conditions for starvation wages.

This serves two purposes: it destroys the agro-economies of the Third World, which are now required to import their food from the First World, and ensures the outward flow of wealth to First World transnational corporations and their international investors.

The case of Nigeria is typical. Today, life expectancy in this oil-rich, aid-dependent nation is 47 years for males and 52 years for females. Of a population of 120 million, 89 million people live on less than a dollar a day, this despite the fact that the Niger Delta region contains large deposits of oil.

One IMF loan of $12 billion has become a continuous unpaid debt of $27 billion.

The people of Nigeria do not see a dollar of the wealth produced by their oil, which flows unchecked out of their country into the pockets of a consortium of British, Dutch and U.S. oil companies. Theirs are lives reduced to a daily struggle for survival.

Six million children under the age of 5 die each year in the Third World as a whole due to hunger and preventable disease.

This year by year genocide against the children of the poor is the net result of the IMF and World Bank’s rape and theft of the Third World’s natural and human resources on behalf of the ruling classes in the First World.

It is imperialism by any other name, soft imperialism which arrives disguised as aid but with its real aim indistinguishable to that of the hard imperialism we see now in Iraq with military occupation.

Both are embarked upon in order to feed the insatiable appetite of the free market capitalist powers.

Both spell misery and death for millions.

Both constitute an evil which is inimical to human progress.

John Wright lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. He can be reached at: Jscotlive@aol.com

US might strike in Pakistan: White House

news.yahoo.com

July 19, 2007

NASHVILLE, United States (AFP) - The White House on Thursday refused to rule out striking at suspected terrorist targets inside Pakistan and would not say whether US forces would first seek permission from Islamabad.

Asked whether US President George W. Bush had ruled out US military action inside Pakistan, spokesman Tony Snow replied: "We never rule out any options, including striking actionable targets."

Asked whether Bush would first seek authorization from Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, Snow told reporters: "Those are matters that are best not discussed publicly."

Washington in recent days has sharply criticized Musharraf's truce with leaders in Pakistan's tribal areas, where Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants were believed hiding, calling on him to take aggressive military action.

And Bush's top counter-terrorism adviser at the White House recently suggested that the United States did not get all of the cooperation it hoped for from Pakistan in the global war on terrorism.

At the same time, the White House has been praising Musharraf personally.

"President Musharraf has put his life on the line and has been a very important ally in the war on terror," Snow said as Bush traveled here to make remarks on the federal budget.

"It's also clear that Taliban and al Qaeda, in the northwest territories and the federally administered tribal areas, have begun to put on operations that threaten the government of Pakistan itself," he added.

"President Musharraf, having tried one approach, in terms of dealing with the tribal leaders, is now going to have to be more aggressive and is being more aggressive moving forces into the region to deal with the security problems there," he said.

Hamas official: Abbas can't serve as Palestinian president

Source: Al Bawaba

Posted: 19-07-2007

A Hamas official vowed on Thursday to foil early general elections favored by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in his standoff with the Islamic movement. "Early elections are an attempt to bypass the will of the Palestinian people and this attempt is bound to failure. It will fail. We, the Palestinian people, will scupper it," Mahmud Zahar told a press conference in Gaza, according to AFP. The former foreign minister in a Hamas cabinet lashed out against Abbas, accusing him of conspiring with Israel against his people and saying he was not worthy of being president. "He conspires with the enemy to assassinate Hamas chiefs by affirming that they have dug their own grave," Zahar said. "There is an Israeli plan for a Gaza incursion with the agreement of Abu Mazen (Abbas)," he said. "Can a man who allies with the enemy against his people remain the president of these people," Zahar asked. He also accused Abbas of being directly responsible for the closure of the Rafah border crossing and the suffering of the estimated 6,000 Palestinians stuck there. © 2007 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)

When War Business Rules The World

Source: Association of World Citizens

By Douglas Mattern

Published by SCOOP ­ New Zealand - 2007

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
--- President Eisenhower - From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953

It's been over thirty-three years since Eisenhower's powerful message and yet the obscenity of the war business continues stronger than ever. Take a recent decision by the Bush Administration to sell F-16 Fighter Jets to Pakistan while at the same time offering to sell the same jet fighters to India, always a potential adversary. Moreover, selling weapons to both sides of a conflict has become standard policy. Data compiled by the Federation of American Scientists shows that since1992, the U.S. exported well over $150 billion worth of weapons to states around the world.

The data also reveals the macabre world arms market is dominated by the U.S., followed by Russia, China, United Kingdom, and scores of other nations wanting their share of this death for profit business.

The truly astronomical money comes from the annual military budgets with the U.S. far in the lead, actually spending nearly as much as all other countries combined. For 2006 the U.S. military (defense) budget came to $426 billion, including $17.5 billion for nuclear weapons, and this does not count the cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The cost of modern weapons is staggering and immensely profitable. The largest weapons company, Lockheed-Martin, had sales in 2005 amounting to $37.2 billion (this 50 percent higher than the annual United Nations budget for all of its programs). And just think of all the missiles, bombs, etc., that will be replaced for
profit by the armament industry after the U.S. military assault on Iraq. This conflict is longer than U.S. involvement in World War II, and has transformed Iraq into a nightmare of violence.

There's no business like war business!

The Department of Defense announced plans to spend $1.4 trillion, yes trillion, on 70 new weapon systems over the coming years. Moreover, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that between 2012 and 2014 the Pentagon budget will have to grow between 18 and 34 percent over the 2006 budget.

No Business Like War Business - A few examples:

Cruise missiles cost over $500,000 each. The CVN-21 aircraft carrier will cost an estimated $13.7 billion. A smaller George H.W. Bush Nimitz-class aircraft carrier will cost $6.1 billion. The new Virginia-class submarine is estimated to cost $2.5 billion each, and a new guided missile destroyer, Arleigh Burke class will cost over $1 billion each. The new F-22 jet fighter, manufactured by Lockheed-Martin, will cost $335 million each, and the Pentagon plan is to purchase 183 F-22s. The FIM-92A Stinger, which is an individual shoulder fired lightweight guided missile, costs $6 million each. The U.S. armament industry is the second most subsidized industry after agriculture.

Profits are up; ethics are down as war business goes into orbit

The next frontier for the war business is space with the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Space Command, General Joseph Ashy, concisely stating its overall purpose: "It's politically sensitive, but it's going to happen. Some people don't want to hear this and it sure isn't in vogue, but-absolutely-we're going to fight in space. We're going to fight from space and we're going to fight into space. That's why the U.S. has development programs in directed energy and hit-to-kill mechanisms. We will engage terrestrial targets someday-ships, airplanes, and land targets from space." (From Aviation Week and Space Technology).

Today, scientists and engineers in the weapons industry are working with Pentagon contracts to develop space-based weapons scheduled for deployment 10 and more years from now. The Rand think tank reports weapons under development include space-based lasers, microwave guns, particle beam weapons, and kinetic-energy weapons.

Another weapon is Space Rods, sometimes called "Rods of God" that would be delivered to targets on the earth from orbiting space platforms. Jack Kelly, Post-Gazette National Security Writer, reports the rods would be made of tungsten around 20 feet in length and a foot in diameter. The rods could be guided by satellite to targets on Earth, striking at speeds of around 12,000 feet per second that would destroy hardened bunkers several stories beneath the surface.

Just imagine our world with weapons orbiting the planet 24-hours every day blocking our last frontier. Is this the end of freedom and human dignity as we gaze to the stars and mystery of the universe, and at the same time, see orbiting lights that are platforms loaded with weapons?

If civilization is to survive and progress, the militarization of space must be stopped, the nuclear weapons industry abolished in every country, and world's largest criminal activity, the war business with its economic, political, and cultural manifestations put permanently out of business. There is no alternative to stop our planet from becoming a final arsenal of mass destruction.

With apologies to Irving Berlin's Broadway hit, 'There's No Business Like Show Business," we should collectively sing this grim refrain--without restrain--in Ethel
Merman style--but without the smile:

There's no business like war business-- like no business so low
Everything about it is appalling-- everything that greed will allow
Nowhere do you get that sickening feeling-- as when their selling arms like now
There's no people like war people-- they smile as they make dough
Whether selling guns or tanks-- its adds money in their banks
That pays politicians in their ranks--so they can go on with the show

To the worldwide audience: We must pull down the curtain on the war usiness show. It has lasted far too long and we can no longer tolerate, nor can civilization long endure, the show's merchants of death and architects of destruction. Together we must be the bright light of hope and resolve that obliterates the black business of war by creating conditions where future disputes between peoples and nations (and dealing with terrorists) are settled through the framework of world law.

There is no alternative if we are to survive and move forward to create a better and just world, and a new civilization based on respect for life, respect for each other, and respect for the environment.

*************
Douglas Mattern is president of the Assocation of World Citizens and author of Looking for Square Two - Moving from War & Violence to Global Community

Bush revives al Qaeda bogeyman to justify Iraq war

Green Left, July14, 2007

By Doug Lorimer

“Nearly five months into a security strategy that involves thousands of additional US and Iraqi troops patrolling Baghdad, the number of unidentified bodies found on the streets of the capital was 41% higher in June than in January, according to unofficial health ministry statistics”, the July 4 Washington Post reported.

During June, “453 unidentified corpses, some bound, blindfolded, and bearing signs of torture, were found in Baghdad, according to morgue data provided by a health ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information”, the Post reported.

June also capped the deadliest three-month period for the US armed forces since they invaded Iraq in March 2003. In the first quarter of this year, 244 US troops were killed — an average of 2.7 per day. But in the second quarter, 331 US soldiers were killed — an average rate of 3.6 per day.

By the end of June, the Pentagon had reported that a total of 3578 US troops had been killed in Iraq since the start of the war. In addition, the May 18 New York Times reported, based on examination of insurance claims recorded by the US Labor Department, almost 1000 US civilians employed on contracts for the US government had been killed in Iraq between March 2003 and the end of March this year.

Full article

Palestine -- traitors within and enemies all around

Overcoming the conspiracy against Palestine
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 18 July 2007

Mohammed Dahlan's 13 July 2003 letter to then Israeli defense minister Shaul Mofaz.

"Be certain that Yasser Arafat's final days are numbered, but allow us to finish him off our way, not yours. And be sure as well that ... the promises I made in front of President Bush, I will give my life to keep." Those words were written by the Fatah warlord Mohammed Dahlan, whose US- and Israeli-backed forces were routed by Hamas in the Gaza Strip last month, in a 13 July 2003 letter to then Israeli defense minister Shaul Mofaz and published on Hamas' website on 4 July this year.

Dahlan, who despite his failure to hold Gaza, remains a senior advisor to Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas, outlines his conspiracy to overthrow Arafat, destroy Palestinian institutions and replace them with a quisling leadership subservient to Israel. Dahlan writes of his fear that Arafat would convene the Palestinian legislative council and ask it to withdraw confidence from then prime minister Mahmoud Abbas, who had been appointed earlier in 2003 at Bush's insistence in order to curb Arafat's influence. Dahlan wrote that "complete coordination and cooperation by all" was needed to prevent this, as well as "subjecting [Arafat] to pressure so that he cannot carry out this step." Dahlan reveals that "we have already begun attempts to polarize the views of many legislative council members by intimidation and temptation so that they will be on our side and not his [Arafat's]."

Dahlan closes his letter to Mofaz saying, "it remains only for me to convey my gratitude to you and the prime minister [Ariel Sharon] for your continued confidence in us, and to you all respect."

This letter is a small but vivid piece of evidence to add to the existing mountain, of the conspiracy in which the Abbas leadership is involved. In the month since Abbas' appointment of a Vichy-style "emergency government" headed by Salam Fayad, historic Fatah leaders, such as Farouq Qaddumi and Hani al-Hassan have signalled their opposition to Abbas' actions, specifically rejecting his order that Palestinian resistance fighters disarm while Israeli occupation continues unchallenged.

Full article

Lies, More Lies, and Damn Lies

LewRockwell.com , July 17, 2007

By Eric Margolis

As Americans turn increasingly against President George Bush’s calamitous war in Iraq, and revolt spreads through Republican ranks, the White House is again resorting to its tried-and-true ploy of fanning grossly inflated fears of terrorism.

The president just made two preposterous claims last week that insult the intelligence of his listeners. First, Bush insisted US forces in Iraq are fighting “the same people who staged 9/11.”

Second, withdrawing US forces from Iraq, as the Democratic-controlled Congress is urging, means “surrendering Iraq to al-Qaida.”

These canards mark the latest steps in the Bush administration’s evolving efforts to mislead Americans into believing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are all part of a global fight against al-Qaida.

When marketers want to change the name of an existing product, they first place a new name in small type below the existing one. They gradually shrink the old name, and enlarge the new one until the original name vanishes.

That’s what’s been happening in Iraq. When the US invaded, Iraqis who resisted were initially branded “Saddam loyalists,” “die-hard Ba’athists,” or, in Don Rumsfeld’s colorful terminology, “dead-enders.” Next, the Pentagon and US media called the Iraqi resistance, “terrorists” or “insurgents.” The reason for invading Iraq, the White House insisted, was all about removing the tyrant Saddam, seizing weapons of mass destruction, defending humans rights and implanting democracy.

Then, a tiny, previously unknown Iraqi group that had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden appropriated the name, “al-Qaida in Mesopotamia.”

This was such a breathtakingly convenient gift to the Bush Administration, many cynics suspected a false-flag operation created by CIA and Britain’s wily MI6. Soon after, the White House and Pentagon began calling most of Iraq’s 22 plus resistance groups, “al-Qaida.”

The US media eagerly joined this deception, even though 95% of Iraq’s resistance groups had no sympathy for bin Laden’s movement. Watch any US network TV news report on Iraq and you will inevitably hear reporters parroting Pentagon handouts about US forces “launching a new offensive against al-Qaida.”

Al-Qaida in Mesopotamia didn’t even exist before 9/11, but that didn’t stop President Bush from trying to gull credulous voters. He simply ignored the 2006 National Intelligence Estimate that found US-occupied Iraq had become an “incubator” for violent anti-American groups.

If the US were to withdraw from Iraq tomorrow, the nation would be split between warring Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties. The fake Al-Qaida in Iraq would end up at the bottom of the totem pole, or be wiped out by other Iraqis. Even Osama bin Laden and his number two, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, have blasted the phony al-Qaida in Iraq and called for an end to its attacks on Iraqi civilians.

Polls show that in spite of a mountain of evidence to the contrary, White House disinformation strategy has worked. Today, an amazing 60% of Americans still believe Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks.

At least that’s down from the 80% who originally believed this Orwellian big lie in 2003. The White House continues to blur the facts and make Americans believe Iraq and Afghanistan are “central fronts in the global war on terror.”

The fact recent polls found 60% of Americans – and 90% of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan – still believe Saddam and bin Laden had colluded to launch 9/11 is shocking, but not surprising. Ignorance of foreign affairs and mindless flag waving are as American as apple pie.

Tens of millions of Americans are fed a steady diet of political or religious ideology disguised as news from the administration’s house organ, Fox News; from evangelical Christian TV and radio; or from the neoconservative’s version of Pravda, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages. The rest are too busy watching brain-deadening TV pap to pay the least attention to events overseas.

They remain unaware the faux “war against global terror” is now costing a mind-boggling US $12 billion monthly, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. That’s the cost of 3 nuclear-powered “Nimitz” class 97,000-ton aircraft carriers every month.

The Bush Administration has spent $610 billion dollars since 2001 on its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, making them the second most expensive conflict in US history after World War II.

Last week, US Homeland Security Czar Michael Chertoff allowed he had a “gut feeling” that an al-Qaida attack on America was imminent this summer. At the same time, Washington was abuzz with a leaked US intelligence report that al-Qaida – the objective of the so-called war on terror – had reconstituted and was as strong as prior to 9/11, 2001.

America’s sixteen intelligence agencies spend $40 billion annually, with another $15–20 billion in their hidden “black budgets.” Homeland Security spends $44.6 billion. In spite of these gargantuan expenditures of a trillion dollars – that’s $1,000,000,000,000 – the best intelligence Czar Chertoff can come up with is “gut feeling?”

One suspects Chertoff’s worried stomach has far more to do with the growing Republican Party revolt against the president’s Iraq war than nebulous threats from Osama bin Laden’s loud but tiny group.

Polls show the only area where Republicans still command popular support is the “war on terror.”

So Bush/Cheney & Co. are trying to use al-Qaida to scare Americans to vote Republican, just as they did prior to 2004 elections. It worked well last time and got Bush reelected.

But Americans are increasingly leery of the White House’s crying wolf. Many are also asking how Bush could claim “steady progress” was being made in his wars when it appears the al-Qaida movement is back to pre-2001 strength, anti-American groups are popping up across Asia and Africa, and Iraq is a bloody mess.

After six years of conflict, 3,600 dead and 25,000 wounded American soldiers, expenditure of $610 billion, tens of thousands of dead Iraqis and Afghans, collapse of Mideast peace efforts, and a Muslim World enraged against the US, nothing positive seems to have been accomplished by a leader who likes to style himself, “the war president.”

As the White House now ponders an attack on Iran, we would do well to recall the famed words of King Pyrrhus of Epirus, “one more such victory and we are ruined.”

Eric Margolis [send him mail], contributing foreign editor for Sun National Media Canada, is the author of War at the Top of the World. See his website.

Bush-Cheney Making Things Worse Day by Day

CommonDreams.org,

Thursday, July 12, 2007

BY Ralph Nader

Washington Post was another day of well-supported headlines chronicling the lawless, incompetent, wasteful, negligent, bumbling and multiple perils to our nation’s security and safety caused by the Bush-Cheney regime.

One headline reads: “U.S. Warns of Stronger Al-Qaeda.” The report by the Bush Administration’s National Counterterrorism Center was titled “Al-Qaida Better Positioned to Strike the West.” Safe havens are being established in remote tribal areas of western Pakistan.

In recent days, George W. Bush has told audiences of the growing menace of Al-Qaeda inside Iraq.

There was no Al-Qaeda in Iraq before Bush’s invasion.

Five hundred billion dollars (and vast bloodshed) later and we are left with the Bush government’s own assessment of Al-Qaeda’s resurgence and spread!

Officials inside and retired generals, diplomats and intelligence specialists outside the Bush government have warned before and after the Iraq invasion of the disastrous consequences of this maneuver. Inside the Pentagon, the U.S. Army personnel, up to four-star Generals, have warned against the invasion but have been muzzled.

Bush’s own CIA director-Porter J. Goss-, General William Casey and others declared that the U.S. military presence was fueling the insurgency in Iraq and Goss added that our presence in Iraq is a magnet attracting more people from other countries to learn the skills of sabotage and terror.

Bush’s own counter-terrorism advisor in the White House, Richard Clarke, wrote in his book, Against All Enemies, that Osama bin Laden must be beseeching Bush to invade Iraq to inflame the Muslim world and generate new recruits.

Nothing-facts, judgment, the destruction of Iraq, the U.S. casualties, the massive drain on the taxpayers, the distraction from the needs of the American people affect this obsessively-compulsed duo in the White House.

Another headline in the Post that day was an assessment by Bush’s CIA chief, Michael V. Hayden that the U.S. installed Iraqi government was unable to govern and that the situation seems irreversible. He added that he could not “point to any milestone or checkpoint where we can turn this thing around.” Those words were conveyed to the Iraq study group on the same day (November 13, 2006) that the Group heard Mr. Bush give an upbeat assessment of that same government.

Bush has been chronically detached from the reality of his own advisors.

Also on page one was this stunner of a sting: “Undercover congressional investigators posing as West Virginia businessmen obtained a license with almost no scrutiny from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that enabled them to buy enough radioactive material from U.S. suppliers to build a “dirty bomb,” a new government [GAO] report says.”

How about that for the Bush’s agency that is supposed to keep the atom in safe hands!

Inside on the Business Page is “Armored Vehicles Chronically Late.” This latest chapter in the Bush’s management by criminal negligence leaving soldiers without adequate body armor for many, many months of preventable fatalities.

The reporter, Renae Merle, writes: “The Pentagon inspector general’s office has found that a program to deliver special armored vehicles to protect military personnel in Iraq from roadside bombs has been marred by delays and questionable contracting practices that may have endangered troops.” “May have”? When such vehicles are not shipped out, soldiers lose their lives and limbs.

If George W. Bush’s daughters, Jenna and Barbara were on those Iraqi roads, wanna bet how fast Laura Bush would get George to focus?

Day after day in the papers and on the television news, the endemic mismanagement of corrupt corporate contracts, flouting of civil liberties, due process of law and inability to get anything done, even in widespread post-Katrina emergencies, produces no accountability, no compelling changes from the Congress, no impeachment proceedings.

Poll after poll shows Bush-Cheney approval ratings below thirty percent. About 70 percent of the people want out of Iraq. And many polls show the public wants the Bush regime to end, believes that Bush does not care for the people like themselves, and that corporations have too much control over their lives.

And not only conservatives are appalled by the gigantic deficits Bush is piling up for future generations of Americans.

This government leaves Americans defenseless when it comes to occupational diseases, medical malpractice, air and water pollution. Bush can’t even police defective or contaminated products pouring into this country from communist China.

Because it has no quorum, his Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is just about powerless to impose civil penalties or otherwise regulate or recall defective products, domestic or imported.

As reported in the useful Loyola Consumer Law Review, Bush has not filled the third Commissioner’s position for over a year which prevents the CPSC from exercising its authority over dangerous products. The agency is in limbo, while injuries mount.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book is The Seventeen Traditions.

The First Problem in Iraq is BUSH

Source: Huntington Post,

By Dave Johnson

Posted July 16, 2007

People say we should not impeach Bush because it will divert us from getting out of Iraq. I think that approach has things backwards. I think we can’t deal with the problems of Iraq until we deal with getting Bush out. With Bush in place we can’t have a rational debate about the best options for Iraq.

1) I believe that it’s wrong to just pull our forces out of Iraq. We invaded, we destabilized and we destroyed the existing institutions of order. We created the mess there. We created the civil war. We created the threat of regional conflict. So I think it is America’s legal and moral responsibility to provide security for the people of Iraq. And that’s also what international law says. Of course, providing security for the people of Iraq is not going to happen with Bush in office.

(Someone told me this idea is like being raped and then getting a ride to the hospital from the rapist. I can understand the sentiment, but the U.S. is not a person and Iraq is not a person. We and they are a bunch of people all with their own differing needs and interests. Countries have to deal with where things are on a given day, before they deal with where things were on a previous day. In other words, Bush did what he did — but where do we go from here that is best for us and best for them NOW?)

2) It is wrong to blame the Iraqis for what we have done and it would be wrong to abandon them to the mess we made. But the way our forces are being used by Bush just makes things worse. This must change but it will not change with Bush in charge of policy decisions.

3) Suppose we do vote to withdraw with Bush in office? How do you think a Bush administration will execute that withdrawal? Will they do it in a way that makes things better — or much worse? And will they just refuse, necessitating the impeachment I say has to happen first? In other words, we can’t deal with Iraq until we deal with Bush.

4) There is also a national security component. The current situation in Iraq really is making us less safe here. Leaving might only make that worse. This needs to be debated rationally - impossible with Bush in office spouting his focus-group-tested bullshit, designed to put up a smokescreen and distract us from reality.

5) Bush’s propaganda is causing us to doubt terror warnings that may be real. What if our intelligence agencies discovered that al Queda really is getting ready to use a nuke on an American city, for example? We simply can not trust our government right now to tell us the truth. The threat of a terrorist attack is too serious to allow this incompetent, lying gang of criminals to remain in office even one day longer than it takes to get them out.

6) Similarly, Bush’s lies about Iraq have forced us to doubt the claims about threats presented by Iran. But Iran is not Iraq, and their theocratic rulers are not our friends. We need to be able to trust what is being said to us and we can’t with Bush in office.

So I think that the right path lies in a different direction from working to get the troops out. Options beyond the simplistic choice of doing what we are doing now or just leaving need to be discussed. But we are not going to be able to do what is right until we change the national leadership here. We are not even going to be able to properly debate the issues.

Finding the answers to the problems of Iraq begins with solving the problem of Bush.

Torture Is A War Crime

Source: CommonDreams.org, July 15, 2007

By Cindy Sheehan

Journey For Humanity and Accountability

Today our Journey took us to Ft. Benning, Ga, where the cancer of the School of Americas (WINSEC) is housed. I have written on torture before and I believe that BushCo’s policy of imprisoning people without their basic due process and torturing them is one of the grossest breeches of international and American law and one of the overriding reasons that they should be impeached.

The School of Torture has graduated many egregious violators of human rights like Panamanian drug lord, U.S. CIA employee, and Bush family friend (until he became an enemy), Manuel Noriega. If there is one issue that should unite Americans it should be against torture. Incredibly, we still have neighbors in our communities who believe that torture is correct, humane and valuable. However to say torture is “wrong” is like saying the sky is blue. Torture is inherently wrong. Torture is pure evil. Torture is an abomination. Torture is disordered and demented. Torture is sick, sick, sick!

Most significantly the people who are being tortured in such prison camps as Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib were mostly sold to the US Army by bounty hunters and the Northern Aliance. Criminal charges against the prisoners are as rare as the truth in the Bush Regime. Most reasonable people would agree that information gleaned from such awfully brutal means (water-boarding, stress positions, extreme noise and temperatures, sodomy and other sexual humiliation, electrodes on genitalia, etc) is never reliable. I can’t even fathom the sick, sadistic minds of the Bush Regime who not only have authorized and institutionalized this behavior but also refuse to end it and close the camps that have undermined any moral authority the US may have had.

Torture not only dehumanizes the tortured, but the torturer. It hurts my heart deeply to think of our young soldiers carrying out such ruthless acts on other humans who for the most part were in the wrong place at the wrong time and do not know where Osama bin Laden is hiding. Torture only compromises our soldiers’ lives in the field as the US cannot credibly claim any kind of moral high ground if one of our soldiers is tragically captured. The abomination of Abu Ghraib is one of the reasons that the insurgency began on the day Casey was killed in Sadr City, Baghdad. I personally know three men who were illegally and wrongly imprisoned in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib who can testify to the fact that, yes, America does torture and does so with extreme, callous and cold-hearted cruelty.

The Geneva Conventions are clear on prohibiting the use of torture and the 8th Amendment to our own Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. When torture is official policy, where will it end? When George can pick and choose who receives the centuries old right to habeas corpus and who doesn’t, where will it end? Will it end with the “terrorists” in Guantanamo or will it be used here in the USA against those who stand up against tyranny and struggle for our Constitution, freedoms, peace and human rights?

Torture has tarnished the soul of our nation and Congress has done little to restrain BushCo’s Torquemadas and even when a bill is passed restricting the use of torture, George adds a signing statement saying that he is above the law. BushCo is no better than a crime cabal and they must be Consitutionally controlled.

Apparently impeachment is the only remedy for torture and will go a long way to elevating our country’s standing in the international community and to healing our broken nation. Impeachment is not an optional menu item that can be set on a table but a Constitutionally mandated requirement (See section II, Article IV).

Put it back on the table, Ms. Pelosi. We have over a million signatures on petitions demanding that Congress end the misery of our nation and world by impeaching George Bush and Dick Cheney.

Action items: Go to: www.impeachbush.org to sign the petition to impeach Bush.

Go to: www.thecampcaseyinstitute.org for more info on our Journey for Humanity and Accountability or to donate to defray our expenses.

Call Nancy Pelosi’s office (202-225-4965) to tell her to green light impeachment.

Join us in our walk from Arlington Cemetery to Congressman John Conyer’s office for a sit-in for impeachment on July 23rd or organize sit-ins in your Congress Rep’s local office.

Go to Amnesty International to learn more about the issue of torture.

Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan who was KIA in Iraq on 04/04/04. She is a co-founder and President of Gold Star Families for Peace and the author of two books: Not One More Mother’s Child and Dear President Bush.

Indonesia: Police Abuse Endemic in Closed Area of Papua

Human Rights News

Government Should Open Central Highlands to Independent Observers

(Jakarta, July 5, 2007) – In the Central Highlands of remote Papua province, a region closed to outside observers, police appear to be routinely committing serious abuses, such as extrajudicial executions, torture and rape, with impunity, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Endemic police abuse is deepening mistrust of the national government in Jakarta and potentially inflaming separatist tensions.

Conditions in Papua’s Central Highlands are an important test of how Indonesia’s security forces perform when political tensions are high and regions are closed to outside observers. Joseph Saunders, deputy program director at Human Rights Watch

The 81-page report, “Out of Sight: Endemic Abuse and Impunity in Papua’s Central Highlands,” is the product of more than a year of research. The report documents daily abuses by police officers and other security forces in the mountainous and isolated Central Highlands area of the Indonesian province of Papua, located on the western half of the island of New Guinea.

A key finding of the report is that the police, particularly BRIMOB officers (Mobile Brigade police, the elite paramilitary corps used for emergencies), are responsible for the most serious rights violations in the region today, although some reports of brutal treatment by Indonesian soldiers continue to emerge.

“Conditions in Papua’s Central Highlands are an important test of how Indonesia’s security forces perform when political tensions are high and regions are closed to outside observers,” said Joseph Saunders, deputy program director at Human Rights Watch. “The police are failing that test badly.”

The new report follows Human Rights Watch’s report in February, “Protest and Punishment: Political Prisoners in Papua,” which documented severe restrictions on freedom of expression, assembly and association in Papua.

Many of the police abuses documented in the report were particularly cruel. One man told Human Rights Watch what happened when 12 BRIMOB officers arrested him and some friends for a peaceful independence flag raising:

My teeth fell out. Blood flowed out. I was hit. I was kicked twice and then in the stomach twice again. I was kicked in the nose, the mouth and the teeth. More kicks were ordered and this was repeated. I could not count the number of times. I saw all my friends given the same treatment. Blood was flowing from them and they were forbidden from going to the toilet. They ordered us to swallow our blood. My nose was bleeding. They ordered us to swallow the blood again. I do not know the name of the officer in command. They all punched us, taking turns.

Another man reported being beaten by the police while witnessing the arrest of another person:

I was beaten with the end of a gun on my back, and with fists to my face. My mouth and eyes were smashed and bleeding. I felt dizzy and fell. Straight away I was kicked by five members of the police and BRIMOB. They were all wearing complete official uniforms with guns ... I was barely conscious when five members of the police took me into the car. As they were taking me, they punched me to the back three times with rifle butts and then in the car I was beaten with a truncheon.

Human Rights Watch wrote to both the head of the police and the head of the military in Papua asking for information on all of the cases documented in the report, but received no response.

A lack of internal accountability and a poorly functioning justice system mean impunity for perpetrators of abuses is the norm in Papua.

“No one is being prosecuted for the crimes we documented,” said Saunders. “The police are acting as a law unto themselves.”

The Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua are closed to outside human rights observers. Journalists have extremely limited access. Many diplomats have told Human Rights Watch that they have little understanding of the situation in the provinces since there is not much independent reporting on conditions there. Reliable information on the remote Central Highlands region is even harder to come by.

Human Rights Watch called on the Indonesian government to open the provinces to independent observers in order to increase the amount and quality of information about conditions there and to allow independent and transparent investigations to take place.

“By keeping the region closed to outside scrutiny, officials in Jakarta are receiving biased and partial accounts of what is taking place,” said Saunders. “Reliable information is essential if officials are genuinely interested in identifying problems and finding lasting solutions.”

For years, the Central Highlands region has been the site of often tense confrontations between Indonesian police and military units and small cells of guerrillas from the separatist Free Papua Movement (Organisasi Papua Merdeka, or OPM). The pro-independence guerrillas have conducted repeated low-level armed attacks against Indonesian security forces, which continue to conduct “sweeping” operations in civilian areas, spreading fear and panic and leading many villagers to flee their homes.

Gross violations of human rights in Turkey: AI Report

Source: WSWS, July 14, 2007

Amnesty International report on Turkey: failure to punish perpetrators of torture

By a correspondent

A new report published by Amnesty International on July 5, entitled “Turkey: The entrenched culture of impunity must end,” clearly demonstrates that torture, ill-treatment and killings continue to be practiced with impunity by the security forces in Turkey.

The report points out that “the investigation and prosecution of serious human rights violations” committed by the Turkish police and gendarmerie are “flawed and compounded by inconsistent decisions by prosecutors and judges.”

The human rights group called on Turkey to overhaul its justice system. It pointed to the “absence of an independent body which can impartially and effectively investigate human rights violations by state officials and the lack of centralised data collection of human rights violations committed by the security forces.”

The Turkish judiciary and police have been dominated by far-right elements, fascists and Islamists, especially since the September 1980 military coup. The judiciary has become more overtly conservative and reactionary, particularly in cases involving human and minority rights issues. Justice for the victims of human rights violations is often delayed or denied.

Full article

America violated every rule of international law in Iraq war

Counterpunch

Bastille Day Weekend Edition
July 14 / 15, 2007

America Leads the Way

The Illegalities of the Iraq War

By ROBERT FANTINA

In the four years since the United States and its so-called 'Coalition of the Willing' invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq, only one stated goal has been accomplished: the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Peace and democracy are simply pipe dreams, the continued fantasies of a deluded U.S. president and his gaggle of yes-men who all choose to remain oblivious to Iraq's bloody civil war.

In its perpetration of unspeakable terror upon the people of Iraq, the United States and its willing and/or coerced cohorts have violated international law at almost every turn. A few shocking examples are instructive.

In March of 2003, British Attorney General Lord Goldsmith responded to then Prime Minister Tony Blair's request for input on the legality of the 'coalition's' pending invasion. The U.S. had said that Iraq was in violation of Security Council Resolution 687, passed in 1991. The United Kingdom, Mr. Goldsmith said, believed that this determination could only be made by the U.N Security Council. He commented: "The US have a rather different view: they maintain that the fact of whether Iraq is in breach is a matter of objective fact which may therefore be assessed by individual Member States. I am not aware of any other state which supports this view."

One can readily deduce from this brief statement that Mr. Blair joined President Bush in his frenzied rush to war despite serious reservations that Mr. Goldsmith had about its legality, and which were made known to Mr. Blair prior to the invasion. Yet the then British Prime Minister, not called the Yankee Poodle for nothing, was willing to ignore the counsel of his own Attorney General and put his reputation, and the lives of thousands of young Britons, on the line as he happily jumped through the hoops Mr. Bush held for him.

Full article

Bush like Hitler, says first Muslim in Congress

The Telegraph, July 15, 2007

By Toby Harnden in Washington

	Keith Ellison, a convert to Islam, has cultivated a moderate image since being elected last November

America's first Muslim congressman has provoked outrage by apparently comparing President George W Bush to Adolf Hitler and hinting that he might have been responsible for the September 11 attacks.

Addressing a gathering of atheists in his home state of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, a Democrat, compared the 9/11 atrocities to the destruction of the Reichstag, the German parliament, in 1933. This was probably burned down by the Nazis in order to justify Hitler's later seizure of emergency powers.

"It's almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that," Mr Ellison said. "After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it, and it put the leader [Hitler] of that country in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted."

To applause from his audience of 300 members of Atheists for Human Rights, Mr Ellison said he would not accuse the Bush administration of planning 9/11 because "you know, that's how they put you in the nut-ball box - dismiss you".

Vice-President Dick Cheney's stance of refusing to answer some questions from Congress was "the very definition of totalitarianism, authoritarianism and dictatorship", he added.

Mr Ellison also raised eyebrows by telling his audience: "You'll always find this Muslim standing up for your right to be atheists all you want."

A convert to Islam who was previously linked to the extremist Nation of Islam, Mr Ellison, 42, has cultivated a moderate image since being elected last November, concentrating on issues such as health and education.

He is an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq. But he angered his own anti-war supporters by voting for a budget bill that aims to end the war over the next 18 months. His followers want an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.

After his speech was reported, Mr Ellison said he accepted that Osama bin Laden was responsible for 9/11. But his demagogic comments threaten to plunge him in controversy.

Mark Drake, of the Republican party in Minnesota, said: "To compare the democratically elected leader of the United States of America to Hitler is an absolute moral outrage which trivialises the horrors of Nazi Germany."

Lieberman Lays the Groundwork For Another War

Source: Huffington Post, July 14, 2007

By RJ Eskow

This week Joe Lieberman reprised a role he played so well in 2002. He paved the way for another needless and tragic war by outmaneuvering his Democratic colleagues on the Senate floor. This time he forced them to pass an amendment that seems reasonable on the surface, but which lays the groundwork a a new attack that could turn pro-Western Iranians into anti-American terrorists. It passed just as a new poll confirms that the Iranian leadership’s policies are wildly unpopular with their own people.

Lieberman’s 2002 “Rose Garden” appearance with Bush - where he endorsed the authorization for war in Iraq without further changes - destroyed ongoing negotiations to limit the President’s war options that were taking place between Democrats like John Kerry and Republicans like Richard Lugar. (Kerry described that move - a betrayal of genuine bipartisanship - in our 2006 conversation.) Now he’s done it again.

The Lieberman amendment sets the nation up for a Gulf of Tonkin moment - one that can be used to justify military strikes against Iran, with the President reassuring the nation that he has bipartisan support. It was worded in such a way that voting against it would have been political suicide for Senators.

Does that scenario sound familiar?

Full article

Senate Democrats Vote for War With Iran

Source: Dissident Voice

By Pham Binh / July 14th, 2007

That’s right. Senate - Democrats - Voted - For - War - With - Iran!

On Wednesday, the Senate voted 97-0 for an amendment written by Joe Bomb Iran Lieberman, whose position on Iran is identical to Dick Cheney’s.

The amendment repeats the flimsy charges made by the Cheney administration earlier this year that the Iranian government is arming Iraq’s Shia militias with explosively-formed projectile explosives that have killed almost 200 American troops and that Shia Iran is giving a safe haven to Sunni extremist Al-Qaeda (even though AQ is blowing up Iraqi Shias left and right). These are the same charges that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Statt, Peter Pace, distanced himself from, claiming that the evidence did not support the contention that Iran’s government either supplied or was complicit in the supply of these weapons to militias in Iraq. (Pace’s will not be renominated for the position, by the way.)

The amendment states that “the murder of members of the United States Armed Forces by a foreign government or its agents is an intolerable act against the United States,” and demands the government of Iran “take immediate action” to end all forms of support it is providing to Iraqi militias. It also mandates a regular report on Iran’s anti-US activity in Iraq.

Senior Democrat Carl Levin successfully inserted a small change to Lieberman’s text stating that, “Nothing in this section shall be construed to authorize or otherwise speak to the use of Armed Forces against Iran.” If you’re thinking, “phew! That’ll stop a war on Iran!” think again. The Iraq Liberation Act passed by Congress in 1998 and signed by Bill Clinton had the same text. And we all know the story of how that text stopped the invasion of Iraq.

Charging Iran with killing US troops has nothing to do with the facts. It’s about beating the war drums and trying to convince Americans that in order to “protect our troops” the US must bomb Iran.

The unanimity of the vote is alarming. Hillary and Obama voted for it. Only three sat out on the vote, including Senator Vitt who can’t be bothered to Iran-bash in the middle of his Religious Right-family-values-meets-hookers-and-diapers political meltdown.

During the Vietnam war, it was obvious that the Vietnamese were killing American soldiers with bullets and bombs with “from Russia with love” or “made in China” written all over them. These weapons were delivered by the boatload by Chinese and Russian ships sent their by their respective governments. Yet no one in Congress declared that this was “murder” by “foreign governments and their agents” and even Nixon, rabid anti-Communist that he was, never threatened Russia or China if they failed to “take immediate action” to halt these shipments.

Then again, those governments had armies and nukes powerful enough to do real damage if the US was stupid enough to attack them. These days, the US picks fights with tin pot dictators of impoverished Third World nations (Noriega, Hussein, Milosevic, the Taliban, Kim Jong-Il, Ahmadinejad) while screaming they are “the next Hitler.”

If the war on Iraq was a cakewalk, an attack on Iran would be. It’s got a bigger population, a bigger economy, a fairly strong military, and they’ve probably studied how Hezbollah fought the Israelis to a stalemate last year. The US Navy is so cramped for room to manuever its 130 or so ships in the Persian Gulf that they regularly radio the Iranian navy to notify them about impending ship movements, imagine how it will be once that third aircraft carrier arrives and if Iran fires thousands of missiles at these ships to overwhelm their hi-tech defenses. Plus, Iraq’s Shia won’t take kindly to the mass slaughter of their brethren next door by the same nation that refuses to leave Iraq and funds Israel’s slow motion genocide of the Palestinians.

Make no mistake. The US is on a collision course with Iran. Both Democrats and Republicans are hell-bent on rolling back Iran’s growing power and influence on the region, even if it means a war that will cost thousands or tens of thousands of lives. The vote on Wednesday is just more proof of that.

Pham Binh is an activist and recent graduate of Hunter College in NYC. His articles have been published at Znet, Asia Times Online, Dissident Voice, and Monthly Review Online. He can be reached at anita_job@yahoo.com. Read other articles by Pham, or visit Pham's website.

Failure of American Political System

Information Clearing House, July 13, 2007
A Reform to Restore the People’s Power

By Paul Craig Roberts

The American political system has failed. The fabled checks and balances of American politics were no match for a neoconservative administration with a secret agenda. The American people were deceived and tricked into supporting two invasions that are war crimes under the Nuremberg standard.

US aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq and the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians have radicalized Muslims throughout the world and swelled the ranks of insurgents. Despite the "surge" and an additional 30,000 US troops in Baghdad, the US is unable to protect its own embassy. On July 10, the fortified Green Zone, which contains the US and British embassies and the puppet Iraqi government, came under intense mortar and rocket attack. Within the protected Green Zone, 18 people were wounded and 3 were killed.

The US military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus said that the US is a decade away from victory in Iraq. Gen. Petraeus could have added another truth and acknowledged that the US military lacks sufficient fresh troops to remain in the conflict. Last year Colin Powell said the US Army is "about broken." The US military is exhausted by the insurgencies and will be driven out if not withdrawn.

Gen. Petraeus assumed command in January. Six months later, Petraeus says "the question is how can we gradually reduce our forces so we reduce the strain on the army."

In the US Senate, Republican support for Bush's wars is fading as senators face a hostile public that has had enough of Bush's pointless and lost wars based on lies and deception. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq never had any valid reason. The US occupations of these countries have failed, and no purpose has been achieved except the enrichment of the military-security complex and the swelling of al-Qaeda's ranks and credibility.

One trillion dollars has been totally squandered. Moreover, Bush's wars have had to be financed by borrowing abroad. The result has been a reduction in the dollar's value and an erosion of the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency. The dollar has fallen to a new low against the Euro and has reached a 26-year low against the British pound.

The latest comprehensive worldwide Pew poll reveals the complete collapse of America's standing in the world.

This is a huge price to pay for Bush's childish ego, for the enrichment of Cheney's cronies at Halliburton and merchants of death, and for Congress' appeasement of AIPAC.

Bush's and Cheney's lies and assaults on the US Constitution and American civil liberty, their plans to attack Iran, and the war crimes for which they are responsible provide an open and shut case for their impeachments. The latest polls show that 54% of Americans support impeachment of Vice President Cheney, with only 40% opposed. Bush hangs on by a hair with 45% favoring his impeachment and 46% opposed. But Democrats, like Republicans, have failed the electorate and refuse to do their duty. Congress is a creature of special interests and no longer represents the American people.

Obviously, some new method is needed for removing incompetent or dictatorial presidents and vice presidents.

Constitutional reform might be next to impossible, but before dismissing the possibility consider that according to British news reports, Britain's new prime minister, Gordon Brown, intends a wide-ranging program of constitutional reform, including giving up the prime minister's power to declare war.

The London Telegraph says: "The measures are intended to restore trust in politics after the by-passing of Parliament and the Cabinet, as well as the culture of spin and media manipulation, that characterized the Blair decade."

If America is to remain a democracy, the people need refurbished powers to hold "government of the people, by the people, for the people" accountable. One way of doing this would be a vote of confidence by the people. The question can be put to a national referendum: "Shall the President remain in office?" "Shall the Vice President remain in office?"

The state of Florida does this for judges, including Florida's Supreme Court, so there is precedent for allowing the people to decide whether officials may remain in office.

As the American people can no longer rely on elected officials to respond to public opinion, the people must do what they can to gather power back into their hands before they become the subjects of tyrants.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

The dictator and Lal Mosque massacre

Counterpunch, July 13, 2007

Musharraf's Massacre
When Dictators Serve US Interests

By IMRAN KHAN

Over recent days, news from Pakistan has been dominated by the siege at the Red Mosque, which ended late yesterday. Scarcely a mile from the seat of power in Islamabad, the madrasa students and their two leading clerics inside the mosque first claimed attention with kidnappings, threats of suicide bombings and demands for the imposition of sharia law. The Musharraf regime mounted a military operation against the militants which led to the loss of numerous lives, among them one of the clerics, Abdul Rashid Ghaz. A number of questions arise. Why was action not taken immediately? How were militants and arms able to get in under the gaze of the police and intelligence services? And why were other measures, including shutting off electricity at the mosque, not exhausted earlier?

The episode appears to have been drawn out deliberately by President Musharraf. Since he sacked the chief justice in March, a movement led by lawyers, journalists and opposition parties has been clamouring for democracy on Pakistan's streets. As Musharraf faces his biggest crisis, he is desperate to prove his indispensability to the west in the war on terror.

But this use of force is likely to produce unintended and dangerous consequences, as it has in Baluchistan, Waziristan and Bajaur. It may be salutary to recall how Indira Gandhi's order for troops to attack the Golden Temple, where Sikh militants were holed up, not only failed to subdue the militants but triggered a wave of violence, including her assassination. While few Sikhs may have sympathised with the militants, many came to deeply resent the government's high-handedness.

Suicide bombing and other noxious forms of terrorism were once alien to Pakistan. After eight years of military dictatorship, radicalism and fundamentalism are in the ascendant everywhere. Musharraf is perceived among radical elements as the west's instrument in a "war on Islam"--there could be no greater failure in the battle for hearts and minds.

Terrorism requires a political solution. Extremists can be marginalised through debate and political dialogue in a democracy. Military dictatorship, as we are now seeing, only exacerbates the problem. It has become obvious to every Pakistani that, far from presiding over a transition to genuine democracy in the country, Musharraf is intent on dismantling every democratic institution in his way. Over recent months he has assaulted the judiciary, restricted freedom of the press, and put hundreds of members of the opposition behind bars.

The roots of the most shocking incident so far, however, can be found in north London, where the chairman of the Musharraf-allied Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Altaf Hussain, resides. When Pakistan's chief justice decided to address the bar in Karachi, a vast welcome was expected in the city. This worried Musharraf and his MQM allies, who control the Sindh government--and especially Karachi, the provincial capital. They decided to organise a rival rally the same day, despite protests by the opposition. What followed on the blood-soaked May 12 could be described in two words: state terrorism.

While the police stood aside, the terrorist arm of the MQM sprayed bullets into a peaceful procession of the opposition parties. Some 48 people lost their lives and 200 sustained bullet wounds. Among them were 10 members of my party. Most callously, Musharraf later that evening triumphantly claimed that the people had shown their "force". None of the opposition parties believe MQM's denials that they were involved in turning this peaceful protest violent. It was then I decided to launch legal proceedings against Altaf Hussain, who has been living in exile in London since 1992 and became a British citizen in 1999.

The MQM came into existence in the mid-1980s as a genuine people's movement in Karachi, representing the immigrant community that had arrived from India shortly after the creation of Pakistan. This community had serious grievances, the most significant being that educated young muhajirs could not get jobs because of imposed quotas. But within a few years it had degenerated into a thuggish mafia outfit, controlled by one man, Altaf Hussain.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and even the US state department and the European Union have issued reports about the MQM's terrorist activities. The only independent provincial assembly in Pakistan recently denounced the party as a "terrorist organisation", and last weekend the conference of opposition parties jointly resolved to support the legal proceedings against Hussain.

While Musharraf maintains that he is at the frontline of the war on terror--in which thousands of Pakistani soldiers and citizens have lost their lives--he has allied himself with the country's number one terrorist. And Tony Blair's government, which was at the fore of this war, gave Pakistan's number one terrorist citizenship.

It is impossible to embark on any quest for the hearts and minds of Pakistanis when these blatant double standards exist. Are dictators somehow fine when they exist to serve US interests, even if they destroy hopes of democracy in the process? And are terrorists only a problem when it is western blood that is shed?

Imran Khan is the leader of the Pakistan Movement for Justice and a member of parliament

TIME TO END THE OCCUPATION OF IRAQ

Source: War Times

Life under occupation has been an unending tragedy for the people of Iraq. Over 34,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in 2006, and the violence has forced over one million Iraqis to flee their country. One in five Iraqis are living in poverty and more than half are unemployed, all while the costs of basic goods have skyrocketed. Many Iraqis still don’t have enough drinking water or electricity.

No wonder more than 80% of Iraqis want the U.S. military to leave.

THE U.S. OCCUPATION: THE SOLUTION OR THE PROBLEM?

All people of conscience are concerned with the intensifying civil war in Iraq. But the U.S. military cannot prevent civil war. This was clear when Sunni guerrillas blew up a sacred Shiite shrine in February 2006, sparking attacks and counter-attacks among Iraqis. “The [U.S.] military largely watched the violence from the sidelines,” according to the L.A.Times.

The only way to end the civil war in Iraq is for the different groups of Iraqis to negotiate a solution. This is impossible as long as the U.S. military remains in Iraq, because many of these groups are opposed to the occupation and the U.S. is openly trying to destroy them. Furthermore, extremist groups who actually do want civil war have very little support among the Iraqi people and are only tolerated because they are attacking occupation forces. If the US troops leave, these groups will be isolated and powerless.

The vast majority of Iraqis think the US military is creating more conflict than it is preventing. They are right. A series of atrocities created widespread anger against U.S. soldiers and fueled the armed insurgency: torture in the Abu Ghraib prison, arbitrary and indefinite imprisonment, massacres such as the shooting of 24 civilians at close-range in Haditha, and the rape and murder of a 14 year-old girl, to name a few.

The occupation makes a civil war more likely, not less. The US military’s main goal is destroying the mostly Sunni resistance, not preventing a civil war. But when the US military attacks a Sunni area with Shia soldiers, they generate retaliatory attacks by Sunni against Shia. The best chance to stop the cycle of violence is to end the occupation.

WHAT ABOUT OUR MORAL OBLIGATION TO THE IRAQI PEOPLE?

The occupation fulfills no moral obligation; it has fostered corruption instead of genuine reconstruction. But, because of the catastrophic effects of U.S.-led sanctions and military occupation we do have a responsibility to support the process of rebuilding Iraq, if the process is led by the people of Iraq. Individuals can support Iraqi groups struggling for womens’ rights and workers’ rights, and efforts to cancel Iraq’s foreign debt accumulated by Saddam. The U.S. government should support projects to clear Iraq of the depleted uranium, cluster bombs, and landmines in Iraq that poison, kill, and injure hundreds of Iraqis each year. It should also play a leading role in establishing a fund to rebuild Iraq, which will be controlled by the Iraqis themselves. The U.S. should be this fund’s largest donor. This will provide Iraq with the resources to move forward.

WHAT IS THE PATH TOWARDS REAL SECURITY FOR ALL?

Bush’s endless anti-Islamic “war on terror” is alienating other governments and peoples. This is the wrong course. In order to create true security, we must work cooperatively with the global community to resolve situations where the roots of violent conflict–inequality and social instability–are clear. In the Middle East, the U.S. must support a just resolution to the Israel-Palestine crisis that will allow Palestinians to live with rights and dignity.

The U.S. cannot play a positive role in promoting peace and security without withdrawing from Iraq. Our military presence there is destabilizing the region, putting Iraqis, US soldiers, as well as people in the U.S. at risk. Worldwide, it has pushed resentment of U.S. foreign policy to the highest levels in recent memory, according to BBC polls. Getting out now will make another world possible.

WHAT’S BEST FOR IRAQIS AND FOR U.S. SOLDIERS?

Attacks on US troops in Iraq average several hundred each week. Frightened young GI’s are shooting first, asking questions later. The result: one-third of Iraq veterans suffer from depression, schizophrenia or post-traumatic stress disorder. On top of that, US troops are being sent to the frontlines even if they are mentally ill, just to keep the occupation going. Iraq Veterans Against the War says:

“We, the veterans of the war, now know. . . the reasons for invading the sovereign country of Iraq were false, and we have paid a heavy price for these lies. . . . We call upon our President, the Congress, and all elected officials to immediately and unconditionally withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq and the Middle East.”

BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW

Take action to end the war: go to www.unitedforpeace.org for more information and action ideas.

President Bush's Contempt For Congress

The Nation, July 12, 2007

Bush’s Royal Edict: Don’t Cooperate With Congress

by John Nichols

President Bush has treated Congress with contempt for more than six years.But the most regal executive to reign over the United States since King George III was deposed has never displayed that contempt so aggressively as he did Wednesday.

On the eve of former White House counsel Harriet Miers’ scheduled testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, she was ordered by the president to defy the subpoena she had been issued by the committee.

The president’s lawyers claimed that Miers has “absolute immunity from compelled congressional testimony” in regard to the investigation of the administration’s politicization of federal investigations and prosecutions.

According to current White House counsel Fred Fielding, Miers does not need to cooperate with congressional inquiries into “matters occurring while she was a senior adviser to the president.”

That was enough for the former counsel’s lawyer, George T. Manning, to notify Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers, D-Mich., that Miers would refuse to appear at Thursday’s session to answer questions about the role played by the White House in forcing the firings of eight U.S. Attorneys.

Unlike former White House political director Sara Taylor, who answered a subpoena to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday but refused to answer most questions, Miers will not offer even a bare minimum of respect for the system of checks and balances that gives Congress the authority to investigate wrongdoing in the White House.

“As a former public official and officer of the court, Ms. Miers should be especially aware of the need to respect legal process,” complained Conyers.

The committee chair said he was, “extremely disappointed in the White House’s direction to Ms. Miers that she not even show up to assert the privilege before the committee.”

That disappointment is understandable.

But disappointment is not enough.

The administration’s casual disregard for subpoenas issued by Congress demands a response.

Conyers has spoken of seeking Contempt of Congress citations against current and former administration aides who refuse cooperate with his committee.

It’s time, not merely to defend the authority of the Congress but to reassert respect for the role of the Constitution in defining proper relations between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.

John Nichols’ new book is The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders’ Cure for Royalism. Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson hails it as a “nervy, acerbic, passionately argued history-cum-polemic [that] combines a rich examination of the parliamentary roots and past use of the ‘heroic medicine’ that is impeachment with a call for Democratic leaders to ‘reclaim and reuse the most vital tool handed to us by the founders for the defense of our most basic liberties.’”

Nobel Laureate Calls for Removal of Bush

Source: The Dallas Morning News (Texas), July 12, 2007

By James Hohmann

Nobel Peace Prize winner Betty Williams came from Ireland to Texas to declare that President Bush should be impeached.

In a keynote speech at the International Women’s Peace Conference on Wednesday night, Ms. Williams told a crowd of about 1,000 that the Bush administration has been treacherous and wrong and acted unconstitutionally.

“Right now, I could kill George Bush,” she said at the Adam’s Mark Hotel and Conference Center in Dallas. “No, I don’t mean that. How could you nonviolently kill somebody? I would love to be able to do that.”

About half the crowd gave her a standing ovation after she called for Mr. Bush’s removal from power.

“The Muslim world right now is suffering beyond belief,” she said.

“Unless the president of the United States is held responsible for what he’s doing and what he has done, there’s no one in the Muslim world who will forgive him.”

When an audience member told Ms. Williams that Vice President Dick Cheney would become president if George Bush were impeached, she said, “Can’t you impeach them both?”

“It’s twisted. It’s all wrong,” she said. “There are so many lies being told. It’s hard to be an American and go out into the world right now.”

Ms. Williams started her speech by asking every member of the audience to hug everyone around them. Then she cut to what amounted to both a call for peace and a stinging rebuke of the American government.

Conference organizers have said that the conference is nonpartisan and that no one was invited to speak about the war in Iraq. After Ms. Williams finished her speech, conference chairwoman Carol Donovan took the podium to say that Ms. Williams did not speak for the conference — only herself.

“It’s important for us to separate the opinion of the person and the position of the conference,” Ms. Donovan said.

Two other Nobel Peace Prize winners, American activist Jody Williams and Rigoberta Menchú Tum of Guatemala, will speak this week as part of the conference. Jody Williams, who was in the audience Wednesday, has also indicated she would speak about Mr. Bush.

“We believe very strongly it was important to have the opportunity to hear these three peace prize winners,” Ms. Donovan said.

Betty Williams won the Nobel Prize in 1976 for creating a group that helped start peace talks in Northern Ireland.

In 1992, Texas Gov. Ann Richards appointed Betty Williams to the Texas Commission for Children and Youth.

Many in the crowd found out that Lady Bird Johnson had died when Jan Sanders, the wife of U.S. District Judge Barefoot Sanders and a close friend of the former first lady, gave an impromptu eulogy.

“She was a friend, a doer, an influencer of world events,” Ms. Sanders said. “She lived a full life. If she were here, she would say to you, ‘Keep on being women doers.’ ”

Massacre in Islamabad

World Socialist Web Site

Mosque massacre: Washington’s “war on terror” shakes Pakistan

By Bill Van Auken
11 July 2007

A week-long siege mounted by the Pakistani military against Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, in Islamabad ended violently Tuesday in bitter fighting that claimed a heavy loss of life. Citing Pakistani military sources, the Dawn News television network reported that 88 civilians and 12 army commandos had been killed by late Tuesday, as the day-long battle continued.

There was no way as of last night, however, to determine the real death toll. Military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad declined to give a firm casualty figure, stating bluntly, “When the operation is finished we’ll start picking up bodies.”

It is suspected that many of the victims are young madrassa students, drawn from poor families and from the strife-torn regions of Kashmir and the North West Frontier Province. In the course of the siege, frantic family members gathered on street corners outside the barbed-wire barricades erected by the military, hoping for news of their children and relatives trapped inside.

“He is getting dollars for every student from America, Europe and others,” Badshah Rehman, whose two sons were inside the mosque, said of Pakistan’s US-backed military dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf. “He has killed our children for dollars,” he told the Reuters news agency, while keeping vigil with other parents.

Full article

The power of Israeli lobby on U.S. policies

Source: CounterPunch, July 10, 2007

"Whatever AIPAC Wants, AIPAC Gets"

Democratic Defectors and the Israel Lobby

By JERRY KROTH

In November, the American electorate repudiated Bush's Iraq debacle and established Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate promising to bring this "flawed policy wrapped in illusion" to a decisive end. Bush vetoed their withdrawal timetable, but voters urged their leaders to hold the line and not be bullied. In the end, though, 37 Democratic senators capitulated and gratuitously gave the President his $100 billion no-strings- attached blank check . . . enough money to pay tuition and fees for 1.3 million college students for four solid years!

Deep disappointment set in. Cindy Sheehan, the liberal icon, was so demoralized she resigned and returned to private life. In June, a CNN poll reported that "respect for Congress" plummeted to the lowest level "ever recorded."

Bloggers called them "traitor Democrats", and the descriptor is apropos. At the time of the vote, sixty-two percent of the American people favored a time-table for a withdrawal, but, more significantly, "seventy percent" of Democrats were so inclined. Voting against this burgeoning tide of anger betrayed the will of the people and party that put these Democrats in office.

Curiously, all of the traitor democrats were huge career recipients of funds from the Israeli lobby. If we took ten Democratic apostates and compared them to ten Democrats who stood by the voters, pro-Israeli PAC contributions were "ten times" greater for the turncoats than those who stayed with their constituencies ($322,000 versus $34,000 on average).

To be specific: Carl Levin, outspoken critic of the war and, we thought, a loyal supporter of the new regime to end it, defected and blithely turned his back on his Michigan support base. Despite his strident anti-war rhetoric, the Grand Rapids Independent reports Levin has supported Bush all the way "consistently funding the war and not introducing any meaningful legislation to bring it closer to an end." Practically unknown to his constituents, Levin is one of the largest beneficiaries of Pro-Israeli PAC funds collecting $600,000 in career contributions according to the Washington Report on Mideast Affairs.

Full article

'A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi... You know, so what?'

The Independent

Interviews with US veterans show for the first time the pattern of brutality in Iraq

By Leonard Doyle in Washington

Published: 12 July 2007

It is an axiom of American political life that the actions of the US military are beyond criticism. Democrats and Republicans praise the men and women in uniform at every turn. Apart from the odd bad apple at Abu Ghraib, the US military in Iraq is deemed to be doing a heroic job under trying circumstances.

That perception will take a severe knock today with the publication in The Nation magazine of a series of in-depth interviews with 50 combat veterans of the Iraq war from across the US. In the interviews, veterans have described acts of violence in which US forces have abused or killed Iraqi men, women and children with impunity.

The report steers clear of widely reported atrocities, such as the massacre in Haditha in 2005, but instead unearths a pattern of human rights abuses. "It's not individual atrocity," Specialist Garett Reppenhagen, a sniper from the 263rd Armour Battalion, said. "It's the fact that the entire war is an atrocity."

A number of the troops have returned home bearing mental and physical scars from fighting a war in an environment in which the insurgents are supported by the population. Many of those interviewed have come to oppose the US military presence in Iraq, joining the groundswell of public opinion across the US that views the war as futile.

Full article

US Middle East Wars: Social Opposition and Political Impotence

Source: Dissident Voice, July 9, 2007

By James Petras / July 9th, 2007

You cannot win the peace unless you know the enemy at home and abroad.
– US Marine Colonel from Tennessee.

Everywhere I visit from Copenhagen to Istanbul, Patagonia to Mexico City, journalists and academics, trade unionists and businesspeople, as well as ordinary citizens, inevitably ask me why the US public tolerates the killing of over a million Iraqis over the last two decades, and thousands of Afghans since 2001? Why, they ask, is a public, which opinion polls reveal as over sixty percent in favor of withdrawing US troops from Iraq, so politically impotent? A journalist from a leading business journal in India asked me what is preventing the US government from ending its aggression against Iran, if almost all of the world’s major oil companies, including US multinationals are eager to strike oil deals with Tehran? Anti-war advocates in Europe, Asia and Latin America ask me at large public forums what has happened to the US peace movement in the face of the consensus between the Republican White House and the Democratic Party-dominated Congress to continue funding the slaughter of Iraqis, supporting Israeli starvation, killing and occupation of Palestine and destruction of Lebanon?

Absence of a Peace Movement?

Just prior to the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003 over one million US citizens demonstrated against the war. Since then there have been few and smaller protests even as the slaughter of Iraqis escalates, US casualties mount and a new war with Iran looms on the horizon. The demise of the peace movement is largely the result of the major peace organizations’ decision to shift from independent social mobilizations to electoral politics, namely channeling activists into working for the election of Democratic candidates — most of whom have supported the war. The rationale offered by these ‘peace leaders’ was that, once elected, the Democrats would respond to the anti-war voters who put them in office. Of course practical experience and history should have taught the peace movement otherwise: The Democrats in Congress voted every military budget since the US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. The total capitulation of the newly elected Democratic majority has had a major demoralizing effect on the disoriented peace activists and has discredited many of its leaders.

Full article

CIA-run rendition flights through German airspace

Source: Spiegel International, July 10, 2007

CIA FLIGHTS

Special Treatment for Uncle Sam?

By John Goetz, Marcel Rosenbach and Andreas Wassermann

About 390 CIA-run flights through German airspace were in violation of German law, and Berlin could have collected millions of euros in fines. Now internal investigations could make things embarrassing for Gerhard Schröder's government as well as the United States.

DPA

Buffed clean: The German government stands accused of ignoring illegal "renditions" flights by the CIA.

When air traffic controllers hear the code words "ATFM exempt," they know to expect something drastic. Airlines use the code to report a flight when it has sick or severely injured passengers -- or heads of state -- on board. The code is the air-traffic equivalent of flashing blue lights on a city street.

On July 19, 2002, a Gulfstream business jet took off from Frankfurt am Main bound for Amman, Jordan. The flight received an ATFM exempt, although it carried neither patients nor politicians. Instead, the jet was carrying a CIA team that took a Mauritanian terrorism suspect into custody a short time later and eventually flew him to Guántánamo.

This camouflaging of an illegal kidnapping as a rescue flight was no isolated incident. SPIEGEL has obtained complete lists of the flight plans of secret CIA flights in German airspace, which reveal 390 takeoffs and landings of CIA aircraft at airports in Germany between 2002 and 2006. The documents also show that mis-identifying the flights was part of a system designed to dodge compliance with complicated approval regulations.

If the CIA had registered the flight plans correctly, it would have been required to provide details on the purpose of the flights. And once the true reasons for travel were reported -- say, as "kidnapping" or "war on terror" -- Germany's Federal Department of Aviation, the LBA, would have become suspicious (to say the least).

These deceptive maneuvers by the CIA have become the subject of intense scrutiny and debate within German political circles -- from the Ministry of Transportation and the LBA to the Chancellery. Soon a parliamentary committee set up to investigate the German foreign intelligence agency (or BND) will also take up the matter. On Thursday the committee appointed Joachim Jacob, a former federal data protection commissioner, as special investigator on the issue of secret CIA flights. Jacob's job is to determine how much the German government knew about the flights, which European Council investigator Dick Marty has called a "series of illegal acts" by the CIA.

Jacob will also investigate why the German government has been so tight-lipped on the flights. The government "itself had no knowledge of such transports," according to deputy government spokesman Thomas Steg, who added that the government had derived its information from reports in the media. A secret report prepared for the federal government in February 2006 made similar claims.

But the administration will have trouble maintaining this position once the special investigator gets to work. According to internal documents, former Interior Minister Otto Schily was "directly presented" in February 2005 with various press reports about US intelligence agents. At the time Bernhard Falk, the deputy head of Germany's Federal Office of Criminal Investigation, was apparently so concerned about the questionable flights that he wrote to the interior ministry: "I recommend ... that you inform your senior officials." Falk also suggested that the reports be "made available to other departments that could be involved with such procedures or accusations." Only a week later Falk contacted the interior minister once again to inform him about another press story on the secret flights.

This series of events should have triggered an investigation. Under German aviation law, the false declaration of flights is an infringement subject to fines ranging from €10,000 to €25,000. All told, the 390 CIA flights would have incurred fines of between four and 10 million euros.

And yet nothing happened. Now the government -- which at the time was led by former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, a Social Democrat -- must face allegations of sacrificing principles to avoid ruffling feathers in Washington, and of not collecting the fines.

In its own defense, the government wrote in a February 2006 report (after current Chancellor Angela Merkel took power) that it continued to "assume that ... the flights were conducted in compliance with the regulations of ... aviation law."

Experts believe this claim is a farce. Aviation law expert Elmar Giemulla, whose textbook on aviation law the government ironically cites in its 2006 report, calls the affair an "outrageously negligent treatment of German air sovereignty." Ronald Schmid, another aviation law expert, thinks the government wants to "deliberately conceal" the problem.

If the special investigator of the parliamentary investigation committee arrives at similar conclusions, the government will be forced to take action, especially in light of a statement it released last year: "The federal government will use all means available to it to address proven violations."

CIA flights aside, the LBA prosecuted 30 similar incidents in 2006, imposing fines in 27 cases. But LBA's investigative division has been quick to deny any negligence. "We did not receive a request from the Ministry of Transportation to investigate the CIA flights," says the former acting director of the task force, Reinhard Knäblein. "If there had been a request, we would have investigated immediately."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

US backs Pakistan mosque raid

Source: Al Jazeera July 11, 2007

Parents are anxiously awaiting news of children allegedly used as human shields in the mosque [EPA] The United States has said it backs Pakistan's "responsible" decision to storm the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, in Islamabad. The signal of support came as Pakistan began to count the human and political cost of Tuesday's bloody assault that killed the mosque's chief cleric, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, and left at least another 50 armed students dead. Eight soldiers also died in the raid, although the final death toll - including possible casualties among women and children in the mosque complex - remains unclear. Speaking in the US state of Ohio, George Bush, the US president, signalled his support for Pakistan's government, praising the country's president, Pervez Musharraf, as "a strong ally in the war against these extremists". 'Responsible move' Bush was speaking after the US state department signalled its backing for the raid. "The government of Pakistan has proceeded in a responsible way. All governments have a responsibility to preserve order" Tom Casey, US State Department "The government of Pakistan has proceeded in a responsible way," spokesman Tom Casey said. "All governments have a responsibility to preserve order." Meanwhile, the US embassy in Islamabad has warned its citizens in Pakistan to be on guard for the possibility of attacks by "terrorist elements" in the wake of the mosque raid. The decision to storm the mosque followed a week-long siege and came after the government said efforts to negotiate a peaceful end had broken down. Pakistan's interior ministry says the operation dealt a big blow to what it called Islamic hardliners and that the strong response should teach them a lesson. But the raid has sparked protests and promises of revenge from supporters of the mosque's chief cleric. Human shields According to military officials the body of Abdul Rashid Ghazi was found in the basement of a women's religious school after a fierce gun battle. Troops first stormed the sprawling mosque compound before dawn on Tuesday, and 18 hours later the army said it was still trying to clear out militants from residential quarters next to the school. Gunfire and explosions thundered over Islamabad as "Operation Silence" extended into the night. Government spokesmen accused the fighters of holding up children and using them as human shields before and during Tuesday's raid on the mosque. Although officials said about 30 children and 27 women had managed to escape during the fierce fighting, talks between the government and fighters suggested that hundreds had been inside. That has raised fears that the final death toll from the military raid could rise significantly. Some of the women in the mosque were among the most fervent supporters of the Taliban-style movement led by Lal Masjid's two cleric brothers, Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rashid Ghazi. Aziz is reported to have escaped te mosque a week ago disguised in a woman's all-enveloping black burqa. Bloody clashes A high death toll from the raid could turn public opinion against Musharraf, already unpopular for attempting to fire the country's chief justice, as he seeks a second term in office in elections due later this year. Hundreds of students protested the bloody raid on the Lal Masjid [EPA] More than 80 people have been killed since street clashes erupted on July 3 between security forces and followers of the clerics in the Red Mosque. The cleric brothers had sought to impose strict Islamic law in the capital, including inciting students to abduct and "re-educate" alleged prostitutes. Abdul Sattar Edhi, head of the private relief agency Edhi Foundation, said the army had asked him to prepare 400 white shrouds used for covering the dead. Police said more than 100 armed tribesmen and religious students near Batagram, in northwest Pakistan, joined a protest over the storming of the mosque by temporarily blocking a road leading to China. Another 500 Islamic school students in the eastern city of Multan blocked a main road and burned tyres, chanting "Down with Musharraf".

Bush's linking Iraq violence to 9/11 is utter nonsense

Source: McClatchy Newspapers

Bush again links Iraq violence to 9/11

By Jonathan S. Landay

Posted on Tue, July 10, 2007

WASHINGTON — Struggling to stem growing opposition to his Iraq policy even among Republicans, President Bush contended anew Tuesday that the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States are the same as al Qaida in Iraq, a violent Iraqi insurgent group that didn't exist until after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

It was the second time in two weeks that Bush has made the link in an apparent attempt to transform lingering fear of another U.S. terrorist attack into backing for the current buildup of U.S. troops in Iraq.

"Al Qaida is doing most of the spectacular bombings, trying to incite sectarian violence," Bush told a business group in Cleveland, Ohio. "The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is a crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many of whom are Muslims."

Al Qaida in Iraq didn't emerge until 2004. While it is inspired by Osama bin Laden's violent ideology, there's no evidence that the Iraq organization is under the control of the terrorist leader or his top aides, who are believed to be hiding in tribal regions of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan.

Moreover, the two groups have been divided over tactics and strategy.

While U.S. intelligence and military officials view al Qaida in Iraq as a serious threat, they say the main source of violence and instability is an ongoing contest for power between majority Shiites and Sunnis, who dominated Saddam Hussein's regime.

Bush's speech came as Democrats in the Senate mounted a drive for legislation that would mandate a timetable for a U.S. troop withdrawal or set the stage for a pullout.

Four key Republican senators have broken with Bush over Iraq, and more could desert after the administration sends a report to Congress at week's end that is expected to chart slight improvements in security, but virtually none on political measures aimed at reconciling rival religious and ethnic groups.

In his speech, Bush cited the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as the motivation behind the continuing war in Iraq. "They will kill a Muslim, a child or a woman at a moment's notice to achieve a political objective," Bush said. "They are dangerous people that need to be confronted, and that's why since Sept. 11 our policy has been to find them and defeat them overseas so we don't have to face them here at home again."

Before the war, the president and his aides cited Iraq's alleged illegal chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs to justify the ouster of Saddam, who administration officials asserted also had ties to al Qaida.

No such programs were found, however, and U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that Saddam also had no operational links to al Qaida.

Bush's linking Iraq violence to 9/11 is utter nonsense

Source: McClatchy Newspapers

Bush again links Iraq violence to 9/11

By Jonathan S. Landay

Posted on Tue, July 10, 2007

WASHINGTON — Struggling to stem growing opposition to his Iraq policy even among Republicans, President Bush contended anew Tuesday that the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States are the same as al Qaida in Iraq, a violent Iraqi insurgent group that didn't exist until after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

It was the second time in two weeks that Bush has made the link in an apparent attempt to transform lingering fear of another U.S. terrorist attack into backing for the current buildup of U.S. troops in Iraq.

"Al Qaida is doing most of the spectacular bombings, trying to incite sectarian violence," Bush told a business group in Cleveland, Ohio. "The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is a crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many of whom are Muslims."

Al Qaida in Iraq didn't emerge until 2004. While it is inspired by Osama bin Laden's violent ideology, there's no evidence that the Iraq organization is under the control of the terrorist leader or his top aides, who are believed to be hiding in tribal regions of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan.

Moreover, the two groups have been divided over tactics and strategy.

While U.S. intelligence and military officials view al Qaida in Iraq as a serious threat, they say the main source of violence and instability is an ongoing contest for power between majority Shiites and Sunnis, who dominated Saddam Hussein's regime.

Bush's speech came as Democrats in the Senate mounted a drive for legislation that would mandate a timetable for a U.S. troop withdrawal or set the stage for a pullout.

Four key Republican senators have broken with Bush over Iraq, and more could desert after the administration sends a report to Congress at week's end that is expected to chart slight improvements in security, but virtually none on political measures aimed at reconciling rival religious and ethnic groups.

In his speech, Bush cited the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as the motivation behind the continuing war in Iraq. "They will kill a Muslim, a child or a woman at a moment's notice to achieve a political objective," Bush said. "They are dangerous people that need to be confronted, and that's why since Sept. 11 our policy has been to find them and defeat them overseas so we don't have to face them here at home again."

Before the war, the president and his aides cited Iraq's alleged illegal chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs to justify the ouster of Saddam, who administration officials asserted also had ties to al Qaida.

No such programs were found, however, and U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that Saddam also had no operational links to al Qaida.

PRESIDENT BUSH'S HEROES IN ACTION IN IRAQ

Antiwar February 16, 2006

The Abu Ghraib Prison Photos

New Abu Ghraib Abuse Photos released February 15, 2006 by Australia's Special Broadcasting Service TV CLICK ON IMAGE FOR BIGGER PICTURE earlier Abu Ghraib photos

Mordechai Vanunu In Jail Again

CounterPunch
Weekend Edition
July 7 / 8, 2007

Back Behind Bars

The Unbreakable Mordechai Vanunu

By RANNIE AMIRI

"I said to the Shabak, the Mossad, 'you didn't succeed to break me, you didn't succeed to make me crazy.'"

Mordechai Vanunu, former Israeli nuclear technician, upon being released from Ashkelon's Shikma prison on April 21st, 2004, where he served 18 years.

They were words of courage and defiance, uttered by a man who embodied both. Mordechai Vanunu spent 18 years in jail, a full 11 of them in solitary confinement, for revealing Israel's yet undeclared nuclear capability to the world. He had emerged from Shikma with arms outstretched, repeatedly flashing the victory sign ­ or was it peace? ­ and refused to answer questions posed to him in Hebrew from the awaiting media. "I am proud and happy to do what I did," he unabashedly stated.

And what he has done since will now land him back behind bars.

An Israeli court has just sentenced Vanunu to six months in jail for violating the terms of his parole, which prohibit him from having any contact with foreigners or visiting the West Bank. As in all matters, he was fearless in doing both.

It thus behooves us to retell this man's remarkable story, lest we forget what a person of conscience can achieve.

Mordechai Vanunu was the first to expose Israel's dirty little secret: it was a major atomic power. He worked as a technician at the Dimona nuclear plant in the Negev desert from 1976 - 1985. Then, in a 1986 interview with London's Sunday Times, he disclosed pictures that not only proved Israel had the capacity to produce nuclear weapons, but was actually in possession of them.

Just prior to the publication of his interview on October 5, events unfolded as if they came straight off the pages of a Robert Ludlum thriller. On September 30, Vanunu was lured by a female Mossad agent from London to Rome, where he was captured and scurried off to Israel. Behind closed doors he stood trial for treason, was quickly convicted and sentenced to an 18-year term. If the Israeli government had hoped he would quietly and contritely fade away, they were sadly mistaken.

Vanunu vociferously renewed his call for Israel to come clean regarding its nuclear arsenal (reportedly the world's fifth largest) and open the Dimona reactor to international inspection. Israel still remains the only country in the Middle East to be a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has likewise barred entry to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) personnel.

Israeli politicians, from left, right and center, roundly heaped scorn on Vanunu after his release, whom they dubbed a "traitor." Conditions of his parole included prohibition of traveling abroad for one year or possessing a passport, limitation of his movement within the country, speaking with non-Israeli citizens, and discussing anything related to his former work at Dimona. These restrictions were condemned by Amnesty International who demanded their rescindment, citing Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which permit a citizen to move freely about or leave the country of their citizenship.

Although the term "whistleblower" is often used to describe Vanunu, it is a rather weak and understated characterization. He was a siren, alerting the world that nuclear weapons had found their way into the Middle East, shattering Israel's official policy of nuclear ambiguity.

Born in Morocco, Vanunu converted to Christianity before being imprisoned. He felt both his religious and political views (a staunch advocate of Palestinian rights) led to the harsh treatment he received while incarcerated, which he described as "cruel and barbaric."

Despite interrogation by the world's most ruthless intelligence agencies and imprisonment in what could have only been unforgiving conditions, Vanunu endured, saying:

"I am a symbol of the will of freedom, that you cannot break the human spirit."

A Nobel Peace Prize recipient in waiting and a true hero of our time no less.

Rannie Amiri is an independent commentator on issues dealing with the Arab and Islamic worlds. He may be reached at: rbamiri@yahoo.com.

US Military Bases Around the World -- What For?

Review Article: The Worldwide Network of US Military Bases The Global Deployment of US Military Personnel by Prof. Jules Dufour

Global Research, July 1, 2007

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The Worldwide control of humanity's economic, social and political activities is under the helm of US corporate and military power. Underlying this process are various schemes of direct and indirect military intervention. These US sponsored strategies ultmately consist in a process of global subordination. Where is the Threat? The 2000 Global Report published in 1980 had outlined "the State of the World" by focussing on so-called "level of threats" which might negatively influence or undermine US interests. Twenty years later, US strategists, in an attempt to justify their military interventions in different parts of the World, have conceptualised the greatest fraud in US history, namely "the Global War on Terrorism" (GWOT). The latter, using a fabricated pretext constitutes a global war against all those who oppose US hegemony. A modern form of slavery, instrumented through militarization and the "free market" has unfolded. Major elements of the conquest and world domination strategy by the US refer to: 1) the control of the world economy and its financial markets, 2) the taking over of all natural resources (primary resources and nonrenewable sources of energy). The latter constitute the cornerstone of US power through the activities of its multinational corporations. Geopolitical Outreach: Network of Military Bases The US has established its control over 191 governments which are members of the United Nations. The conquest, occupation and/or otherwise supervision of these various regions of the World is supported by an integrated network of military bases and installations which covers the entire Planet (Continents, Oceans and Outer Space). All this pertains to the workings of an extensive Empire, the exact dimensions of which are not always easy to ascertain. Known and documented from information in the public domaine including Annual Reports of the US Congress, we have a fairly good understanding of the strucuture of US military expenditure, the network of US military bases and the shape of this US military-strategic configuration in different regions of the World. The objective of this article is to build a summary profile of the World network of military bases, which are under the jurisdiction and/or control of the US. The spatial distribution of these military bases will be examined together with an analysis of the multibillion dollar annual cost of their activities. In a second section of this article, Worldwide popular resistance movements directed against US military bases and their various projects will be outlined. In a further article we plan to analyze the military networks of other major nuclear superpowers including the United Kingdom, France and Russia. Continue

US Occupation Forces Abuse Iraqi Women

Source: http://www.aztlan.net/iraqi_women_raped.htm

Photos Show Rape of Iraqi Women
by US Occupation Forces

(Please Note: Many of the photographs showing the rape of Iraqi women and the sodomization of Iraqi POW's at the Abu Ghraib prison are now at USA pornographic websites pointing to the possibility of collusion between the depraved US soldiers in the pictures and US based Jewish pornographers. Many of these photographs were also freely disseminated to US occupation forces, perhaps to inflame their nefarious desires and to motivate them to strike out against the Iraqi populace in these perverse ways.)

by
Ernesto Cienfuegos
La Voz de Aztlan

Los Angeles, Alta California - May 2, 2004 - (ACN) The release, by CBS News, of the photographs showing the heinous sexual abuse and torture of Iraqi POW's at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison has opened a Pandora's box for the Bush regime. Apparently, the suspended US commander of the prison where the worst abuses took place, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, has refused to take the fall by herself and has implicated the CIA, Military Intelligence and private US government contractors in the torturing of POW's and in the raping of Iraqi women detainees as well.

Brigadier General Janis Karpinski said to the Washington Post that Military Intelligence, rather than the Military Police, dictated the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. "The prison, and that particular cellblock where the events took place, were under the control of the Military Intelligence command," Brigadier General Karpinski said to the Washington Post Saturday night in a telephone interview from her home in Hilton Head, South Carolina.

Brigadier General Karpinski, who commanded the 800th Military Police Brigade, described a high-pressure Military Intelligence and CIA command that prized successful interrogations. A month before the alleged abuses and rapes occurred, she said, a team of CIA, Military Intelligence officers and private consultants under the employ of the US government came to Abu Ghraib. "Their main and specific mission was to give the interrogators new techniques to get more information from detainees," she said.

Today, new photographs were sent to La Voz de Aztlan from confidential sources depicting the shocking rapes of two Iraqi women by what are purported to be US Military Intelligence personnel and private US mercenaries in military fatigues. It is now known that hundreds of these photographs had been in circulation among the troops in Iraq. The graphic photos were being swapped between the soldiers like baseball cards.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, one Mexican-American soldier told La Voz de Aztlan, "Maybe the officers didn't know what was going on, but everybody else did. I have seen literally hundreds of these types of pictures." Many of the pictures were destroyed last September when the luggage of soldiers was searched as they left Iraq, he said

An investigation, led by Army Major General Antonio M. Taguba, identified two military intelligence officers and two civilian contractors for the Army as key figures in the abuse cases at the Abu Ghraib prison. In an internal report on his findings, Major General Taguba said he suspected that the four were "either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib and strongly recommended disciplinary action."

The Taguba report states that "military intelligence interrogators and other U.S. Government Agency interrogators actively requested that Military Police guards set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses." The report noted that one civilian interrogator, a contractor from a company called CACI International and attached to the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, "clearly knew his instructions" to the Military Police equated to physical and sexual abuse. It is not known whether these instructions included, or led to, the raping of Iraqi women detainees as well.US

American treatment of Iraqi prisoners

Nasir Khan

The Bush Administration claims to have brought democracy and American values to Iraq. But actions speak louder than words. The following pictures show the sort of democracy and American values Mr Bush, Mr Cheney, Mr Rumsfeld, Mr Wolfowitz, etc.,etc., had planned for the Iraqis.

I find it difficult to comment or say anything in this regard. However, the following photos are merely a glimpse of what American forces have been doing in Iraq and how they have been treating the Iraqis under occupation. But who is responsible for all this? President Bush is the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of America and the ultimate responsibility for the crimes his forces commit in Iraq lies on him.

—————————————————-

s) 04/12/2004
(AP Photo) 04/12/2004
The Abu Ghraib Prison Photos It’s the “liberation” of the Iraqi people These are just some of the photos that led to an investigation into conditions at the Abu Ghraib prison run by the occupation authorities, as revealed in a shocking report broadcast by CBS on 60 Minutes II. Images Copyright CBS News: Reprinted for Fair Use
The Passion PowerPoint
Kelly … ‘I had to act’ By JOHN SCOTT and MICHAEL LEA THE young mum who uncovered the Iraqi PoW sex snaps scandal said last night: “I felt sick to the stomach at those pictures.” Kelly Tilford, 22, called police after developing a film in her photo shop. http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/1,,2003250508,00.html
Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski, who was responsible for military jails in Iraq
Inside Abu Ghraib
Washinghtonpost video presoners abuse
Handcuffed in an awkward position, the prisoner’s ankle cuffed to the door handle behind him
اليدان مربوطتان مع الركبه و الكاحل مربوط بالباب الخلفي ليجبر الضحيه على الوضع الظاهر
Covered in a feces, Stool
الضحيه ملطخ بالبراز مقيد القدمين
ضربه مميته على النخاع الشوكي في الرقبه
Our Abu Ghraib? Former inmates at a Brooklyn detention center are suing the Justice Department on charges of abuse
Even after death !
ABC News has obtained two new photos taken at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq showing Spc. Charles Graner and Spc. Sabrina Harmon posing over the body of a detainee who was allegedly beaten to death by CIA or civilian interrogators in the prison’s showers. The detainee’s name was Manadel al-Jamadi. Mark Rothschild writes about the details of this poor man’s death.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,299964,00.html
Beaten to death
http://www.aztlan.net/iraqi_women_raped.htm
http://ctdsaddam.i8.com/uscrimes11.htm http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/iraqis_tortured/ http://www.albasrah.net/maqalat/english/kelly/Kelly.htm SHAME OF ABUSE BY BRIT TROOPS LAS TORTURAS DE LOS GENOCIDAS EN IRAK
http://www.carmillaonline.com/archives/2003/05/000221.html#000221 http://www.e-aljazeera.net/al3ar.htm

Impeach Bush and Cheney now !

CommonDreams.org,

Published July 8, 2007

An Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi

By John Atcheson

Madam Speaker:

It is time to impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney.

We all know the case for doing so: the litany of this administration’s offenses is long and tragic, the damage they have wrought to our nation and the principles it was founded upon profound.

And yet many of us understood - even if we did not agree - when you said “impeachment is off the table.” Your case was credible, if not persuasive. The proceedings would have been disruptive, making progress in other areas difficult, and the fact that three of the last six presidents would have been impeached by the opposition party could have damaged the presidency and sank this nation into a permanent partisan war. It could have fed the notion that impeachment proceedings were simply another political maneuver to be used by partisans to cripple their opponents, much as partisan Republicans did with Clinton. And with two years remaining, this did seem a high price to pay for getting rid of George Bush and his partners in crime. Taking the high road had a certain nobility, even if it didn’t satisfy a hunger for justice many of us felt.

But now - with scarcely eighteen months left - you have no choice but to impeach Bush and Cheney regardless of the cost, because it has become increasingly clear that the very foundations of this nation have been assaulted as never before in our history, and to let that record stand would be an act of cowardice on your part and a dangerous precedent to future presidents.

Others have laid out the specific charges, and they are legion. But it is the nature and character of the offenses which leave you no choice. This administration has not simply broken specific provisions of arcane laws, or committed “misdemeanors.” They have sought to fundamentally rewrite the Constitution in a manner that is more to their liking. They have systematically put the interest of a political party over the interests of the nation, committing serious crimes in the process.

The commitment to basic civil rights inherent in Bill of Rights has been violated with a cavalier arrogance unprecedented in our Nation’s history. Both the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment have been compromised. Indeed, had it not been for the Supreme Court, these cherished provisions would have been all but consigned to history’s trash heap. But we can no longer rely on them to safeguard our rights. The new Court has exhibited a reckless disregard for precedent, and a certain randomness in their interpretation of the Constitution in general and the Bill of Rights in particular.

The careful system of checks and balances, so carefully constructed in our Constitution, and so jealously guarded by elected officials throughout our history has been eviscerated by signing statements, secrecy, and lies. The de facto dictatorship of the executive has been enshrined in the theory of the “unitary executive.”

This has all been done under cover of a never-ending “war” which this President and Vice-president lied the country into. Indeed, to this day, they cannot articulate a real reason for embarking on this war. The President has proffered no less than twenty-two separate justifications for it, and none has survived scrutiny. Iraq has become the ultimate - and ultimately tragic - tautology: we are there because we are there. But now, as the clarifying lens of history brings this catastrophe into sharper focus, the full cynicism and criminality of this administration’s Iraq policy is emerging: we are there because of oil interests, and the political clout a war president can wield.

Finally, this administration has played fast and loose with the most fundamental principle in a democracy: the vote. Born in deceit in Florida 2000; re-elected in 2004 with the taint of voter fraud in Ohio; accused of politicization of the Justice Department - the guardian of the right to vote - in 2006, there is a rapidly growing body of credible evidence that they played an active roll in caging voters, suppressing turnout, and constructing a legal staff at Justice that would support such efforts.

All of this has been conducted under a cloak of official secrecy reminiscent of the Soviet Union. Characteristically, they have stonewalled attempts to examine their records, ignored Congressional subpoenas, and withheld information needed for Congressional oversight. Indeed, it is now known that the White House maintained a shadow e-mail system and used it for official business, and that some 500 critical e-mails from the official White House system are “missing.” Meanwhile, Cheney has made the preposterous claim that he is not a part of the executive branch in order to avoid disclosing any information to the Nation’s archives, making a mockery of Constitution.

Honest men and women can no longer doubt that there is more than probable cause to impeach Bush and Cheney on the most serious of charges and the highest of crimes.

In the end, their chief offense has been nothing less than to treat the Constitution as a document of convenience. They have substituted their theory of governance for that of our founding fathers.

If you fail to impeach Bush and Cheney, you elevate the opinions of partisan hacks like Addington, Yoo, and Gonzales, over the cherished and proven principles of governance advanced by statesmen such as Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, and our nation and our democracy will forever be changed, for the worse.

Yes, impeachment is disruptive; yes, we must preserve it for only the most heinous of offenses; and yes, it will make it difficult to conduct other business.

But future presidents must know that they will be held accountable; they must know that they cannot ignore the Constitution simply by wagging the dog; they must know that Congress is vigilant and that they serve the people by jealously protecting their rights.

Fear is democracy’s worst enemy, secrecy its greatest threat, but they are a despot’s best friend. Despots operate in secret and thrive on the ignorance it creates. They wield fear to frighten the people and paralyze opposition.

Those who would champion freedom must have the courage to confront the fear-monger and expose his stratagems and the wisdom to know when it is necessary.

Two hundred and twenty years ago, as the constitutional convention was concluding, a lady asked Benjamin Franklin whether we had a Republic or Monarchy. Franklin’s famous reply, “A Republic, if you can keep it,” is as true today as it was then.

History is watching, Madam Speaker. The fate of our Republic is in your hands. We look now to you for the wisdom to know it is time, and courage to act upon it.

John Atcheson’s writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, The San Jose Mercury News and several other major papers. He is currently at work on a novel about global warming.

Bush a man of compassion!

The Guardian, July 7, 2007

A president transformed

It is so moving to see how a willing executioner can soften into a man of compassion - for cronies

By Terry Jones

It has been a truly moving experience to witness the concern and compassion the president of the United States can show towards a convicted felon. Particularly someone accused of such grave offences as Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's former chief of staff. On March 6 2007 Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice, making false statements to the FBI, and twice committing perjury before a grand jury. According to the charge sheet, Libby "did knowingly and corruptly endeavour to influence, obstruct and impede the due administration of justice by misleading and deceiving the grand jury". So it wasn't a case of absent-mindedness, then.

That is why George Bush's act of mercy is so inspiring, especially when one considers that compassion is not something generally associated with him. When he was governor of Texas, for instance, there were quite a number of convicted felons towards whom he didn't show much compassion at all. In fact he insisted they receive the full penalty of the law, which in their case was somewhat more severe than in Libby's. They were executed. When Bush became governor in 1995, the average number of executions in the state was 7.6 a year. During his time in office, he managed to put down a further 24 humans a year, bringing the annual number of executions up to 31.6; it is heartwarming to see how his attitude to convicted criminals has softened.

The president said the sentence imposed on Libby was "excessive", and that he had suffered enough punishment without it. "The reputation he gained through his years of public service and professional work in the legal community is for ever damaged," said Bush. "His wife and young children have also suffered immensely."

Now this will be good news for critics of the current system of justice. For some time, defence lawyers have been complaining that sentences are too harsh, that defendants' positive contributions to society are ignored, and that collateral damage caused to defendants' families is disregarded. Only last month the US attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, announced that the justice department would push for legislation to make federal sentences even tougher and less flexible. How delighted the critics of such harsh attitudes must be to see that the president has now come around to their way of thinking.

Mind you, Bush's softening of heart can only have happened in very recent days. A couple of weeks ago, in an eerily similar case, Victor Rita was, like Libby, convicted of perjury, making false statements to federal agents, and obstruction of justice. Like Scooter, Rita has an unblemished record of public service - 25 years in the armed forces with 35 commendations, awards and medals - and yet he was handed a 33-month jail sentence without even a message of condolence from the president.

In another recent case, the justice department tried to have Jamie Olis put away for more than 24 years for accounting fraud. In the end he got six years inside. But then I suppose fiddling the accounts isn't on a par with trying to obstruct an investigation into a breach of national security.

So I thoroughly approve of the president's change of heart towards convicted criminals, and hope it will continue until his term of office expires - and that in the future we shall witness increasing moderation in the justice department's insatiable urge to punish, imprison and execute.

And I sincerely hope that the commutation of Libby's prison sentence will usher in a new era of clemency, compassion and human forgiveness, under a president who otherwise has so much blood on his hands.

· Terry Jones is a film director, actor and Python
Terry-jones.net

Comments

NATO kills 108 Afghan civilians in one day

New York Times, July 8, 2007

Tribal Chief Says NATO Airstrike Killed 108 Afghan Civilians

By BARRY BEARAK

Published: July 8, 2007

KABUL, Afghanistan, July 7 — Amid a continuing flurry of reports about civilian casualties in Afghanistan, the leader of a tribal council in Farah Province said Saturday that 108 noncombatants had been killed Friday in a NATO airstrike.

The report was denied by a NATO spokesman and could not immediately be confirmed from other sources.

“NATO soldiers, along with the Afghan National Army and people from the national police, came to Shewan Village and told us they needed to search three or four houses,” the tribal chief, Hajji Khudai Rahm, said in a telephone interview. “As we talked, a firefight began and 20 houses were destroyed when the planes dropped bombs.

“We counted 108 bodies, including women and children,” he said. “Fourteen local policemen were among the dead. Right now, things are calm, but people are digging through the rubble to find more bodies.”

Also, Reuters reported that residents and officials in Kunar Province said 36 civilians had been killed in recent airstrikes, 11 of them on Thursday during a bombardment, and 25 more on Friday as they attended a funeral for the deceased.

Hajji Shalizai Didar, the governor of Kunar, said Saturday via telephone that he had heard the reports about the deaths, in Watapoor District, but had been unable to confirm them because the fighting continued.

Maj. John Thomas, a spokesman for NATO, said the alliance had ordered airstrikes in both Farah and Kunar during the times in question.

“We’re aware of the reports of civilian casualties but none of it tracks with the information we have, which is pretty extensive,” he said. “In both cases, we had good reconnaissance before and after.”

American and NATO forces in Afghanistan have relied on airstrikes to help fight resurgent Taliban fighters in many parts of the country. But the rising number of civilian casualties in the bombardments has brought criticism from Afghan officials, who have accused foreign forces in the country of being cavalier with civilian lives. They have also accused the Taliban of using civilians as human shields.

Closest CIA bid to kill Castro was poisoned drink

Reuters | July 6, 2007

By Anthony Boadle

The closest the CIA came to killing Cuba's Fidel Castro was a 1963 attempt with a poison pill delivered by American mobsters that was to be slipped into a chocolate milkshake, a former Cuban intelligence chief said.

But the capsule stuck to the freezer where it was hidden in the cafeteria of the Havana Libre (ex Hilton) Hotel and ripped open when the would-be assassin waiter went to get the poison.

"That moment was the closest the CIA got to assassinating Fidel," retired state security general Fabian Escalante told Reuters in an interview this week.

Castro, who seized power in a 1959 revolution that turned Cuba into a communist state 90 miles away from the United States, has survived hundreds of attempts on his life by his enemies, from car ambushes to grenade attacks in baseball stadiums, Escalante said.

Some of the most imaginative cloak-and-dagger plots were the brainchild of the Central Intelligence Agency, he said.

They included poisoned cigars, an exploding shell meant to be planted in his favorite underwater fishing location and a scuba diving wet suit tainted with toxins.

Among early attempts devised by the CIA to discredit Castro was a plan to place chemical powders on his boots that would cause his beard to fall out when he was in New York to speak at the United Nations in 1960.

When that failed, the CIA planned to slip him a box of cigars tainted with LSD so that he would burst into fits of laughter during a television interview, said Escalante, author of a book that documents 167 plots against Castro.

But it was the CIA's plans to poison Castro with botulinum toxins in the early 1960s that came closest to succeeding.

The agency acknowledged last week for the first time that the plot to assassinate Castro was personally approved by the Kennedy administration's CIA director Allen Dulles.

"FAMILY JEWELS"

The CIA declassified nearly 700 pages of secret records detailing some of its illegal acts during 25 years of overseas assassination attempts and domestic spying.

The agency's so-called "Family Jewels" describe the initial efforts to get rid of Castro by using a go-between to convince two top mobsters, Salvatore Giancana and Santos Trafficant, the head of the Mafia's Cuban casino operations, to assassinate Castro. Giancana suggested poisoning him.

Six potent pills were provided in 1961 to Juan Orta, identified as a Cuban official who had been receiving kickback payments from gambling interests, who still had access to Castro and was in a financial bind. But Orta got cold feet.

Escalante said more poisoned pills, one batch disguised in a bottle of Bayer aspirins, were delivered through the Mafia to an opposition group that almost succeeded in March 1963 when Castro went for a milkshake.

Much of the information declassified by the CIA had been released in congressional investigations in the past.

Escalante, who detailed the poison pill plot in his book "The Secret War" published in 2005, said the agency was trying to "purify" itself but continues its skulduggery today.

While there is no evidence that the CIA has plotted to kill Castro since the Ford Administration banned assassination plots against foreign leaders in 1976, Escalante sees the hand of the CIA in more recent attempts by anti-Castro militants trained by the agency for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961.

Despite U.S. hostility, Castro remains Cuban leader at age 80, although bowel surgery forced him to hand over formal power to his brother Raul last July.

Escalante said effective Cuban security measures around Castro and the Cuban leader's intuitive "nose" for danger has kept him alive.

To this day, few Cubans know Castro's whereabouts, whether he is in a hospital or at home in a residential compound in western Havana called "Point Zero."

Much of US favors Bush impeachment: poll

Source: rinf.com, July 7, 2007

Nearly half of the US public wants President George W. Bush to face impeachment, and even more favor that fate for Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a poll out Friday.

The survey by the American Research Group found that 45 percent support the US House of Representatives beginning impeachment proceedings against Bush, with 46 percent opposed, and a 54-40 split in favor when it comes to Cheney.

The study by the private New Hampshire-based ARG canvassed 1,100 Americans by telephone July 3-5 and had an error margin of plus or minus three percentage points. The findings are available on ARG’s Internet site.

The White House declined to comment on the poll, the latest bad news for a president who has seen his public opinion standings dragged to record lows by the unpopular war in Iraq.

The US Constitution says presidents and vice presidents can be impeached — that is, formally charged by the House — for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” by a simple majority vote.

Conviction by the Senate, which requires a two-thirds majority, means removal from office.

Just two US presidents have been impeached: Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998 and acquitted in 1999; Andrew Johnson was impeached and acquitted in 1868. Disgraced president Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 when a House impeachment vote appeared likely.

In late April, left-wing Representative Dennis Kucinich, a long-shot Democratic presidential hopeful, introduced a resolution calling for Cheney’s impeachment. To date, the measure has nine listed co-sponsors and a 10th set to sign on when the House returns to work next week.

But Democratic leaders appear unlikely to pursue such a course.

'Supporting the troops' means withdrawing them

Source: Nieman Watchdog

COMMENTARY | July 05, 2007

Gen. William Odom writes that opponents of the war should focus public attention on the fact that Bush’s obstinate refusal to admit defeat is causing the troops enormous psychological as well as physical harm.

By William E. Odom
diane@hudson.org

Every step the Democrats in Congress have taken to force the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq has failed. Time and again, President Bush beats them into submission with charges of failing to "support the troops."

Why do the Democrats allow this to happen? Because they let the president define what "supporting the troops" means. His definition is brutally misleading. Consider what his policies are doing to the troops.

No U.S. forces have ever been compelled to stay in sustained combat conditions for as long as the Army units have in Iraq. In World War II, soldiers were considered combat-exhausted after about 180 days in the line. They were withdrawn for rest periods. Moreover, for weeks at a time, large sectors of the front were quiet, giving them time for both physical and psychological rehabilitation. During some periods of the Korean War, units had to fight steadily for fairly long periods but not for a year at a time. In Vietnam, tours were one year in length, and combat was intermittent with significant break periods.

In Iraq, combat units take over an area of operations and patrol it daily, making soldiers face the prospect of death from an IED or small arms fire or mortar fire several hours each day. Day in and day out for a full year, with only a single two-week break, they confront the prospect of death, losing limbs or eyes, or suffering other serious wounds. Although total losses in Iraq have been relatively small compared to most previous conflicts, the individual soldier is risking death or serious injury day after day for a year. The impact on the psyche accumulates, eventually producing what is now called "post-traumatic stress disorders." In other words, they are combat-exhausted to the point of losing effectiveness. The occasional willful killing of civilians in a few cases is probably indicative of such loss of effectiveness. These incidents don't seem to occur during the first half of a unit's deployment in Iraq.

After the first year, following a few months back home, these same soldiers are sent back for a second year, then a third year, and now, many are facing a fourth deployment! Little wonder more and more soldiers and veterans are psychologically disabled.

And the damage is not just to enlisted soldiers. Many officers are suffering serious post-traumatic stress disorders but are hesitant to report it – with good reason. An officer who needs psychiatric care and lets it appear on his medical records has most probably ended his career. He will be considered not sufficiently stable to lead troops. Thus officers are strongly inclined to avoid treatment and to hide their problems.

There are only two ways to fix this problem, both of which the president stubbornly rejects. Instead, his recent "surge" tactic has compelled the secretary of defense to extend Army tours to 15 months! (The Marines have been allowed to retain their six-month deployment policy and, not surprisingly, have fewer cases of post-traumatic stress syndrome.)

The first solution would be to expand the size of the Army to two or three times its present level, allowing shorter combat tours and much longer breaks between deployments. That cannot be done rapidly enough today, even if military conscription were restored and new recruits made abundant. It would take more than a year to organize and train a dozen new brigade combat teams. The Clinton administration cut the Army end strength by about 40 percent – from about 770,000 to 470,000 during the 1990s. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld looked for ways to make the cuts even deeper. Thus this administration and its predecessor aggressively gave up ground forces and tactical air forces while maintaining large maritime forces that cannot be used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sadly, the lack of wisdom in that change in force structure is being paid for not by President Bush or President Clinton but by the ordinary soldier and his family. They have no lobby group to seek relief for them.

The second way to alleviate the problem is to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq as soon as possible and as securely as possible. The electorate understands this. That is why a majority of voters favor withdrawing from Iraq.

If the Democrats truly want to succeed in forcing President Bush to begin withdrawing from Iraq, the first step is to redefine "supporting the troops" as withdrawing them, citing the mass of accumulating evidence of the psychological as well as the physical damage that the president is forcing them to endure because he did not raise adequate forces. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress could confirm this evidence and lay the blame for "not supporting the troops" where it really belongs – on the president. And they could rightly claim to the public that they are supporting the troops by cutting off the funds that he uses to keep U.S. forces in Iraq.

The public is ahead of the both branches of government in grasping this reality, but political leaders and opinion makers in the media must give them greater voice.

Congress clearly and indisputably has two powers over the executive: the power of the purse and the power to impeach. Instead of using either, members of congress are wasting their time discussing feckless measures like a bill that "de-authorizes the war in Iraq." That is toothless unless it is matched by a cut-off of funds.

The president is strongly motivated to string out the war until he leaves office, in order to avoid taking responsibility for the defeat he has caused and persisted in making greater each year for more than three years.

To force him to begin a withdrawal before then, the first step should be to rally the public by providing an honest and candid definition of what "supporting the troops" really means and pointing out who is and who is not supporting our troops at war. The next step should be a flat refusal to appropriate money for to be used in Iraq for anything but withdrawal operations with a clear deadline for completion.

The final step should be to put that president on notice that if ignores this legislative action and tries to extort Congress into providing funds by keeping U.S. forces in peril, impeachment proceeding will proceed in the House of Representatives. Such presidential behavior surely would constitute the "high crime" of squandering the lives of soldiers and Marines for his own personal interest.

Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.), is a Senior Fellow with Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale University. He was Director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988. From 1981 to 1985, he served as Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, the Army's senior intelligence officer. From 1977 to 1981, he was Military Assistant to the President's Assistant for National Security Affairs, Zbigniew Brzezinski. E-mail: diane@hudson.org

The revolution starts now

The Electronic Intifada, 6 July 2007

By Osamah Khalil

Palestinian students take part in a demonstration marking the 59th anniversary of the Nakba in the West Bank city of Nablus, 15 May 2007. (Rami Swidan/MaanImages)

No time in the recent history of the Palestinian people has appeared darker or more devoid of hope. Internally divided, splintered across the globe, and lacking effective representation, the Palestinian national movement is arguably at the lowest point in its history. Moreover, Palestine today serves as the harbinger of the future of an Arab world under siege, occupied by external forces allied with internal collaborators intent on sowing and feeding divisions. Outside of Palestine, refugees and exiles are under constant threat and pressure from Arab regimes and Western governments, with little or no support from the traditional institutions which once represented them on the world stage. Yet, if there is to be hope it is in the desiccated and ostensibly defunct Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to which Palestinians must turn. The time has come for Palestinians globally to regain and reinvigorate the institution that the world still recognizes as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people."

This process begins with the dissolution of the Palestinian Authority. All Palestinians living under the 41st year of their occupation in the West Bank and Gaza must declare that they will no longer be a party to their own occupation. That they will not allow Israel to illegally withhold their tax revenues, while launching repeated incursions and invasions killing with virtual impunity. Nor will they permit representatives of their "government' to benefit financially and politically from Israel's occupation, from the construction of Israel's apartheid wall to the expansion of settlements on Palestinian land and the suppression of political activity. For American President George W. Bush's favored sons -- Mahmoud Abbas, Salam Fayyad, Mohammad Dahlan and their ilk -- to resign with what little dignity that remains and leave Palestine for whatever shore will take them, in order to allow a new PLO to emerge not tainted by the stench of corruption and collusion. Any government which is beholden to the financial and military support of its peoples' enemies is not deserving of either the title "Palestinian" or "Authority." Indeed, the time for this grotesque charade to end is now and it is long overdue.

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Tony Blair: Reinventing A War Criminal

Global Research, July 5, 2007 By Stephen Lendman

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Britain's most despised and discredited man ended his 10 year reign June 27 when he stepped down from office transferring his ruling Labor Party's leadership to successor Gordon Brown. He had no choice because of seething public displeasure over his allying with George Bush's illegal wars on Iraq and Afghanistan. Most Brits oppose them, yet the vast majority of Labor and Conservative MPs, including new prime minister Gordon Brown, supported them early on, now may have second thoughts, but are constrained by close relations with Washington making them reluctant to back down from what they once disingenuously trumpeted as a noble cause. That's an open question, however, the London Guardian's Jonathan Steele posed and answered June 29 if Mr. Brown was listening. Steele's message to "The new man in No 10" is "seize the day....break with Bush now....signal a fresh start by taking Britain out of Iraq." Don't bet on it. Steele says Brown is a committed "Atlanticist." He's likely weighing the proper way to begin engaging his US ally. Steele tells him how, pointing to other loyal NATO members as examples. France and Germany sent no forces to Iraq, and Italy, Spain and the Netherlands withdrew theirs. It caused no rupture in relations with Washington for any of them after some name calling at first. Why not Britain now? Steele stresses how refreshing a policy change at "No 10" would be "after the subservient Blair years." Tony Blair began his tenure May 2, 1997 with a formidable approval rating as high at times as 90% but ended it in the mid-20% range or lower. The same is likely for George Bush already at 26% in the latest Newsweek poll suggesting it's even lower than that. Immediately post-9/11, he was compared to Lincoln, FDR and Churchill combined. It was laughable then and seems ludicrous now for a hated man barely hanging on and trying to avoid what growing numbers in the country demand - his removal from office by impeachment along with Vice-President Cheney. The feeling of many in Britain is that by allying with George Bush, Mr. Blair left a legacy of "dashed hopes and big disappointments, of so much promised and so little delivered." That's in spite of helping advance the Northern Ireland peace process, begun before he took office, and that leaders in Ireland had lots more to do with than him. Just hours after standing down, the announcement everyone knew in advance came, surprising no one but angering most. Referring to the so-called Quartet, the BBC reported June 27: "Tony Blair is to become a Middle East envoy working on behalf of the US, Russia, the UN and the EU." The London Guardian called him "the Quartet's fifth horseman," an appointment that "beggars belief." In his new capacity, he'll replace former World Bank president James Wolfensohn who resigned last year for lack of progress he never had a chance to achieve in the first place. Neither will Mr. Blair, nor will he try to, as Alvaro de Soto, former UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and envoy to the Quartet, explained in his leaked End of Mission Report. It noted Wolfensohn was originally to cover the entire peace process, but what emerged for him was a narrowly constricted role. De Soto said he was "highjacked....by US envoys and (Secretary Condoleezza) Rice." As a result, Wolfensohn stepped down from his job in April, 2006 with "a more jaundiced view of Israel (and US) policies than he had upon entering." Based on his sordid war criminal record post-9/11, Tony Blair won't likely have the qualms that got James Wolfensohn to resign his job. He's taking it to reinvent himself, but that's no more likely than convincing carnivores to become vegetarians. He'll first visit Ramallah in the West Bank, showing up as a Trojan horse fooling no one about what's behind his slick-tongued hypocrisy. Full article

When the Crimes of the White House are Unpunishable

CounterPunch, July 6, 2007

Scooter Libby and Mordechai Vanunu

By DANIEL ELLSBERG

On the day that Scooter Libby's prison sentence was lifted by President Bush, Mordechai Vanunu was sentenced to prison, again, in Israel. In both cases, the underlying offense was the same: speaking to journalists. In each case, the nominal charges were otherwise. For Libby, lying under oath about the circumstances, thereby obstructing justice. For Vanunu, it was breaking a restriction laid upon him when he emerged from prison three years ago, after serving an earlier full sentence of eighteen years, also for speaking to journalists: he was ordered not to speak, at all, to journalists or foreigners. Like a free man, he did both, openly and repeatedly.

But whereas Libby had passed classified information, and Vanunu had served his earlier sentence for doing the same, in this instance Vanunu was not charged with revealing any secrets. The transcripts or published accounts of his conversations being available, it was open knowledge that what he had mainly talked about was the truth of his personal convictions about nuclear weapons: that they should universally be abolished, Israel's among them.

Perjury, with the intent and effect of obstructing justice (successfully, as it happens, in Libby's case) is an ancient, established crime under virtually any system of justice. Vanunu's act of speaking his mind freely is not, under existing international human rights law. Nor is it a domestic crime in other democratic societies. These were not conditions of parole, as frequently misstated. Vanunu was not paroled from prison for his earlier conviction, but served his full sentence of eighteen years, eleven and a half of them in solitary confinement. Therefore, under most systems of criminal justice, he should have been subject to no further restrictions or requirements.

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Bush's War: Killing 10,000 Iraqis Every Month

CounterPunch, 5 July 2007

Media Silent About the Carnage in Iraq

Killing 10,000 Iraqis Every Month

By MICHAEL SCHWARTZ

A state-of-the-art research study published in October 12, 2006 issue of The Lancet (the most prestigious British medical journal) concluded that--as of a year ago--600,000 Iraqis had died violently due to the war in Iraq. That is, the Iraqi death rate for the first 39 months of the war was just about 15,000 per month.

That wasn't the worst of it, because the death rate was increasing precipitously, and during the first half of 2006 the monthly rate was approximately 30,000 per month, a rate that no doubt has increased further during the ferocious fighting associated with the current American surge.

The U.S. and British governments quickly dismissed these results as "methodologically flawed," even though the researchers used standard procedures for measuring mortality in war and disaster zones. (They visited a random set of homes and asked the residents if anyone in their household had died in the last few years, recording the details, and inspecting death certificates in the vast majority of cases.) The two belligerent governments offered no concrete reasons for rejecting the study's findings, and they ignored the fact that they had sponsored identical studies (conducted by some of the same researchers) in other disaster areas, including Darfur and Kosovo. The reasons for this rejection were, however, clear enough: the results were simply too devastating for the culpable governments to acknowledge. (Secretly the British government later admitted that it was "a tried and tested way to measuring mortality in conflict zones"; but it has never publicly admitted its validity).

Reputable researchers have accepted the Lancet study's results as valid with virtually no dissent. Juan Cole, the most visible American Middle East scholar, summarized it in a particularly vivid comment: "the US misadventure in Iraq is responsible [in a little over three years] for setting off the killing of twice as many civilians as Saddam managed to polish off in 25 years."

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TERROR ATTACKS IN BRITAIN AND IRAQ LINK

The Guardian Thursday July 5, 2007

Denial of the link with Iraq is delusional and dangerous

The insistence that terror attacks have nothing to do with Britain's actions in the Muslim world only makes them harder to stop

Seumas Milne

Two years on from the suicide bombings that devastated London's streets and tube system, official Britain is still in the deepest denial about why this country is a target for al-Qaida- style terror attacks. In the wake of the abortive atrocities in London and Glasgow, there has been no shortage of lurid media coverage of the "doctors' plot" that came so close to carnage, nor of bombastic calls for the nation to stand firm against terrorists. The Sun was yesterday handing out free union jacks to "fly in the face of terror", while its heavyweight counterparts have been demanding ever greater efforts by an increasingly intimidated Muslim community to demonstrate its loyalty. Mercifully, the tone adopted by Gordon Brown has been less strident than his predecessor's - he has avoided the rhetoric of the war on terror and the shopping lists of new coercive powers favoured by Tony Blair in the aftermath of the July 2005 attacks and last year's alleged transatlantic airline plot.

But when it comes to the substance, there has been little change. The failed bombings were, Brown insisted, an attack on "our British way of life" and the "values that we represent", "unrelated" to the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan or any other conflict. He compared the fight against the bombers' ideology with the struggle against communism and called for a similar "propaganda effort" to win "hearts and minds". In the days since, this "it's nothing to do with the war" refrain has since been taken up with gusto by large parts of the media. The pro-war Times and Telegraph have led the field, with neoconservative commentators and politicians hammering home the Blair-Bush message that terror is simply the product of an evil ideology. Anyone who dissents or suggests a connection with Britain's violent role in the Muslim world is portrayed as somehow soft on terrorism - as the Liberal Democrats' Nick Clegg found when he tentatively referred to Muslim grievances in the House of Commons earlier this week.

In an echo of Gordon Brown's cold war propaganda theme, defectors from radical Islamist groups have been playing a prominent role in this campaign. Rarely a TV debate goes by without Ed Husain, one-time member of Hizb ut-Tahrir and now a British neocon pinup boy, or Hassan Butt, formerly of the banned al-Muhajiroun group, insisting that this is all about people with identity crises who are "hell-bent on destroying the west", denouncing Ken Livingstone for engaging in dialogue with Islamists, or calling for a harsher crackdown on their former fellow enthusiasts for the restoration of the caliphate. They are championed by politicians like the Tory Michael Gove and New Labour's Denis MacShane, who this week argued that all Islamists, from the liberal Muslim academic Tariq Ramadan to al-Qaida terrorists, had to be confronted without exception. It's become eerily reminiscent of the McCarthyite era when communist renegades would be wheeled out to give Americans a state-orchestrated glimpse of the enemy's dark heart.

Of course, it's perfectly true that al-Qaida and its "takfiri" fellow travellers have an extreme, violently sectarian and socially conservative ideology. But it is simply delusional - and flies in the face of logic and history - to fail to recognise the central link between the terror threat and Britain's post-9/11 actions in the Muslim world.

First, there were no al-Qaida-inspired attacks in Britain before the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. There were against the US - starting with the World Trade Centre in 1993 - triggered by the aftermath of the Gulf war, as well as jihadist campaigns in Kashmir, Chechnya and Bosnia. But Britain was not a target until it attacked the Muslim world. If the bombers' real focus was, say, sexually liberal western lifestyles, they would presumably be attacking cities like Amsterdam and Stockholm.

Second, it is only necessary to listen to what the bombers say themselves. Just as Bin Laden has repeatedly spelled out that his campaign is about western occupation of Muslim lands and support for pro-western autocracies, so the "martyrdom videos" made by the London bombers of 2005 made clear that they regarded their attacks as revenge for British support for Israel and the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq: "Until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people we will not stop this fight," Mohammed Sidique Khan declared. The government was repeatedly warned before the Iraq war that it would bring terror to Britain, and a string of government, intelligence and other reports have since underlined the connection - also accepted by a large majority in opinion polls.

In the case of these latest bungled bombings, in which two Iraqis, a Palestinian and at least two other Arabs are said to have been involved, it's not hard to guess what might lie behind them. And while politicians who have supported wars that have cost hundreds of thousands of lives might want to cast a veil over the link, it makes no sense for the rest of us.

The neocon attempt to lump together all Islamists - a political trend that stretches from Turkey's ruling Justice and Development party to al-Qaida - as beyond the political pale will meanwhile only make it harder to overcome the terror threat and isolate those who believe it is justifiable to kill civilians in retaliation for the Iraqi and Afghan bloodbaths. It is a folly that exasperates senior figures in the police, including special branch, whose job is to counter terror groups in the Muslim community. Just as mainstream Islamists in the Palestinian territories such as Hamas have helped prevent the encroachment of takfiri jihadists, so non-violent Islamists in the west can offer an alternative political channel to those who might otherwise be drawn to al-Qaida-inspired terror. "This approach has played into the hands of al-Qaida," one high level special branch officer argues. "Islamists have the best antidotes to al-Qaida propaganda."

Given Britain's role in the Muslim world, the surprise must be that there haven't been more attacks. They have, after all, yet to reach anything like the level of the campaign waged by the IRA. But that such attacks continue is a central part of Blair's legacy - and the responsibility of a political class that failed to hold to account those who launched an illegal war of aggression with the most devastating human and political consequences. Until the Brown government makes serious moves to end Britain's role in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the likelihood must be that the threat will grow.

Australia admits oil motive in Iraq

Source: RINF.com

Thursday, July 5th, 2007

Australia has admitted for the first time that securing the supply of oil is a key motive for its involvement in the US-led war in Iraq.

Brendan Nelson, the defence minister, said “energy security” was one of the main priorities behind his country’s support for the war, which is unpopular among Australians.

His remarks add weight to war protesters’ arguments that the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 was aimed at grabbing the country’s oil supplies rather than a bid to counter the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, which later proved to be non-existent.

Nelson told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that Australia’s priorities were set out in a defence and security review being released on Thursday ”and resource security is one of them”.

US ‘prestige’

He said: “Obviously the Middle East itself, not only Iraq, but the entire region is an important supplier of energy, oil in particular, to the rest of the world.

”… it’s extremely important that Australia take the view that it’s in our interests, our security interests, to make sure that we leave the Middle East, and leave Iraq in particular, in a position of sustainable security.”

Nelson also said it was important to support the “prestige” of the US and UK.

“We’re also there to support our key ally - that’s the United States of America - and we’re there to ensure that we don’t have terrorism driven from Iraq which would destabilise our own region,” he said.

Howard criticised

His comments contrast with those made by John Howard, the Australian prime minister, on the eve of the Iraq invasion in February 2003 when he denied the war was linked to oil.

He said at the time: “It [the war] is about the danger to Australia if countries like Iraq continue to have chemical and biological weapons, and those weapons get into the hands of international terrorists - that fundamentally is what this is about.”

The opposition Labor Party, which wants to withdraw Australia’s troops from Iraq, said the government’s admission contradicted its statements before the invasion.

Kevin Rudd, the opposition leader, said on Thursday: “When Mr Howard was asked back in 2003 whether this war had anything to do with oil, Mr Howard said in no way did it have anything to do with oil.

“This government simply makes it up as it goes along on Iraq.”

China ‘threat’

Meanwhile, John Howard said on Thursday that China’s rapid military expansion risked causing greater instability in the region.

“The pace and scope of its military modernisation, particularly the development of new and disruptive capabilities such as the anti-satellite missile, could create misunderstandings and instability in the region,” he said at the launch of the new defence paper.

Beijing has overtaken Japan as Australia’s top trading partner and Canberra has been reticent to comment on China’s military and economic development.

But with Washington viewing Canberra’s close relationship with Beijing with some concern, the document launched by Howard brings his government into closer step with Japan and the US - both partners with Australia in security pacts.

Howard, who has committed Australia’s military to a $43bn build-up, said Canberra had buried the “self-defeating” idea that Australia’s military should be based on home defence.

“It needs to be able to defend our mainland and approaches in the unlikely event these ever come under direct military threat.

“But it must also be capable of conducting substantial operations in our immediate region, whether alone or as the leader of a coalition, and of making meaningful military contributions as a member of coalitions further abroad.”