Unspeakable grief and horror
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Know them by their fruit:
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Unspeakable grief and horror
Know them by their fruit: |
Thursday, May 31, 2007
The Hariri Tribunal and the Approaching Lebanese Train Wreck
China Abstains and Gets out of the Way
The Security Council, by a vote of 10-0-5 (five abstentions by China, Russia, Indonesia, Qatar, and South Africa), authorized the imposition of a tribunal to investigate, try, and sentence the murderers of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and maybe some other Lebanese citizens possibly murdered by Syrian agents.
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Middle Eastern affairs are way out of my bailiwick, but this is nuts.
Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora invited the United Nations in because he was unable to reach an agreement with pro-Syrian and Hizbollah forces inside Lebanon concerning the investigation.
In the least generous interpretation, Siniora surrendered Lebanese sovereignty for the sake of advantage in a domestic political squabble.
That’s not the kind of international action China likes.
Theoretically, if Taiwan deadlocked between pro and anti-reunification forces, a pro-independence president could cite the Hariri precedent and ask the Security Council to help out.
I imagine China abstained, instead of vetoing the tribunal resolution, in order to stay on the good, not-blowing-up people side of the debate and avoid an argument over a situation in which it has little leverage and few compelling interests.
Syria is a bridge too far for China: too distant, too isolated, too beyond sustained, effective Chinese assistance for China to risk its political and diplomatic capital in the Middle East with an overt demonstration of support for Syria against the concerted efforts by Europe and the United States to establish the tribunal.
But after the tribunal gets going, well that’s another matter.
The tribunal is authorized under Section VII of the UN Charter—making cooperation an enforceable, binding obligation on member states, including Syria--which is meant to give it intimidating weight.
News reports sometimes imply that Section VII authorizes military action to enforce the resolution.
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Not quite.
Here are the relevant articles of Section VII:
Article 39
The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.
Article 40
In order to prevent an aggravation of the situation, the Security Council may, before making the recommendations or deciding upon the measures provided for in Article 39, call upon the parties concerned to comply with such provisional measures as it deems necessary or desirable.
Such provisional measures shall be without prejudice to the rights, claims, or position of the parties concerned. The Security Council shall duly take account of failure to comply with such provisional measures.
Article 41
The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures.
These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.
Article 42
Should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Article 41 would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security.
Such action may include demonstrations, blockade, and other operations by air, sea, or land forces of Members of the United Nations.
Long story short:
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Any enforcement action requires further Security Council action. Article 41 actions are limited to non-military measures.
Article 42 is the kitchen sink, including military action.
As far as China is concerned, Article 42 ain’t never gonna happen.
China is dedicated to denying the United States and its allies a hunting license for military action in the Middle East or elsewhere.
"No more than Article 41 -- if that" has been the Chinese rallying cry on Iran and North Korea.
And that will be the case on Syria.
Bloggers can be wrong about anything and everything, but I think this is one piece of China Matters wisdom you can take to the bank.
UN military action against Syria is off the table, forever.
Getting Beijing to support Article 41 action against Syria would require not just Chinese enthusiasm for truth, justice, and goodness in the matter of Hariri’s assassination.
It would require some major geopolitical benefit to compensate for the destabilization of an anti-US, pro-Chinese regime. I don’t see that happening either.
Of course, blocking enforcement actions by the Security Council isn’t the end of the story.
I think the United States, Russia, and China — and Syria and Lebanon and France and the UK and Germany — all understand that the Security Council resolution’s main utility is to provide legal and diplomatic cover for unilateral US/”coalition of the willing” actions against Syria if and when the tribunal stalls and the Security Council waffles.
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If America and its allies decide to impose a Proliferation Security Initiative-type economic blockade against Syria (presumably with greater success than the disastrous North Korean blockade, which failed embarrassingly without regional support beyond Japan and against the active opposition of South Korea, China, and Russia), there’s not much the Chinese can do about it.
But the Chinese won’t do anything.
Maybe they don’t need to.
Events inside Lebanon may overtake the anti-Syria campaign.
To my mind, the subtext for the Hariri tribunal is “The West needs a win in the Middle East”, especially to assert continued Western prestige and influence after the Iraq and Iran debacles.
The Bush administration yearns for the creation of a strongly pro-Western Lebanese state, an objective which was partially accomplished by the Cedar Revolution.
It also yearns for the destruction of Asad’s regime in Syria, a seemingly attainable goal that has been frustrated by US mis-steps in Iraq and Asad’s craftiness.
The Hariri tribunal, with its broad mandate, its Section VII authority, and its renewable three-year term, seems to offer the promise of productive months of legal, diplomatic, and economic isolation and harassment of Asad’s regime.
The theory is that putting Syria on the defensive will strengthen the pro-Western forces in Lebanon.
But perhaps just the opposite will occur.
The March 14 coalition has created an advantage for itself by obtaining UN backing for its position.
But that’s a step away from grudging coexistence with Hizbullah and pro-Syrian forces, let alone reconciliation.
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To my mind, the Hariri tribune represents an escalation of a domestic political conflict that will further polarize the factions inside Lebanon.
That’s not good, because the only way that Lebanon’s rickety and illogical political structure can survive is if the various confessional and political factions agree to co-exist and make things work.
Lebanon’s political power-sharing is based on having a Christian Maronite President (Emile Lahoud, strongly pro-Syrian; go figure), a Sunni Prime Minister (Siniora, rich, secular Hariri associate), and a Shi’ite Speaker of Parliament (Nabih Berri, Hizbullah sympathizer whose refusal to convene parliament to debate a Hariri tribunal impelled Soniora to petition the UN to establish it unilaterally).
When one group, like the March 14 coalition of pro-Western forces, decides to upset the political balance, much craziness can quickly ensue.
The March 14 coalition apparently believes it holds enough cards to maintain its political ascendancy.
But demographics seem to be against them.
Seats in the Lebanese parliament (the bunch that Berri refused to convene) are apportioned to the Taif Agreement that ended Lebanon’s civil war with a power-sharing arrangement between Christians and Muslims.
What kind of arrangement?
The Agreement says:
G. Abolition of Political Sectarianism: Abolishing political sectarianism is a fundamental national objective.
To achieve it, it is required that efforts be made in accordance with a phased plan.
The Chamber of Deputies elected on the basis of equal sharing by Christians and Muslims...
So the Lebanese parliament has 64 Christian deputies and 64 Muslim ones (that was an improvement over the previous arrangement -- a legacy of French colonialism -- in which Christians held the majority.
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That's why the civil war ended.
There’s only one problem with that.
Lebanon’s government got out of the population census business to avoid awkward questions, but...
...a private researcher crunched the numbers for Lebanese birth records and, as translated on the Middle East website Voices on the Wind, concluded:
Lebanon's population is 64.29% Muslim and 35.33% Christian.
Ouch.
That means Christians should only have 46 seats instead of 64.
Guess Berri would be much more willing to convene that kind of parliament.
And he certainly has some grounds for regarding the current parliament as a political tool of a minority, rather than a truly representative body.
But there’s worse news:
The more telling statistic in Dweihy's report is that among those under the age of 20, the Christians form only 23.31% compared to a whopping 76.59% for the Muslims.
Demographics — and not the undeniable Syrian influence and intimidation in Lebanese politics — is the biggest threat to the pro-Western coalition.
And there’s even worse news:
The Taif Agreement consensus — the basis for the various factions ignoring Lebanon’s demographic reality — is breaking down.
Israel’s attack on Lebanon in 2006, targeted Hizbullah and also destroyed beaucoup non-Hizbullah assets in order to try to convince Sunnis and Christians to blame Hizbullah for their misfortune (which they did) and turn on Hizbullah and destroy or marginalize it (which they didn’t, perhaps because of nationalistic qualms or because Israel made such a hash out of the war that the prospects for defeating Hizbullah with or without Israeli help were non-existent).
There are rumblings that Israel and the United States, having learned from their (numerous) 2006 mistakes, are going to try for a do-over war this summer, perhaps with support from the March 14 coalition this time around.
Hizbullah and the Shia are now questioning the viability of the Taif Agreement (or as a Hizbullah member of the Lebanese cabinet stated during the 2006 Israel attack, “the accord is no longer a document of national agreement”), on the understandable grounds that, if Hizbullah is going to be the target of an attack by the state of Israel, it deserves to have at least equal representation in the Lebanese government that may determine its fate.
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Which makes the existing Taif Agreement an implement of sectarianism, rather than the solution it was meant to be.
Muslims will be demanding — and getting — a bigger share of the parliamentary pie.
The only question is when.
The United States and the May 14 coalition are staking their political and diplomatic fortunes on propping up the Taif system (UN involvement in the Hariri matter, including the current unilateral tribunal, are justified by the de-Syrianization that was an element to the Taif Agreement) despite the demographic tidal wave bearing down on it.
By increasing the polarization within Lebanese society, they may be unwittingly accelerating the collapse of the Taif system — with its enforced supremacy of Christians and prosperous Sunni and Druze — instead of forestalling it.
And if another US-backed Israeli attack on Hizbullah occurs this summer, the collapse of Taif and a existential political crisis inside Lebanon — rather than the destruction of Hizbullah and Lebanese Shi’ites as a Lebanese political force or the destabilization of Syria—would seem to be pre-ordained.
With this oncoming train wreck inside Lebanon, maybe all China and Syria need to do is try to stay out of the way. |
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California Man Revealed as al Qaeda Leader
July 07, 2006
For the first time, a former Orange County, Calif. teenage rock music fan has revealed his role as a top al Qaeda leader.
Adam Gadahn, who disappeared from California seven years ago, appeared unmasked on an al Qaeda tape made public on the internet today.
As previously reported by ABC News, the FBI had concluded that the masked man was Gadahn based on voice analysis of previous al Qaeda tapes. On today's tape, Gadahn is bearded, wearing a turban.
He denounces U.S. soldiers in Iraq and their alleged murder and rapes of Iraqi citizens.
"Who are the real terrorists?" Gadahn asks.
When referring to the alleged atrocities committed by U.S. Marines in Iraq, Gadahn also says, "It's hard to imagine that any compassionate person could see pictures... and not want to go on a shooting spree at the Marines' housing facilities at Camp Pendleton."
Camp Pendleton is located just south of where Gadahn grew up in California.
There was no immediate response from Gadahn's family, which still lives in California. They had previously denied he was the masked figure on al Qaeda tapes.
Copyright © 2005 ABCNEWS Internet Ventures. |
Mossad Agent Pearlman Releases Phony "Al-Qaeda Tape"
While President Bush authorizes the CIA to bankroll and arm the real Al-Qaeda in Iran
Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com Wednesday, May 30, 2007 Adam Pearlman, the Jewish Mossad agent who once wrote stinging essays condemning Muslims as "bloodthirsty terrorists", has once again popped up as an "Al-Qaeda spokesman" to frighten the dwindling number of Americans who still believe Al-Qaeda exists outside of U.S. intelligence circles.
"An American member of al-Qaida warned President Bush on Tuesday to end U.S. involvement in all Muslim lands or face an attack worse than the Sept. 11 suicide assault, according to a new videotape."
"Wearing a white robe and a turban, Adam Yehiye Gadahn, who also goes by the name Azzam al-Amriki, said al-Qaida would not negotiate on its demands," reports the Associated Press.
Who is the mysterious Adam Yehiye Gadahn?
The FBI lists Gadahn's aliases as Abu Suhayb Al-Amriki, Abu Suhayb, Yihya Majadin Adams, Adam Pearlman, and Yayah.
Adam Pearlman is his real name and his grandfather is none other than the late Carl K. Pearlman; a prominent Jewish urologist in Orange County.
Carl was also a member of the board of directors of the Anti-Defamation League, which was caught spying on Americans for Israel in 1993.
WhatReallyHappened.com
Mike Rivero has the scoop at WhatReallyHappened.com .
Israel's Mossad intelligence agency was caught in 2002 creating a phony Al-Qaeda group to justify attacks on Palestinians.
Pearlman has a knack of releasing his tapes at the most politically opportune time for Bush, having first burst onto the scene shortly before the 2004 presidential election and then again right after Katrina when the President's approval rating was tanking fast.
Even more mainstream publications, like the Los Angeles City Beat, have dismissed Pearlman before as nothing more than "cartoonish propaganda."
Pearlman had a hippy upbringing, a brief but intense flirtation with death metal and before a sudden transformation, once referred to Muslims as “bloodthirsty, barbaric terrorists.”
Pearlman was a hardcore Jewish Zionist and wrote essays and screeds bashing the Muslim faith.
He even got into fights at mosques and beat up Muslim worshippers.
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Pearlman's personal history and the highly suspicious nature in which he suddenly professed his conversion to Islam in a single Internet posting and later appeared on the scene as a spokesman for "Al-Qaeda" are all the ingredients needed to draw the conclusion that Pearlman is working as a double agent and most likely for Mossad.
The Pearlman tape was once again obtained by the IntelCenter group, a U.S. government contractor, and it's head Ben Venzke has given the tape credence in media interviews concerning the story.
In our previous groundbreaking expose, we unveiled the ties between Intelcenter, a group that regularly 'obtains' Al-Qaeda tapes and the Pentagon.
Intelcenter is an offshoot of IDEFENSE, which was staffed by a senior military psy-op intelligence officer Jim Melnick, who has worked directly for Donald Rumsfeld.
Intelcenter were behind the October 2006 release of the "laughing hijackers" tape that showed Mohammad Atta and Ziad Jarrah allegedly attending a 2000 Al-Qaeda meeting and reading their last will and testament.
Segments of the video that were interspersed with footage of the "laughing hijackers," Jarrah and Atta, showing Bin Laden giving a speech to an audience in Afghanistan on January 8 2000, were culled from what terror experts described as surveillance footage taken by a "security agency."
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News reports at the time contained the admission that the U.S. government had been in possession of the footage since 2002, while others said it was found when the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001.
Yet it was still bizarrely reported that the tape, bearing all the hallmarks of having been filmed and edited by undercover US intelligence and having admittedly been in US possession for five years, was released over the weekend of September 31/October 1 by Al-Qaeda.
The video also contained segments that were first broadcast in a British documentary called The Road to Guantanamo, which was originally aired in March 2006.
The context of the corresponding scene in the dramatized documentary featured U.S. interrogators attempting to coerce Gitmo detainees into confessing Al-Qaeda membership by showing them fake videos where their likeness had been computer generated to appear as if they were in attendance during Bin Laden's January 8 2000 speech.
Monster in the closet
The monster in the closet is once again being waved in front of the American people's faces in order to quell bubbling national resentment about the ongoing carnage in Iraq and the fact that May was the deadliest month in terms of our boys returning home in flag-draped caskets.
Meanwhile, President Bush has authorized the CIA to bankroll and arm Jundullah, a Sunni Al-Qaeda organization, to attack Iran in order to destabilize Ahmadinejad's government.
While Bush grandstands in his Rose Garden speech about how Al-Qaeda wants to kill our children and as Mossad agent Pearlman rants on a video tape about a new 9/11, the only real Al-Qaeda are being equipped, funded and trained by our own government to kill innocent civilians in the Middle East in order to pave the way for the next chapter of Neo-Con blood-letting.
Crude propaganda tapes foisted on us at home in an effort to hoodwink us into supporting it all.
PRISON PLANET.com Copyright © 2002-2006 Alex Jones All rights reserved. |
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PAKISTAN: FOCUS — FBI PROBE HAS THE ESTABLISHMENT ON EDGE
Karachi, 29 May (AKI) — Syed Saleem Shahzad
— A white four-wheel drive vehicle glides out from the garage of one of the key securities brokerage houses situated in the upmarket Clifton neighbourhood of Karachi.
Its destination — a powerful military installation situated at the only curve of the long Shahrah-e-Faisal artery.
Once the passenger is introduced, the gates open instantly and a khaki-clad soldier climbs in to escort the vehicle to the majestic building constructed for the British Indian armed forces.
A staff officer is on the step to welcome the very special guest.
Everybody in the office understands that senior bosses and staff may be transferred or they may retire, but whoever is in charge is bound to receive a visit from this special guest, a stock broker.
There is no lack of gossip as to the reason for parleys between a stock broker and every new senior army officer in Sindh province.
Under General Pervez Musharraf’s regime, the wealth of Pakistan's oligarchs has shifted from real estate to the stock market
One thing is certain though; under General Pervez Musharraf’s regime, the wealth of Pakistan's oligarchs, the Pakistani military establishment and all its stake holders including politicians, financial experts, journalists and academics, has now been largely shifted from real estate to the stock market.
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Uniformed generals, bankers and stock brokers are hand in hand in the galaxy of power.
As a result in the stock market scandals from 2000 to 2007, especially the biggest in 2005, punishment was not inflicted on any of those considered responsible and the same goes for the privatization scandals of Pakistan Still Mills, a deal stopped on the orders of Supreme Court of Pakistan after clear evidence of kick backs.
However, this hermetically sealed parallel universe of power is having to come to grips with the real world.
In the form of a FBI team, comprising officers Mark Emerson, Alfred Martial and Joseph Simon, on the trail of a multi million dollar insider trading scandal in whcih a Pakistani banker and broker are caugth up.
The American investigators have accessed the records of the hundi business, (non-banking channel for monetary transactions) money laundering and details of stock exchange brokers scams.
Pakistan’s most powerful financial cartel spanning from the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad to the financial artery of I.I. Chundrigar Road Karachi is in the spotlight.
32 billion US dollar leveraged buyout of Texas energy giant TXU
The story began from Pakistani banker Hafiz Naseem’s complex web of international insider trading in America and reached Pakistan where top figures in the financial sector of the country are now beign fingered.
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Naseem, 37, was arrested in New York earlier this month and charged with 26 counts of conspiracy and securities fraud.
He is accused of leaking details about nine deals, including the record 32 billion US dollar leveraged buyout of Texas energy giant TXU.
One Pakistani banker, Ejaz Rahim, was also named in investigations for his alleged connection with Naseem’s network on one side and with top Pakistani financial figures on other side.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in a lawsuit filed in a Chicago federal court earlier this month, accused Rahim of insider trading based on information it said he got from a Credit Suisse Group investment banker in New York, Hafiz Naseem.
The SEC said Rahim received non-public information about the proposed leveraged buyout of TXU from Naseem, and that Rahim then bought TXU call option contracts and stock.
Rahim reaped about 5.1 million dollars in profits through the trades, according to the SEC complaint.
Not exactly related with international insider trading — about money transactions concerning terror networks like Al-Qaeda
A top security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that the visiting FBI interviewed top Pakistani finance officials but maintained that it was not exactly related with international insider trading.
“The third party involvement is not specificallly connected to the insider trading allegations.
Most of the trading was done personally by Ejaz Rahim himself.
What I know of the FBI investigations is that they are about money transactions concerning terror networks like Al-Qaeda,” the official asserted.
Sources in the banking sector maintain that it is a multi-faceted inquiry because the whole network is interrelated with stockmarkets, banks and even with Pakistan's politicians.
Well-placed sources confirmed top men in the corridors of power and leading bankers have been investigated and some of their connections have been established.
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However, there are many queries which the financial regulators have been unable to answer during the recent course of investigations:
An active connivance of a leading Forex brokerage house with Al-Qaeda channels was alleged traced several months ago.
Despite available evidence why was no action undertaken?
The connection trail of the Forex company passes through stock markets, banks and up to a very powerful politician from central Punjab.
Who has been involved in the big scams, how were they covered up and by which cartel?
The stock market fiasco 2005 is the best example.
The stock market crash caused a loss of over Rs780 billion (USD 12.87 billion) in March 2005 to a large number of small investors, had raised many questions on role of the regulator Security Exchange Comission of Pakistan (SECP) and the management of Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE).
A task force was constituted, headed by a retired justice, which pin pointed 11 big brokerage houses involved in malpractices which resulted the market crash.
Stopped from taking action against the “big fish.”
However, the bombshell was the statement by the former chairman of Security Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP), Dr. Tariq Hassan, in which he alleged that high-ranking finance ministry officials, including Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, had forcibly stopped him from taking action against the “big fish.”
Hassan had issued a ‘white paper’ in July 2006 on the March 2005 stock exchange crash, and claimed he had reached close to a ‘few big fish” when he was shown the door.
Local media reports said that the former SECP chairman was summoned to a national assembly’s standing committee on finance in July 2006.
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He asked during the meeting how could he get hold of those powerful brokers who, he alleged, had access to the prime minister.
It was also reported that Hassan faced tough questions from the Minister of State for Finance Omar Ayub Khan and Prime Minister’s Adviser Dr Salman Shah, apparently because he had mentioned their names in letters he had sent to the prime minister and accused them of pressurising him not to replace the "carry-over transaction with margin financing", reprotedly one of the main technical causes of the crash.
Whether the FBI nets 'the big fish' remains to be seen.
Pakistan is one of the US's key allies in the 'war against terror' so alongside the investigative thrust there will also be political considerations to be weighed, especially as President Musharraf's stay in power is already being challenged in mass protests revolving around the suspended chief justice
(Syed Saleem Shahzad/Aki) May-29-07 |
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| Car bomb exploded outside courtPeshawar, Pakistan |
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| NATO STATES militarismNATO Terror StatesMore than 380 Afghanistan people killed Jan to May 2007 not including resistance members |
Dead in Afghanistan Sarah Meyer, INDEX RESEARCH |
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Threatened with death threats if they proceed, Luke Radowski and fellow 9/11 truth activists demand answers on collapse of towers
Giuliani, how do you sleep at night?
Steve Watson Infowars.net Wednesday, February 21, 2007 An intrepid group of Infowars reporters confronted Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani at a fundraiser he was attending in New York today to demand answers to unanswered questions surrounding the collapse of the three World Trade Center buildings on 9/11.
One activist, the relative of a firefighter killed in the collapses, asked the former NYC mayor, for an explanation as why no steel framed building in history has ever collapsed from fire damage except for on 9/11 and why people in the buildings including rescuers were not given warnings they were going to collapse when he was.
She then asked Giuliani "How do you sleep at night?"
Watch the video here
Previously Giuliani has previously admitted in interviews that he was given prior warning that the twin towers were going to collapse, something no one could possibly have known was going to happen. Yet firefighters and police were not given the same warnings.
INFOWARS.net Copyright © 2002-2007 Alex Jones All rights reserved. |
US militarismUS Terror State, BaghdadUnknown if US taxpayer paid black budget special operations money involved
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May 29, 2007 Don't Go Too Far Away, Cindy
By RON JACOBS
The Exit of Cindy Sheehan I have to admit that I was quite surprised when I read that Cindy Sheehan is leaving the peace movement. After reading her explanation for the move, I was less surprised, but still a bit disappointed. After reading the piece, it is clear that Sheehan has discovered that politics can be an ugly affair. |
Thousands in US hurt by loss of loved one in Iraq or Afghanistan
When one is the focus of a political movement like Ms. Sheehan became, they become even uglier.
Her departure will leave a hole, but it should not leave a vacuum.
After all, there are thousands of US residents that have been hurt by the loss of a loved one in Iraq or Afghanistan, unfortunately.
In addition, there are millions around the world that are just plain fed up and pissed off about these wars and the death and destruction they are causing. |
US has luxury to stop fighting war because it does not live where bombs are exploding
Ms. Sheehan is planning to go home and raise her remaining children.
That's a good thing.
Her screed makes it clear that she is burned out from her past two years of antiwar activism and doing something real like caring for children will surely put her back in touch with the better side of humanity.
This move is similar to the retreat from politics and the streets that much of an entire generation underwent in the years following the government murders at Kent State and Jackson State in 1970 during antiwar protests.
Another side of this retreat was the turn away from politics and towards cultural and religion.
Unlike caring for one's children, the latter two were mere escapism and somewhat solipsistic.
One could argue that these phenomenon destroyed the potential for radical change in the United States, but a more appropriate analysis would merely claim that here in the US we had (and have) the luxury to stop fighting against the war because we do not live where the bombs are exploding and the assault weapons firing.
Ms. Sheehan makes it clear that she still opposes these wars and the power mongers who insist on continuing it.
Indeed, she saves her harshest words of her farewell message for these men and women who "move them (US soldiers) around like pawns on a chessboard of destruction" and are " worried more about elections than people."
Naturally, this includes the Democrats as well as the Republicans.
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She honestly thought Democrats were different
And that, is the crux of Sheehan's despair.
She honestly thought that the Democrats were different.
Now that they have proved they are not, she is ready to give it all up and, by doing so, hand the forces of war and reaction a victory that they will surely relish.
Yeh, there will probably be some tentative cries from various Democrats telling Cindy that their party is not a war party and that she needs to hang in there.
Those cries will most likely come from party rank and file, not its leaders or elected types, since the latter are much more concerned with the 2008 elections, as Sheehan clearly points out.
Meanwhile, one can almost imagine the nasty jokes and high-fives going around George Bush's breakfast table.
They finally got rid of that pesky Mom whose son they killed.
Maybe now they can get on with the war, especially since the Democrats caved like a cardboard box in a hurricane.
If one opposes the war, one gets in the streets and opposes it
In another section of her letter, Sheehan directs her anger and frustration at the so-called leadership of the antiwar movement.
Pointing a well-deserved finger at the movement and its divisions, she writes: " I have also tried to work within a peace movement that often puts personal egos above peace and human life. This group won't work with that group; he won't attend an event if she is going to be there.... It is hard to work for peace when the very movement that is named after it has so many divisions."
What else can one say except, once again Ms. Sheehan has drawn an incorrect conclusion.
As many others have written when addressing this issue, who cares about the pettiness of egos and power players in the movement?
If one opposes the war, one gets in the streets and opposes it.
Screw the fools jockeying for a future or a media spot.
The war will be ended by the mass protest of the people who oppose it, not by getting a director's job with MoveOn, UFPJ, or some other antiwar organization. |
| US militarismUS Terror State, BaghdadUnknown if US taxpayer paid black budget special operations money involved |
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Suicide Bombing is response to foreign occupation Will stop once troops withdraw |
Radical analysis and action undertaken by millions will change system that requires these wars to survive
The most poignant paragraph in Sheehan's statement begins with her sad acknowledgment that her son died for absolutely nothing.
One can only imagine the emotions that come from this realization.
Like many of her fellow citizens, Sheehan wants to believe that the United States is a good place and that the people who live there do believe in the principles espoused in its documents and by its greatest leaders.
Her discovery that "Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months" is a difficult thing to take.
Yet, this is not a reason to quit.
It is, instead, a motivation to change things at an even more fundamental level.
One may not like being called a radical because they oppose the wars Washington has dragged us into, but one must also become aware that only radical analysis and action undertaken by millions will change a system that requires those wars to survive.
Breather from the madness
I recall a discussion I had with a friend during the buildup to the first Gulf War.
We were talking about activist burnout and egotistical activists as we watched the antiwar movement in Olympia, WA. grow by leaps and bounds while it struggled with internal conflicts that were primarily ego-driven.
I said to my friend that whenever I felt an organization couldn't live without me, then it was time for me to step back from whatever high-profile position I happened to be in and go back to the grunt work of passing out leaflets and setting up stages.
After all, it wasn't me that mattered, but the movement. |
It is certainly not time to give up
I wish Cindy Sheehan a peaceful and restorative time away from the frontlines of the antiwar movement.
Her presence, commitment and personality have made a good deal of difference in the growth of the movement against Washington's wars.
Indeed, it can be reasonably argued that it was Cindy Sheehan that made it okay for Middle America to protest, and for that she must be thanked.
Now that she is taking a breather from the madness it is up to us to continue expanding those protests.
It is certainly not time to give up. |
The most poignant paragraph in Cindy's statement begins with her sad acknowledgment that her son died for absolutely nothing.
One can only imagine the emotions that come from this realization.
Like many of her fellow citizens, Cindy Sheehan wants to believe that the United States is a good place and that the people who live there do believe in the principles espoused in its documents and by its greatest leaders.
Her discovery that "Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months" is a difficult thing to take.
Ron Jacobs www.counterpunch.org May 29, 2007 |
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The Democratic leadership has agreed to finance the deaths of Americans in a war that has only reduced the security of Americans |
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The Entire Government Has Failed Us on Iraq
Keith Olbermann MSNBC
This is, in fact, a comment about...betrayal.
Few men or women elected in our history — whether executive or legislative, state or national — have been sent into office with a mandate more obvious, nor instructions more clear:
Get us out of Iraq.
Yet after six months of preparation and execution — half a year gathering the strands of public support; translating into action, the collective will of the nearly 70 percent of Americans who reject this War of Lies, the Democrats have managed only this:
Elected with the simplest of directions
You, the men and women elected with the simplest of directions — Stop The War — have traded your strength, your bargaining position, and the uniform support of those who elected you… for a handful of magic beans.
You may trot out every political cliché from the soft-soap, inside-the-beltway dictionary of boilerplate sound bites, about how this is the "beginning of the end" of Mr. Bush's "carte blanche" in Iraq, about how this is a "first step."
Well, Senator Reid, the only end at its beginning... is our collective hope that you and your colleagues would do what is right, what is essential, what you were each elected and re-elected to do.
Because this "first step"… is a step right off a cliff.
..."We seem to be very near the bleak choice between war and shame," Winston Churchill wrote to Lord Moyne in the days after the British signed the Munich accords with Germany in 1938. "My feeling is that we shall choose shame, and then have war thrown in, a little later…"
That's what this is for the Democrats, isn't it?
Their "Neville Chamberlain moment" before the Second World War.
All that's missing is the landing at the airport, with the blinkered leader waving a piece of paper which he naively thought would guarantee "peace in our time," but which his opponent would ignore with deceit.
The Democrats have merely streamlined the process.
Their piece of paper already says Mr. Bush can ignore it, with impugnity.
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...For, ultimately, at this hour, the entire government has failed us.
Mr. Reid, Mr. Hoyer, and the other Democrats... have failed us.
They negotiated away that which they did not own, but had only been entrusted by us to protect: our collective will as the citizens of this country, that this brazen War of Lies be ended as rapidly and safely as possible.
Ask they stay home — permanently
...The Democrats will figure it out, during the Memorial Day recess, when they go home and many of those who elected them will politely suggest they stay there — and permanently.
Because, on the subject of Iraq...
The people have been ahead of the media...
Ahead of the government...
Ahead of the politicians...
For the last year, or two years, or maybe three.
Our politics... is now about the answer to one briefly-worded question.
Mr. Bush has failed.
Mr. Warner has failed.
Mr. Reid has failed.
So.
Who among us will stop this war — this War of Lies?
To he or she, fall the figurative keys to the nation.
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Inside Narh al-Bared and Bedawi Refugee Camps
Who's Behind the Fighting in North Lebanon? FRANKLIN LAMB
Tripoli, Lebanon May 24, 2007 Wearing a beat-up ratty UNCHR tee-shirt left over from Bint Jbeil and the Israeli-Hezbollah July probably helped. As did, I suspect, the Red Cross jersey, my black and white checkered kaffieyh and the Palestinian flag taped to my lapel as I joined a group of Palestinian aid workers and slipped into Nahr el-Bared trying not to look conspicuous. Our mission was to facilitate the delivery of food, blankets and mattresses, but I was also curious about the political situation. Who was behind the events that erupted so quickly and violently following a claimed 'bank robbery'? A heist that depending on who you talked to, netted the masked bandits $ 150,000, $ 1,500 or $ 150! It seems that every Beirut media outlet has a different source of 'inside information' based on which Confession owns it and 'knows' the real culprits pulling the strings. But then, even we who are particularly obtuse have realized, as the late Rafic Hariri often counseled: "In Lebanon, believe nothing of what you are told and only half of what you see!" [Applies everywhere Franklin — Kewe TheWE.biz] My friends made we swear out loud that I would claim to be Canadian instead of American if Al Qaeda types stopped us inside the Camp. My impression was that they were not so worried about my safety but for their own if they got caught with me. It would not be the first time that I relied on my northern neighbors to get me out of a potential US nationality jam in the Middle East, so I ditched my American ID. |
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After three days of shelling and more than 100 dead
We were advised as we approached the Fatah al Islam stronghold that we would be in the cross-hairs of Lebanese army snipers from outside of Nahr el-Bared Camp as well as Fatah al-Islam snipers from the inside, and that any false move or bad luck could prove fatal.
After three days of shelling and more than 100 dead and with no electricity or water, Nahr el-Baled reeks of burned and rotting flesh, charred houses with smoldering contents, raw sewage and the acrid smell of exploded mortars and tank rounds.
Press figures of 30,000-32,000 are not accurate.
45,000 live in Bared!
Contrary to some reports food and water still not being allowed in.
15 to 70 percent of some areas destroyed.
Some light shooting this morning and afternoon.
Army shelling at rate of 10-18 shells per minute from 4:30 am to 10 am on Tuesday.
Army will not allow Palestinian Red Crescent to move out civilians because they don't trust them.
Only the Lebanese Red Cross is allowed.
It is possible to enter Bared from the back (east side).
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I met Abdul Rahman Hallab famous for Lebanese candy factory in Tripoli, helped him unload 5,000 meals to evacuees from Bared staying in Badawi
The Army taking cameras of journalists they catch.
The Lebanese government is controlling the information and don't want extent of damage known yet.
Still unrecovered bodies. 40 per cent of the camp population have been evacuated.
The rest don't want to leave out of fear of being shot or that they are losing their homes for the 5th time or more for some.
No electricity and cell phone batteries are dying.
Relatives who fled are telling families to stay because there are not enough mattresses at Bedawi Camp.
Bared evacuees are living up to 25 in one room in Badawi schools etc.
3,000 evacuees in one school in Bedawi.
UN aid is starting to arrive at Badawi but workers not able so far to deliver it to Bared due to attack on relief convoy on Tuesday.
I met Abdul Rahman Hallab famous for Lebanese candy factory in Tripoli.
Helped him unload 5,000 meals to evacuees from Bared staying in Badawi. He is Lebanese not Palestinian.
The camp population all say that Fatah Al-Islam came in September-October 2006 and have no relatives in the camp.
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Most say they are paid by the Hariri group
They are from Saudi, Pakistan, Algeria, Iraq, and Tunisia and elsewhere.
No Palestinians among them except some hanger ons.
Most say they are paid by the Hariri group.
Reports that Fateh al-Islam helps people in Bared are denied.
"All they do is pray, one woman told me..and do military training.. They are much more religious than the Shia" she said.
Population of Badawi camp was 15,000 and as of of this morning it is 28,000.
Four bodies arrived this morning at Safad, the only Palestinian Red Crescent Hospitals in north Lebanon.
I was told the army will have to destroy every house in Bared to remove Fateh al Islam. |
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Now some background about Nahr el-Bared
Like the other Palestinian camps in Lebanon, it is inhabited by Palestinians who were forced from their homes, land, and personal property in 1947-48, in order to make room for Jews from Europe and elsewhere prior to the May 15, 1948 founding of Israel.
Of the original 16 Refugee camps, set up to settle the more than 100,000 refugees crossing the border into Lebanon from Palestine during the Nakba, 12 official ones remain.
The camp at Tal El-Za`tar was ethnically cleansed by Christian Phalange forces at the beginning of the 1975-1990, Lebanese Civil War and the Nabatieh, Dikwaneh and Jisr el-Basha camps were destroyed by Israeli attacks and Lebanese militia and not rebuilt.
Those remaining include the following which currently house more than half of Lebanon's 433,276 Palestinian refugees:
Al-Badawi, Burj El-Barajna, Jal El-Bahr, Sabra and Shatilla, Ain El-Helwa, Nahr El-Bared, Rashidieh, Burj El Shemali, El-Buss, Wavel, Mieh Mieh and Mar Elias.
Nahr el-Bared is 7 miles north of Tripoli near the stunning Mediterranean coast and is home to more than 32,000 refuges many of whom were expelled from the Lake Huleh area of Palestine, including Safed.
Like all the official Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, plus several 'unofficial' ones, Nahr el-Bared suffers from serious problems including no proper infrastructure, overcrowding, poverty and unemployment.
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Anti-Hezbollah groups funneled by financial backers in league with the Bush administration to weaken Hezbollah
Tabulated at more than 25%, Nahr el-Bared has the highest percentage of Palestinian refugees anywhere who are living in abject poverty and who are officially registered with the UN as "special hardship" cases.
Its residents, like all Palestinians in Lebanon are blatantly discriminated against and not even officially counted.
They are denied citizenship and banned from working in the top 70 trades and professions (that includes McDonald's and KFC in downtown Beirut) and cannot own real estate.
Palestinians in Lebanon have essentially no social or civil rights and only limited access to government educational facilities.
They have no access to public social services.
Consequently most rely entirely on the UNRWA as the sole provider for their families needs.
It is not surprising that al-Qaeda sympathies, if not formal affiliations, are found in the 12 official camps as well as 7 unofficial ones.
Groups with names such as Fateh al-Islam, Jund al-Shams (Soldier of Damascus), Ibns al-Shaheed" (sons of the martyrs) Issbat al-Anssar which morphed into Issbat al-Noor - "The Community of Illumination" and many others.
Given Bush administration debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan and its encouragement for Israel to continue its destruction of Lebanon this past summer, the situation in Lebanon mirrors, in some respects, the early 1980's when groups sprung up to resist the US green lighted Israeli invasion and occupation.
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But rather than being Shia and pro-Hezbollah, today's groups are largely Sunni and anti-Hezbollah.
Hence they qualify for US aid, funneled by Sunni financial backers in league with the Bush administration which is committed to funding Islamist Sunni groups to weaken Hezbollah.
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BEHIND THE SCENE |
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Welch Club
Franklin Lamb
This project has become the White House obsession following Israel's July 2006 defeat.
To understand what is going on with Fatah al-Islam at Nahr el-Bared one would want a brief introduction to Lebanon's amazing, but shadowy 'Welch Club'.
The Club is named for its godfather, David Welch, assistant to Secretary of State Rice who is the point man for the Bush administration and is guided by Eliot Abrams.
Key Lebanese members of the Welch Club (aka: the 'Club') include:
The Lebanese civil war veteran, warlord, feudalist and mercurial Walid Jumblatt of the Druze party( the Progressive Socialist Party or PSP)
Another civil war veteran, warlord, terrorist (Served 11 years in prison for massacres committed against fellow Christians among others) Samir Geagea. Leader of the extremist Phalange party and its Lebanese Forces (LF) the group that conducted the Israel organized massacre at Sabra-Shatilla (although led by Elie Hobeika, once Geagea's mentor, Geagea did not take part in the Sept. 1982 slaughter of 1,700 Palestinian and Lebanese).
The billionaire, Saudi Sheikh and Club president Saad Hariri leader of the Sunni Future Movement (FM).
Over a year ago Hariri's Future Movement started setting up Sunni Islamist terrorist cells (the PSP and LF already had their own militia since the civil war and despite the Taif Accords requiring militia to disarm they are now rearmed and itching for action and trying hard to provoke Hezbollah).
The FM created Sunni Islamist 'terrorist' cells were to serve as a cover for (anti-Hezbollah) Welch Club projects.
The plan was that actions of these cells, of which Fatah el-Islam is one, could be blamed on al Qaeda or Syria or anyone but the Club.
To staff the new militias, FM rounded up remnants of previous extremists in the Palestinian Refugee camps that had been subdued, marginalized and diminished during the Syrian occupation of Lebanon.
Each fighter got $700 per month, not bad in today's Lebanon.
The first Welch Club funded militia, set up by FM, is known locally as Jund-al-Sham (Soldiers of Sham, where "Sham" in Arabic denotes Syria, Lebanon, Palestine & Jordan) created in Ain-el-Hilwa Palestinian refugee camp near Sidon.
This group is also referred to in the Camps as Jund-el-Sitt (Soldiers of the Sitt, where "Sitt" in Sidon, Ain-el-Hilwa and the outskirts pertain to Bahia Hariri, the sister of Rafiq Hariri, aunt of Saad, and Member of Parliament).
The second was Fateh-al-Islam (The name cleverly put together, joining Fateh as in Palestinian and the word Islam as in Qaeda). FM set this Club cell up in Nahr-al-Bared refugee camp north of Tripoli for geographical balance.
Fatah el-Islam had about 400 well paid fighters until three days ago.
Today they may have more or fewer plus volunteers.
The leaders were provided with ocean view luxury apartments in Tripoli where they stored arms and chilled when not in Nahr-al-Bared. Guess who owns the apartments?
According to members of both Fatah el-Islam and Jund-al-Sham their groups acted on the directive of the Club president, Saad Hariri.
So what went wrong?
"Why the bank robbery" and the slaughter at Nahr el-Baled...?
May 26, 2007
Bedawi and Nahr el-Bared Palestinian Refugee Camps, Lebanon.
With very intermittent internet access and this ancient pc with one lone wire running from the spaghetti wiring system tied to the ceiling and taped to a single bare light bulb socket, plus 8 toddlers, two babies, crawling over and under this 'foreigner' in a 10 x 12 concrete room where 28 or more of us slept on the floor last night, this blurb may never be sent.
But if it does get out and for what it's worth an update on the situation in the Palestinian Nabr al-Bared and Bedawi Camps.
Will try to send results shortly of my interviews with 11 Fatah al-Islam fighters regarding who paid them and got them travel documents and weapons and what was their mission.
There was no bank robbery by them.
That was a fake story put out by the Welch Club.
Sorry I misreported it.
BBC was suckered.
Also, no, repeat no heads cut off.
Where are the medical reports from those who claim it?
That was black propaganda to smear Fatah el-Islam.
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The army feels set up by the Club's Internal Security Forces which did not coordinate with the Lebanese Army, as required by Lebanese law and did not even make them aware of the "inter family operation" the ISF carried out against Fatah-al-Islam safe houses in Tripoli.
Today, tensions are high between the Lebanese army and the Welch Club.
Some mention the phrase 'army coup'.
The Club is trying to run Parliament and is prepared to go all the way not to 'lose' Lebanon.
It still holds 70 seats in the house of parliament while the Hezbollah led opposition holds 58 seats.
It has a dutiful PM in Fouad Siniora.
The club tried to seize control of the presidency and when it failed it marginalized it.
Last year it tried to control of the Parliamentary Constitutional Committee, which audits the government's policies, laws and watch dogs their actions.
When the Club failed to control it they simply abolished the Constitutional Committee.
This key committee no longer exists in Lebanon's government.
The Welch Club's major error was when it attempted to influence the Lebanese Army into disarming the Lebanese Resistance led by Hezbollah.
When the Army wisely refused, the Club coordinated with the Bush Administration to pressure Israel to dramatically intensify its retaliation to the capture of the two soldiers by Hezbollah and 'break the rules' regarding the historically more limited response and try to destroy Hezbollah during the July 2006 war.
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INDEX ON IRAQ: A JOURNEY IN HELL Sarah Meyer, INDEX RESEARCH |
US UK created Iraq — Death Squads — Devastated cities |
Welch Club now considers Lebanese Army serious problem.
The Bush administration is trying to undermine and marginalize it to eliminate one of the last two obstacles to implementing Israel's agenda in Lebanon.
If the army is weakened, it can not protect over 70% of the Christians in Lebanon who support General Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement.
The F.P.M. is mainly constituted of well educated, middle class and unarmed Lebanese civilians.
The only protection they have is the Lebanese Army which aids in maintaining their presence in the political scene.
The other type of Christians in Lebanon is the minority, about 15% of Christians associated with Geagea's Lebanese Forces who are purely militia.
If the Club can weaken the Army even more than it is, then this Phalange minority will be the only relatively strong force on the Christian scene and become the "army" of the Club.
Welch Club wants to keep some Palestinians in Lebanon for cheap labor, ship others to countries willing to take them (and be paid handsomely to do so by American taxpayers)
Another reason the Club wants to weaken the Lebanese Army is that the Army is nationalistic and is a safety valve for Lebanon to ensure the Palestinian right of return to Palestine, Lebanese nationhood and the resistance culture led by Hezbollah, with which is has excellent relations.
For their part, the Welch Club wants to keep some Palestinians in Lebanon for cheap labor, ship others to countries willing to take them (and be paid handsomely to do so by American taxpayers) and allow at most a few thousand to return to Palestine to settle the 'right of return' issue while at the same time signing a May 17th 1983 type treaty with Israel with enriches the Club members and gives Israel Lebanon's water and much of Lebanon's sovereignty.
Long story short, Fatah el-Islam must be silenced at all costs.
Their tale, if told, is poison for the Club and its sponsors.
We will likely see their attempted destruction in the coming days.
Hezbollah is watching and supporting the Lebanese army.
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Bedawi and Nahr el-Bared Palestinian Refugee Camps, Lebanon.
May 26, 2007
Another Waco in the Making
Inside Nahr el-Bared FRANKLIN LAMB
Bedawi is teeming with new arrivals from al-Bared where there is still no water, power or food.
A few NGO's still negotiating with army for permission to enter.
(Still possible to sneak in from the east but getting more dangerous to try it).
The problem is not being shot by Fatah al-Islam anymore.
They are digging in.
And the army is not as trigger happy as on Monday-Wednesday.
The "security agents" on the slopes above the army looking down into al-Baled are the main sniper danger.
People claim they are Hariri militia but I can not confirm that.
The army told the PLO they would stop them but as of Saturday night they are still shooting.
They are trying to shoot anyone they see inside or leaving al-Balad. Someone should stop them.
Several hours ago I met a woman arriving from al-Bared who had walked the whole 7 miles with an 18 month old baby and a daughter of 5 who just stares into the press cameras with her mouth open and eyes glazed over.
The Palestinian mother told us neither she nor her children have eaten or taken water for four days.
The children will be ok.
The mother's husband is in Syria she said and she has no relatives.
One NGO group of three from Beirut left a few hours ago in tears from frustration, sadness and anger from repeatedly being stopped by the army from taking supplies to al Barad.
Their cargo of water and blankets abandoned.
On Saturday the Palestinian Red Crescent, which for a quarter century has provide the medical service to both camps has been formally and completely banned from al-Bared and told they will be shot if they try to enter al-Bared.
I met with the PRCS leadership and drivers.
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Huge US/NATO airbase to be built next to camp
There is some-near panic in Bedawi caused by many rumors.
One rumor, widely believed, is that the Lebanese government plans to demolish al-Bared to make room for the huge US/NATO airbase which is to be built next to the camp.
5,000 of the Palestinians in al-Bared are from the 1975 ethnically cleansed east Beirut camp Telazatter.
The PLO moved them to al-Bared at the beginning of the Lebanese civil war (1975-90) and they live close together in one al-Bared neighborhood.
I saw women wailing that they may be another Telazatter massacre and destruction of their homes.
Many Palestinian young men are being arrested as they leave al-Bared.
An old woman sleeping in the same room as me last night told us that her son was taken as he left al-Bared on Monday and she has not heard from him.
There are now 6 check points between Tripoli and Beirut.
Many (I was told all but have not confirmed it) Palestinian males traveling to Beirut are being arrested and taken for interrogation.
Some from al-Bared are afraid to try to go to Beirut and stay with relatives.
Fear among PLO camp leaders that there could be a blood bath.
"It's the Bush complex," one German NGO volunteer said.
"The Lebanese government wants to be macho like the Israelis to gain some respect.
This could be another Waco in the making, for no reason."
The PLO is trying to mediate with the army to avoid a slaughter that would occur if the army tries to enter al-Bared.
"What is needed is leadership and for the warlords to keep quiet.
The army has behaved very badly but it's the politicians fault."
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Designed to assault 420,000 Palestine population
Great fear that the army will try to enter al-Bared.
The army moved the press position to more than one mile from al Bared, "for security".
The army has orders to give no information to the press.
Some journalists feel something terrible is going to happen here.
Just heard the army has now completely sealed the camp.
No access to the wounded still in basements and bombed houses needing help.
Palestinians activist in Bedawi say that if the army goes into al-Bared and makes a massacre that Palestinian from all over Lebanon will fight.
This may be what some here or outside Lebanon are hoping for.
The Welch Club wants the army to "wipe out the terrorists", and "protect our Palestinian brothers".
Not one Palestinian in either camp or observer I know believes that.
Rather the Palestinian community here believes that the whole Fatah al-Islam "very strange case" was designed to assault their 420,000 population here.
School is cancelled in Bedawi because up to 20,000 from Bared are being housed in them.
Food and water are arriving intermittently but distribution is not yet well organized.
Much angst among the arrivals who come with only what they are wearing.
Joy to find al-Bared loved ones.
Statements are heard on the crowded streets such as:
"Why did the army fire on us?
There were no fighters in our area?"
"Where was their artillery during the July war?
Why did they not fight Israel and now bomb us"?
The leader of Nahr al Bared Women's association accused Lebanon's envoy Abbas Zaki of not helping the refugees and with cooperating with the government and Israel.
'He should come here', one woman said.
"Abu Ammar or Abu Jihad (Arafat and his deputy Khalil al Wazir) would have come if they were alive".
Fatah is weak in Bedawi and even weaker in al-Bared.
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We expelled Fatah al-Islam from Bedawi because we did not like their friends —
(Hariri intelligence staff)
Seven PLO factions operate in both camps.
They jointly chased Fatah al-Islam out of Bedawi on September 21, 2006 not long after they split from Abu Musa's Fateh Intifida which has been based in Badawi since 1983.
Fatah Intifada still man's the entrance to Bedawi but they seem to have only about 100 members left.
When one interviews them they are almost apologetic about their step-brothers, Fatah al-Islam.
"We expelled them because we did not like their friends (Hariri intelligence staff) they were too religious and acted strange but we did not think things would come to this"
But the al-Barad PLO factions do not have arms or power to confront FAI.
Amazing examples of humanity happening here.
There are many family connections between the two camps.
Kids distribute water and bread when it arrives in cars from Beirut and elsewhere.
Young girls pick up and care for babies of people they don't know.
Helping old people find a place to sit, listening to them when they tell of what happened.
I could be wrong but I have rarely witnessed the solidarity among people as I see here with the Palestinians.
Clean, smart, patient, charming, funny, and caring toward one another — determined to return to Palestine.
Many who have been in Badawi for nearly a week now just want to just go back and die in their al-Bared homes.
On 5/25/07 the Palestinian group, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine tried to organize a convoy of those who wanted to return to al-Bared.
The plan is to go as far as they can and refuse to leave the army checkpoints until they are allowed back in.
The convoy did not leave Bedawi yet and the idea may be abandoned.
Franklin Lamb's recent book, The Price We Pay: A Quarter Century of Israel's use of American Weapon's against Lebanon (1978-2006) is available at Amazon.com.uk.
Dr. Lamb can be reached: fplamb at gmail dot com |
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US ammunition on way to Lebanon to do more killing |
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SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, very simply...this is over the winter...the government made...I think the article is called “The Redirection.”
There was a major change of policy by the United States government, essentially, which was that we were going to...the American government would join with the Brits and other Western allies and with what we call the moderate Sunni governments — that is, the governments of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt — and join with them and with Israel to fight the Shia.
One of the major goals for America, of course, was the obsession the Bush White House has with Iran, and the other obsession they have is, of course...is in fear...is of Hezbollah.
Hezbollah the Shia Party of God that’s so dominant in southern Lebanon and whose leader Hassan Nasrallah wants to play a bigger political role and is doing quite a bit to get there and is in direct confrontation with Siniora.
Fouad Siniora, deputy or aide to Rafik Hariri, the slain leader of Lebanon
And so, you have a situation where the Sunni government, pretty much in control now, the American-supported Sunni government headed by Fouad Siniora, who was a deputy or an aide to Rafik Hariri, the slain leader of Lebanon, that government has....
We know, the 'International Crisis Group' reported a couple years ago that the son Saad Hariri, the son of Rafik Hariri, who’s now a major player in the parliament of Lebanon, he put up $40,000 bail to free four Sunni fundamentalists — Jihadist-Salafists who were tied directly to, you know, this word “al-Qaeda.”
It is sort of ridiculous, they were tied to jihadist groups, and God knows, al-Qaeda, in terms of Osama bin Laden.
Osama bin Laden doesn’t have much to do with what we’re talking about.
These are independently, more or less, you can call them, fanatical jihadists.
Given support covertly, the goal being they would be potential enemies of Hezbollah
So, the goal — part of the goal in Lebanon, part of the way this policy played out, was, with Saudi help, Prince Bandar.
We remember Prince Bandar, the Saudi prince, as a major player in Iran-Contra and also in the American effort two decades ago.
If you remember, we supported Osama bin Laden and other jihadists in Afghanistan against the Russians, and that didn’t work out so well.
Well, we run right back to the well again, and we began supporting some of these jihadist groups, and particularly — in the article, I did name Fatah al-Islam.
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The idea was to provide them with some arms and some money and some basic equipment.
These are small units, a couple hundred people.
There were three or four around the country given the same help covertly, the goal being they would be potential enemies of Hezbollah in case of warfare.
In case Nasrallah decided to do something physical, get kinetic, in Lebanon, the Sunni Siniora government would have some very tough guys on its side, period.
That’s the policy.
JUAN GONZALEZ:
Well, Sy Hersh, if that is true, then what has led to the current fighting now? If the Lebanese government had been backing the group, why is it now attacking it?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, first of all, the Lebanese army is very distinct.
Let me begin by saying nobody really knows anything right now.
I mean one of the things about crises is you learn that you really get to play much later.
But based on common sense and what I’m reading, the Lebanese army has maintained an amazing sort of neutrality, which is surprising.
The army has not been a pawn of the Siniora government.
As you know, the American government — the American position right now — there’s a stand-off politically.
You cannot discuss what’s going on without discussing the overall politics.
There’s a stand-off politically right now, a very serious one, in Lebanon.
The government is polarized.
The government in power really has no legal basis to make any changes in cabinet positions, etc., because it’s not a constitutional government, because Hezbollah, which had five members of the parliament — five members of the cabinet and a dozen or so members in the parliament, Hezbollah pulled out months ago.
And there were street protests, protests against Siniora.
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And right now, you have Hezbollah in league with a Christian leader named Aoun, a former chief of staff for the army.
Aoun and Nasrallah are in an amazing partnership against the Siniora government.
And where this breaks down and who’s going to win this stand-off — it’s been going on since last December — isn’t clear.
America clearly supports Siniora.
But there’s a big brutal fight going.
And the Lebanese army stayed out of it and was pretty much, very much, independent, in the sense that when there were street demonstrations, they did not beat up on the Nasrallah people.
They were very impartial.
Palestinians — you know, rational people don’t like being mistreated
So I think the story that we have is that there was a crime, and they were chasing people into one of the Palestinian camps, which are always hotbeds.
God knows the Palestinians are the end of the stick, not only for the West, but also for the Arab world.
Nobody pays much attention to them and those places.
I’ve been to Tripoli and been into the camps, and they are seething, as they should be.
You know, rational people don’t like being mistreated.
So what seems to me we have is just a series — the word you could use is “unintended consequences.”
I don’t think anybody in the Siniora government anticipated that the people they were covertly supporting to some degree — I got an email the other day, and I have not checked this out, from somebody who was in the community, in the intelligence community and still consults with the community, he says:
“Why don’t we ask more about the American arms that the fighters of Fatah al-Islam are brandishing?”
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I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I did get that email.
And so, that could be true.
Both Saudi money and American money, not directly, but indirectly, was fed into these groups.
The White House is putting it out hot and heavy as part of the anti-Syria campaign, but it’s not flying
And what is the laugh riot and the reason I’m actually talking to you guys about this — I usually don’t like to do interviews unless I have a story in The New Yorker — the reason I’m talking about it is because the American government keeps on putting out this story that Syria is behind the Fatah group, which is just beyond belief.
There’s no way — it may be possible, but the chances of it are very slight, simply because Syria is a very big supporter, obviously, of Nasrallah.
Bashar al-Assad has told me that he’s in awe of Nasrallah, that he worships at his feet and has great respect for him.
The idea that the Syrians would be sponsoring Sunni jihadist groups whose sole mission are to kill the apostates — that is, anybody who doesn’t support their view, the Wahhabi or Salafist view of Sunni religion — that includes the Shia — anybody who doesn’t believe — support these guys’ religions are apostates and are killable, that’s basically one of the crazy aspects of all this, and it’s just inconceivable.
Nothing can be ruled out, but that doesn’t make much case, and I noticed that in the papers today there’s fewer and fewer references to this.
The newspapers in America are beginning to wise up, that this can’t be — this isn’t very logical.
The White House is putting it out hot and heavy as part of the anti-Syria campaign, but it’s not flying, because it doesn’t make sense.
So there we are.
It’s another mess.
Look, clearly this president is deeply involved in this, too, but what I hear from my people, of course, the players — it’s always Cheney, Cheney.
You might think that one of the reasons — I think I wrote about this in The New Yorker — one of the things that the Saudi Bandar had promised us was that we can control the jihadists.
We can control them, he assured us.
Don’t worry about getting in bed with these bad guys, because, as we remember, the same kind of assurances were given to us in the late 1980s, when we supported, as I said, bin Laden and others in the war against Russia, the Mujahideen war, and that, of course, bit us on the ass.
And this is, too.
So there we are.
AMY GOODMAN: Seymour Hersh, what about the role of Vice President Dick Cheney, the Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, any time you have violent anti-Iran policy and anti-Shia policy, you have to start looking there.
Look, clearly this president is deeply involved in this, too, but what I hear from my people, of course, the players — it’s always Cheney, Cheney.
Cheney meets with Bush at least once a week.
They have a lunch.
They usually have a scheduled lunch.
And out of that comes a lot of big decisions.
We don’t know what’s ever said at that meeting.
And this is — talk about being opaque, this is a government that is so hidden from us.
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So I can tell you that the thing that’s amazing about this government, the thing that’s really spectacular, is even now how they can get their way mostly with a lot of the American press.
They made a decision that because of the totally dwindling support for the war in Iraq, we go back to the al-Qaeda card, and we start talking about al-Qaeda
For example, I do know — and, you know, you have to take it on face value — if you’ve been reading me for a long time, you know a lot of the things I write are true or come out to be more or less true — I do know that within the last month, maybe four, four-and-a-half weeks ago, they made a decision that because of the totally dwindling support for the war in Iraq, we go back to the al-Qaeda card, and we start talking about al-Qaeda.
And the next thing you know, right after that, Bush went to the Southern Command — this was a month ago — and talked, mentioned al-Qaeda twenty-seven times in his speech.
He did so just the other day — al-Qaeda this, al-Qaeda that
He did so just the other day this week — al-Qaeda this, al-Qaeda that.
All of a sudden, the poor Iraqi Sunnis, I mean, they can’t do anything without al-Qaeda.
It’s only al-Qaeda that’s dropping the bombs and causing mayhem.
It’s not the Sunni and Shia insurgents or militias.
And this policy just gets picked up, although there’s absolutely no empirical basis.
Most of the pros will tell you the foreign fighters are a couple percent, and then they’re sort of leaderless in the sense that there’s no overall direction of the various foreign fighters.
You could call them al-Qaeda.
You can also call them jihadists and Salafists that want to die fighting the Americans or the occupiers in Iraq and they come across the border.
Whether this is — there’s no attempt to suggest there’s any significant coordination of these groups by bin Laden or anybody else, and the press just goes gaga.
And so, they went gaga a little bit over the Syrian connection to the activities in Tripoli.
It’s just amazing to me, you guys. |
Fire almost here We are now living in the interval, the few heartbeats left before the great flame ignites. The work has intensified to a fever pitch. |
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Fire almost here By Chris Floyd
Published: February 17, 2006 The kindling has been piled high, stuffed with tinder and doused with gasoline. The match has been lit. All it will take is the slightest flick of the wrist to set off the conflagration. We are now living in the interval, the few heartbeats left before the great flame ignites. The heap of kindling has been a long time building, but in recent weeks, the work has intensified to a fever pitch. With relentless urgency, the American people are being habituated to the prospect of several interrelated upheavals — new war, new terror attacks — and the predetermined result of these events: the final, open establishment of presidential tyranny, a militarized "commander state" where executive power is beyond the law, and endless war endlessly prolongs the "emergency measures" of the authoritarian regime. Making a virtue of necessity, the Bush administration has used the exposure of its illegal wiretap scheme to ratchet up the level of terrorist scaremongering, accelerate its drive toward a military attack on Iran and publicly proclaim its long-held covert doctrine of executive dictatorship.
Of course, "commander rule" is already the de facto state of the union, as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made clear to the Senate last week, when he refused to deny the notion that the president can contravene any law he chooses under his authority as commander-in-chief.
And we have often detailed here the tyrannical powers that President George W. Bush has already bestowed upon himself without objection from the U.S. political establishment, including the power to jail anyone without charges, hold them indefinitely and have them tortured — or simply murder them in an "extrajudicial killing."
The scope of Bush's claimed powers — arbitrary sway over the life and liberty of every person on earth — far surpasses that of the most megalomaniacal Roman emperor or totalitarian dictator.
But a militarist state must have war: to justify its draconian rule (and those $550 billion "defense" budgets), to find new fields for dominion and swag, and to seal with blood its illegitimate compact with the people, seeking to make them complicit in its crimes, which are committed in their name, for their "security."
Fortunately for the militarists, Bush has promised war in abundance.
Just this month, the Pentagon released its new strategy, heralding the newly dubbed "Long War" against terrorism, where U.S. forces will be deployed, openly and covertly, "in dozens of countries simultaneously" for decades to come.
The plan is designed to "ensure that no foreign power can dictate the terms of regional or global security" — except, of course, for the dictatorial foreign power emanating from the Potomac.
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This is the constitution of the new commander state: the eternal "emergency," fomenting endless bloodshed, strife, atrocity — and reprisals, the terrorist blowback that is the essential lubricant for the war machine.
And a new terror strike on the "homeland" is inevitable. The ground for this attack has been carefully prepared — whether wittingly or unwittingly is irrelevant now.
For whatever the Bush faction's intentions, their actual policies have demonstrably and indisputably stoked the fires of Islamic extremism to new heights of virulence.
Meanwhile, their manifest incompetence and callous disregard for the well-being of ordinary Americans — vividly displayed in the deadly bungling of the Katrina disaster and its corruption-riddled aftermath — have left American soil virtually undefended against any genuinely serious terrorist attack, i.e. one not carried out by half-wits telegraphing their punches over tapped phones.
For years, a vast infrastructure of authoritarian rule has been constructed behind the facade of ordinary political life — such as the series of "special authorities" signed by Bush and Pentagon warlord Donald Rumsfeld giving the military absolute power over the nation "in the event of a declared or perceived emergency," The Washington Post reports.
This dovetails with such open measures as the Patriot Act and the creation of Northcom, the first military command aimed at the "homeland," which last fall conducted the massive "Granite Shadow" exercise, practicing "domestic military operations" with "unique rules of engagement regarding the use of lethal force," the Post reports.
This infrastructure is part of the context, the granite shadow looming behind many recent events, such as last month's $385 million open-ended contract awarded to Halliburton to build large-scale "detention and deportation" centers around the country, as Reuters reports.
It looms behind the "excitement" expressed by weapons-makers over Bush's plans to build new atomic bombs on a production-line basis, the Oakland Tribune reports, including "low yield" nukes for use in attacks on non-nuclear nations.
It looms over Rumsfeld's frenzied push to build a new arsenal of "first-strike" intercontinental and space-based weapons to attack enemies — or perceived enemies — with "no warning," as the Pentagon declared this month, UPI reports.
You can even see it in the Air Force's decision last week to allow top brass to press their politicized pseudo-Christianity on young cadets without restraint, as Reuters reports — more of the sinister melding of militarism and religious extremism that characterizes the Bushist philosophy.
And of course, the granite shadow overhangs the entire campaign to foment war fever against Iran, a grim replay of the "Attack Iraq" propaganda, complete with exaggerated threats, manipulated intelligence supplied by dubious exiles, lies about "pursuing diplomacy" while finalizing battle plans, as The Sunday Telegraph reports — and a complete disregard of the murderous quagmire that will ensue, including the rapid proliferation of nuclear weapons worldwide as countries scramble to protect themselves from the "first-strike" triggermen of the Bush faction.
More war, more terror, more authoritarian rule: The fire next time is almost here.
Annotations
A 'long war' designed to perpetuate itself International Herald Tribune, Feb. 10, 2006 Ability to Wage 'Long War' Is Key To Pentagon Plan Washington Post, Feb. 4, 2006 Granite Shadow: Commandos in the Streets? Washington Post, Sept. 25, 2005 Oil and Water: Life in the Bush Imperium Empire Burlesque, Feb. 14, 2006 The Politics of Fear The Independent, Feb. 15, 2006 Can You Say Permanent Bases? TomDispatch.com, Feb. 14, 2006 Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps New American Media, Feb. 8, 2006 Lab officials excited by new H-bomb project Oakland Tribune, Feb. 6, 2006 The Armageddon Plan The Atlantic, March 2004 Military Role in Space Set to Expand Reuters, Feb. 8, 2006 Polls: Anti-Iran Propaganda Working Antiwar.com, Feb. 10, 2006 Terror Threat: The Great Deception The Independent, Feb. 15, 2006 Rumsfeld's First Strike Vsion UPI, Feb. 9, 2006 The Destruction of the Constitution Molly Ivins, Feb. 9, 2006 US prepares military blitz against Iran's nuclear sites Sunday Telegraph, Feb. 12, 2006 Air Force Eases Rules on Religion Washington Post, Feb. 9, 2006 Air Force sets revised rules for prayers by its chaplains Washington Times, Feb. 9, 2006 Masters of Deception Antiwar.com, Feb. 16, 2006 Abu Ghraib: School for terrorists International Herald Tribune, Feb. 14, 2006 America's Long War The Guardian, Feb. 15, 2006 Quick Rise for Purveyors of Propaganda in Iraq New York Times, Feb. 14, 2006 Katrina Report Spreads Blame Washington Post, Feb. 14, 2006 Audits Show Millions in Katrina Aid Wasted Associated Press, Feb. 14, 2004 Storm Warning: Levee Lies and the War on Reality Empire Burlesque, Feb. 10, 2006 Intelligence, Policy,and the War in Iraq Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006 Nuclear Iran Is Not a Threat International Herald Tribune, Jan. 31, 2006 The First Front in the War on Iran? Zmag, Nov. 7, 2005 Annexing Khuzhestan: Battle Plans for Iran Information Clearing House, Feb. 1, 2006 Abu Ghraib General Lambastes Bush Administration Truthout, Aug. 24, 2005 Seabees Buzz in to Build Bases Washington Times, Feb. 6, 2006 © Copyright 2006, The Moscow Times. All Rights Reserved. |
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Militarism is promoted through the relentless manipulation of public opinion in all media
— Hollywood films aided by US department of war armament loans
TV, video games
Public relations US department of war
Newspapers, magazines
Parades
Many are directly employed by CIA, NASA, NSA, NED, USAID that work with our invasions and subversions
The rest of the US people:
All are in thrall — enslaved, held by economics or other means of bondage |
January 25, 2006 Military Contractor Philanthropy
By JOAN ROELOFS
Why Some Stay Silent The military-industrial complex is elephantine, yet it is rarely taken into account by political commentators. Connected to almost everything, it is one reason why the home front sustains our aggressive, illegal, military interventions and occupations throughout the world. Many good people are in thrall to the military-industrial complex, and consequently are silenced, unwilling to become active opponents. These include liberals, social justice advocates, and even professional soldiers who question our illegal interventions. There are, of course, some protesters in our nation, but not enough to make militarism the main issue in Congressional and Presidential elections, or to give the subject much visibility on a daily basis. Militarism Militarism is promoted through the relentless manipulation of public opinion in all media: Hollywood films (aided by DOD armament loans), TV, video games, the public relations army of the DOD, newspapers, magazines, parades, etc. For the intellectuals, there are articles in "liberal" magazines alleging that violence is genetically implanted in humans, and a generally positive force. This barrage normalizes violence and war. |
Actions widely accepted or ignored by liberals
Most people want to regard themselves as normal, and not fuzzy idealists or crackpots, so they increasingly view aggression as inevitable, and perhaps a good thing.
Bombing people into democracy (as in Yugoslavia) becomes a reasonable proposition; overthrowing governments (as in Haiti) just a routine world improvement activity.
Both these actions were widely accepted or ignored by liberals, among others.
Government harassment, discrimination, social penalties
Fear motivates human behavior; many people eschew protesting wars as they are afraid of being considered unpatriotic, and subjected to government harassment, discrimination in employment, social penalties, or beatings by local thugs.
Even those who suspect that war is not normal may be convinced that nothing they can do will change anything.
Yet the home front support is not based merely on psychological manipulation; there are interests served by the military-industrial complex. |
Kellogg, Brown & Root, Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, Boeing
Many people are directly employed by the military and its auxiliaries, which include CIA, NASA, NSA, and agencies such as NED and USAID that are not alternatives to force, but work with our invasions and subversions.
Those in the reserves or retired remain influential serving in local, state, and national governments, with few active dissenters among them.
Of course, it is not news that military contractors help many politicians get their jobs via campaign contributions.
The military industries include the "big ten" (Kellogg, Brown & Root, Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, United Technologies, General Electric, Dyncorp) and countless others involved in base construction worldwide, in armaments, protective gear, disorienting drugs, supplying mercenaries for contract operations, etc.
Many civilian industries (e.g., computer software) have substantial contracts; others have ones that reliably pay the rent.
The military buys or leases every kind of thing, including buttons, philosophy, toilet paper, and real estate.
War industries are spread throughout the country (and also have overseas branches and subsidiaries).
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Military bases, Universities, Research
They are crucial in providing employment in the many declining areas of our economy: the rust belt of the Midwest, the shoe belt of New England, the cotton belt of the South.
The corporations and their employees are major consumers in their communities, purchasing real estate, furniture, clothing, food, medical services, entertainment, tap dancing lessons, etc.
All these businesses know where their bread is buttered-with guns.
A similar multiplier effect occurs surrounding military bases, which is one reason why our bases overseas are often quietly accepted.
In the US, the notorious Fort Benning, GA SOA-WHISC is a local mainstay.
"Special" military training is also performed by contracts with universities, such as Norwich University in Vermont, or University of Kentucky.
Research grants and ROTC embed many academic institutions.
The military academies likewise radiate power in their communities, encouraging silence on militarism.
Greed?
"Greed" is often indicted as the source of war.
This may describe stockholders or highly paid executives, but many ordinary people are simply dependent on the military-industrial complex.
Often, our economy doesn't provide attractive or practical alternatives for employment or community survival.
Whatever the personal opinions of war industry employees, service workers, retailers, volunteers, or municipal employees in contractor territory, few will become anti-war activists or attempt to unseat their Congressperson for supporting invasions, occupations, and overthrows.
In addition, the military is deeply involved with disaster relief, which brings many more good people into its orbit: Red Cross volunteers, state and local government officials and staff, Vista workers, etc.
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| FallujaUnknown if US taxpayer paid black budget special operations money involved |
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Long-term interests of rich
Yet another rampart is built from military contractor philanthropy.
Large corporations in every industry have established foundations that act like the large private foundations: Ford, Rockefeller, McArthur....
Traditional business charity has been used for public relations, community projects, and product-related benevolence, but today corporate philanthropy works with the general foundations to protect the long-term interests of capitalism and its access to resources, markets, and labor worldwide.
Essential dissidents distracted into discrete good works away from systemic challenges
In this process, it is essential that potential dissidents be distracted into discrete, yet important, good works, and away from systemic challenges.
Contractor philanthropy takes many forms and embraces a wide circle.
(Sources for the following discussion include Tax Form 990s accessed through the Foundation Center or Guidestar web sites, the database of the Capital Research Center, and the annual reports or web sites of the corporations.
Most grants mentioned were given in recent years; a few in the late 1990s.)
There are the unsurprising grants to policy-planning think tanks, such as Boeing-McDonnell Foundation's to the Hudson Institute, Heritage Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute.
Another conventional largesse is scholarship aid to aspiring engineers, who may then be predisposed to seek future employment with the benefactor.
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Benefits to poor, Grants, Education is a gifted field for militarism spending
Widely unremarked is the benevolence that touches many members of the general population: minorities, poor people, social justice activists, liberals, civic-minded volunteers, and those not in the elite or military minded.
In short, the good people, who, because of their own oppression, or their warm hearts, might have been likely recruits for an anti-war movement.
Education is a gifted field.
Of course, universities with large science and engineering faculties receive grants, but so does every kind of institution: liberal arts, Catholic colleges, public universities, community colleges, colleges with large minority enrollments.
For example, General Electric lists a grant (in 2002) to Barnard College, my alma mater.
Cooper Union, site of 1950s Pete Seeger hootenannies, benefits from Northrop Grumman.
Halliburton helps out the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
Northrop is very generous to career services offices in higher education.
Programs preparing disadvantaged students for college do well: GE has committed half a million to Brandeis University's College Bound, and $80,000 to CUNY's center (perhaps to forestall a repeat of the 1930s ruckus there).
Associations in minority higher education, such as American Indian college organizations, the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, and the United Negro College Fund, are supported generously.
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| Response to US militarismIraq resistanceKirkukIraq |
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This week's cave-in on Capitol Hill — supplying a huge new jolt of funds for the horrific war effort in Iraq — is surprising only to those who haven't grasped our current circumstances.
Public opinion polls aren't the same as political leverage. The Vietnam War went on for years after polling showed that most Americans opposed the war and even saw it as immoral.
Slick phrases about the need to bring our troops home can easily become little more than platitudes on wallpaper in media echo chambers.
No matter how many Democrats are in Congress, they won't end this war unless an antiwar movement develops enough grassroots strength to compel them to do so.
Progressive visionaries: Reps. Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey, Maxine Waters
Unfortunately — and unnecessarily — for years now the Internet powerhouse MoveOn.org has often functioned as a virtual appendage of the national Democratic Party. That close relationship has largely squandered MoveOn's opportunities to help build strong deep independent activism for the long haul. And, on crucial issues of the Iraq war, MoveOn has failed to back the positions of such gutsy progressive visionaries as Reps. Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey and Maxine Waters.
A statement issued Thursday by the national Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) pointed out that "the approach of the Democratic leadership has utterly failed — as they now prepare to give President Bush $95 billion more war funding through a bill that no longer has any timelines for troop withdrawal."
Asking a key question — "How can you oppose a troop escalation while funding it in full?" — PDA reiterated its longstanding position that Democrats in Congress should be "using the power of the purse to cut off funds to Iraq, except those needed to safely withdraw our troops (and for humanitarian/reconstruction aid to the Iraqi people)." And legislators should be "using their investigative power to probe White House deceptions and distortions that propelled the Iraq invasion and occupation, and to impeach if necessary."
Memorial Day 2007 comes at a disastrous time. Political power brokers and media elites insist on opting for a mix-merge of tragedy and farce. A key reality is that we won't be able to change the militaristic direction of the country without effectively confronting the congressional Democrats who are fueling the engines of destruction.
'Self-evident wisdom'
When considering what to demand now, it's helpful to put the current moment in historical perspective. The same basic arguments for keeping U.S. forces in Iraq have long been presented by reigning politicians and key media outlets as self-evident wisdom.
A cover story in Time magazine laid down the prevailing line:
"Foreign policy luminaries from both parties say a precipitous U.S. withdrawal would cripple American credibility, doom reform in the Arab world and turn Iraq into a playground for terrorists and the armies of neighboring states like Iran and Syria."
That was in April— 2004.
Norman Solomon www.counterpunch.org March 24, 2007 |
Military Contractor Philanthropy
— Why Some Stay Silent
By JOAN ROELOFS
A n even broader base of gratitude has been created by contractor grants to all types of high and elementary schools (private, public, parochial), e.g. Northrop's to Emmanuel Christian Academy and Melvin J Berman Hebrew Academy.
Very young are not neglected by US Militarism
The very young are not neglected; the Long Beach Day Nursery Newsletter, Fall 2004, features a photo of a Boeing representative handing over a $7,500 check for its Ready to Read program.
Raytheon reaches into the public schools with a national project:
MathMovesU is a program designed specifically to reach students at a time where studies show performance declines in math and science — middle school, grades six through eight.
The MathMovesU program combines student interest in celebrities with grant money and awards to generate new interest and excitement in math.
Raytheon has partnered with skateboard legend Tony Hawk, soccer star Mia Hamm, basketball greats Bill Russell and Lisa Leslie, and BMX champ Dave Mirra to promote the MathMovesU program and demonstrate how math plays a role in "cool" careers.
No matter how small the grant, it may well be noted by the children, who are alert to brand names and corporate logos (sometimes incorporated into textbook exercises), and by teachers and parents, especially those active in PTAs and bake sales.
Gradually, they may come to accept that weapons of mass destruction are simply products like any others.
Community organizations
Support for community organizations is especially generous near contractor headquarters and facilities, which are widespread, yet the industries give grants everywhere, and to national organizations.
The NAACP has always had strong connections with major corporations.
The civil rights movement of the 1960s prompted new close links between activist organizations and business.
The Urban Coalition was formed, and thereafter, corporate philanthropy became more focused on defusing systemic threats.
Its goal was to challenge segregation and discrimination while discouraging the more radical suggestions of that era's activists.
(The same model was later applied to foundation intervention in South Africa, which aimed to end apartheid without furthering the ANC's socialist goals.)
Today, Lockheed, GE, and Boeing are important funders of the NAACP.
Minority organizations, religious groups, women's groups
Military contractors are attentive to every kind of minority organization: Asians Against Domestic Abuse and Vietnamese American Community (Halliburton); American Indian Science and Engineering Society and National Society of Black Engineers (Northrop Grumman); the Holocaust Museum and the Chinese Community Center (GE).
Boeing has funded the Congressional Black Caucus and the Urban League. Lockheed even contributes to the Sons of Norway, perhaps to deflect them from the socialistic policies of their homeland.
Religious groups of all kinds are grantees, not excluding the Benedictine Sisters and Zoroastrians.
Women's organizations are well endowed.
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Boeing and BAE Systems (a prominent contractor in New Hampshire) sponsor an AAUW program encouraging women to enter science and engineering.
GE gives to the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy; Boeing to the National Women's Political Caucus, Lockheed to the National Museum of Women.
Children's groups
Children are nurtured.
Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCAs, YWCAs, Little Leagues, UNICEF, Children's Defense Fund, etc., receive substantial grants, which aid many poor and minority children, and may impress them, their leaders, and their parents.
Lockheed Martin was a major sponsor of the Girl Scout 2005 National Council Convention, and supports a special program within the GSA organization: The Lockheed Martin Science Career Exploration Fund.
Organizations of ill and disadvantaged children are also beneficiaries: Child Abuse Network, Children's Brain Tumor Foundation, Make A Wish, Juvenile Diabetes, Special Olympics, Big Brothers Big Sisters, et al.
Those working in such heartbreaking fields, and the parents involved, rarely hesitate to take whatever help is offered from whatever source.
Private philanthropy may appear more desirable than the dreaded public taxation of many civilized nations.
Charities, Art institutions
Health and environmental organizations are not neglected: American Lung Association, Canine Companions, Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, American Cancer Society, AIDs services, Clean Air Campaign, Audubon Society, Nature Conservancy, Brooklyn Botanic Garden....
Most major charities are included, e.g., Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity....
Arts of all kinds are funded by US Militarism
Arts of all kinds are funded, from major institutions such as the JFK Center for the Performing Arts to the Chicago Jazz Orchestra (Boeing), the Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Houston (Halliburton), the New York Public Library (GE) and Baltimore Shakespeare Festival (Lockheed Martin).
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Even organizations with pacifist connections receive contractor money: GE funds Peter Maurin House and the Hancock Shaker Village.
Civil liberties and human rights organizations also receive grants: Lockheed gives to the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, GE to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Beyond grants, there are other links.
AI? HRW? AARP? College teachers' retirement fund
Amnesty International USA has received hundreds of GE stock shares from individual donors.
Whether these have been sold or are being nurtured would require more sleuthing.
Human Rights Watch has 50 million invested in stocks and bonds; I know not where, except for $1.5 million in the Soros Quantum Fund.
Connections and revolving doors between contractors and citizen organization boards and top staff further cement bonds and promote a non-critical atmosphere.
In 2002, Chris Hansen, former chief lobbyist for Boeing, became the top lobbyist for the AARP.
John H. Biggs was a director of Boeing while he was Chairman, President and CEO of TIAA-CREF, the college teachers' retirement fund.
Around the world
What happens in the United States is also projected throughout the world: bases, military training, military contracts, military-civilian organization collaboration in disaster relief, and so too with philanthropy.
Boeing Employees Community Fund helps to support the Teenage Cancer Trust of London, England, and a Japanese residential center for mentally disabled children; GE gives grants in Hungary and to Peking University; BAE Systems funds programs in Australia and Saudi Arabia.
Reinforcing the corporate, general foundation, and government philanthropy abroad, NATO has its own considerable, and greatly understudied grant program.
This funds diverse organizations and projects, such as aid in environmental decision-making in Central Asia.
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Philanthropy (often a joint project of private, corporate, government, and intergovernmental institutions such as the European Union, World Bank, and NATO) has attempted to fill the void created by the overthrow of communist governments, which had previously provided for industrial employment, social services, culture, research, and education.
NATO now supports scientists in Eastern Europe and Central Asia studying the arctic, toxicity in leather tanning, pesticides, deforestation, sustainable human development indicators, mating systems in conifers, antioxidant activity of beverages, biotechnology, women's reproductive choices, superstrings, and cancer detection.
Whatever anyone is doing; NATO is happy to help (and welcomes those focusing on leather tanning as the major environmental hazard).
Plenty of money to go around
How to estimate the influence of all this philanthropy?
We can listen carefully for rejections of grants by organization leaders and members; or resignations because of acceptance; or anti-war protest activity by all but the rare bird belonging to or benefiting from these organizations.
Then we can investigate further, using teams of interviewers financed somehow the other side has plenty of finances to show their favored results.
Historical evidence indicates that people serving on boards or staffs of civic, social service, or reformist organizations would be prime recruits for radical activism, were the opportunity structure different.
As it is, thousands of these potential leaders are tucked away in innumerable non-governmental organizations, funded by military contractors and other corporations and foundations friendly to US imperial policies.
They are doing good works on a small scale, but the larger picture may cause more deaths than the rare diseases that get so much attention and funding.
Everywhere self-censor
My personal experience, and anecdotal evidence from activists with whom I have discussed my research on foundations, indicates that most people self-censor.
Even I do sometimes, and when I haven't, I have often paid a price.
For example, I was on the board of a local environmental organization, and was asked about the propriety of applying for a GE grant.
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I argued that the organization should not, because the military was the greatest threat to sustainability.
An important board member claimed that I was being silly, for it would never affect the decisions of the organization.
I argued that it gave legitimacy to GE, which would be acknowledged in the annual report, and it would soften members' attitudes towards GE and the military.
The organization decided not to apply for the grant, but my popularity in the local non-profit world did not soar.
In another case, I decided that I was finally ready to join a sorority after resisting for so many years.
The best local one was the AAUW, where friends and associates belong.
However, I won't join any organization that I know has ties to military contractors, and will lose out.
It is easy to understand why so many good people are silent in the face of murderous policies.
They are in thrall.
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Suicide Bombing is response to foreign occupation Will stop once troops withdraw |
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Published on Monday, May 21, 2007 by Working For Change
Driving Triangulation “Over the Dead Bodies” of the Progressive Movement
by David Sirota
The term “triangulation” in politics means a set of leaders trying joining with their opponents to pass measures that run counter to those leaders’ own supporters.
Typically, triangulation is practiced by presidents against their own parties in Congress, with the master of triangulation being President Bill Clinton who, among other things, rammed welfare reform and NAFTA “over the dead bodies” of rank-and-file Democratic lawmakers and the progressive movement.
Can congressional leaders can pull the same move?
Unfortunately, we’re going to find out very soon, as congressional Democratic leaders are very clearly attempting to triangulate against their own party on the three issues the party ran on to win Election 2006.
TRADE — TRIANGULATING WITH A SECRET DEAL IN PURSUIT OF WALL STREET CASH
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On trade, Public Citizen has shown that the Democratic Party relied on candidates who ran against lobbyist-written trade deals in order to win many of the crucial conservative-leaning districts that were necessary to win the congressional majority.
Yet, as we’ve seen over the last week, a handful of senior Democratic leaders are joining with the Bush White House in an attempt to ram an ultra-secret free trade deal through Congress, acknowledging that in order to be successful, they will rely on all Republicans and just 25 percent of Democratic lawmakers.
Would have tried to negotiate the deal in even more secrecy
As rank-and-file Democratic lawmakers and organizations representing millions of workers, farmers and small businesses have raised objections to the deal, Reuters reports today that Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) is digging in, saying that if he knew what he knew now about how serious rank-and-file Democratic opposition to lobbyist-written trade policy was, he would have tried to negotiate the deal in even more secrecy than it was negotiated in in the first place.
On Bill Moyers’ terrific PBS report on Friday about the secret deal, author John R. MacArthur says the motivations for the triangulation on trade are obvious.
“This is like the NAFTA campaign of the ’90s, an attempt by the Democratic leadership — in those days it was the Clintons — to raise money from Wall Street.”
You can watch Bill Moyers’ entire piece on the secret deal here.
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Attacking Democrats raising questions about the deal
This drive to triangulate on trade has now reached a point where the handful of Democrats who made the deal are publicly attacking those rank-and-file Democratic lawmakers, labor, environmental, health, human rights, religious, consumer protection and agricultural groups raising questions about the deal.
On Friday, Reuters reported that Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) “offered no apology” for negotiating the deal in secret or for continuing to conceal the legislative text of the deal.
People wasting my time
Instead, he went on the attack, saying the only thing he would do differently would be to “ignore a lot of people that really were just wasting my time.”
He claimed innocently that “I cannot see how anybody would be upset” by the deal, even though as Public Citizen shows today, the list of reforms to current trade policies that fair trade groups forwarded to Democratic leaders many months ago was almost entirely brushed aside by Rangel, as were proposals for a whole new framework for global trade deals.
TRIANGULATION STRATEGY: The dynamics set up a situation whereby the Democratic congressional leadership and less than half of all Democratic lawmakers (as during NAFTA) join with all Republicans to ram a free trade package through Congress over the objections of the progressive movement and rank-and-file Democrats who ran against lobbyist-written trade policies in 2006.
LOBBYING — TRIANGULATING TO PERPETUATE THE CULTURE OF CORRUPTION
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Most observers agree that outrage at the Republican’s corruption scandals and Democrats promise to clean up the “culture of corruption” helped Democrats win in 2006.
Yet, late last week, The Politico reported that Democrats on the House Judiciary committee yesterday “scrapped a beefed-up provision of the Lobbying Reform Bill that would have prohibited former lawmakers and senior staff from lobbying their former colleagues during their first two years out of office.”
The original bill would have extended the revolving door ban from one to two years, but the amendment eliminating that provision passed by a unanimous voice vote.
AP reports that “several days of backroom deal-making where some of the toughest proposed reforms were left on the cutting-room floor.”
The shenanigans come just as freshman Democrats announced their demands for a much stronger anti-corruption bill.
TRIANGULATION STRATEGY: The dynamics set up a situation whereby the Democratic congressional leadership would join with all Republicans to ram a sham lobbying “reform” bill through Congress potentially over the objections of many of rank-and-file Democrats and the progressive movement.
IRAQ — POTENTIAL TRIANGULATION TO KEEP THE WAR GOING
Finally, Iraq — the big issue that helped Democrats win in 2006.
The Associated Press reports that congressional Democratic leaders may be backing away from using their power to oppose the war, floating the possibility of an Iraq War supplemental bill that “would allow the president to waive compliance with a deadline for troop withdrawals.”
The New York Times says that the “likelihood that any final agreement will specify no withdrawal date for American troops from Iraq raised the possibility that antiwar Democrats will not support it, particularly in the House, and that the measure will need substantial Republican support to pass.”
TRIANGULATION STRATEGY: The dynamics set up a situation whereby the Democratic congressional leadership would join with all Republicans to ram a blank check Iraq spending bill through Congress potentially over the objections of many of rank-and-file Democrats and the progressive movement.
To read complete article including links to many references not included in above: click here |
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"They started torturing us before they posed any questions.
Basically they were kick boxing us and looked to be really enjoying it."
Throughout the detention he witnessed beatings inflicted on his friend, the hotel receptionist Baha Mousa
"Baha was with me from the moment we were arrested.
We were also put in the same cell.
He suffered a lot at their hands.
They were very cruel.
I do not believe they had any feelings.
I would say they were not human." |
Kidnap and torture: new claims of Army war crimes in Iraq Robert Verkaik reveals evidence of systemic ill-treatment of civilians by British soldiers in the aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Published: 18 May 2007 The British Army is facing new allegations that it was involved in "forced disappearances", hostage-taking and torture of Iraqi civilians after the fall of the regime of Saddam Hussein. One of the claims is made by the former chairman of the Red Crescent in Basra, who alleges he was beaten unconscious by British soldiers after they accused him of being a senior official in Saddam's Baath party.
The family of another Iraqi civilian claims he was arrested and kidnapped by the British in order to secure the surrender of his brother, who was also accused of being a high-ranking member of the party. He was later found shot dead, still handcuffed and wearing a UK prisoner name tag.
Both cases are being prepared for hearings in the High Court in which the Government will be accused of war crimes while carrying out the arrest and detention of alleged senior members of the Baath party.
Last month, the first British soldier to be convicted of a war crime was jailed for a year and dismissed from the Army after being convicted of mistreating Iraqi civilians, including the hotel worker Baha Mousa, who died of his injuries at the hands of British soldiers.
Six other soldiers, including Col Jorge Mendonca, were cleared of all charges.
Lawyers and rights groups say the worrying aspect of these latest allegations is that they show evidence of systemic abuse by British soldiers soon after the fall of Saddam.
Fouad Awdah Al-Saadoon, 67, chairman of the Iraqi Red Crescent in Basra, alleges he was visited by British soldiers at his offices in the city on 12 April 2003 and was taken to the British base at the former Mukhabarat [intelligence] building.
In his witness statement, Mr Saadoon said he was accused of being a member of the Baath party and of using his organisation's ambulances secretly to transport Iraqi militia.
In a detailed account of the abuse that he alleges he suffered, Mr Saadoon recalls: "As soon as I went inside they started beating me.
They used electric cables and wooden batons and they harshly punched me with their hands and boots. I had a heart problem, I was a diabetic and had high blood pressure.
I was hit repeatedly on my eyes which made me collapse unconscious."
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Mr Saadoon was later transferred to the joint American/British-run detention centre called Camp Bucca, in southern Iraq, which the British had set up to process prisoners at the start of the war.
He was interrogated for five days.
Because of the injuries sustained during the beatings his condition worsened and he claims the British flew him to Kuwait for a heart operation.
There he claims he was visited by the International Federation of the Red Crescent whose representatives expressed concern at his alleged treatment by the British.
In the second case, a 26-year-old Iraqi civilian, Tarek Hassan, was arrested in a dawn raid by British troops involved in the rounding up of Baath party officials on 24 April 2003.
His family allege he was held hostage by the British in exchange for the surrender of his brother, Kadhim Hassan, a member of the Baath party.
Five months after his arrest, his family received a phone call to say his body had been found dumped in Samarra, north of Baghdad and 550 miles from the detention centre where he had been held.
Kadhim Hassan, 37, has spent the past three years trying to establish the circumstances that led to the death of his brother.
Now Iraqi human rights workers and British lawyers have uncovered vital witnesses to his arrest and detention.
They have also recovered Tarek's UK identity tag, which indicates he was a British prisoner.
In his witness statement, Kadhim recalls the night his bother was arrested.
"The British were looking for me as I was a high-ranking member of the Baath party," he said.
"I suspect that a financial dispute with one of my neighbours made him inform the British of my rank and he possibly told them some lies which made them look for me."
Kadhim had left the family a few hours before the armoured vehicles carrying the soldiers arrived.
When his sisters contacted the British to find out where the British had taken Tarek, they were told that he would only be released if Kadhim gave himself up.
That was the last they heard of him until five months later.
"He was found," said Kadhim:
"by locals in the countryside ... We went to collect him from the morgue in Samarra, where we found him with eight bullet wounds to his chest.
They were Kalashnikov bullets.
His hands were tied with plastic wire and had many bruises."
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He was very scared and confused
Now it emerges that Mr Saadoon, who has left Iraq and is working as a businessman in Dubai, met Tarek shortly after he was flown back to Camp Bucca from Kuwait, where he had been receiving medical care.
"I was brought back to Camp Bucca in a van on 21 April and placed in a tent, which held 400 prisoners.
On 24 April Tarek Hassan was brought to our tent.
He was very scared and confused.
He told me British troops had raided his house and were looking for his brother who left the house before the soldiers had arrived.
As I was in bad health, Tarek used to bring me food and care for me.
Tarek was never interrogated while I was at Camp Bucca."
On 27 April the International Federation of the Red Crescent requested the British to free Mr Saadoon and that night he and all 200 others were released in the middle of the night on the highway between Basra and Zubai.
"We had to walk 25 miles to reach the nearest place where we could hire cars," remembers Mr Saadoon.
The Government denies being involved in the injuries suffered by Mr Saadoon or responsibility for Tarek's death.
In letters to the family, the Ministry of Defence makes the point that the bullets that may have killed him were fired from a Kalashnikov weapon and that the area where his body was found was not an area of operations associated with British forces.
But the Hassan family's solicitor, Phil Shiner, of Public Interest Lawyers, said the evidence showed Tarek disappeared at the hands of UK forces and that the circumstances of his release "significantly increased the risk to his life".
In recent correspondence, the MoD has admitted to the Hassan family that Tarek was held at Camp Bucca but claims that it is a US-run camp and so not the responsibility of the British.
It is a matter of public record that our agents were torturing Iraqis at Camp Bucca
Mr Shiner, who is acting in both cases, said:
"The Government deny any responsibility in a case where a man has been kidnapped by UK forces and killed.
It is a matter of public record that our agents were torturing Iraqis at Camp Bucca and continued to hand over detainees to the Iraqi criminal system even though there was a serious risk of torture or death in detention.
This case is important because if the UK have jurisdiction it cannot allow these incidents to continue and must properly investigate previous incidents".
Mazin Younis, chair of the Iraqi League, a UK-based rights group, said:
"The cases we have reported so far may only be the tip of an iceberg of systematic abuse procedures devised high up the command chain in the Army.
The scale of such cases greatly necessitates the need for the Government to start a public inquiry."
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| Ten members of Rogers' unit gave evidence in court.Their most frequently used phrase: "I can't remember."They said it six hundred and sixty-seven times! |
Camp Bucca, a 'holding facility' with a history of allegations
The secure holding facility in the desert near the city of Umm Qasr, close to the Kuwaiti border, was originally called Camp Freddy and used by British forces to hold Iraqi prisoners of war.
But in April 2003 control of the camp was transferred to the Americans, although there was a "secure and discrete" unit within the camp that remained exclusively British.
In 2003 the British had control of two tent compounds, holding roughly 400 prisoners each.
The Americans had six similar compounds.
The camp is designed to hold between 2,000 and 2,500 prisoners but figures released in March 2006 estimated that it held 8,500 Iraqi detainees.
There have been a number of inquiries into alleged abusive treatment at the camp, mostly related to the Americans.
In February 2005 American soldiers killed four detainees and injured six others to quell a riot in which prisoners were armed with stones.
But the British have also been accused of abuse, specifically the hooding of prisoners, which led to concerns being raised with the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Six of the men detained with Baha Mousa were later taken to Camp Bucca.
Conditions in the camp are known to be primitive, with open trenches used as lavatories.
The prisoners were forced to sleep on the desert floor, at risk from scorpions and snakes, and were only given one blanket at night when temperatures can fall below zero.
Since May 2003, 27 prisoners have escaped from Camp Bucca, 18 of whom have been recaptured.
A number of attempts at mass escape have been foiled.
The Ministry of Defence says that apart from two spells in 2003, Camp Bucca has been run by the Americans.
Soldiers in the dock
Camp Breadbasket
On 15 May 2003 the 1st Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers captured Iraqis looting an aid camp in Operation Ali-Baba.
They were detained for a brief period during which they were beaten, forced to simulate oral and anal sex and suspended from a forklift truck.
Later that month, Fusilier Gary Bartlam, 20, of Tamworth, Staffordshire, took a film to be developed containing 22 photographs of abuse taking place.
This triggered a lengthy court martial at a British Army barracks in Osnabruck, Germany. Bartlam pleaded guilty to three charges of ill treatment of Iraqi prisoners.
Cpl Daniel Kenyon, 33, from Newcastle, denied six charges of abuse.
He was convicted of three, cleared of two charges and the remaining charge was dropped.
L/Cpl Mark Cooley, 25, from Newcastle, denied two charges of abuse but was found guilty of both. L/Cpl Darren Larkin, 30, from Oldham, Greater Manchester, admitted to one charge of assault but denied another.
The second charge was dropped. |
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Britain's first convicted war criminal
Baha Mousa
The hotel worker and son of an Iraqi police colonel died on 16 September 2003 while in custody of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment at a detention centre near Basra.
The building had formerly been the secret service headquarters of Ali Majid (Chemical Ali).
Cpl Donald Payne, 36, became Britain's first convicted war criminal when he admitted inhumanely treating civilian detainees.
Six other soldiers were cleared by a military court in Bulford, Wiltshire, of abusing Mr Mousa and other detainees.
©2007 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd. All rights reserved |
| "I am bleeding, my nose is broken."
"Have mercy on me, I am going to die." |
| There was an old latrine, just a hall of cesspits, and there was a man who was bound and made to lie with his nose hanging over that latrine and he'd been thrown around and he'd soiled himself and he was lying in his own urine.
The detainee, nicknamed granddad, hooded in the next room, heard his friend's last moments.
KIFAH MUTAIRI — Iraqi detainee 'Grandad'
On the last night I could hear Baha's voice was further from me, but I could tell he was in the next room.
He was getting tortured and he would groan because the torture was so bad.
Panorama reporter PAUL KENYON:
There was a struggle.
Baha Mousa was at the end of his strength.
Corporal Payne was restraining him with his knee in his back.
A charge of manslaughter against Payne was thrown out.
KIFAH MUTAIRI — Iraqi detainee 'Grandad':
He was shouting: 'I am bleeding, my nose is broken.
'Have mercy on me, I am going to die.'
Then his voice disappeared.'
Panorama reporter PAUL KENYON:
He died of postural asphyxia.
In simple terms he'd been unable to breathe.
His ribs were fractured and he had 93 separate injuries.
Nobody has been convicted over the death of Baha Mousa. |
Iraqi mother of Nadhem Abdullah holds his picture in Farakah.
A court hearing the case of seven British troops accused of beating Abdullah to death, also heard that the same soldiers savagely attacked a taxi driver at the same time.
Charges against the seven British soldiers accused of murdering Iraqi teenager dismissed.
Judge ruled insufficient evidence — November 3, 2005 |
Brutal attack by soldiers left innocent Iraqi dead, court told
Seven paras accused of murder at court martial
Owen Bowcott Tuesday September 6, 2005 An army court martial yesterday heard the first graphic account of how seven British soldiers allegedly carried out a "brutal" and "unprovoked" attack on a group of Iraqi civilians that led to the death of an unarmed teenager from severe head injuries. The paratroopers, who appeared at the hearing in Colchester, Essex, and have been charged with murder, were alleged to have used rifle butts, helmets, fists and feet to batter the occupants of an intercepted Toyota pick-up truck. Two women who tried to intervene were "hit and hurt", the court martial was told. One of them was pregnant. A dog that barked at the patrol was shot dead. The hearing was told that witnesses had heard the soldiers laughing and clapping. On the opening day of the long-anticipated military case - which dates back to May 2003, three weeks after the formal end to hostilities - the chief prosecutor, Martin Heslop QC, gave a detailed narrative of the incident which allegedly led to the death of 18-year-old Nadhem Abdullah.
Corporal Scott Evans, 32, and Privates Billy Nerney, 24, Samuel May, 25, Morné Vosloo, 26, Daniel Harding, 25, Roberto Di-Gregorio, 24 and Scott Jackson, 26, all deny murder and violent disorder.
Before describing the event Mr Heslop asked each of them whether they pleaded guilty to murder and violent disorder.
Each of the men, who were all members of the 3rd Battalion the Parachute Regiment, in turn answered: "No, sir."
"The Crown case is that [these men] entered a small Iraqi village in two vehicles," Mr Heslop said. Once in the village they brutally assaulted a number of unarmed Iraqis, causing fatal injuries.
"In the course of the assault they used helmets, rifle butts, fists and feet. Two women who tried to intervene were hit and hurt. One was pregnant. A dog that was barking was shot dead.
"This is not a case of soldiers responding to an attack nor being required to defend themselves in an operational engagement. This was nothing more than gratuitous violence meted out to unarmed civilians."
The assaults, Mr Heslop added, were "unjustified and wholly unprovoked".
Evidence against the men, he said, came from a number of sources. Iraqi witnesses could not individually identify them, but they saw British soldiers and vehicles. No other units were in the area at the time, Mr Heslop explained.
Boot marks on the clothes of the injured Toyota driver, Athar Saddam, matched those worn by several patrol members, the court heard.
Blood recovered from the screw recess of Private May's rifle butt matched the DNA profile of Mr Abdullah's family. Private May was second-in-command of the patrol, which was led by Corporal Evans.
Radio messages sent from the patrol that day confirmed they had followed a car from a checkpoint, Mr Heslop said.
Later two of the accused - Privates Di-Gregorio and Vosloo - acknowledged there had been an incident that day.
Mr Heslop said the men were all charged with murder on the basis of "joint enterprise" in that they had either "inflicted blows" or had later protected those who carried out the assaults.
The patrol, the court heard, had been out that day to stop so-called "Ali Ba Bas" trying to smuggle money through Iran. The soldiers, it was suggested, may have mistaken the Toyota pick-up for a similar vehicle.
The patrol followed the truck into Al-Ferkah in southern Iraq where it was dropping off locals who had been to market. The two army vehicles boxed in the Toyota.
"The deceased [Mr Abdullah] and the driver were dragged out and made to lie down," Mr Heslop said. "The men were assaulted. During the assault the driver's sister, Dalal, tried to stop it. She was struck by one of the soldiers on the mouth.
"Nadhem Abdullah was struck about the head and body. He and the driver were rendered unconscious."
Leaving them behind, the soldiers went on to assault two brothers who had earlier left the vehicle, Kazem and Zugraher Al-Mohamadawi, Mr Heslop told the court.
"Witnesses described the soldiers laughing and clapping their hands."
After the patrol left, Mr Abdullah and Mr Saddam were taken to a hospital in nearby Amara. Mr Saddam was suffering internal bleeding to the back of his head, thought to have been caused by a rifle butt.
No neurosurgeon was on duty so he was driven to Basra but he died on the way. His body could not be exhumed for a postmortem examination.
"However, the Crown has no doubts that Mr Abdullah died as a result of the battering he received from the soldiers," Mr Heslop added.
The men's commanding officer, Captain Andrew Blackmore, the court heard, interviewed the soldiers on their return to base that night.
He reported finding them excited and hyped up but they denied that anything had happened.
The court martial is being held in a converted military warehouse in the flagstaff compound in Colchester. The building was previously used for testing uniforms and equipment.
A visit by lawyers to Al-Ferkah was yesterday postponed because of deteriorating security. A video of the scene will instead be shown to the court martial next week.
The proceedings of a general court martial are similar to a civilian crown court. The judge advocate, Judge Jeff Blackett, is a civilian.
Instead of a jury there is a seven-member panel which delivers the verdict.
It comprises six men and one woman of varying ranks between brigadier and warrant officer.
If any of the accused are found guilty the panel, working with the judge, will also decide upon the sentence.
The seven former and serving soldiers accused are represented by civilian barristers and solicitors. The judge ordered that their home addresses should not be revealed.
Three of the soldiers who have since left the army are deemed to have been re-enlisted for the duration of the trial. If convicted, they will serve their time in a military prison.
The hearing was adjourned until next Monday.
· The seven men are charged with two offences each, murder and violent disorder. The accused, who appeared in court, were Corporal Scott Evans, Private Billy Nerney, Private Samuel May and Private Morné Vosloo. All four are still serving members of the 3rd battalion, the Parachute regiment.
The other three accused - Private Scott Jackson, Private Daniel Harding and Private Roberto Di-Gregorio - are all former members of the 3rd battalion, the Parachute regiment.
All seven men deny the charges.
The other cases
· Ahmed Jabber Kareem, a 16-year-old, died after being arrested by three Irish Guards on May 8, 2003.
It is alleged he and three other Iraqis were marched at gunpoint to a dock near the Shatt al-Arab waterway in Basra and forced to jump in. The Army Prosecuting Authority (APA) is considering charges.
· Said Shabram was herding sheep with another man in the former marine base in Basra on May 24, 2003.
A British soldier is is said to have told them to follow him to the dockside and, after they did so, they were ordered to stand at the water's edge before being pushed in.
Said Shabram drowned despite a rescue attempt by another soldier.
The APA is deliberating whether to charge an officer and two soldiers from 32 Engineer regiment. They could face joint murder charges over his death.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 |
An army whistleblower describes the investigation as "appalling" The full 29 minute Panarama segment While Google video still has it |
Circus of Torture Blood, stomach pumping, penis cut - Rendition - CIA MI6 Guantanamo, blinded and forced into restraints |
Read more details of Court Martial and cover up Sergeant Thomas Symon has since been promoted Captain Dan Taylor has since been promoted |
Torture
The principal propagator of this narrative is Senator John McCain.
Writing recently in Newsweek on the need for a ban on torture, McCain says that when he was a prisoner of war in Hanoi, he held fast to the knowledge "that we were different from our enemies...that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or approving such mistreatment of them."
It is a stunning historical distortion.
By the time McCain was taken captive, the CIA had already launched the Phoenix program and, as McCoy writes, "its agents were operating forty interrogation centers in South Vietnam that killed more than twenty thousand suspects and tortured thousands more," a claim he backs up with pages of quotes from press reports as well as Congressional and Senate probes.
Our Amnesiac Torture Debate Naomi Klein The Nation December 9, 2005 |
The real Ronald Reagan US Terror State — Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, South Africa |
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ALLAN NAIRN: Well, Newsweek said that they described the Salvador option as the targeting of combatants and their sympathizers, and the key word is sympathizers.
In El Salvador and not just Salvador, but about three dozen other countries, the U.S. government, in an integrated effort involving the C.I.A., the Pentagon, and the State Department, backed the creation of military units that targeted civilian activists.
ALLAN NAIRN:
In Salvador, I interviewed many of the officers involved in running these squads.
For example, General “Chele” Medrano, who was on the C.I.A. payroll, described how they picked their targets.
He said, they targeted people who speak, and these are his words:
“…against yankee imperialism, against the oligarchy, against military men. These people are traitors to the country. What can the troops do, when they found them this he kill them.”
Actually, they didn't always kill them.
Torture
Often, they brought them to the headquarters of the treasury police, the national guard, the army and they tortured for them days.
One former member of the Salvadoran treasury police, Rene Hurtado, described a course that was given at army general staff headquarters where American officers gave instruction in techniques including electroshock torture.
Hurtado himself said he conducted such torture.
He said, these are his words:
“You put wires on the prisoner’s vital parts.
You place the wires between the prisoner’s teeth, on the penis, on the vagina.
The prisoners feel it more so the feet are in the water, and they are seated on iron so the blow is stronger…
When it's over, you just throw him in the alleys with a sign saying, Mano Blanco, ESA (Secret Anticommunist Army), or Maximiliano Hernandez Brigade.”
These are the names of the Salvadora death squads.
I was given a chance to see the archives of the Salvadoran National Police, the intelligence archives and you could see they have filed marked, union, student, religious.
They showed me a card file, which included surveillance reports on activists who had traveled to other countries.
These surveillance reports were given to them, according to the captain who was giving me this tour, by the C.I.A.
The whole filing system was set up for them by the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Silver medal
Medrano was at one point brought to the oval office in the White House, and presented a silver medal by president Lyndon Johnson for an — he showed me the medal, inscribed on the medal — for exceptionally meritorious service.
This program actually began not just under Reagan, but during the John F. Kennedy administration.
It encompassed all of Latin America or all of the dictatorships of Latin America that were being backed the by the U.S. in the Central American region, it included Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Honduras.
Special teletype system
A special teletype system, which at that time was the top technology, was set up for exchanging information among the intelligence services of the various participant countries, where information would be passed back and forth about, for example, labor leaders who would travel from one country to another for conferences, and then on their return, they would be picked up, tortured and assassinated.
Something on the order of 75,000 Salvadoran civilians were killed by the Salvadoran military, most of them during the 1970's.
And the majority of these were targeted by these death squad type forces.
So one point is, these were not combatants who were being killed.
These were not armed guerrillas.
They were sometimes engaged by the Salvadoran military in combat, but the death squad operations, which the Pentagon according to Newsweek is now talking about using for Iraq, these went after civilians.
AMY GOODMAN: You talk about General Medrano, who is known as the father of these death squads, trained by the United States in El Salvador.
Again, this 20 years ago.
And I'm looking at a full-page ad that The Progressive took out in the , “Behind the Death Squads,” an exclusive report on the U.S. role in Salvador's official terror.
Can you talk about the effect of this, and how this information was made known?
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ALLAN NAIRN: Well, based on some of those interviews that I just described and also U.S. internal documents I did that article for The Progressive.
They published, I think it was May of 1984 and it was almost completely ignored by the corporate press.
There was no notice whatsoever. So then The Progressive went out and raised money from various donors, and they were able to buy a full-page ad in the Washington Post where they reprinted about a third of the article.
This got some attention in Washington.
The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee then asked me to come in, and meet with them.
So I did in a closed session and was questioned by dozens of the Intelligence Committee staff for about three or four hours about what the U.S. had done to back and create the Salvadoran death squads.
Now this was a bit curious since they were the ones, who had security clearance, who had access to the C.I.A. and Pentagon files.
They were the ones who worked with them, indeed funded them, but they were asking me, I think in part maybe to try to find out how much I knew.
What I knew is what I printed in the magazine, but I was trying to spur them to investigate. And they did.
They then launched an investigation where they say they examined more than a million internal documents.
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They produced a 400 page report, which was heavily classified. They told me that only two copies of the report were produced, one was in a sealed room that only — kept on Capitol Hill, which only the Senators on the committee could read, and another at the C.I.A. headquarters.
A public report was released, which said nothing.
Some of the Senators told me that the classified — they told me a little bit about the classified report.
They said they had verified that in fact, yes, the U.S. had set up these death squads in Salvador and also that U.S. personnel had sometimes been on the premises during torture sessions and had supplied questions for the prisoners being tortured.
AMY GOODMAN:
So, this was back in 1984 and 1985 when this was coming back — coming out.
Did it surprise you that the Pentagon is actually calling this proposal, according to Newsweek, to train — it's not clear if it's C.I.A.-backed, Pentagon-backed assassination and kidnapping squads in El Salvador, that they're calling it the Salvador option.
Have they ever acknowledged it publicly?
ALLAN NAIRN:
Well, it sounds … No, they never acknowledged it publicly. That Senate report was classified. But now it sounds like in an offhand way, it's almost — it sounds as if they're almost talking about it even in a — almost a joking way, oh yeah, we'll do to them what they did to Salvador.
It's an astonishing admission, but I think now that this is on the record, immediately, the Senate Intelligence Committee should release their classified report of 1984, and there should be a demand that the Pentagon and the C.I.A. release all internal documents they have about the Salvador option, and similar activities in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Salvador, also — there are dozens of other countries in the world where this has happened.
Recently, we had the revelations about General Pinochet and his bank account, the Riggs Bank in Washington.
He was paid millions by the U.S. as a very similar intelligence exchange system and assassination system was being set up the southern cone countries.
This admission should be pursued, and the U.S. officials who participated in creating units that killed civilians should be prosecuted for murder. We have to enforce the murder laws.
AMY GOODMAN:
The nuns, the American nuns it is referred to in the Newsweek piece, that were killed in El Salvador, Allan. Can you give some background as we — as the Pentagon apparently weighs this option of the Salvador option in Iraq?
ALLAN NAIRN:
They were killed by the Salvadoran National Guard. They were pulled from their vehicle, raped, shot, dumped into a ditch, and this was a typical Salvadoran death squad operation.
This one got a lot of the attention in the press in the U.S., because victims were American.
Although at the time, U.S. officials actually tried to excuse it, Alexander Haig, I believe it was Alexander Haig spoke publicly about there being an exchange of gunfire, which implied these were pistol packing nuns who had to be brought down in combat by the Salvadoran forces.
Jean Kirkpatrick actually said, well, these were not real nuns, her suggestion being that they were activists and this somehow — she seemed to be suggesting this somehow legitimized their targeting.
That was in fact the principle behind these death squad operations.
AMY GOODMAN:
And then the Jesuits who were killed in El Salvador, not to mention the archbishop of El Salvador Oscar Romereo.
ALLAN NAIRN:
Archbishop Romero was killed as part of the — according to later investigations, he was killed by an offshoot of the operation of Roberto D’Aubuisson who ran the ARENA party, which was one of the death squad operations or one of the smaller one, actually.
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The larger came from the regular Salvadoran armed forces and police.
He also had U.S. backing.
In fact, D’Aubuisson launched his career as a major figure in Salvador by going on TV and making a speech.
He had a video role as he spoke with an illustrated death list of union people and religious figures and others who he said should be killed as traitors to the country.
And the data for the list were supplied to him by American intelligence, again according to the officers there I interviewed.
AMY GOODMAN:
Now, one link between Salvador 20 years ago and today in Iraq is the former U.S. ambassador to Honduras, John Negroponte, who is the current ambassador to Iraq.
And I also want to get to Aceh and talk about the latest that's happening there, but in just a minute, if you could sum up that link.
ALLAN NAIRN:
Well, Negroponte was one of the people who ran the Contra operation, the central — the invasion against Nicaragua, which the world court later ruled to be an act of aggression by the Contras, which were created and funded by the U.S. government.
He also oversaw the back — the military backing for Battalion 316, which was a Honduran military death squad that specialized in torture and assassination.
AMY GOODMAN:
And so, what it means that he is in charge of Iraq right now. Do you think he has a part of designing this “Salvador option?”
ALLAN NAIRN:
Maybe not. They probably have other people who are specialists in that.
He's probably handling the economic side of it, but if there are political apologies to be done, Negroponte may handle it.
The thing is that these programs, which backed the killing of foreign civilians, it's a regular part of U.S. policy.
It's ingrained in U.S. policy in dozens upon dozens of countries.
In Indonesia for example, which we are going to talk about in a minute, where the tsunami hit, the Kopassus, the Red Berets, which there specialize in torture and assassination, they have been trained by U.S. Green Berets in things like urban warfare.
This is a longstanding policy, and it's nothing new. |
He spoke at a police “protest” — in reality, a drunken brawl of white cops — held on the steps of City Hall against the establishment
JENNIFER ROESCH May 11, 2007 | Page 5
of a civilian complaint review board The truth about Giuliani
WITH THE Bush presidency in a free-fall and Republicans scrambling to find a candidate with as little connection as possible to the White House, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is back at center stage.
Despised in New York as a lame-duck mayor through much of his second term, Giuliani today is leading in opinion polls among contenders for the Republican presidential nomination.
Giuliani’s popularity is the result of the September 11 attacks in New York.
That year, Time magazine declared him its “Person of the Year,” and he became known as “America’s mayor.”
He projected an image of a tough but compassionate leader who would unite New Yorkers and “heal the wounds” of a traumatized city.
Another aspect of Giuliani’s appeal is his carefully nurtured image as a moderate on social issues — especially gay rights and a woman’s right to choose abortion — an aberration in a Republican Party where the Religious Right seems to call the shots.
This image has been aided by a compliant media that paints Giuliani as able to reach across partisan lines to provide leadership in times of crisis.
The reality could not be more different — and Giuliani’s reign as mayor of New York proves it.
Racist backlash against African American Mayor David Dinkins
In 1993, Giuliani rode to power on the wave of a racist backlash against African American Mayor David Dinkins.
Once in office, Giuliani was unapologetic in appealing to racist stereotypes to drive through his policies.
During his time as mayor, Giuliani led a racist war on working and poor New Yorkers that slashed social services, threw women and children off welfare, attacked union rights and spurred an epidemic of police brutality.
Giuliani has made it clear that he intends to carry this “tough on crime” agenda — now repackaged as “tough on terrorism” — into the presidential campaign.
In a recent New Hampshire appearance, he took a page out of Dick Cheney’s book, suggesting that the U.S. would be more vulnerable to a terrorist attack if the Democrats were elected.
“If one of them gets elected, it sounds to me like we’re going on the defense,” he said.
“We’ve got a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.
We’re going to wave the white flag there.
We’re going to try to cut back on the Patriot Act.
We’re going to cut back on electronic surveillance.
We’re going to cut back on interrogation.
We’re going to cut back, cut back, cut back, and we’ll be back in our pre-September 11 mentality of being on defense.”
Another carryover from the Giuliani years in New York City is his blatant appeal to racism.
While campaigning in the South, this “social moderate” defended flying the Confederate flag as an issue of “state’s rights” — the rallying cry of the Jim Crow South 40 years ago.
As for his supposedly liberal credentials on social issues, Giuliani has shown that he is willing to shift positions to appease a right-wing audience.
For example, while he has long been known as a supporter of abortion rights, Giuliani recently backed the Supreme Court decision upholding a federal ban on a late-term abortion procedure misnamed “partial birth abortion” by the right.
Giuliani says that if he were president, he would appoint “strict constructionist” judges — a phrase that many consider code for overturning the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.
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Cop killed squeegee man because he was a criminal
IF ANYONE wants to know what a Giuliani presidency would really look like, they should go back to his years as mayor of New York during the 1990s.
Giuliani is credited with an urban renewal in NYC that cut crime rates and revived the economy and tourism.
While he did create a Disneyland version of NYC, complete with a redeveloped Times Square and booming Wall Street, the reality of what happened to working-class and poor New Yorkers during his time in office is a much darker story.
Giuliani came to power in the context of a racially divided city.
During his election campaign, he spoke at a police “protest” — in reality, a drunken brawl of white cops — held on the steps of City Hall against the establishment of a civilian complaint review board.
Complete and unapologetic support for the NYPD became a hallmark of his tenure.
As soon as he took office, Giuliani announced a “quality of life” campaign, claiming that by going after small-time offenses, the city would be able to root out more violent crimes.
The symbol of this campaign was Giuliani’s plan to drive “squeegee men” — homeless people who wiped windshields at traffic stops for money—from NYC streets.
Giuliani’s cops went after them with a ruthlessness that foreshadowed much greater brutality to come.
As the campaign got underway, an off-duty cop shot and killed an unarmed “squeegee man” — and defended his actions on the basis that the man was a “criminal.”
Treating misdemeanors as equal to more serious crimes meant ratcheting up the level of violence and repression in poor, minority communities.
The underlying assumption of the new “stop and frisk” policy was that all Blacks and Latinos were potential criminals.
A report by then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer found that Latinos were stopped 39 percent more often than whites under the policy, and Blacks were stopped 23 percent more often.
The year before Giuliani took office, 720 people were arrested for misdemeanor marijuana-related offenses; by 2000, the number had jumped to 59,495—an increase of 4,549 percent.
During a 10-month period in 1996, 50,000 people detained on misdemeanors were strip-searched by the Department of Corrections.
These kinds of aggressive policies gave a green light to the NYPD to terrorize Black and Latino communities.
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Giuliani called officers congratulating them for killing
When unarmed cousins Anthony Rosario and Hilton Vega were shot in the back and killed while they lay face down on the floor in 1995, Giuliani called the officers [NYPD officers Patrick Brosnan and James Crowe, former bodyguards of mayor Rudolph Giuliani] and congratulated them on their performance.
When Anthony’s mother, Margarita Rosario, began organizing in protest, Giuliani told her that her son died because she was a bad mother.
This attitude was exemplified most starkly when cops tortured and sodomized Abner Louima in a Brooklyn police station in 1997.
Even after the killing of Amadou Diallo — shot 41 times in the hallway of his building in 1999 — Giuliani maintained his defense of the police and his opposition to any kind of reform of the NYPD.
Giuliani and his supporters defended these actions by claiming that “tough on crime” policies were crucial to a decline in crime statistics.
But a look at the statistics shows that the drop in crime began 36 months before Giuliani took office — while Dinkins was still mayor.
In fact, the 1990s saw a national reduction in crime, due largely to demographic and economic changes.
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But it happened to my brother Police fired 41 shots — Acquitted of all charges Police brutality continues |
The Dark Side Initiates — Click here Dark path initiates depend on the denial The five-percent manipulator class is composed of those on the dark path |
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Unspeakable grief and horror
...and the circus of deception killing continues... | |||
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