Of course the peace flotilla will not bring peace, and it won’t even manage to reach the Gaza shore. The action plan has included dragging the ships to Ashdod port, but it has again dragged us to the shores of stupidity and wrongdoing
By Gideon Levy
May 30, 2010
The Israeli propaganda machine has reached new highs its hopeless frenzy. It has distributed menus from Gaza restaurants, along with false information. It embarrassed itself by entering a futile public relations battle, which it might have been better off never starting. They want to maintain the ineffective, illegal and unethical siege on Gaza and not let the “peace flotilla” dock off the Gaza coast? There is nothing to explain, certainly not to a world that will never buy the web of explanations, lies and tactics.
Only in Israel do people still accept these tainted goods. Reminiscent of a pre-battle ritual from ancient times, the chorus cheered without asking questions. White uniformed soldiers got ready in our name. Spokesmen delivered their deceptive explanations in our name. The grotesque scene is at our expense. And virtually none of us have disturbed the performance.
The chorus has been singing songs of falsehood and lies. We are all in the chorus saying there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. We are all part of the chorus claiming the occupation of Gaza has ended, and that the flotilla is a violent attack on Israeli sovereignty – the cement is for building bunkers and the convoy is being funded by the Turkish Muslim Brotherhood. The Israeli siege of Gaza will topple Hamas and free Gilad Shalit. Foreign Ministry spokesman Yossi Levy, one of the most ridiculous of the propagandists, outdid himself when he unblinkingly proclaimed that the aid convoy headed toward Gaza was a violation of international law. Right. Exactly.
It’s not the siege that is illegal, but rather the flotilla. It wasn’t enough to distribute menus from Gaza restaurants through the Prime Minister’s Office, (including the highly recommended beef Stroganoff and cream of spinach soup ) and flaunt the quantities of fuel that the Israeli army spokesman says Israel is shipping in. The propaganda operation has tried to sell us and the world the idea that the occupation of Gaza is over, but in any case, Israel has legal authority to bar humanitarian aid. All one pack of lies.
Only one voice spoiled the illusory celebration a little: an Amnesty International report on the situation in Gaza. Four out of five Gaza residents need humanitarian assistance. Hundreds are waiting to the point of embarrassment to be allowed out for medical treatment, and 28 already have died. This is despite all the Israeli army spokesman’s briefings on the absence of a siege and the presence of assistance, but who cares?
And the preparations for the operation are also reminiscent of a particularly amusing farce: the feverish debate among the septet of ministers; the deployment of the Masada unit, the prison service’s commando unit that specializes in penetrating prison cells; naval commando fighters with backup from the special police anti-terror unit and the army’s Oketz canine unit; a special detention facility set up at the Ashdod port; and the electronic shield that was supposed to block broadcast of the ship’s capture and the detention of those on board.
And all of this in the face of what? A few hundred international activists, mostly people of conscience whose reputation Israeli propaganda has sought to besmirch. They are really mostly people who care, which is their right and obligation, even if the siege doesn’t concern us at all. Yes, this flotilla is indeed a political provocation, and what is protest action if not political provocation?
And facing them on the seas has been the Israeli ship of fools, floating but not knowing where or why. Why detain people? That’s how it is. Why a siege? That’s how it is. It’s like the Noam Chomsky affair all over again, but big time this time. Of course the peace flotilla will not bring peace, and it won’t even manage to reach the Gaza shore. The action plan has included dragging the ships to Ashdod port, but it has again dragged us to the shores of stupidity and wrongdoing. Again we will be portrayed not only as the ones that have blocked assistance, but also as fools who do everything to even further undermine our own standing. If that was one of the goals of the peace flotilla’s organizers, they won big yesterday.
Five years ago, the noted Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who is a Jerusalem Prize laureate, after concluding his visit to Israel, said the Israeli occupation was approaching its grotesque phase. Over the weekend Vargas Llosa, who considers himself a friend of Israel, was present to see that that phase has since reached new heights of absurdity.
Most Jerusalem Palestinians Live in Poverty: Israeli Study
May 10 2010
Jerusalem.
Most Palestinians in east Jerusalem, including three out of four children, live below the poverty line, an Israeli rights group said on Monday, accusing Israel of neglect and discrimination.
“A unified Jerusalem does not exist,” the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) said in a report released as the Jewish state begins celebrations to mark the 43rd anniversary of its 1967 capture of Arab east Jerusalem.
“The truth is, two cities exist side by side,” the report said, challenging Israel’s claim that it unified the Holy City after annexing the Arab sector in a move not recognized by the international community.
Seventy-five percent of Palestinian children in east Jerusalem live in poverty compared with 45 percent of the city’s Jewish children, the report said.
“Over 95,000 children in east Jerusalem live in a perpetual state of poverty,” ACRI said.
Despite the rampant poverty, only 10 percent of east Jerusalem’s 300,000 Palestinians have access to social services, it added.
The neglect extends to just about every sector of life in the Arab sector, and ACRI blamed this on the authorities.
“Israel’s policy for the past four decades has taken concrete form as discrimination in planning and construction, expropriation of land, and minimal investment in physical infrastructure and government and municipal services,” the report said.
The office of Nir Barkat, the Israeli mayor of Jerusalem, told AFP it had no immediate comment on the report.
Israel has expropriated more than one-third of east Jerusalem land which was privately owned by Palestinians, on which it has built more than 50,000 homes for the Jewish population.
Virtually no permits for Palestinian housing construction have been issued for decades, there is a shortage of about 1,000 classrooms and rubbish collection is sporadic at best, as are postal services, the report said.
The annual budget allocation per elementary school child in east Jerusalem was 577 shekels (152 dollars) compared with 2,372 shekels (627 dollars) in west Jerusalem.
About 160,000 Palestinian residents have no suitable and legal connection to the water network and 50 kilometres (30 miles) of main sewage lines are lacking, the report said.
At the end of 2009 approximately 303,429 Palestinians lived in east Jerusalem, which equals around 36 percent of the city’s total population of some 835,450.
Israel claims the whole of Jerusalem as its “eternal” capital, while Palestinians see east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
The status of the Holy City, as well as that of Jewish settlements built on occupied Palestinian land, have long been among the thorniest issues in Palestinian-Israeli efforts to reach a peace deal. Source
Israel building 14 units in al-Quds
May 10 2010
Settler groups have started building 14 new units in the Palestinian neighborhood near an old police station in Ras al-Amoud, in al-Quds (East Jerusalem).
The Israeli far-left Peace Now organization revealed on Sunday that 1,900 settlers already live in 119 units in that area and own them.
It added that since elected as the mayor of East al-Quds in 2008, Nir Barkat has remained “faithful” to the settlers in al-Quds. It warned that the increasing number of settlers in occupied al-Quds would lead to a future of no political deal with the Palestinians.
It is not known if the settlers have obtained permits for the new construction. As per reports, the settlers have received 1,213 permits, while only 136 permits have been issued to the Palestinians in the same neighborhoods.
An expert on the settlement and maps, Khalil al-Tufkaji, said: “The construction in Ras al-Amoud settlement is one of the most dangerous plans in al-Quds, especially when the Israeli occupation seeks to establish a large settlement there.”
The Israelis have plans to build more units in the area and to integrate the settlements of Ma’aleh Oztenem consisting of 200 units, and the settlement of Givat David with 104 units, al-Tufkaji pointed out.
This plan obstructs any possibility of a Palestinian capital in the holy city, he added.
As the proximity talks began on Sunday, this is a clear message to the Palestinians that al-Quds is outside the framework of any negotiations, and construction in the city is “just like the construction in Tel Aviv,” as Israel’s hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said. Source
Settlers can get permits but Palestinians cannot. Bigotry/Discrimination at it’s finest.
The whole idea is to make the lives of Palestinians as horrid as possible. Israel wants all their land. Seems they don’t care who or how many live in poverty or are removed from their land and homes.
In its response to a freedom-of-information suit last week, the state admitted that there is specific list of goods permissible for import to Strip.
By Amira Hass
May 7 2010
The Defense Ministry is refusing – on security grounds, it says – to reveal why Israel prohibits the import into the Gaza Strip of items such as cilantro, sage, jam, chocolate, french fries, dried fruit, fabrics, notebooks empty flowerpots and toys, while allowing cinnamon, plastic buckets and combs.
But in its response to a freedom-of-information suit last week, the state did admit, for the first time, that there is specific list of permissible goods.
The suit, filed in the Tel Aviv administrative court by Gisha: Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, sought to clarify the criteria and procedures the authorities use to determine what goods to allow into Gaza. It was filed after Gazans began claiming that commercial interests inside Israel, and their lobbying power, were determining the permitted items.
In its response, the state “apologized to the court and the plaintiff for inaccuracies presented during oral arguments [in January], due to certain misunderstandings.” The inaccuracy in question was its denial of the existence of written directives.
The response included two documents that the state termed drafts that are already being used in practice – one titled “Procedure for Permitting the Entry of Goods into Gaza” and one titled “Procedure for Tracking and Estimating Inventories in Gaza.” The latter is supposed to warn of existing or likely shortages.
The state also submitted a third document, a “List of Critical Humanitarian Goods for the Population,” whose existence it had previously denied. This list is periodically updated, it said.
A fourth document, called “Foodstuffs Consumption in Gaza – Red Lines,” is a draft for internal use only, the state said, “and has never served as a basis for decision-making.” Haaretz reporters Uri Blau and Yotam Feldman revealed the existence of this document in a June 2009 investigative report. It apparently determines the minimum nutritional needs of Gaza’s population, according to caloric intake and grams of food, parsed by age and gender.
The state seeks to deny Gisha’s suit on the grounds that revealing the first three documents would “harm national security and possibly even diplomatic relations.” And since the fourth is not a basis for policy, there is no need to reveal it, the state argued.
Gisha filed its response with the court yesterday, in which it reiterated its demand for any documents that determine the goods transfer policy. “It is difficult to imagine how publishing a list of products, such as medications, foodstuffs and hygiene products, or revealing the procedures that determine this list, could harm state security,” wrote attorney Tamar Feldman. Source
I was surprised on my recent trip to Afghanistan that I learned so much…about the United States. I was in Afghanistan for two weeks in March of this year, meeting with a large number of Afghans working in humanitarian endeavors – the principal of a girls’ school, the director of a school for street children, the Afghan Human Rights Commission, a group working on environmental issues. The one thing that all of these groups that we met with had in common was, they were penniless. They all survived on rather tenuous donations made by philanthropic foundations in Europe.
I had read that the United States had spent $300 billion dollars in Afghanistan since the invasion and occupation of that country ten years ago, so I naturally became curious where this tremendous quantity of money and resources had gone. Many Americans had said to me that we were in Afghanistan “to help Afghan women,” and yet we were told by the director of the Afghan Human Rights Commission, and we read in the recent UN report titled “Silence is Violence,” that the situation for women there was growing more violent and oppressive each year. So I decide to do some research.
95% of the $300 billion that the U.S. has spent on its Afghanistan operation since we invaded the country in 2001 has gone to our military operations there. Several reports indicate that it costs one million dollars to keep one American soldier in that country for one year. We will soon have 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, which will cost a neat $100 billion a year.
US soldiers in Afghanistan spend almost all of their time on one of our 300 bases in that country, so there is nothing they can do to help the Afghan people, whose physical infrastructure has been destroyed by the “30-year war” there, and who are themselves mostly jobless in a society in which there is almost no economy and no work.
Some effort is made to see that the remaining 5% of the $300 billion spent to date in Afghanistan does help Afghan society, but there is so much corruption and general lawlessness that the endeavor is largely futile. We were told by a female member of the Afghan parliament of one symbolic incident in which a container of medical equipment that was purchased in the US with US government funds for a clinic in Ghawr province, west of Kabul. It was shipped from the US, but by the time it arrived in Ghawr it was just an empty shell; all the equipment had been pilfered along the way.
Violence against women is increasing in Afghanistan at the present time, not decreasing. The Director of the Afghan Human Rights Commission told us of a recent case in which a ten-year-old girl was picked up by an Afghan Army commander in his military vehicle, taken to the nearby base and raped. He brought her back to her home semiconscious and bleeding, after conveying to her that if she told what had happened he would kill her entire family. The human rights commissioner ended the tale by saying to us the he could tell us “a thousand stories like this.” There has been a rapid rise in the number of self-immolations – women burning themselves to death – in Afghanistan in the past three years, to escape the violence that pervades many women’s lives – under the nine-year US occupation.
Armed conflict and insecurity, along with criminality and lawlessness, are on the rise in Afghanistan. In this respect, the country mirrors experience elsewhere which indicates a near universal co-relation between heightened conflict, insecurity, and violence against women.
Once one understands that the US military presence in Afghanistan is not actually helping the Afghan people, the question of the effectiveness or goodwill of other major US military interventions in recent history arises. In Vietnam, for example, the country had been a colony of France for the 80 years prior to WW II, at which point the Japanese invaded and took over. When the Japanese surrendered, the Vietnamese declared their independence, on September 2, 1945. In their preamble they directly quoted the US Declaration of Independence (“All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness….”).
The United States responded first by supporting the French in their efforts to recapture their lost colony, and when that failed, the US dropped 10 million tons of bombs on Vietnam – more than were dropped in all of World War II – sprayed 29 million gallons of the carcinogenic defoliant Agent Orange on the country, and dropped 400,000 tons of napalm, killing a total 3.4 million people. This is an appreciable level of savagery, and it would be reasonable to ask why the United States responded in this way to the Vietnamese simply declaring their inalienable rights.
There was a sideshow to the Vietnam war, and that is that the United States conducted massive bombing campaigns against Vietnam’s two western neighbors, Laos and Cambodia. From 1964 to 1973, the US dropped more than two million tons of ordnance over Laos in a operation consisting of 580,000 bombing missions – equal to a planeload of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years. This unprecedented, secret bombing campaign was conducted without authorization from the US Congress and without the knowledge of the American people.
The ten-year bombing exercise killed an estimated 1 million Laotians. Despite questions surrounding the legality of the bombings and the large toll of innocent lives that were taken, the US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs at the time, Alexis Johnson, stated, “The Laos operation is something of which we can be proud as Americans. It has involved virtually no American casualties. What we are getting for our money there . . . is, I think, to use the old phrase, very cost effective.”
One Laotian female refugee recalled the years of bombing in this way: “Our lives became like those of animals desperately trying to escape their hunters . . . Human beings, whose parents brought them into the world and carefully raised them with overflowing love despite so many difficulties, these human beings would die from a single blast as explosions burst, lying still without moving again at all. And who then thinks of the blood, flesh, sweat and strength of their parents, and who will have charity and pity for them? In reality, whatever happens, it is only the innocent who suffer.”
In Cambodia, the United States was concerned that the North Vietnamese might have established a military base in the country. In response, The US dropped three million tons of ordnance in 230,000 sorties on 113,000 sites between 1964 and 1975. 10% of this bombing was indiscriminate, with 3,580 of the sites listed as having “unknown” targets and another 8000 sites having no target listed at all. About a million Cambodians were killed (there was no one counting), and the destruction to society wrought by the indiscriminate, long-term destruction is widely thought to have given rise to the Khmer Rouge, who proceeded, in their hatred for all things Western, to kill another 2 million people.
Four days after Vietnam declared its independence on September 2, 1945, “Southern Korea” also declared independence (on September 6), with a primary goal of reuniting the country – which had been split into north and south by the United States only seven months before. Two days later, on September 8, 1945, the US military arrived with the first of 72,000 troops, dissolved the newly formed South Korean government, and flew in their own chosen leader, Syngman Rhee, who had spent the previous 40 years in Washington D.C. There was considerable opposition to the US control of the country, so much that 250,000 and 500,000 people were killed between 1945 and 1950 resisting the American occupation, before the actual Korean War even started.
The Korean War, like Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, was an asymmetrical war, in which the highly industrialized and mechanized US pulverized the comparatively primitive North Korean nation. One third of the population of North Korea was killed in the war, a total of three million people (along with one million Chinese and 58,000 Americans). Every city, every sizable town, every factory, every bridge, every road in North Korea was destroyed. General Curtis LeMay remarked at one point that the US had “turned every city into rubble,” and now was returning to “turn the rubble into dust.” A British reporter described one of the thousands of obliterated villages as “a low, wide mound of violet ashes.” General William Dean, who was captured after the battle of Taejon in July 1950 and taken to the North, later said that most of the towns and villages he saw were just “rubble or snowy open spaces.”
More napalm was dropped on Korea than on Vietnam, 600,000 tons compared to 400,000 tons in Vietnam. One report notes that, “By late August, 1950, B-29 formations were dropping 800 tons a day on the North. Much of it was pure napalm. Vietnam veteran Brian Wilson asks in this regard, “What it is like to pulverize ancient cultures into small pebbles, and not feel anything?”
In Iraq, Saddam Hussein came to power through a U.S.-CIA engineered coup in 1966 that overthrew the socialist government and installed Saddam’s Baath Party. Later conflict with Saddam let to the first and second Gulf Wars, and to thirteen years of severe U.S.-imposed economic sanctions on Iraq between the two wars, which taken together completely obliterated the Iraqi economy. An estimated one million people were killed in the two Gulf wars, and the United Nations estimates that the economic sanctions, in combination with the destruction of the social and economic infrastructure in the First Gulf War, killed another million Iraqis. Today both the economy and the political structure of Iraq are in ruins.
This trail of blood, tears and death smeared across the pages of recent history is the reason that Martin Luther King said in his famous Vietnam Speech that the United States is “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Vietnam veteran Mike Hastie expanded the observation when he said in April of this year (2010) that, “The United States Government is a nonstop killing machine. The worst experience I had in Vietnam was experiencing the absolute truth of Martin Luther King’s statement. America is in absolute psychiatric denial of its genocidal maniacal nature.”
A further issue is that “war destroys the earth.” Not only does, as President Dwight D. Eisenhower said in 1960, “Every rocket fired signify a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed,” but every rocket that is fired reduces the life-sustaining capacity of the biosphere. In an ultimate sense it could be argued that those who wage war and those who pay for and support war, in reality bear some hidden hatred for life and some hidden desire to put and end to it.
What are our options? The short answer is, grow up. Grow up into the inherent depth of your own existence. After all, you are a “child of the universe, no less than the trees and stars, you have a right be here.” There is no viable, universally inscribed law that compels you to do as you are told to do by the multitude of dysfunctional and destructive authority figures that would demand your compliance, if you acquiesce.
“If we led our lives according to the ways intended by nature,” wrote French author La Boétie in his book The Politics of Obedience,” we should be intuitively obedient to our parents; later we should adopt reason as our guide and become slaves to nobody.” La Boétie wrote this in the year 1552, but people today remain slaves to external authority. “Our problem,” said historian Howard Zinn, “is not civil disobedience; our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty.”
Do you want to spend your life paying for the death of people (executed by the US military) that you would probably have loved if you have met them? Do you want to spend your life paying for the arsenal of hydrogen bombs that could very well destroy most of the life on the planet? If not, if you want another kind of life, then as author James Howard Kunstler often suggests, ‘You will have to make other arrangements.” You will have to arrange to live according to your own deepest ethical standards, rather than living in fear of the nefarious authority figures that currently demand your obedience and threaten to punish you if you do not obey their demands on your one precious chance at life.
“We must know how the first ruler came by his authority.” ~ John Locke
“How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
Dana Visalli [dana@methownet.com] is an ecologist, botanist and organic farmer living in Twisp, Washington.Source
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is losing hearts and minds in Afghanistan, according to a report by the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) that gives a clear signal of the dangers of the military operation against Kandahar planned for this summer.
Contrary to its stated objectives of protecting the population from insurgents, NATO is actually raising the likelihood that poor Afghans will join the Taliban - not a great report card for General Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, whose strategies seem to be backfiring.
The report, entitled Operation Moshtarak: Lessons Learned [1], is based on interviews conducted last month with over 400 Afghan men from Marjah, Lashkar Gah and Kandahar to investigate their views on the military operation to drive out the Taliban, launched in February in Helmand province, and its aftermath.
It corroborates previous assessments, such as one from the Pentagon released last week which concluded that popular support for the insurgency in the Pashtun south had increased over the past few months. Not one of the 92 districts that are deemed key to NATO operations supported the government, whereas the number of those sympathetic to or supporting the insurgency increased to 48 in March, from 33 in December 2009. [2]
There is no doubt Operation Moshtarak has upset Afghans: 61% of those interviewed said they now feel more negative about NATO forces than before the offensive. This plays into the insurgents hands, as 95% of respondents said they believed more young Afghans are now joining the Taliban. In addition, 67% said they do not support a strong NATO-ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) presence in their province and 71% said they just wanted foreign troops to leave Afghanistan entirely. Locals don’t have much confidence in NATO “clearing and holding” the area, as 59% thought the Taliban would return to Marjah once the dust settled, and in any case, 67% didn’t believe NATO and the Afghan security forces could defeat the Taliban.
The anger is easy enough to understand. Whereas aid agencies and human rights groups have estimated the number of civilian killed during Operation Moshtarak at fewer than 50, the great majority of respondents believe the toll to be about 200, or roughly a third of the number of insurgents killed; a “collateral damage” clearly too high to “win hearts and minds” – if such damage can ever be justified at all. Moreover, the operation against Marjah displaced about 30,000 people, many forced into refugee camps nearby with inadequate food, medical services or shelter. Such camps are good recruitment sites for the Taliban.
Locals say the main reason why their young men join the Taliban is for the job or money it provides, even if they don’t necessarily share the leaders’ ideological convictions. Indeed, the majority of those who join the ranks of the insurgency are often unemployed and disenfranchised. One solution could therefore be to spend more funds on reconstruction and development to generate employment. But this has never been a NATO priority: the US alone has spent US$227 billion on military operations in Afghanistan since 2001, while international donors together have spent less than 10% of that amount on development aid.
To make things worse, NATO seeks to eliminate the drugs industry, which makes up about 30% of the country’s total economy, often the best source of income for poor farmers. According to the ICOS report, eradication was opposed by 66% of those interviewed, not a surprising finding given that Helmand province cultivates over half the country’s poppies and produces about 60% of its opium, with Marjah dubbed by many to be Helmand’s “opium capital”. Even NATO’s new policy of paying farmers as an incentive for them to eliminate their own crops undermines the economy because sustainable alternative livelihoods are not offered.
The survey also points to a paradoxical finding: notwithstanding their negative perceptions about NATO, two-thirds of interviewees said foreign troops should clear the Taliban from the road linking Lashkar Gah to Kandahar and Kabul and start an operation against insurgents in Kandahar.
This apparent contradiction can be explained in immediate terms by the fact that locals wish to travel and conduct business more easily. From a broader perspective, it suggests that locals simply dislike both the Taliban and foreign troops. As summarized concisely by a major tribal leader from Kandahar, “Ten percent of the people are with the Taliban, 10% are with the government and 80% of the people are angry at the Taliban, the government and the foreigners.”
The roots of the dire situation of insecurity faced by many Afghans were explained by the mayor of Kandahar, Ghulam Haider Hamidi, who stated. “It was the international community that went to the warlords after the Taliban and brought them back,” with appalling consequences up to this day. [3]
Those views reflect those of democratic-minded Afghans such as member of parliament Malalai Joya and the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), who have been campaigning for years against both the Taliban and the warlords and their NATO backers. Yet, their views have been completely ignored by coalition governments.
Rather, NATO and US forces have specialized in (botched) night raids that kill civilians, including pregnant women as happened in February in Paktia province. McChrystal has increased those Special Operations Forces raids since he became the top commander in Afghanistan, skills he had previously honed as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) from 2003 to 2008. Even though civilian deaths from air strikes have declined, those caused by night raids have increased, so much that the UN now estimates they account for half the civilians killed by foreign troops. This has contributed to the 33% increase in civilian deaths last month compared to the same period last year, adding to Afghans’ anger. [4]
Finally, 74% of those interviewed by ICOS support negotiations and dialogue with the Taliban, a clear sign that Afghans are tired of war. Bringing Taliban leaders in a political process already dominated by actors whose human rights record is atrocious might not be the ideal solution, but since in practice it is unlikely that NATO will push to have the warlords it allied itself with taken to court, it might be the best political alternative in the short term.
Notes
1. The International Council on Security and Development, formerly known as The Senlis Council, is an international think-tank known for its work in Afghanistan and other conflict zones such as Iraq and Somalia. It is a project of the Network of European Foundations’ Mercator Fund. ICOS currently runs three programs: Global Security, Public Security and Public Health and Drug Control.
2. Alissa J Rubin, US report on Afghan war finds few gains in six months. New York Times, April 29, 2010; Gareth Porter, Pentagon map shows wide Taliban zone in the South. Inter Press Service, May 1. 2010.
3. Kathy Gannon, Afghans blame both US, Taliban for insecurity. Associated Press, April 16, 2010.
4. Gareth Porter, Pentagon map belies Taliban’s sphere. Asia Times Online, May 4, 2010. Source
Dubai names five new suspects in Hamas murder
May 7 2010
Total number of suspected Mossad agents involved in Dubai assassination reaches 32.
DUBAI – Dubai police have named five new suspects in the assassination of a senior Hamas official at a hotel in the Gulf emirate, bringing the total number to 32, Al-Arabiya news channel reported on Friday.
The murder is widely believed to be carried out by the Mossad, Israel’s notorious secret service.
Police said two of the new suspects in Mahmud al-Mabhuh’s assassination in January held French passports, another two travelled on British passports, and the other, a woman, had an Australian passport, the Dubai-based channel said.
It gave the names in Arabic, while Dubai police were not reachable for comment.
International police agency Interpol has already issued arrest notices for 27 suspects wanted by Dubai in connection with the murder of Mabhuh, who was found dead in his Dubai hotel room on January 20.
The assassination has caused diplomatic tension over the alleged falsification of Western passports by Israel’s Mossad spy agency.
London in March kicked out an Israeli diplomat citing “compelling reasons” to believe that Israel was responsible for the misuse of British passports.
The Dubai police had said 12 people linked to the murder used cloned British passports, four had French travel documents, six carried Irish passports and one used a German identity.
Four Australian passports were also used in the operation.
Meanwhile, two Palestinians were arrested in Jordan and extradited to Dubai over connections to the killing, according to police.
Australia said on Friday that it was investigating reports that a fifth Australian passport had been linked to the assassination.
Dubai police chief General Dahi Khalfan has said Mabhuh was drugged and then suffocated in his hotel room.
The emirate’s security service showed surveillance video footage from Mabhuh’s hotel detailing the movements of the alleged assassination squad. Source
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba — To get teen terror suspect Omar Khadr to cooperate, a former U.S. Army interrogator testified Thursday, he told the wounded Canadian a “fictitious” tale of an Afghan youth who was gang-raped in an American prison and died.
“We’d tell him about this Afghan gets sent to an American prison and there’s a bunch of big black guys and big Nazis,” said the former interrogator who was since convicted of detainee abuse and was identified in court only as Interrogator No. 1.
Under Pentagon ground rules, reporters covering the hearing are not allowed to include the interrogator’s real name in their dispatches from Guantanamo. Canadian newspapers have published the name, however, and his testimony in other cases is available at the McClatchyDC.com website and elsewhere.
Interrogator No. 1 also gave an on-the-record interview with The Toronto Star in 2008 and his name was widely published in accounts of his court martial in September 2005.
The interrogators told Khadr that the Afghan – “a poor little kid … away from home, kind of isolated” – had been sent to the U.S. prison away because the interrogators were disappointed with his truthfulness, Interrogator No. 1 said. When patriotic American prisoners discovered the Afghan was a Muslim, praying five times a day, they raped him in their rage over the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Interrogator No. 1 said Khadr, who was 15 and badly wounded at the time, was told.
Khadr’s attorneys called Interrogator No. 1 to bolster Khadr’s claim that he was abused while in U.S. custody and their motion before a military judge that any confessions he made during his captivity should be considered coerced and not admissible.
Khadr, now 23, had specifically claimed in an affidavit outlining abuse that he was threatened with rape. On Tuesday, a medic identified as Mr. M testified that he once found Khadr chained by his arms to the door of his cage-like cell, hooded and in tears. That too tracked allegations included in Khadr’s affadavit.
According to court testimony, Interrogator No. 1 was attached to the 519 MP Battalion, which guarded prisoners at Bagram air base in Afghanistan in 2002. Three years later, Interrogator No. 1 pleaded guilty to three acts of detainee abuse on another captive at Bagram in December 2002.
Interrogator No. 1 said he questioned Khadr as many as 25 times over 100 hours before the teen was sent to Guantanamo for more interrogations.
According to earlier testimony, Interrogator 1 questioned Khadr the first time on a stretcher while he was still under sedation on July 29, 2002, hours after the 15-year-old was released from an U.S. Army combat hospital and life-saving surgery. He denied under questioning from defense counsel Barry Coburn that he ever threatened Khadr directly with rape.
Instead, he said, a group of U.S. interrogators dreamed up the “fictitious” Afghan rape story to utilize authorized “Love of Freedom” and “Fear Up” techniques designed to break particularly uncooperative prisoners. “It’s never about the detainee,” Interrogator No. 1 said, explaining how he used it. “It’s to make the individual … afraid of American prisons.”
U.S. troops captured Khadr two weeks before his first formal interrogation, near dead and shot twice through the back during a Special Forces raid on a suspected al Qaida stronghold near Khost, Afghanistan.
Another former interrogator, who was acquitted by a court martial of detainee abuse charges, testified Wednesday that Khadr was first questioned just two days after he was wounded at the field hospital at Bagram. That interrogator, Damien Corsetti, said Khadr was tethered to a heart monitor. Soldiers held a tin of chewing tobacco to his gaping chest wound and saw that it could fit inside.
Defense attorneys argue that the military mistreated Khadr and created a coercive environment that should disqualify the truthfulness and reliability of his later confessions that he threw a hand grenade that killed U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, 28.
Prosecutors defend the youth’s treatment and say he subsequently boasted voluntarily, and truthfully, to FBI agents conducting a criminal terror trial investigation that he threw the grenade and also planted land mines in Afghanistan meant to kill American soldiers and earn him $1,500 a head.
Veteran prosecutor Jeff Groharing, now a Justice Department attorney who got the case as a Marine major, sought on follow-up questioning to make clear that Interrogator No 1 was gleaning information from the Canadian for “actionable intelligence” in the Afghanistan combat zone – not for a future criminal prosecution.
Interrogator No. 1 said he wanted to know about the location of weapons and mines to assist the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. His intelligence reports at the time noted that Khadr had thrown a grenade that killed a fellow U.S. soldier but Interrogator 1 said he wasn’t seeking a confession.
He also said that he didn’t think the rape tale made Khadr any more cooperative or truthful and that he only started spilling al-Qaida secrets after U.S. troops went back to the scene of his capture in Khost, Afghanistan, and recovered a video of showing a young Khadr being taught how to assemble Soviet anti-tank mines.
Khadr, wearing the white uniform of a cooperative captive, watched the proceedings intently. Interrogator No. 1, in blue jeans and sporting a pony tail, testified by video hookup from Arizona. on a video monitor. Source
— Three Canadian journalists are being barred from Guantanamo Bay, where they have been covering pre-trial war-crimes hearings for Omar Khadr, the Pentagon said Thursday.
The reporters for the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, and Canwest News Service breached a ban on identifying a witness, according to the Pentagon.
“Your reporters published the name of a witness whose identity was protected in court,” a letter handed to the journalists stated.
“As a result of these violations, these individual reporters are barred from returning to cover future military commissions proceedings.”
For the past eight days, Khadr’s defence lawyers have been trying to establish the Canadian was tortured into making incriminating statements.
Among the witnesses was a former interrogator at Bagram prison in Afghanistan, where Khadr was taken after his capture in July, 2002.
The man testified Thursday to scaring Khadr by telling the badly wounded 15-year-old a “fictitious” story of an Afghan boy in U.S. custody who was gang-raped and died.
The Pentagon wanted him identified only as Interrogator No. 1 and forbade reporting his name, which has been widely available through his previous prosecution and conviction for detainee abuse.
He has also previously given an interview to the Star.
Toronto Star reporter Michelle Shephard, who has written a book on Khadr and his family, called the decision “ridiculous.”
The paper’s editor, Michael Cooke, denounced the ban.
“This is grossly unfair,” Cooke said. “The Star will object to this decision.”
Also barred were the Globe and Mail’s Washington correspondent, Paul Koring, and Canwest’s Steven Edwards.
Canwest vice-president Scott Anderson said from Ottawa he had not yet had a chance to talk about the issue with Edwards.
“It’s critical that we find out what happened here,” Anderson said.
“Obviously there was some misunderstanding on one side or another.”
Globe foreign editor, Stephen Northfield, said the paper “would appeal this decision.”
The New York-based American Civil Liberties Union condemned the Pentagon’s ruling as “absurd” and “nonsensical,” saying it would discourage reporting on the internationally condemned military commissions.
“No legitimate government interest is served by suppressing information that is already well known,” said Jameel Jaffer, the union’s deputy legal director.
“We strongly urge the Defence Department to reconsider its rash, draconian and unconstitutional decision to bar these four reporters from future tribunals.”
Carol Rosenberg, a reporter from the American newspaper, the Miami Herald, who has extensive experience covering the commissions, was also told she may not return.
Rosenberg declined to discuss the situation, referring calls to the Herald’s managing editor, who did not immediately return a call for comment.
The ban does not extend to the media outlets, only to the reporters involved.
However, media organizations themselves could be barred should there be “future violations,” the letter warns.
The letter also states the reporters can appeal the decision to the deputy assistant secretary of defence for media operations.
The hearings have wrapped up — it was not immediately clear when they will resume — and the media on the U.S. naval base were all expected to leave Friday.
Khadr’s trial — he is accused of throwing a grenade that killed an American soldier and blinded another — had been due to start in July.
UN official calls for release of former child combatant from Guantanamo
5 May 2010 – A United Nations envoy today reiterated her call for the immediate release of the last child soldier still being held in Guantanamo Bay, voicing concern that his case has been brought to trial under a United States military commission and that he has been charged with war crimes.
Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen, was arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 when he was 15 years old. He has been in US custody for the last seven years, having spent much of his time in solitary confinement.
Radhika Coomaraswamy, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, called on the Governments of Canada and the US to respect the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and release Mr. Khadr into Canadian custody.
The Optional Protocol aims to increase the protection of children during armed conflicts. It requires that all States parties “take all feasible measures” to ensure that members of their armed forces under the age of 18 do not take a direct part in hostilities, and reminds nations that children under 18 are entitled to special protection and so any voluntary recruitment under the age of 18 must include sufficient safeguards.
Ms. Coomaraswamy today urged Canada and the US to treat Mr. Khadr as a child soldier and undertake efforts to rehabilitate him.
“Like other children abused by armed groups around the world who are repatriated to their home communities and undergo re-education for their reintegration, Omar should be given the same protections afforded these children,” she emphasized.
“Trying young people for war crimes with regard to acts committed when they are minors could create a dangerous international precedent,” the official warned. Source
WASHINGTON — A federal judge has dismissed more than 100 habeas corpus lawsuits filed by former Guantanamo captives, ruling that because the Bush and Obama administrations had transferred them elsewhere, the courts need not decide whether the Pentagon imprisoned them illegally.
The ruling dismayed attorneys for some of the detainees who’d hoped any favorable U.S. court findings would help clear their clients of the stigma, travel restrictions and, in some instances, perhaps more jail time that resulted from their stay at Guantanamo.
U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan wrote that he was “not unsympathetic” to the former detainees’ plight. “Detention for any length of time can be injurious. And certainly associations with Guantanamo tend to be negative,” he wrote.
But the detainees’ transfer from Guantanamo made their cases moot. “The court finds that petitioners no longer present a live case or controversy since a federal court cannot remedy the alleged collateral consequences of their prior detention at Guantanamo,” he wrote.
Hogan’s ruling, issued last Thursday, but not widely publicized, closed the files on 105 habeas corpus petitions, many of which had been pending for years as the Bush administration resisted the right of civilian judges to intervene in military detentions. The U.S. Supreme Court resolved that issue in 2008, ruling in Boumediene v. Bush that the detainees could challenge their captivity in civilian court. Since then, judges have ordered the release of 34 detainees while upholding the detention of 12.
Attorneys for the ex-detainees were deciding Monday whether to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, said Shayana Kadidal, an attorney at New York’s Center for Constitutional Rights, which has taken the lead in championing Guantanamo habeas petitions.
The former prisoners who’d filed the dismissed suits ranged from “people who disappeared in Libyan prison to people who are home living with their family and can’t get a job,” Kadidal said.
The “vast, vast majority” of former Guantanamo prisoners are under some form of travel restriction, he said, as a result of either transfer agreements between the United States and where they now live or the stigma of having spent time in U.S. military custody.
“If you want to do haj at some point in your life,” he said, referring to a Muslim’s duty to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, a freed detainee would need to get those restrictions lifted.
Moreover, he added, CCR affiliated attorneys have tracked former captives to prison at Pol-i-charki, Afghanistan, that was once run by the U.S. military. He said “the U.S. may be pulling the puppet strings” of their continued captivity.
In the case of two men sent home to Sudan, according to an affidavit filed by an investigator with the Oregon Federal Public Defender’s office, which is representing them, the United States required as a condition for their release that Sudan seize their travel documents and prevent them from leaving the country.
Hogan said the attorneys for the former detainees hadn’t offered enough proof that other countries were operating essentially as U.S. proxies. “Petitioners are short on examples, except for the fact that former Guantanamo detainees from Afghanistan transferred back to Afghanistan have been detained at a detention facility built by the United States,” he wrote.
Of the 183 men currently held at Guantanamo, 22 have had their habeas cases resolved — 10 who were ordered released, but are still being held and the 12 whose detentions were upheld.
It was unclear, however, how many of the other 161 might have cases pending. Some detainees have refused American lawyers’ offers to sue on their behalf, apparently rejecting the authority of any U.S. court to sit in judgment on them. An Obama administration panel has determined that about 50 of those should be held indefinitely without charges. Source
This of course is American Justice. No Justice at all.
Drone Pilots Could Be Tried for ‘War Crimes,’ Law Prof Says
By Nathan Hodge
April 29, 2010
The pilots waging America’s undeclared drone war in Pakistan could be liable to criminal prosecution for “war crimes,” a prominent law professor told a Congressional panel Wednesday.
Harold Koh, the State Department’s top legal adviser, outlined the administration’s legal case for the robotic attacks last month. Now, some legal experts are taking turns to punch holes in Koh’s argument.
It’s part of an ongoing legal debate about the CIA and U.S. military’s lethal drone operations, which have escalated in recent months — and which have received some technological upgrades. Critics of the program, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have argued that the campaign amounts to a program of targeted killing that may violate the laws of war.
In a hearing Wednesday before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s national security and foreign affairs panel, several professors of national security law seemed open to that argument. But there are still plenty of caveats, and the risks to U.S. drone operators are at this point theoretical: Unless a judge in, say, Pakistan, wanted to issue a warrant, it doesn’t seem likely. But that’s just one of the possible legal hazards of robotic warfare.
Loyola Law School professor David Glazier, a former Navy surface warfare officer, said the pilots operating the drones from afar could — in theory — be hauled into court in the countries where the attacks occur. That’s because the CIA’s drone pilots aren’t combatants in a legal sense. “It is my opinion, as well as that of most other law-of-war scholars I know, that those who participate in hostilities without the combatant’s privilege do not violate the law of war by doing so, they simply gain no immunity from domestic laws,” he said.
“Under this view CIA drone pilots are liable to prosecution under the law of any jurisdiction where attacks occur for any injuries, deaths or property damage they cause,” Glazier continued. “But under the legal theories adopted by our government in prosecuting Guantánamo detainees, these CIA officers as well as any higher-level government officials who have authorized or directed their attacks are committing war crimes.”
The drones themselves are a lawful tool of war; “In fact, the ability of the drones to engage in a higher level of precision and to discriminate more carefully between military and civilian targets than has existed in the past actually suggests that they’re preferable to many older weapons,” Glazier added. But employing CIA personnel to carry out those armed attacks, he concluded, “clearly fall outside the scope of permissible conduct and ought to be reconsidered, particularly as the United States seeks to prosecute members of its adversaries for generally similar conduct.”
Drone attacks haven’t just become the primary weapon in the American bid to wipe out Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist networks. “Very frankly, it’s the only game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt the al Qaeda leadership,” CIA director Leon Panetta said.
But that “embrace of the Predator program has occurred with remarkably little public discussion, given that it represents a radical new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force,” The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer recently observed. Before 9/11, the American government regularly condemned Israel for taking out individual terrorists. “Seven years later, there is no longer any doubt that targeted killing has become official U.S. policy.”
The U.S. government has since defended the strikes as legitimate self-defense — without going into details about the operations. Kenneth Anderson, an American University law professor, said the government’s reluctance to talk about the missions — as well as its reliance on an intelligence agency to carry out military action — raises some serious questions.
In his prepared statement (.pdf), Anderson said Koh “nowhere mentions the CIA by name in his defense of drone operations. It is, of course, what is plainly intended when speaking of self-defense separate from armed conflict. One understands the hesitation of senior lawyers to name the CIA’s use of drones as lawful when the official position of the U.S. government, despite everything, is still not to confirm or deny the CIA’s operations.”
What’s more, Anderson argued, Congress has been reluctant to talk about the bigger policy issue: Why this is a CIA mission in the first place. “Why should the CIA, or any other civilian agency, ever use force (leaving aside conventional law enforcement)?” he said. “Even granting the existence of self-defense as a legal category, why ever have force used by anyone other than the uniformed military?”
Mary Ellen O’Connell, professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, was much more blunt in her statement. “Combat drones are battlefield weapons,” she told the panel. “They fire missiles or drop bombs capable of inflicting very serious damage. Drones are not lawful for use outside combat zones. Outside such zones, police are the proper law enforcement agents, and police are generally required to warn before using lethal force.”
“Restricting drones to the battlefield is the most important single rule governing their use, O’Connell continued. “Yet, the United States is failing to follow it more often than not.”
Not all of the law professors testifying today agreed. Syracuse University’s William Banks, for one, said that “the intelligence laws permit the president broad discretion to utilize the nation’s intelligence agencies to carry out national security operations, implicitly including targeted killing.” Current U.S. laws “supply adequate – albeit not well articulated or understood – legal authority for these drone strikes.”
But American laws may not be on the only ones applicable to drone strikes, critics contend. As Anderson argued, the United States may face legal challenges from what he called the “international-law community” – nongovernmental organizations, international bodies, U.N. agencies and others who view this as a program of targeted killing that falls outside the bounds of armed conflict.
Either way, this hearing will not end the controversy. As we’ve noted here before, the government has been less than forthcoming about who, exactly, authorizes drone strikes, how the targets are chosen and how many civilians may have been inadvertently killed.
Obama has been told and so had the Bush administration Pakistan doesn’t want them bombing in their country. So what part of NO doesn’t the US get the N or the O.
They do not have Pakistan permission to drop bombs in their country. Any bombing done by any US citizen, military or not, are illegal.
Pakistan
Civilian Deaths -1256
Civilians Injured -427
Al-Qaeeda deaths -30
Success Rate of Drone Attacks against Al-Qaeeda ~ 2.5%
A US drone attack has killed at least six people and wounded several others in the troubled tribal areas of northwestern Pakistan, officials say.
According to Pakistani officials, the drone fired three missiles in the Mir Ali area in Waziristan tribal area near the Afghan border on Monday, DPA reported.
The death toll is expected to rise as some of the injured are reported to be in critical condition, sources said.
According to the sources, those killed were “militants.”
So far this year, 300 people have lost their lives in 42 drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal belt. Washington claims the raids target militants in Pakistan, but hundreds of civilians have fallen victim to the US drone attacks since 2008.
Islamabad has repeatedly condemned the strikes, saying they threaten the country’s sovereignty and fuel public anger. Source
CNN made a big deal out of Iran flying over a ship in the Arabian sea. Seems to me the US shouldn’t be there either.
Who do they think they are? They do not own the world.
Iran may have flown over and may not have.
For all we know it could have been Israel who flew over the US ship.
Of course they didn’t fly over the ship anyway, who ever was in the planes, were flying over half a mile away.
‘Iranian fighters may fly over US forces’
The Title should have been
Iranian fighters may have flow near US forces
April 29 2010
A senior Iranian Air Force officer does not rule out reports that an Iranian fighter jet might have flown over a US aircraft carrier last week in the Arabian Sea.
The incident was first reported by CNN on Tuesday. According to the report, a plane belonging to the Iranian Navy was flying as low as 300 feet near the USS Eisenhower on April 21.
The Eisenhower was in the northern Arabian Sea when the Iranian maritime patrol aircraft flew within 1,000 yards of the vessel, US military officials claimed.
Mohammad Alavi, deputy commander of the Iranian Air Force said that the fighter jet may have come close to the US aircraft carrier during a routine patrol.
“Iran has scheduled flights in the air corridor in the altitude of up to 20,000 feet, and its plane might have come close to the US aircraft carrier while flying in this corridor,” Fars news agency quoted Alavi as saying on Thursday.
He added, “Nobody can criticize such flights because they are being conducted within the framework of international law. We conduct routine reconnaissance flights with different aircrafts, including drones, and they may have come across the US forces.” Source
(1000 yards = 3,000 feet, 1 mile = 5280 feet so they were over half a mile away from the ship. ( 0.56818 miles or almost 1 kilometer -0.91439 kilometers) That isn’t exactly over the ship now is it?
They were also 91,439.99986 Centimeters or 35,999.99990 Inches away from the ship as well. But I digress. Now I am just being stupid.
So what the American ship doing there anyway? There is the question that should be asked. Were they spying on others? Probably.
Iran wasn’t breaking any Laws, if in fact it even was their fighters.
Could the US have been breaking the Law, is the other question that should be asked?
A US-Sponsored Terror Network-Death Squads in Afghanistan
By Francis Shor
April 27 2010
It should no longer be a matter of dispute that US Special Forces in Afghanistan are responsible for an increasing number of murders, whether part of targeted extra-judicial killings or the result of bad intelligence. From the attack on a bridal shower in Gardez on February 12, 2010 that killed numerous civilians, including two pregnant women, to the growing list of executions of insurgents in the Kandahar area, Special Forces have become the US military version of death squads. For Entire Story Go HERE
WASHINGTON — Spurred by deep election-year voter anger, the US Senate voted Wednesday to forbid government-funded bailouts of big banks like those blamed for the global economic meltdown of 2008.
In their first substantive vote on the most sweeping finance industry overhaul since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the lawmakers agreed by a 96-1 margin to an amendment banning future taxpayer rescues.
The measure, crafted by Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, aimed to prohibit vastly unpopular bailouts of so-called “too big to fail” firms that might have won government help because their collapse would cripple the economy.
Senators, who were expected to take at least two weeks to pass the overall legislation, also voted 93-5 to approve a compromise plan for “orderly liquidation” to take apart failing financial giants.
Democratic Senator Chris Dodd, chairman of the senate banking committee, announced earlier that he and the panel’s top Republican, Senator Richard Shelby, had reached a deal on that provision after months of talks.
Dodd said he had agreed to drop plans to create a 50-billion-dollar fund, drawn from Wall Street, to cover possible liquidation expenses — a proposal opposed by President Barack Obama’s administration.
The fund, which some Republicans had wrongly painted as a “bailout” fund, would be replaced by liquidating the troubled company or assessing a fee on other major financial firms.
“Because whether they pay in advance or after the fact, these costs will be paid by Wall Street and not taxpayers, I have no objection to dropping that provision,” Dodd said in a statement.
The plan puts the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, an independent agency, in charge of “orderly liquidation” of a big failing firm; dictates that shareholders and unsecured creditors will bear losses; and removes top executives.
Regulators will also have the power to break up a firm if it poses a serious threat to US financial stability.
US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geither praised the Senate vote, saying: “The strong bipartisan support for this provision demonstrates the growing momentum for passing comprehensive financial reform.”
The accord between Dodd and Shelby removed some obstacles to the legislation, Obama’s top domestic priority, but the two parties were expected to feud on other key provisions.
Both sides have said they want to end government bailouts to such banks — like the 700-billion-dollar Troubled Asset Relief Program approved when the financial industry seemed poised to collapse in late 2008.
The two sides were expected to feud over the creation of a new agency to protect consumers from shady finance practices and over how tightly to regulate derivatives, complex financial instruments blamed for stoking speculative fires but widely used by many companies to cope with volatile commodity prices.
Recent polls have found that the US public overwhelmingly favors tough new rules on Wall Street, leading Democrats to paint Republicans as being in the pocket of big banks.
In a sign of the partisan rancor, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid charged at a press conference that “Republicans are having difficulty determining how they’re going to continue making love to Wall Street. Source
The federal government’s decision not to fund abortion as part of its new G8 maternal health initiative will contribute to the loss of life of women and young girls, says Maureen McTeer, wife of former Progressive Conservative prime minister Joe Clark.
McTeer, who works with the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood, said she was at first “delighted” to hear that Prime Minister Stephen Harper planned to make reducing maternal and childhood morbidity and mortality in the developing world a key initiative when he hosts next month’s G8 and G20 summits in Ontario.
However, the federal government’s plan to exclude abortion from its funding for the initiative means women who live in conflict zones where rape is a tool of war, or young girls who are married off to older men and find themselves pregnant at age 10 or 11, will be left to their own devices when trying to access a safe abortion, McTeer said.
“In situations where they are pregnant against their will, (help is about) providing them with a safe abortion,” McTeer told CTV’s Power Play Wednesday afternoon. “Because women will continue to abort if the situation is as dire as it is for so many of these women. They die, the fetus dies. What in the world are we saying to our partners around the world? Why are we so smug about saying to them, ‘Well, figure it out as best you can?’”
The government’s stance on abortion as it pertains to the maternal health initiative has become a hot topic on Parliament Hill, and gained steam earlier this week when Conservative Sen. Nancy Ruth advised a gathering of women’s groups to “shut the f–k up” on the abortion issue or risk a blacklash from the government.
The day after Ruth’s contentious comments, it was revealed the government had cut funding to 11 women’s groups over the past two weeks. On Wednesday, Liberal status of women critic Anita Neville said by her count, 24 groups have had their funding cut, including groups that have long been funded by Status of Women Canada.
“I think it’s politics at its worst,” Neville said, adding that funding was slashed to groups that “had the temerity to speak out against” the government on abortion or other issues.
Government defends spending
Rona Ambrose, the minister responsible for the status of women, responded that the government is spending the most it has ever spent on women’s programs, but cannot fund all 400 groups that apply for funding.
According to Ambrose, 78 groups have had their funding requests approved, and 40 per cent of them are “brand new groups that have never received funding before.”
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff criticized the funding cuts in the House Wednesday, saying the government is trying to bully and bankrupt its critics.
“This is a big issue here. It is about whether the government respects democracy,” Ignatieff said.
“That is the fundamental issue. When will the Conservatives stop the smears, stop the attacks, stop the intimidation and start showing the Canadian people some respect?”
Transport Minister John Baird replied by charging Ignatieff with bullying his MPs for forcing them to vote against a bill to scrap the long gun registry.
“Let us let members of Parliament honour the sacred trust, the promises that they made to their electorate,” Baird said.
Shift in policy
McTeer accused the government of backing away from a foreign aid policy that has long supported access to safe abortions as part of maternal and reproductive health initiatives.
“Maternal health, and sexual and reproductive health, which is what we’re talking about here, is about providing a basket of services that are needed by women because they happen to be able to bear babies,” McTeer said.
“So that’s what we’re talking about here. This is a brand new shift in our foreign policy, because our foreign policy since the Nairobi Conference has been quite clear: we have supported women’s access to all necessary medical procedures related to reproduction and sexuality where they are legal.”
McTeer said the goal is always to provide women with health services so they can avoid having to make the “terrible decisions” that many women have to make every day. The initiative must include funding for health facilities, trained health workers and equipment, she said.
But she wondered what will come of the negotiations at the two summits, when the Canadian government will be facing countries such as Britain, the U.S. and France, all of which support abortion as part of maternal health.
“The larger question is:
Is our government willing to do what’s needed to be done to save women’s lives? Historically Canada has,” McTeer said. “We seem to be moving away from that policy now. We don’t know what the final agenda will look like, we don’t know how it will play out.” Source
ISRAELIS BLAME TALIBAN GROUP, ONE THEY HAVE BEEN WORKING WITH FOR YEARS
May 2 2010
By Gordon Duff
Who would have believed it? Only days after a warning of an Israeli “false flag” bombing against the US “in the works” a massive car bomb is discovered in Time Square! Better yet, though no intelligence organization in the world could discover anyone claiming responsibility for this embarrassing failure, SITE Intelligence, a group rumored as the “voice of the Mossad” has placed the blame on the Pakistani Taliban.
This is the same group that has come up with numerous bin Laden “audio” tapes, seemingly, though tiny and nearly totally unstaffed, whenever it is convenient for Israel to point a finger at someone, magically Site Intelligence, run by former IDF soldier Rita Katz, whose father was executed as a spy by Saddam Hussein, makes another “unbelievable” intelligence find.
Site Intelligence finds are not only timely for Israel, when the world is focused on claims they have been planning a ‘dirty bomb’ attack to send the US to war against Iran, but always tend to support mysterious organizations run from the caves of the Afghanistan/Pakistan border region.
With the demise of Al Qaeda, an unnamed Taliban organization with a website only visible to one person on earth has now declared a mysterious and shadowy war against the United States, in New York City, a city under tight security but one with a very large Israeli/Mossad presence.
This was the same city where the “dancing Israeli’s,” celebrated 9/11 after filming the attacks. Their advance knowledge of the attacks has been one of the many puzzle pieces tying Israel to 9/11.
However, it wasn’t until the “crotch bomber” of last Christmas that the breadth of Israel’s penetration of US security was demonstrated with Abdulmohammed’s attack tying directly to Tel Aviv.
Anyone who visits New York is aware that security there, especially in Time Square is the highest of anywhere in the world. The intelligence organizations protecting New York, including the world’s best police force, leave only one organization as capable of this kind of effort, an organization with massive resources in the area, numerous Israeli/American assets and many residual relationships with Gulliani/Kerik/Bush era friends, friends conveniently “asleep at the switch” on 9/11.
TIMING
Recent intelligence leaks from several agencies have warned of an impending “9/11 style” attack on a high value target in the US and Israel. Reports that a conventional bomb enhanced with nuclear material would be used.
With Iranian president Ahmandinejad and Secretary of State Clinton both scheduled to be in New York in the next 24 hours, and recent stories out of Israel trying to tie Iran to the Taliban, the issue of “timing” is a critical one.
ISREAL TIES TO PAKISTAN TALIBAN WELL ESTABLISHED
The group blamed in the Site Intelligence/Israeli report, the Pakistani Taliban has been responsible for hundreds of attacks in Pakistan, killing thousands of citizens. However, reliable sources have tied this group directly to Mossad/RAW training camps inside Afghanistan and Balochistan. The Pakistani Taliban have long been allies of Israel and India with 2000 terrorist trainers inside Afghanistan arming Pakistani Taliban terrorist group.
This has been confirmed, not only in direct briefings with the Pakistani ISPR and ISI but US military intelligence sources as well, who dispute then number of terrorist trainers, not their presence.
Terrorist groups inside Balochistan, the remote Pakistan province said to be a haven for Mossad attacks against Iran, claim to be headquartered in Israel. These groups work directly with the Pakistan Taliban and are another indication of this current “stunt” turning back on non-Islamic planners.
ALWAYS THE SAME, “WHO GAINS?”
With Iran taking the propaganda offensive to the United States, a nation increasingly distancing itself from, not only the idea of supporting an Israeli attack on Iran, Israel is under pressure to reestablish itself as America’s partner in a long discredited “war on terror” that has been a huge embarrassment to the US.
With over 90% of America’s terror arrests turning out to be innocent bystanders, some tortured for years, untold numbers “disappeared,” Bush era failures have soured public support for hunting terrorist leaders who have increasingly been either captured by Pakistan or have been found to be negotiating with US forces.
With the signature of this bombing being so close to that of the “crotch bombing,” an attack with Israeli fingerprints from Nigeria to Yemen to Amsterdam, the “superfast” accusation against a Pakistani group was no surprise.
With New York police discounting the Pakistan connection to the bombing immediately, Fox News has unleashed an attack on the Obama administration in a well orchestrated manner, accusing democrats of “failing to protect the American people.”
With both Site Intelligence and Fox News tied directly to Israel and the signature and timing of this attack showing clear Israeli fingerprints, Fox may be right.
America may be unable to protect itself from a nation still seen by most Americans as a close ally. No other nation has the capability of such an attack or the influence to orchestrate the news, an act already in motion.
If any finger is pointing anywhere, Fox News is telling us “Israel did it.”
Cops: Video Has Possible SUV Bomb Suspect In Alley
Police: Despite Claim, No Evidence Of Taliban Link
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility in a video posted on the Internet on Sunday, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. SITE, a U.S.-based terrorist tracking organization, first uncovered the video on YouTube; it later appeared to have been removed from the website.
In a copy of the video provided by SITE, an unidentified voice speaking in Urdu, the primary language in Pakistan, says the group takes “full responsibility for the recent attack in the USA.” The video does not mention any details about Saturday’s attack. Anyone could have made the video.
I am glad for once the police are not falling for the Fake Video garbage provided by SITE. Their videos are bogus pieces of junk. They are intended to take the focus off who really does things.
Update May 4 2010
Suspect arrested
Faisal Shahzad was arrested late last night as he was about to fly out of New York’s John F Kennedy airport.
A 30-year-old naturalised US citizen of Pakistani origin, Shahzad is due in court later today . Last night in Washington, the attorney seneral Eric Holder says the suspect in the failed Times Square car bombing has admitted his role in the nearly catastrophic attack.
May Day Protests around the World
May 1 2010 Trade union members march in May Day celebrations in downtown Kiev on Saturday. About 4,000 people rallied in Ukraine’s capital.(Sergei Chuzavkov/Associated Press)
Millions of people marched in cities around the world Saturday to mark May Day, or International Workers’ Day, as they rallied for better work conditions, higher wages and laws that are more just.
Demonstrators poured into the streets from Hong Kong to Moscow to Santiago, Chile, waving flags, beating drums and dancing to music.
About 140,000 jubilant workers gathered in Istanbul’s Taksim Square in the first celebrations at the site since dozens of people died there in a May 1 gathering more than three decades ago.
The Istanbul demonstrations marked a special victory for Turkish unions, which had been denied access to Taksim Square since 1977, when 34 people died after a shooting triggered a stampede. The culprits were never found and workers on Saturday demanded an inquiry into the demonstrators’ deaths.
‘I reject the five per cent increase,’ says a La Paz demonstrator’s sign denouncing the size of Bolivia’s proposed minimum-wage increase. (Juan Karita/Associated Press)
Thousands joined peaceful May Day marches in Stockholm, where opposition leader Mona Sahlin blamed the centre-right government for failing to stem rising unemployment and eroding the nation’s cherished welfare system. Sahlin is hoping to become Sweden’s first female prime minister after national elections in September.
In Manila, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo announced she had ordered the labour secretary to speed up negotiations between unions and employers on a $1.70 increase in the daily minimum wage.
In Toronto, a few thousand demonstrators pressed for reforms to make it easier for refugees to seek haven in Canada and for immigrants to come to the country.
In Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, thousands of workers marched on the presidential palace, shouting: “Workers unite! No more layoffs!” Rally organizer Bayu Ajie said a free-trade agreement with China had cost jobs, decreased wages and encouraged corruption. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono promised to create safer working conditions and improve job prospects if the workers maintained political and economic stability.
Kasparov leads rally
France saw rallies that drew hundreds of thousands of people to the streets of Paris, Marseille, Lille and other cities, but the turnout nevertheless disappointed labour unions that had been hoping for crowds in the millions to provide a show of force against a planned pension overhaul.
A rare opposition march took place in Moscow, where former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, now an opposition politician, led activists calling for the ouster of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, whom they accuse of stifling democracy.
In La Paz, the Bolivian capital, marchers carried signs denouncing the government’s proposed five per cent hike in the minimum wage as too paltry.
About 1,000 protesters — among them bus drivers and janitors — took to the streets in Hong Kong to demand that the government enact a minimum wage of the equivalent of $4.35 an hour. Though the Chinese territory has some of the richest residents in the world, its wealth is too unevenly distributed, advocates say.
People participate in a May Day protest in San Salvador, El Salvador. (Edgar Romero/Associated Press)
Most of the annual May Day marches were peaceful, but in Santiago, clashes broke out with police, who launched tear gas and deployed a water cannon against demonstrators.
Athens also witnessed riots, with police using tear gas to disperse demonstrators who threw firebombs and stones in a large rally against austerity measures imposed to secure loans for near-bankrupt Greece.
In Switzerland, Zurich police used water cannons in an attempt to disperse dozens of stone-throwing protesters as unions and politicians protested against “excessive” Swiss banking bonuses.
German police detained 250 neo-Nazis who attempted to attack them in downtown Berlin.
The turnout in Cuba was massive, as expected, and authorities asserted the march by hundreds of thousands of Cubans amounted to approval of the island’s Communist system amid mounting international criticism over human rights. A smiling President Raul Castro watched the rally go past from a high podium. Source
May Day turns violent in Berlin
May 2 2010
Riot police made targeted arrests during clashes on May Day demonstrations in Berlin.
May Day demonstrations have turned violent after police battle rioters in two German cities, using water cannons to drive back crowds of protestors.
In the capital Berlin, police tried to disperse hundreds of left-wing protesters in the west of the German capital late Saturday, as they set cars on fire and demolished police vehicles.
The eastern side of the city also saw clashes between anti-Nazi demonstrators and right-wingers.
In the port city of Hamburg, some 1,500 leftist radicals held a parade that continued into the early hours of Sunday. Police said the protestors vandalized banks, overturned parked cars and set them on fire.
It has become a ritual for leftists and rightists to engage in violent clashes with police and storm banks and shops on the May Day for more than a decade in Berlin and Hamburg.
Some 7,000 riot police were deployed to keep the two groups apart. Nearly 20 people were injured in those clashes. Police said they have made more than 250 arrests.
Last year’s May Day in Berlin was the most violent in a decade with hundreds of arrests and dozens of police officers injured. More than 400 cars were set ablaze in Berlin and Hamburg.
May Days have traditionally been an opportunity for workers and the left in general, to let off steam.
In many countries, it is synonymous with International Workers’ Day or Labor Day, a day of political demonstrations and celebrations organized by unions and other groups. Source
May Day marked with global protests
Turks mark first May Day in Istanbul’s Taksim Square in 33 years [AFP]
Tens of thousands of people have marched in cities from Hong Kong to Istanbul to mark International Worker’s Day, demanding more jobs, better work conditions and higher wages.
In Turkey, about 140,000 workers gathered in Istanbul’s Taksim Square in the first celebrations at the site since 34 people died there in a May 1 gathering more than three decades ago.
The demonstration was a special victory for Turkish labour unions, which had been denied access to the site since 1977, after a shooting triggered a stampede.
Aydin Demir, a 44-year-old kiosk owner, said labourers had won a 33-year-long struggle for their right to rally at the square.
“We paid a heavy price to be here today. Thousands of comrades have been arrested, but now we get the result of our struggle,” he said.
‘Rights crushed’
Al Jazeera’s Anita McNaught, reporting from Taksim Square, said that in the past, trade unions who tried to hold rallies there in defiance of the ban met with a heavy police crackdown which left dozens injured and hundreds in detention.
“Then human rights and especially workers rights were crushed for years in Turkey,” McNaught said.
“Over a series of years, particularly the last three, the unions have steadily pushed and pushed to be reallowed access to back to this square.
“They have said there is no good reason not to allow them back and this year, the government agreed.”
More than 22,000 police officers were deployed for the rally and demonstrators went through security checks before entering the square.
Zafer Yoruk, a professor of political science at Izmir University, said the number of workers organised in Turkish unions has fallen dramatically since the 1970s.
“Regarding unionisation and economic rights, I think we’re far behind the 1970s,” he told Al Jazeera.
“The right to strike, for rights, or solidarity strikes, are totally gone.”
Rowdy protesters
Most of the annual May Day marches were peaceful, but in the Chinese territory of Macau police used water cannon and pepper spray against rowdy protesters, injuring at least eight people, including a photographer.
Clashes broke out in a number of countries as workers staged rallies [AFP]
Hundreds of thousands of people joined rallies in Europe, many protesting against government austerity policies in the wake of the global financial crisis.
Athens, the Greek capital, witnessed riots, with police using tear gas to disperse demonstrators who threw firebombs and stones in a large May Day rally against austerity measures needed to secure loans for near-bankrupt Greece.
In Switzerland, Zurich police used water cannon in an attempt to disperse dozens of stone-throwing protesters as unions and politicians protested against “excessive” Swiss banking bonuses.
In Germany, police said 17 officers had been injured when they clashed with 150 demonstrators who threw paving stones and set garbage cans ablaze in the northern port city of Hamburg.
At least nine demonstrators were detained after the confrontations with police on the eve of Saturday’s May Day holiday, the German news agency DDP reported.
Several hundred officers were deployed in the capital, Berlin, ahead of a planned neo-Nazi march and other demonstrations.
‘Workers unite’
The turnout in Cuba was massive, as expected, and authorities claimed the march by hundreds of thousands of Cubans amounted to approval of the island’s communist system amid mounting international criticism over human rights.
In Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, thousands of workers marched on the presidential palace, shouting: “Workers unite! No more layoffs!”
Workers took to the streets to protest labour conditions and demand better pay [Reuters]
Bayu Ajie, a rally organiser, said a free-trade agreement with China had cost jobs, decreased wages and encouraged corruption.
In Russia almost two million people turned out to mark international worker’s day.
Demonstrators carrying red balloons, red Soviet flags and portraits of Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin, called for the Russian government’s resignation over rising prices and unemployment in Moscow.
Thousands of Cambodian workers marked May Day by marching through the capital to demand better work conditions and the establishment of a labour court.
Thousands of workers in the Philippines also took to the streets to reiterate their call to the government to protect jobs and to safeguard the interests of workers.
In the South Korean capital, Seoul, about 20,000 people gathered to demand better working conditions for labourers and farmers.
In Tokyo and Taiwan, thousands marched for better working conditions and permanent jobs.
In Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, several hundred workers protested a proposed four per cent goods and services tax. While, in Hong Kong, about 1,000 protesters, including janitors, construction workers and bus drivers, demanded the government introduce a minimum wage of $4.30.
“A lunch box at a fast-food restaurant costs about $4. It’s an insult if you can’t afford a lunch box after working for an hour,” Leung Yiu-chung, a pro-democracy legislator, said on the sidelines of Saturday’s protests. Source
Workers demand better jobs, pay on May Day
Indonesian workers shout slogans during a May Day rally in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Saturday (AP photo by Dita Alangkara)
I
STANBUL (AP) – Tens of thousands of workers marched in cities from Hong Kong to Istanbul Saturday to mark international worker’s day, demanding more jobs, better work conditions and higher wages.
About 140,000 jubilant workers gathered in Istanbul’s Taksim Square in the first celebrations at the site since dozens of people died there in a May 1 gathering more than three decades ago.
The demonstrations in Istanbul, which sits on both European and Asian continents, marked a special victory for the Turkish unions, which had been denied access to the Taksim Square since 1977, when 34 people died after shooting triggered a stampede. The culprits were never found and workers demanded Saturday an inquiry into the deaths of the demonstrators.
Most of the annual May Day marches were peaceful, but in the Chinese territory of Macau police used water cannons and pepper spray against rowdy protesters who tried to break away from the approved route. Hong Kong radio RTHK reported at least eight people injured, including a photographer.
Athens also witnessed riots, with police using tear gas to disperse demonstrators who threw firebombs and stones in a large May Day rally against austerity measures needed to secure loans for near-bankrupt Greece. In Switzerland, Zurich police used water cannons in an attempt to disperse dozens of stone-throwing protesters as unions and politicians protested against “excessive” Swiss banking bonuses.
German police detained 250 neo-Nazis who attempted to attack them in downtown Berlin, while they braced for further clashes after sundown.
Nadine Pusch, a spokeswoman for Berlin police, said 7,000 officers were scattered throughout the city in an effort to ensure peaceful demonstrations.
Overnight in Hamburg, 17 officers were injured in clashes on the eve of May 1 and at least nine demonstrators were detained, the German news agency ddp reported Saturday.
The turnout in Cuba was massive, as expected, and authorities claimed the march by hundreds of thousands of Cubans amounted to approval of the island’s communist system amid mounting international criticism over human rights.
Thousands joined peaceful May Day marches in Stockholm, where opposition leader Mona Sahlin blamed the centre-right government for failing to stem rising unemployment and eroding the nation’s cherished welfare system. Sahlin is hoping to become Sweden’s first female prime minister after national elections in September.
Several thousand demonstrators in Paris also took to the streets amid concerns about conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plans to overhaul the pension system.
In Manila, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo announced she had ordered the labour secretary to speed up negotiations between unions and employers on a 75-peso ($1.67) increase in daily minimum wage.
In Indonesia’s capital, thousands of workers marched on the presidential palace, shouting: “Workers unite! No more layoffs!”. Rally organiser Bayu Ajie said a free trade agreement with China had cost jobs, decreased wages and encouraged corruption. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono promised to create safer working conditions and improve job prospects if the workers maintained political and economic stability.
Thousands of Communist demonstrators, carrying red balloons, red Soviet flags and portraits of Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin, called for the Russian government’s resignation over rising prices and unemployment in Moscow. Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov led hundreds of opposition activists in a separate rally. They also called for the ouster of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, whom they accuse of stamping out democracy. A few thousands also rallied in Ukraine’s capital.
In Seoul, South Korea, Tokyo and Taiwan, thousands marched for better working conditions and permanent jobs. Jeong Ho-hee, spokesman of the Korean Confederation of Trade Union, vowed to fight against long working hours and high death rate related to industrial accidents.
In the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, several hundred workers protested a proposed 4 per cent goods and services tax while about 1,000 protesters, including janitors, construction workers and bus drivers, demanded the government in Hong Kong to introduce a minimum wage of 33 Hong Kong dollars ($4.30).
This freewheeling capitalist Chinese enclave is one of the world’s wealthiest cities, but critics say its wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few.
“A lunch box at a fast-food restaurant costs about HK$30 ($4). It’s an insult if you can’t afford a lunch box after working for an hour,” pro-democracy legislator Leung Yiu-chung said on the sidelines of Saturday’s protests. Source
What can possibly justify the relentless U.S. diplomatic (and mainstream media) assault on Iran ?
It cannot be argued that Iran is an aggressive state that is dangerous to its neighbors, as facts do not support this claim. It cannot be relevant that Iran adheres to Islamic fundamentalism, has a flawed democracy and denies women full western-style civil rights, as Saudi Arabia is more fundamentalist, far less democratic and more oppressive of women, yet it is a U.S. ally. It cannot be relevant that Iran has, over the years, had a nuclear research program, and is most likely pursuing the capacity to develop nuclear weapons, as Pakistan, India, Israel and other states are nuclear powers yet remain U.S. allies—indeed, Israel deceived the U.S. while developing its nuclear program.
The answer to the above-posed question is fairly obvious: Iran must be punished for leaving the orbit of U.S. control. Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, when the Shah was removed, Iran, unlike, say, Saudi Arabia, acts independently and thus compromises U.S. power in two ways: i) Defiance of U.S. dictates affects the U.S.’s attainment of goals linked to Iran; and, ii) Defiance of U.S. dictates establishes a “bad” example for other countries that may wish to pursue an independent course. The Shah could commit any number of abuses—widespread torture, for example—yet his loyalty to the U.S. exempted him from American condemnation—yet not from the condemnation of the bulk of Iranians who brought him down.
The following quiz is an attempt to introduce more balance into the mainstream discussion of Iran.
Iran Quiz Questions :
1. Is Iran an Arab country?
2. Has Iran launched an aggressive war of conquest against another country since 1900?
3. How many known cases of an Iranian suicide-bomber have there been from 1989 to 2007?
4. What was Iran ‘s defense spending in 2008?
5. What was the U.S. ‘s defense spending in 2008?
6. What is the Jewish population of Iran ?
7. Which Iranian leader said the following? “This [ Israel 's] Occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”
8. True of False: Iranian television presented a serial sympathetic to Jews during the Holocaust that coincided with President Ahmadinejad’s first term.
9. What percentage of students entering university in Iran is female?
10. What percentage of the Iranian population attends Friday prayers?
11. True or False: Iran has formally consented to the Arab League’s 2002 peace initiative with Israel.
12. Which two countries were responsible for orchestrating the 1953 overthrow of Iran’s populist government of democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh, primarily because he introduced legislation that led to the nationalization of Iranian oil?
13. Who made the following address on March 17, 2000? “In 1953 the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran’s popular prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. The Eisenhower administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons. But the coup was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs.”
14. Which countries trained the Shah’s brutal internal security service, SAVAK?
15. Does Iran have nuclear weapons?
16. Is Iran a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)?
17. Is Israel a signatory of the NPT?
18. Does the NPT permit a signatory to pursue a nuclear program?
19. Who wrote the following in 2004? “Wherever U.S forces go, nuclear weapons go with them or can be made to follow in short order. The world has witnessed how the United States attacked Iraq for, as it turned out, no reason at all. Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy. Though Iran is ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, most commentators who are familiar with the country do not regard its government as irrational. … [I]t was Saddam Hussein who attacked Iran, not the other way around; since then Iran has been no more aggressive than most countries are. For all their talk of opposition to Israel , Iran ‘s rulers are very unlikely to mount a nuclear attack on a country that is widely believed to have what it takes to wipe them off the map. Chemical or other attacks are also unlikely, given the meager results that may be expected and the retaliation that would almost certainly follow.”
20. What percentage of Iranians in 2008 said they had an unfavorable view of the American people?
21. What percentage of Iranians in 2008 expressed negative sentiments toward the Bush administration?
22. What were the main elements of Iran’s 2003 Proposal to the U.S., communicated during the build-up to the Iraq invasion, and how did the U.S. respond to Iran’s Proposal?
23. True or False: Iran and the U.S. both considered the Taleban to be an enemy after the 9/11 attacks.
24. Did the U.S. work with the Tehran-based Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq both before and after the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq?
25. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, who said the following? “The Iranians had real contacts with important players in Afghanistan and were prepared to use their influence in constructive ways in coordination with the United States .”
26. Who wrote the following in 2004? “It is in the interests of the United States to engage selectively with Iran to promote regional stability, dissuade Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons, preserve reliable energy supplies, reduce the threat of terror, and address the ‘democracy deficit’ that pervades the Middle East …”
Iran Quiz Answers :
1. No. Alone among the Middle Eastern peoples conquered by the Arabs, the Iranians did not lose their language or their identity. Ethnic Persians make up 60 percent of modern Iran, modern Persian (not Arabic) is the official language, Iran is not a member of the Arab League, and the majority of Iranians are Shiite Muslims while most Arabs are Sunni Muslims. Accordingly, based on language, ancestry and religion, Iran is not an Arab country. ( http://www.slate.com/id/1008394/ )
2. No.
-According to Juan Cole, the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, Iran has not launched such a war for at least 150 years. ( Juan Cole; Engaging the Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York: 2009; p.199.)
-It should be appreciated that Iran did not start the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s: “ The war began when Iraq invaded Iran, launching a simultaneous invasion by air and land into Iranian territory on 22 September 1980 following a long history of border disputes, and fears of Shia insurgency among Iraq’s long-suppressed Shia majority influenced by the Iranian Revolution. Iraq was also aiming to replace Iran as the dominant Persian Gulf state.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War)
3. Zero. There is not a single known instance of an Iranian suicide-bomber since the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988. ( Robert Baer; The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower; Crown Publishers; New York: 2008.)
-According to Baer, an American author and a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East, it is important to understand that Iran has used suicide bombers as the ultimate “smart bomb.” In fact there is little difference between a suicide-bomber and a marine who rushes a machine-gun nest to meet his certain death. Therefore, while Iran had used suicide bombers for tactical military purposes, Sunni extremists use suicide bombing for vague objectives such as to weaken the enemy or purify the state.
-There is also little doubt that Israel could defeat Iran in a conventional war in mere hours. ( Juan Cole; Engaging the Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York: 2009; p p.206-7.)
6. 25,000. It is one of the many paradoxes of the Islamic Republic of Iran that this anti-Israeli country supports by far the largest Jewish population of any Muslim country. After the 1979 Islamic revolution, thousands of Jews left for Israel, Western Europe or the U.S., fearing persecution. But Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s first post-revolutionary supreme leader, issued a fatwa, upon his return from exile in Paris, decreeing that the Jews and other religious minorities were to be protected, thus reducing the outflow of Iran’s Jews to a trickle. ( http://www.sephardicstudies.org/iran.html )
7. Ruhollah Khomeini. ( Juan Cole; Engaging the Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York : 2009; p.201.)
-This wasn’t a surprising statement to come from the leader of the 1979 Revolution as Israel had been a firm ally of both the U.S. and the Shah.
-According to Cole, Ahmadinejad quoted this statement in 2005 yet wire service translators rendered Khomeini’s statement into English as “Israel must be wiped off the face of the map.” Yet, Khomeini had referred to the occupation regime not Israel , and while he expressed a wish for the regime to go away he didn’t threaten to go after Israel . In fact, a regime can vanish without any outside attacks, as happened to the Shah’s regime in Iran and to the USSR. It is notable that when Khomeini made the statement in the 1980s, there was no international outcry. In fact, in the early 1980s, Khomeini supplied Israel with petroleum in return for American spare parts for the American-supplied Iranian arsenal. As both Israel and Iran considered Saddam’s Iraq a serious enemy, they had a tacit alliance against Iraq during the first phase of the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. It should also be noted that Ahmadinejad subsequently stated he didn’t want to kill any Jews but rather he wants a one-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. While Ahmadinejad’s preferred solution is a non-starter, Israel ‘s refusal to pursue a comprehensive peace creates space for Arab hardliners whose agendas do not include a realistic peace with Israel .
8. True. Iranian television ran a widely watched serial on the Holocaust, Zero Degree Turn , based on true accounts of the role Iranian diplomats in Europe played in rescuing thousands of Jews in WWII.
9. Over 60%. ( M. Axworthy; A History of Iran : Empire of the Mind; Basic Books; New York : 2008.)
-In fact, many women—even married women—have professional jobs.
10. 1.4%. ( M. Axworthy; A History of Iran : Empire of the Mind; Basic Books; New York : 2008.)
11. True. In March 2002, the Arab League summit in Beirut unanimously put forth a peace initiative that commits it not just to recognize Israel but also to establish normal relations once Israel implements the international consensus for a comprehensive peace—which includes Israel withdrawing from the occupied territories and a just settlement of the Palestinian refugee crisis. (This peace initiative has been subsequently reaffirmed including at the March 2009 Arab League summit at Doha.) All 57 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, including Iran , “adopted the Arab peace initiative to resolve the issue of Palestine and the Middle East … and decided to use all possible means in order to explain and clarify the full implications of this initiative and win international support for its implementation.” ( Norman G. Finkelstein; This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion; OR Books; New York : 2010; p. 42.)
12. The U.S. and Britain . ( Stephen Kinzer; All The Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; New Jersey: 2008.)
-According to Kinzer, Iranians had been complaining that the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) had not been sharing profits on Iranian petroleum with Iran fairly; and Iran’s parliament (Majles) had tried to renegotiate with the AIOC. When the AIOC rejected renegotiation, Mossadegh introduced the nationalization act in 1951. In response, Britain and the U.S. organized a global boycott of Iran which sent the Iranian economy into a tailspin. Later, the military coup was orchestrated that reinstalled the shah. (One irony is that Britain itself had nationalized several industries in the 1940s and 1950s.)
13. Madeleine Albright: U.S. Secretary of State , 1997 -2001. ( Stephen Kinzer; All The Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; New Jersey : 2008; p.212.)
14. According to William Blum, a highly respected author and journalist, “The notorious Iranian security service, SAVAK, which employed torture routinely, was created under the guidance of the CIA and Israel in the 1950s. According to a former CIA analyst on Iran, Jesse J. Leaf, SAVAK was instructed in torture techniques by the Agency. After the 1979 revolution, the Iranians found CIA film made for SAVAK on how to torture women.” (http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Torture_RS.html)
-According to Reed College Professor Darius Rejali, one of the world’s leading writers on the subject of torture and the consequences of its use for modern society, “[T]he Iranian revolution of 1978-1979 was the revolution against torture. When the Shah criticized Khomayni as a blackrobed Islamic medieval throwback, Khomayni replied, look who is talking, the man who tortures. This was powerful rhetoric for recruiting people, then as it is now. People joined the revolutionary opposition because of the Shah’s brutality, and they remembered who installed him. If anyone wants to know why Iranians hated the U.S. so, all they have to do is ask what America ‘s role was in promoting torture in Iran . Torture not only shaped the revolution, it was the factor that has deeply poisoned the relationship of Iran with the West. So why trust the West again? And the Iranian leadership doesn’t.” ( http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/02/hbc-90002387 )
15. No.
-”We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons
program …” “ We judge with high confidence that Iran will not be technically capable of producing and reprocessing enough plutonium for a weapon before about 2015.” ( U.S. National Intelligence Estimate Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities November 2007
-According to U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency Chief Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess, “The bottom line assessments of the [National Intelligence Estimate] still hold true, ” … We have not seen indication that the government has made the decision to move ahead with the [nuclear weapons] program.” (http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20100115_1438.php)
-According to Juan Cole, The NPT specifies that “Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination.” Therefore, as long as Iran meets its responsibilities under the NPT and continues to allow inspections by the IAEA, it is acting within its rights. The sorts of research facilities maintained by Iran are common in industrialized countries. The real issue is trust and transparency rather than purely one of technology. Yet, Iran has not always been forthcoming in fulfilling its obligations under the NPT.
The Ford administration of the mid-1970s produced a memo saying that the shah’s regime must “prepare against the time … when Iranian oil production is expected to decline sharply.” Iran ‘s energy reserves are extensive, so that fear was misplaced. But Iran already uses domestically 2 million of the 4 million barrels a day it produces, and it could well cease being an exporter and even become a net importer in the relatively near future. (This helps explain Iran’s focus on nuclear energy. Yet, the desire for nuclear weapons isn’t irrational either.) Ford authorized a plutonium reprocessing plant for Iran , which could have allowed it to close the fuel cycle, a step toward producing a bomb.
In the 1970s, GE and Westinghouse won contracts to build eight nuclear reactors in Iran . The shah intimated that Iran would seek nuclear weapons, without facing any adverse consequences beyond some reprimands from the U.S. or Western Europe . In contrast, Khomeini was horrified by the idea of using weapons of mass destruction, and he declined to deploy chemical weapons at the front in the Iran-Iraq War, even though Saddam had no such compunctions and extensively used mustard gas and sarin on Iranian troops. ( Juan Cole; Engaging the Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York: 2009)
19. Martin van Creveld: Distinguished professor of military history and strategy at Hebrew University in Jerusalem . ( http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/21/opinion/21iht-edcreveld_ed3_.html )
-It should not be surprising that Creveld would deem it rational for Iran to want nuclear weapons. “For more than half a century, Britain and the US have menaced Iran . In 1953, the CIA and MI6 overthrew the democratic government of Mohammed Mossadegh, an inspired nationalist who believed that Iranian oil belonged to Iran . They installed the venal shah and, through a monstrous creation called SAVAK, built one of the most vicious police states of the modern era. The Islamic revolution in 1979 was inevitable and very nasty, yet it was not monolithic and, through popular pressure and movement from within the elite, Iran has begun to open to the outside world – in spite of having sustained an invasion by Saddam Hussein, who was encouraged and backed by the US and Britain.
At the same time, Iran has lived with the real threat of an Israeli attack, possibly with nuclear weapons, about which the ‘international community’ has remained silent.” ( http://www.antiwar.com/orig/pilger.php?articleid=8533 )
20. 20%. ( Juan Cole; Engaging The Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York : 2009; p.197.)
21. 75%. ( Juan Cole; Engaging the Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; ( New York : 2009); p.197.)
-One wonders what the percentage of Canadians—or Americans—held the same view?
22. According to the Washington Post, “Just after the lightning takeover of Baghdad by U.S. forces … an unusual two-page document spewed out of a fax machine at the Near East bureau of the State Department. It was a proposal from Iran for a broad dialogue with the United States , and the fax suggested everything was on the table — including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups. But top Bush administration officials, convinced the Iranian government was on the verge of collapse, belittled the initiative. Instead, they formally complained to the Swiss ambassador who had sent the fax with a cover letter certifying it as a genuine proposal supported by key power centers in Iran …” ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/17/AR2006061700727_pf.html )
23. True. According to Ali M. Ansari, Professor of Iranian history at the University of St. Andrews, “[K]hatami, moved quickly to offer his condolences to the US President [after the 9/11 attacks]. … [T]he Iranians soon recognized the opportunity that now confronted them. The United States was determined to dismantle Al Qaeda, and in the face of Taleban obstinacy decided on the removal of the Taleban. Nothing could be more amenable to the Iranians, who had been waging a proxy war against the Taleban for the better part of five years. … The collaboration which took place both during and after the war against the Taleban seemed to inaugurate a period of détente between Iran and the United States … It came as something of a shock therefore to discover that President Bush had decided to label Iran part of the ‘Axis of Evil’ … Now it appeared that the [Iranian] hardliners within the regime had been correct after all; the United States could not be trusted …” ( Ali M. Ansari; Modern Iran: The Pahlavis and After Second Edition; Pearson Education; Great Britain: 2007; pp. 331-332.)
-One wonders what the Bush administration thought the party name entailed? Would it have been unreasonable to assume it had good relations with Iran and might support an Islamic Revolution?
-In 2007, the party, showing good public relations, changed its name to the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq .
25. Flynt Leverett: Senior director for Middle East affairs in the U.S. National Security Council from March 2002 to March 2003. He left the George W. Bush Administration and government service in 2003 because of disagreements about Middle East policy and the conduct of the war on terror. ( http://www.antiwar.com/orig/porter.php?articleid=8590 )
26. A task force sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations and chaired by two prominent members of the American foreign policy establishment, former CIA director Robert Gates and former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, recommended “a revised strategic approach to Iran.” Their report included the above statement. (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2005/mar/24/clouds-over-iran/?pagination=false )
Jeffrey Rudolph, a college professor in Montreal, was the Quebec representative of the East Timor Alert Network, and presented a paper on its behalf at the United Nations.Source
Two women and a girl have been killed and two men injured after Nato troops opened fire on a car in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.
Afghanistan’s interior ministry said that the victims were traveling on a highway in Zabul province on Friday when foreign troops opened fire, killing three of the five civilians in the car.
“A foreign forces convoy opened fire on a vehicle coming the other way, thinking they were Taliban,” Zemarai Bashary, the interior ministry spokesman, said.
“Two women and one girl were killed and one other woman was wounded.”
‘Investigation underway’
A spokesman for the Zabul governor said the troops were part of Nato’s US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and had stopped on the road to defuse a bomb.
“ISAF had to defuse a roadside bomb near a bridge when a small vehicle approached. ISAF told them to stop, fired a warning shot, then shot at the car,” Mohammad Jan Rasul Yar, the spokesman, said.
Eyewitnesses said that the troops, were carrying out house-to-house searches in a village, opened fire first without firing warning shots.
Nick Carter, the ISAF regional commander, said that the military was investigating the allegations but gave no further details.
Friday’s incident is the latest in a long list of civilians mistakenly killed by US-led troops fighting the Taliban.
It comes just weeks after US troops opened fire on a bus in the southern city of Kandahar, the Taliban’s spiritual capital, killing four civilians and sparking angry public protests.
It also comes one day after the French military admitted that its troops accidentally killed four children in eastern Afghanistan on April 6 in a missile attack. Source
More civilian deaths. They always have an excuse however as feeble as it is they always have one. They of course use the same sorry excuses over and over.
How do you accidentally kill 4 children? I don’t believe a word they say any more.
Afghans protest after U.S. military kills parliamentarian’s Relatives
April 29 2010
By Dion Nissenbaum
KABUL — Irate demonstrators burned tires and blocked traffic in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday after U.S.-led forces killed an armed relative of an Afghan lawmaker during a night raid on her home, according to military and Afghan officials.
The confrontation was another setback for the American-led military coalition in Afghanistan, which has declared an aim of reducing civilian deaths and winning support from skeptical Afghans as it prepares for a prolonged summer offensive meant to hobble the Taliban.
U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the head of coalition forces in Afghanistan, has issued a series of orders meant to curtail civilian deaths, which alienate the public and provide fodder for insurgents.
McChrystal recently put new constraints on controversial night raids, requiring Afghan forces to play an integral role and to take the lead when homes are entered.
The American military said Afghan soldiers took part in Wednesday night’s deadly search, but the Afghan family that was caught up in the raid questioned that contention.
“I didn’t see any Afghan forces,” said Shah Fasial Sidiqi, the younger brother of Afghan lawmaker Safiya Sidiqi and one of those whom U.S. forces held for several hours during the raid.
Demonstrators took to the streets in Nangarhar province Thursday as Safiya Sidiqi denounced the U.S. for the raid that killed one of her relatives.
“I was afraid of Taliban, and now I can say the Americans are the enemy of the women of Afghanistan,” she told McClatchy.
Sidiqi wasn’t home when the raid began late Wednesday night at her village in Nangarhar province, east of Kabul.
However, her brother, Shah Fasial Sidiqi, a resident of Canada who’d returned to Afghanistan earlier this week to visit his family, was there when the Americans came looking for a Taliban leader.
He said that more than 80 U.S. soldiers took over the family compound before midnight. The Americans tied up 15 men, women and children and blindfolded the Sidiqi relatives, he said.
The grocery store worker from Toronto said he told the Americans that they were taking over the home of a lawmaker.
“They said, ‘We know,’ ” he told McClatchy on Thursday.
During the search, Safiya Sidiqi said, one of her brothers-in-law emerged from a neighboring house with an old hunting rifle and was shot.
In a statement, U.S. forces said that the man was killed after he took aim at American and Afghan troops who were taking part in the raid. The news release said that intelligence had led them to search the homes for a “Taliban facilitator,” though no arrests were made.
The controversy is the latest to hamper U.S. efforts to win increased support from Afghans.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has long been critical of night raids. Last month, McChrystal imposed tighter rules on the operations.
An Afghan man is “conditioned to respond aggressively in defense of his home and his guests whenever he perceives his home or honor is threatened,” McChrystal said at the time.
“In a similar situation, most of us would do the same,” he said. “This reaction is compounded when our forces invade his home at night, particularly when women are present. Instinctive responses to defend his home and family are sometimes interpreted as insurgent acts, with tragic results.”
The directive was part of an ongoing effort by McChrystal that had some initial success in reducing civilian deaths.
Last year, civilian deaths due to American-led forces and the Afghan government fell by nearly 30 percent, according to a U.N. report this year. Civilian deaths rose 14 percent in 2009 and hit their highest levels of the decade. The U.S. and its allies were responsible for about a quarter of those 2,412 deaths, the U.N. report said.
Since then, the campaign to contain such deaths has had a series of setbacks.
There’s been a dramatic spike in civilian deaths in the first three months of this year. According to military figures, the international coalition and its Afghan allies killed 87 civilians in Afghanistan over that period, a significant jump from the first quarter of 2009, when the coalition said it was responsible for the deaths of 29 Afghan civilians.
American officials said the jump was the result, in part, of accelerated military operations and a flood of new troops into Afghanistan.
Even so, a series of military missteps in recent months has undermined McChrystal’s overriding message.
Earlier this month, the U.S. military apologized for a botched special forces raid in February that killed five civilians, including two pregnant women.
The military was forced to admit responsibility for the deaths after The Times of London questioned the official version of the attack, which suggested that Taliban fighters had killed the women.
Two weeks ago, protesters denounced the United States after American forces in Kandahar killed four civilians when they fired on a bus that was following a military convoy outside the city.
On Thursday, U.S. military officials said they were looking into the latest controversy.
“We are taking Safiya Sidiqi’s allegations seriously and thoroughly reviewing our actions and intelligence connecting the Taliban facilitator to that particular compound,” said U.S. Army Col. Wayne Shanks, the chief of public affairs for the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.
Shah Fasial Sidiqi criticized the Americans for the raid and said that even if his relative was armed, they shouldn’t have killed him in the murky circumstances.
“This is a shame for America,” he said. “They are worse than the Taliban.” Source
They should not have raided the home in the first place. Considering they knew who’s home they were raiding. Seems the US doesn’t care who they kill.
This is Another one of their accidents I guess.
“Tied up, gagged and killed” was how NATO described the “gruesome discovery” of three women’s bodies during a night raid in eastern Afghanistan in which several alleged militants were shot dead on Feb. 12.
In Afghanistan, filmmaker Jamie Doran has uncovered evidence of a massacre: Taliban prisoners of war who surrendered were suffocated in containers, shot in the desert. Those who survived in the containers were shot.
Afghan massacre the convoy of death 50 minutes Democracy Now aired the film in May 2003
Trade union members march in May Day celebrations in downtown Kiev on Saturday. About 4,000 people rallied in Ukraine’s capital. (Sergei Chuzavkov/Associated Press)
Indonesian workers shout slogans during a May Day rally in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Saturday (AP photo by Dita Alangkara)
