Gitmo Trials Rigged! I mean really, really rigged!

This just in from the Nation:

"Now, as the murky, quasi-legal staging of the Bush Administration's military commissions unfolds, a key official has told The Nation that the trials have been rigged from the start. According to Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for Guantánamo's military commissions, the process has been manipulated by Administration appointees to foreclose the possibility of acquittal. "

Read more...

Castro Retires Quietly into Sunset; US Foiled Again... "Give It Up, Sam"

Fidel Castro has just announced his retirement. And as Sarah Stephens put it so well, we should retire our disastrous Cuban policy too ... finally, and so many years too late.

This is the event that fifty years of U.S. policy was designed to stop.

Fidel Castro has announced his retirement. He will be replaced in a peaceful succession, without the violent upheaval that U.S. policy makers have been predicting since the 1960s.
Now that Fidel Castro has announced his retirement, it's time to retire our Cold War era Cuba policy. It failed.

Every U.S. president since Eisenhower has tried to kill or topple Fidel Castro and replace Cuba's government and economic system with something more to our liking. They never succeeded.
It was the express purpose of the U.S. embargo, with sanctions more comprehensive than any we impose on Iran, North Korea, Sudan, or Syria to stop this transition. But it couldn't.

For years, the U.S. embargo has been rebuked in lop-sided votes in the U.N. General Assembly. On October 30, 2007, when we were last drubbed by a margin of 184 to 4 (and one abstention), not a single country in South America, Central America or the Caribbean supported our policy. Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic, three countries praised by President Bush one week earlier for their support of U.S. policy against Cuba, joined the condemnation -- so did Afghanistan, the United Kingdom, and South Africa, a nation whose democracy was born with the help of U.S. sanctions.

As the Cuba embargo sullies our image around the world, it undermines the national interest and our highest values here at home. The embargo sacrifices the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens to travel. It cruelly divides Cuban families on both sides of the Florida straits. Trade sanctions cost U.S. businesses about $1 billion annually, and deny U.S. citizens access to vaccines and other medical treatments. Enforcing the embargo drains resources from the war on terror. By isolating the American people from the Cuban people, we stop our citizens from doing what Americans do best; we can't offer Cubans our support or our ideas, and we're unable to benefit from what they could offer us.

I have been to Cuba close to thirty times in the last seven years and I have spoken to Cubans of every stripe -- fans of the revolution and diehard opponents of President Castro.
Cubans by their nature have vastly divergent opinions, except on one fundamental point: it is Cubans living on the island -- not politicians in Washington, not their kinsmen in Miami -- who must decide for themselves what happens next in Cuba. They cherish their sovereignty, they reject violence and instability, and they want the United States to respect those values as much as they do, especially now that they can see a future past President Fidel Castro and beyond the 50th year of their revolution.

There is a debate happening in Cuba right now, triggered by Raúl Castro on economic reform that is remarkable in its sweep. Leaders have spoken to us with unusual candor about the inability of Cubans to keep pace with prices, but they are committed to raising living standards in ways that are consistent with the preservation of Cuba's political system. We have to have clear minds about their intentions for this debate, its limits, and where it might lead.
Now would be a perfect time to send the long overdue signal that the United States is no threat to Cuba's national security, that we honor the aspirations of average Cubans, and that we are capable of having a constructive relationship with their government.

If President Bush cannot answer the call to history that has been issued in Havana, perhaps his successor will respond with greater imagination when he or she takes office in Washington next year.

People here should not misunderstand this historic moment: the Cubans we know, even determined political opponents of Fidel Castro, are proud of their country, proud of its accomplishments, and persuaded that only Cubans in Cuba -- not politicians in Washington or hardliners in Miami -- have the right and responsibility to determine their own destiny. We owe them that opportunity, now more than ever.

Irony of Gitmo Six

This gem from Sebastian Meyer:

To sum it up: They are there because the Geneva Convention does not apply
to them. Now they must die, because they broke the Geneva Convention.

Why Try the Gitmo 6 for 9/11 Now? It's a Slick PR Job, a Coverup

Andy Worthington's excellent article exposes the real purpose of this oddly-timed death-penalty-charged announcement that six suspects/detainees at Guantanamo Bay will be tried for 9/11-based crimes: it's intended as a PR coup against the mounting anti-torture, anti-Gitmo pressure bearing down on the Bush/Cheney administration.

The announcement of the charges is immensely significant. In one fell
swoop, many of the complaints about Guantánamo appear to have been swept aside.
These, chiefly, have centered on well-founded claims that the prison has mostly
held innocent men or low-level Taliban foot soldiers. Of the 749 detainees who
were held at the prison during its first two and half years of existence, none,
according to dozens of high-level military and intelligence sources interviewed
by the New York Times in June 2004, “ranked as leaders or senior operatives of
al-Qaeda,” and “only a relative handful — some put the number at about a dozen,
others more than two dozen —were sworn Qaeda members or other militants able to
elucidate the organization’s inner workings.”

So we're supposed to believe it was all about 9/11 after all. We're finally putting on trial those "worst of the worst" dangerous terrorists and ridding the world of al-Qaeda and making justice and freedom and democracy a top US priority again.

In charging detainees for their alleged connections with the 9/11 attacks,
the administration has also managed to divert attention away from the stumbling
progress of the trial system which will be used to prosecute the six men. The Military Commissions, dreamt up by Vice President Dick Cheney and his advisors in November 2001, judged illegal by the Supreme Court in June 2006 and reinstated later that year in the Military Commissions Act (MCA), have struggled repeatedly to establish their legitimacy.

So we're gonna shove aside all those nasty investigations and PR disasters surrounding torture, detention without trial, and coverups of the above for mostly INNOCENT people whom most Americans still think of as terrorists anyway, by this huge show of a terror trial.

Described by former military defense lawyer Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift as fatally flawed because they included “no right to habeas corpus, no attorney-client privilege, forced guilty pleas for charges never made public, secret and coerced evidence, juries and presiding officers picked by executive fiat, [and] clients represented even if they declined legal counsel,” the Commission process was supposedly cleaned up during the passage of the MCA, so that prosecutors are prevented from using secret evidence or evidence obtained through torture (although the use of information obtained through “controversial forms of coercion” — torture, perhaps, by any other name — remains at the discretion of the government-appointed military judge), but they have failed, to date, to secure a single significant victory.

Their only alleged success — in the case of David Hicks, who accepted a plea
bargain in March last year, admitting that he provided “material support for
terrorism” and dropping well-documented claims that he was tortured by
US forces in exchange for a nine-month sentence served in Australia —
was undermined last fall by Col. Morris Davis, the Commissions’ former chief prosecutor, who resigned his post and then complained that the entire system was compromised by political interference. Currently, the Commissions are bogged down in pre-trial hearings for two detainees — alleged “child soldier” Omar Khadr, and Salim Hamdan, a driver for Osama bin Laden — whose cases have done nothing to assuage widespread concerns that the whole process remains both unjust and futile.

Yet Bush wants with this Great 9/11 Trial Show to brush aside all these disasters and vital considerations. It's not about justice or democracy or freedom to Bush/Cheney. It's about PR and keeping power on the executive side and his agenda, a secret agenda that looks really horrible upon scrutiny.

And there's another point in the timing:

It is surely no coincidence, for example, that it came just six days after Michael Hayden, the director of the CIA, admitted that three of the “high-value” detainees —
including KSM — had been subjected to waterboarding, a long-reviled torture
technique that simulates drowning.

And now that Congress has voted against torture, it looks even worse that Bush will veto it, thus making himself the Torture President. Oh, and it's illegal...

Under its international obligations — as a signatory to the UN Convention Against Torture, for example, which makes it a crime for American officials to torture people outside the United States — the administration is prohibited from practicing torture, and waterboarding is clearly torture.

But nobody's gonna impeach Bush or Cheney. And the PR keeps on coming. But will there really be a fair trial? How can it be possible if all the evidence was obtained by illegal means - namely, torture? That's another issue behind Bush's veto. If he doesn't veto this, what does that say about the evidence that was obtained against these Gitmo Six? After all, most of the evidence against them

...all came about during the three to four years that these men spent in a
succession of secret prisons run by the CIA. Moreover, it was in these prisons
that, in contrast to Michael Hayden’s claim that, of the six, only KSM was
waterboarded, CIA operatives who spoke to ABC News in
November 2005 said that 12 “high-value” detainees in total were subjected to an
array of “enhanced interrogation techniques.” These included not only
waterboarding, but also “Long Time Standing,” in which prisoners “are forced to
stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for
more than 40 hours,” and “The Cold Cell,” in which the prisoner “is left to
stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees,” and is “doused with cold water”
throughout the whole period.
These statements make it clear that torture — which, in case we forget, is condemned not just because it is morally repugnant, but also because the confessions it produces are unreliable — contaminates almost the whole basis of yesterday’s charges, and casts doubt on at least some of the government’s assertions.

So how are we supposed to believe now that these detainees really did what they confessed to, since their confessions were coerced with the worst of methods, internationally recognized methods of torture? And what about Mohammad Al-Qahtani, who was subjected to the following:

As Time magazine revealed in an interrogation log (PDF) made
available in 2005, al-Qahtani was interrogated for 20 hours a day over a 50-day
period in late 2002 and early 2003, when he was also subjected to extreme sexual
humiliation (including being smeared with fake menstrual blood by a female
interrogator), threatened by a dog, strip-searched and made to stand naked, and
made to bark like a dog and growl at pictures of terrorists. On one occasion he
was subjected to a “fake rendition,” in which he was tranquilized, flown off the
island, revived, flown back to Guantánamo, and told that he was in a country
that allowed torture.

Are we supposed to accept evidence or confessions obtained under those conditions or by these methods? Are we supposed to assume that people accused of terrorism, if they are Muslim, are so depraved as to be only capable of admitting facts under the most horrific of coercion methods? And then we are supposed to feel justified in convicting and executing them, thus assuaging the anger and horror of 9/11? But we're not supposed to be angry or feel any fear or horror about how we reached this point, right?

In addition, as I explain in my book The Guantánamo Files,
“The sessions were so intense that the interrogators worried that the cumulative
lack of sleep and constant interrogation posed a risk to his health. Medical
staff checked his health frequently — sometimes as often as three times a day —
and on one occasion, in early December, the punishing routine was suspended for
a day when, as a result of refusing to drink, he became seriously dehydrated and
his heart rate dropped to 35 beats a minute. While a doctor came to see him in
the booth, however, loud music was played to prevent him from sleeping.”
Even more significant, perhaps, is what al-Qahtani’s torture reveals about how the
whole process that led to these proposed trials could have, and should have been
different.

It was the interrogation of al-Qahtani that finally prompted the FBI — which was already alarmed at the random, self-defeating violence at Guantánamo
perpetrated by other agencies — to make an official complaint to the Pentagon in
June 2004, highlighting abuses witnessed by its agents and singling out
al-Qahtani’s treatment for particular criticism. The letter stated that
al-Qahtani was “subjected to intense isolation for over three months” and began “evidencing behavior consistent with extreme psychological trauma (talking to non existent people, reporting hearing voices, crouching in a cell covered with a sheet for hours on end).”

Reports of al-Qahtani’s treatment also provoked a
heroic attempt by Alberto J. Mora, the director of the Naval Criminal
Investigative Service (NCIS) to persuade the Pentagon to call off the use of
“enhanced interrogation.” Mora was ultimately unsuccessful — Donald Rumsfeld
temporarily dropped the use of the techniques, but secretly mandated a new panel
of pliant experts to reapprove them in an essentially undiluted form — but the
complaints of both the FBI and the NCIS indicate how the interrogation process
should have proceeded.

In fact, these torture methods have destroyed any hope of obtaining justice for 9/11 or even of fighting terrorism itself. It's known that torture does not produce reliable evidence. It's as if Bush/Cheney just want heads to roll, no matter what. Screw justice, truth, or anything else. What does that say about us, about the rule of law, about democracy or freedom, or justice? It says none of that is important. All that matters is power, PR, and propaganda.

Dan Coleman, one of these old-school FBI interrogators, who retired from
the agency in 2004, knows exactly where the faults lie with the Pentagon-led
policy of combating terror with torture. As a top-level interrogator, who
interrogated many of the terrorists captured before 9/11 (and convicted in the
US courts) without resorting to “enhanced interrogation,” Coleman remains
fundamentally opposed to torture, because it is unreliable, and because it
corrupts those who undertake it.
“Brutalization doesn’t work,” he said. “We know that. Besides, you
lose your soul.”

US May Have Erased Evidence that Could Help Gitmo Detainees

As Josh White reported:

Lawyers representing military detainees at Guantanamo Bay have expressed concern that the government has violated a federal court order by losing or erasing
several years' worth of digital video recordings that could shed light on the
legality of detainee treatment.
The concerns are based in part on a recent court filing by Guantanamo's commander, Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby, who said video surveillance recordings in several areas of the facility have been automatically overwritten and no longer exist.
"In January 2008, it was brought to my attention that such . . . [recording] systems may have been automatically overwriting video data contained on recording devices, at predetermined intervals," Buzby wrote. "That is, only a specified number of days' worth of recorded data could be retained on the recording devices at a time."
Defense lawyers said the admission suggests that the military has not complied with a 2005 court order to preserve such evidence, even if the deletion of the
recordings was inadvertent. They claim that the tapes were of potential use at
forthcoming court hearings and trials, a view supported by a Seton Hall University report slated to be released today.
The report, "Captured on Tape," asserts that officials at the facility recorded more than 20,000 interrogations at Guantanamo Bay. It cited FBI statements and military investigative reports as a basis for concluding that video cameras were in interrogation booths and tapes existed.
"All interrogations are videotaped," said an April 13, 2005, report by the Office of the Army Surgeon General on operations at Guantanamo Bay, cited in the Seton Hall study. Pentagon officials declined to discuss the report or comment on the videotaping.
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Hard-Wired Politics: Is the Liberal/Conservative Divide In Our Genes??

Now that politics are really heating up, some scientific studies suggest we should take a hard look at how much influence all those political shows and pundits really have. First, check the wiring: could we really be born to have one political leaning or another? Is it all in our genes? As reported in New Scientist, several studies on twins and personality traits indicate that our politics are really hard-wired. Seriously - we're naming names, like D4DR, the "conservative" gene; or MAOA, the "get out the vote" gene; or 5HTT, the "liberal" gene. OK ... not exactly. But "The point is that certain genes shape personality traits, and these are linked to political opinion." In this view,

... political positions are substantially determined by biology and
can be stubbornly resistant to reason. "These views are deep-seated and built
into our brains. Trying to persuade someone not to be liberal is like trying to
persuade someone not to have brown eyes. We have to rethink persuasion," says John Alford, a political scientist at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

Does this mean talking heads are wasting our time? How, oh how, could that be? No, it can't be! But then, maybe there's another side to this. Consider the evidence.

In 2005, Alford published a paper in which he analysed two decades of work in behavioural genetics, including a huge database containing the political
opinions of 30,000 twins from Virginia (American Political Science Review, vol 99, p 153). He found that identical twins were more likely than non-identical twins to give the same answers to political questions. For example, on the issue of whether property should be taxed, four-fifths of identical twins gave the same answer, compared to two-thirds of non-identical twins.

This and similar results were then joined to another study of the relationship between personality type and political viewpoint.

In 2003, John Jost, a psychologist at New York University, and colleagues
surveyed 88 studies, involving more than 20,000 people in 12 countries, that
looked for a correlation between personality traits and political orientation
(American Psychologist, vol 61, p 651).

People who scored highly on a scale measuring fear of death, for example, were almost four times more likely to hold conservative views. Dogmatic types were also more conservative, while those who expressed interest in new experiences tended to be liberals. Jost's review also noted research showing that conservatives prefer simple and unambiguous paintings, poems and songs.

Which explains why Britney Spears, for example, voted for Bush. Or why Clinton played jazz sax. But it doesn't explain why Tony Snow played jazz flute. Nor, for that matter, why Dan Rather likes "simple" folk music. Or Britney Spears' apparent penchant for "new experiences". Is Munch's The Scream not very unambiguous? Then why does Norway have socialized medicine? Is this an exact science or what?

Many psychologists believe personality can be categorised into five
classes, relating to conscientiousness, openness, extroversion, agreeableness
and neuroticism. The latter two seem to have little to do with political
orientation. Scores on the conscientiousness scale, however, show a significant
correlation with position within the political spectrum.

A much stronger link exists between political orientation and openness,
which psychologists define as including traits such as an ability to accept new
ideas, a tolerance for ambiguity and an interest in different cultures. When
these traits are combined, people with high openness scores turn out to be
almost twice as likely to be liberals.

Combine the genetic influences on personality with the political tendencies of different personality types, and the idea that genetics shapes political tendencies seems very plausible indeed. All of the big five personality traits are highly heritable (Journal of Research in Personality, vol 32, p 431), with several studies suggesting that around half of the variation in openness scores is a result of genetic differences.

This idea was further developed to show that these and other personality traits could be traced to specific genes, as I named above - so you can check your genome before you vote. Or at least, stop arguing with your neocon Uncle - it's useless.

However, the world of politics tends to be much more complex, and what we're talking about are that most occult thing, tendencies, making this theory sound strangely like astrology, also known for making fairly good predictions every so often. And although my political tendency is liberal, I also have a practical tendency that tells me Kucinich won't fly through a general election filled with people whose fear of death by Afghanis in New York trumps their fear of future grand-generations living in a third world has-been America. Barack Obama didn't bring up Reagan because he loves him, but because he hopes to win votes from the general population who don't know any better. So if it's all hard-wired to begin with, maybe that explains why we keep trying to choose people in the center.

But there's another angle to this.

In a paper presented in April 2007 to the annual conference of the Midwest Political Science Association, held in Chicago, Ira Carmen, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, discussed D4DR, a gene involved in regulating levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Itis known that high levels of dopamine can cause obsessive-compulsive disorder. Carmen speculates that dopamine might therefore be linked to the need to impose order on the world. If so, variants of the D4DR gene that lead to higher levels of dopamine should be found more frequently in conservatives.

Can we circumvent this genetic thing by developing dopamine inhibitors? Or, conversely, would conservatives secretly inject liberals with dopamine to "sway" them to the viewpoint that we need to simply eliminate taxes, go to war, build more missiles and weaponry, and eliminate those "social services" that are such a burden on the patriotic people who really deserve those inspiring wars?

At any rate, it's not all cut-n-dried. Many, not all of them conservatives, note that the personality-trait thing is rather hard to pin down, and that many are based on assumptions.

Personality studies in particular have been singled out as sloppy science, in part because qualitative traits like openness cannot be measured in the way that height or eye colour can.

Evan Charney, a political scientist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, noticed a more suspicious trend.

...a rather unflattering view of conservatives emerges from the studies. They are portrayed as dogmatic, routine-loving individuals, while liberals come across as free-spirited and open-minded folk. "I keep expecting Jost to show that conservatism is negatively correlated with penis size," jokes Charney. He feels that inherent biases in the make-up of academia, which is dominated by liberals, leads to the "pathologising of conservatism".

He should worry more about correlating the neocon type, in particular, with cerebellum size, for which I'm sure there's more powerful evidence than The Scream. And it doesn't explain why my father, a preacher who voted for Nixon, unexpectedly walked out of his church to join me and a large number of others marching down the main street in protest against the Vietnam War.

If there are political genes, then it may be a sign that built-in conflict and disagreement is a good thing. But in either case, I believe there are both universals - "self-evident truths" - to which we all intuitively agree, and complexities, in which we are all inextricably entangled. The genome is, after all, not encased in a crystal ball.

Guernica II: Remote-Control Massacre

Dahr Jamail again comes through with this insightful, if devastating, report on what the U.S. bombing strategy really brought about in Iraq - and what kind of future our continued military effort there would bring. On January 10, U.S. bombers and F-16's attacked an area south of Baghdad.

The use of B1 bombers shows the terrible failure of the U.S. campaign in
Iraq," Iraqi Major General Muhammad al-Azzawy, a military researcher in Baghdad, told IPS. "U.S. military and political tactics failed in this area, and that is
why this massacre. This kind of bombing is usually used for much bigger targets
than small villages full of civilians. This was savagery."

The attack on Juboor and neighbouring villages just south of Baghdad
had begun a week earlier with heavy artillery and tank bombardment. The attack
followed strong resistance from members of the mainly Sunni Muslim al-Juboor
tribe against groups that residents described as sectarian death squads.

"On Jan. 10, huge aircraft started bombing the villages," Ahmad Alwan
from a village near Juboor told IPS. "We took our families and fled. We have
never seen such bombardment since the 2003 American invasion. They were bombing everything and everybody."

Residents said two B1 bombers and four F-16 fighter jets dropped at
least 40,000 pounds of explosives on the villages and plantations within a span
of 10 minutes.

"The al-Qaeda name is used once more to destroy another Sunni area,"
Akram Naji, a lawyer in Baghdad who has relatives in Juboor told IPS. "Americans
are still supporting Iranian influence in Iraq by cleansing Baghdad and
surroundings of Sunnis."

But do Americans who pay for this war hear any of this news? Not if they listen to mainstream news. Note that Sunnis feel Americans are "supporting Iranian influence" while mainstream U.S. news reports the diametrical opposite. Note that the U.S. frequently shows hostility in word and deed towards Iran's Shi'a President Ahmedinejad, while maintaining a friendly attitude towards Sunni Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. Yet Sunnis in Iraq are interpreting this bombing as an attack on them personally, using al-Qaeda as a ruse.

Now note how the bombing is played out in the media. Tom Englehardt analyzes various American news sources, showing how they buried the true story in lion's skin of terror-fighting.

A January 21st Los Angeles Times Iraq piece by Ned Parker and Saif Rasheed led with an inter-tribal suicide bombing at a gathering in Fallujah in which members
of the pro-American Anbar Awakening Council were killed. ...Twenty-six
paragraphs later, the story ended this way:
"The U.S. military also said in a statement that it had dropped 19,000 pounds of explosives on the farmland of Arab Jabour south of Baghdad. The strikes targeted buried bombs and weapons caches.
"In the last 10 days, the military has dropped nearly 100,000 pounds
of explosives on the area, which has been a gateway for Sunni militants into
Baghdad."
And here's paragraph 22 of a 34-paragraph January 22nd story by Stephen Farrell of the New York Times:
"The threat from buried bombs was well known before the
[Arab Jabour] operation. To help clear the ground, the military had dropped
nearly 100,000 pounds of bombs to destroy weapons caches and I.E.D.'s."

Farrell led his piece with news that an American soldier had died in Arab
Jabour from an IED that blew up "an MRAP, the new Mine-Resistant
Ambush-Protected armored vehicle that the American military is counting on to
reduce casualties from roadside bombs in Iraq."

Note that both pieces started with bombing news -- in one case a suicide bombing that killed several Iraqis; in another a roadside bombing that killed an American soldier and wounded others. But the major bombing story of these last days -- those 100,000 pounds of explosives that U.S. planes dropped in a small area south of Baghdad -- simply dangled unexplained off the far end of the Los Angeles Times piece; while, in the New York Times, it was buried inside a single sentence.

Neither paper has (as far as I know) returned to the subject, though this is undoubtedly the most extensive use of air power in Iraq since the Bush administration's invasion of 2003 and probably represents a genuine shifting of American military strategy in that country. Despite a few humdrum wire service pieces, no place else in the mainstream has bothered to cover the story adequately either.

How many civilian casualties were there? Who were the civilians? What strategic interests were the U.S. supposedly "protecting" by this attack? What intelligence, if any, led to this area as a strategic target? Who did they think they were killing vs. who did they actually kill? What was gained by this, if anything?

Since Americans pay for this war, as I said, they should know what the hell is going on. But that's not going to happen, apparently. Someone has an agenda, and it's either a very blood experiment in Chaos Theory, a horrific way to nab oil rights in an era when we're supposed to be going green, or just empire-lust run amok. But it's not, no not at all, to "defend freedom", "fight terrorism", or promote democracy. This can't by any stretch of any Republican fantasy, be for that purpose.

Mr. Englehardt then makes a correlation between the bombing of Guernica, Spain, of Picasso's famous painting fame, in which up to 10,000 civilians were killed by - and this is the connection - 100,000 lbs. of explosives. The same as the U.S. bombing on Abu Jaboor in Iraq - 100,000 lbs. of explosives. But back then in 1937,

The self-evident barbarism of the event -- the first massively publicized
bombing of a civilian population -- caused international horror. It was news
across the planet. From it came perhaps the most famous painting of the last
century, Picasso's Guernica, as well as innumerable novels, plays, poems, and other works of art.

Fast-forward to Iraq 2008, and 100,000 lbs. of explosives dropped by American bombs on small farming villages south of Baghdad is barely worth a couple of yawns. More war stats. Can't cut it against Britney Spears celebrinsania.

As far as we know, there were no reporters, Iraqi or Western, in Arab
Jabour when the bombs fell and, Iraq being Iraq, no American reporters rushed
there -- in person or by satellite phone -- to check out the damage. In Iraq and
Afghanistan, when it comes to the mainstream media, bombing is generally only
significant if it's of the roadside or suicide variety; if, that is, the "bombs"
can be produced at approximately "the cost of a pizza" (as IEDs sometimes are), or if the vehicles delivering them are cars or simply fiendishly well-rigged human bodies. From the air, even 100,000 pounds of bombs just doesn't have the ring of something that matters.

Some of this, of course, comes from the Pentagon's success in creating a
dismissive, sanitizing language in which to frame war from the air. "Collateral
damage" stands in for the civilian dead -- even though in much of modern war,
the collateral damage could be considered the dead soldiers, not the ever rising percentage of civilian casualties. And death is, of course, delivered "precisely" by "precision-guided" weaponry. All this makes air war seem sterile, even virginal. Army Col. Terry Ferrell, for instance, described the air assaults in Arab Jabour in this disembodied way at a Baghdad news conference:

"The purpose of these particular strikes was to shape the battlefield and take out known threats before our ground troops move in. Our aim was to neutralize any advantage the enemy could claim with the use of IEDs and other weapons."

You've got non-military verbs strategically placed with battlefield nouns. It creates that all-important bloodless "look". It's almost like selling insurance: "policy", "claim", "planning", etc. The purpose is to keep you, the taxpayer, slightly bored, yet reassured that this war was doing something good, serving some purpose, like "keeping America free."

As that phrase "take out known threats before our ground troops move in" made clear, this was an attempt to minimize casualties among American (and allied Iraqi) troops by bringing massive amounts of firepower to bear in a situation in which local information was guaranteed to be sketchy at best. Given such a scenario, civilians will always suffer. And this, increasingly, is likely to be the American way of war in Iraq.

As Mr. Englehardt sums the math up succinctly:

Anyway, here's the simple calculus that goes with all this: Militarily,
overstretched American forces simply cannot sustain the ground part of the surge
for much longer. Most, if not all, of those 30,000 troops who surged into Iraq
in the first half of 2007 will soon be coming home. But air power won't be. Air
Force personnel are already on short, rotating tours of duty in the region. In
Vietnam back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as ground troops were withdrawn,
air power ramped up. This seems once again to be the pattern. There is every
reason to believe that it represents the American future in Iraq.

And air war means civilian deaths far outnumber the death of actual soldiers - or "militants", as they are now called. For there's not even parity in terms anymore. Our military are "heroes" or "soldiers"; theirs are "insurgents", "militants" or "terrorists". In fact, the name al-Qaeda has come to be used loosely to refer to any Sunni fighters/insurgents. Hence their perception that the U.S. wants to eliminate Sunnis per se.

So if anyone can articulate what we are fighting for, whom we are fighting, and why, in any logical or meaningful way, please let me know. All the reasons presented so far are about as relevant as a random page out of tax law. So bloodless. So mundane. So ordinary. So easy to forget. Almost like a video game. At least, that's what taxpayers are supposed to think. And never, ever even mention or think, don't dare to say, that it's a filthy, bloody, messy, sickening, mind-numbing, sanity-busting, nearly-pointless, remote-control massacre.

Most Americans Figured It Out: Why Can't the Politicians...?

...get out of Iraq, that is.

Why are we in a recession? It's the war, stupid.

It's perhaps one of the main reasons Obama is riveting more than solid "party" and "experienced" Hillary & McCain - those two supported this catastrophic, ill-begotten war that has basically gutted the U.S. economy, its moral fiber, its stance as "leader of the world". Obama did not. And he's not on the extremes like Ron Paul, another rare "no" vote for the war in Iraq.

So the polls have it.

The way to get the country out of recession - and most people think we're
in one - is to get the country out of Iraq, according to an Associated
Press-Ipsos poll.
Pulling out of the war ranked first among proposed remedies in the survey, followed by spending more on domestic programs, cutting taxes and, at the bottom end, giving rebates to poor people in hopes they'll spend the economy into recovery.

Too bad we can't govern by referendum. If only they'd listen to the polls when it comes to policy, instead of only when they run for office.

Forty-eight percent said a pullout would help fix the country's economic
problems "a great deal," and an additional 20 percent said it would help at
least somewhat.
... 65 percent of Democrats think it would help the economy a lot,
but only 18 percent of Republicans think so.

Talk about groupthink. Republicans believe what Daddy W sez, and he sez we pay you money, and everything will be all right. What they don't seem to grasp is that Daddy doesn't have any money, yet he's planning to spend 11 billion a month until sometime, maybe 3:30 pm, on the afternoon of Eternity. Or when America bleeds to death, one devalued dollar at a time. Let's get a Democrat in there, before it does.

Iran Internet Cut Off: Is It War Against Iran Oil Bourse?

Buzzing all over the net: 5 internet cables in the Middle East cut off, some only a few kilometers apart, interrupting internet connectivity to Egypt, India, Qatar, and mostly, yes, most completely, to Iran... although all this is in the fact-meets-speculation stage. One of many synopses:

A ship's anchor severed one undersea Internet cable damaged last week, it
was revealed on Thursday amid ongoing outages in the Middle East and South Asia,
but mystery shrouds what caused another four reported cuts.
There has been speculation that five cables being cut in almost as many days was too much of a coincidence and that sabotage must have been involved.

It's too early to really assess the situation, but the timing is definitely significant. Namely, Iran's announcement that it will not trade its oil in U.S. Dollars. The impact of such a move, especially if it's emulated by others, which is a real possibility, could bring disaster, as eloquently explained by Len Hart of Existentialist Cowboy:

Certainly, when oil is no longer traded in dollars, it is not only the
dollar that will collapse. It means that the US --on the bad end of a huge
balance of trade deficit --will no longer be able to afford to import goods or
services. For a nation that long ago (Reagan years primarily; See Vidal, cited)
gave up its role as a manufacturing nation, this collapse will be monumental,
catastrophic. The fact that oil had been traded in dollars was the only thing
propping up the dollar.

This, in turn, could lead to our overextended debtor nation still called America to an economic tragedy on an unprecedented scale. So cutting off the internet, in comparison, looks sort of like a desperate prelude to war. War on Iran's threat - its economic threat to our empire.

Monitoring the news today --it is clear that the Middle East cables were
deliberately sabotaged and the effect has been to cut Iran off the internet.
Isolating a nation by cutting off its systems of communication is a first step
preceding a military attack. Bush no longer cares about even the pretense of
pre-text! His charge that Iran has weaponized grade fuels is universally and
credibly debunked. The real threat is to the poohbahs of US empire --the
Military/Industrial complex.

The spectre of impending doom, however, will not just trickle down. It may just avalanche down.

That there was a demand for dollars because there was a demand for oil
meant that you could continue to buy imported goods with dollars. Now --imagine
a world in which no other country need "purchase" dollars in order to import
oil! What if oil producing nations agree to accept other currencies? What if
they refuse to accept dollars? Go to Wal-Mart or even your local supermarket.
Almost everything on the shelves is imported.

How are we going to afford our lifestyles if we have to import things we can't pay for? Will the dollar ultimately become worthless? And another issue: what will all the victims of our senseless wars fighting "monsters" like the bin Laden "Antichrist", all those millions of refugees, all those families robbed of their homes, what will they do to, or about, us - or shall I say, US?

With this hanging, unspoken, like a looming cloud overhead, an unknown possibility, and with all our money hanging on the petroleum trade, is there any question now why we are in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East, fawning over Saudi Arabia while blindfolding everyone we can, in order to shore up an empire that collapsed decades ago by invading every oil-rich piece of earth we can manage to invade? Yet that only makes things much worse.

It's Republican mismanagement and squander on wars that devalued the dollar, and now when oil-producers don't want to trade in dollars they become Enemy Number One. It's sabotage time... But to the deluded Petrocorporate War machine, they're Hans Brinker putting his finger in the dam. Let's expose them before it's too late: it isn't even their dam.

It's the War Economy, Cupid!

While the candidates duke it out on SuperTuesday, the economy still looms as Issue #1. But we can't ignore the War on Terror as a major source of economic drain. Although it's not the only drain. Perhaps the candidates should bear in mind some advice from a Founding Father, one whose advice seems right on-the-money, yet basically trashed by the Republican/neocon dynasty.

In fact, it's the very sense of this trashing of values and at the same time being sunk in a dynastic chain of unbreakable power that gives Obama the edge, that gives the otherwise golden Hillary that let's-think-twice voter retreat. But all could use a dose of fatherly wisdom:

"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of
fighting a foreign enemy. Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps
the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every
other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and
armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad."

-- James Madison

Here's some opinion on the subject of budget-screwing-n-skewing from DownsizeDC:

It is because the policies of both parties, and all administrations, on both economics and civil liberties, have combined to create a perfect storm that will manifest itself in an economic way. Foremost among the forces in the approaching economic storm will be the unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare.

There will be fewer young people working to create wealth, and more non-working people consuming an increasingly vast portion of what wealth there is. More elderly people also inevitably means there will be more sick people, demanding more health care. As a result . . .The federal government will lack the revenue to keep its Social Security and Medicare promises. The shortfall in funding is estimated variously at between $53 trillion and $80 trillion. We will have much more to say about this in the month's ahead. Suffice it to say that the spending policies of the federal government must change. They must change dramatically, and they must change now.

But they are not changing. President Bush has just proposed America's first $3 trillion budget. This budget projects near record deficits exceeding $400 billion dollars for each of the next two years, adding nearly one trillion dollars to the national debt in just twenty four months. And more debt means that more of your income taxes will go to pay the interest on the debt, instead of current operating expenses. The nature of the President's spending proposals also highlights the intersection between our government's war on our pocketbooks and its on-going war on the Bill of Rights. Our government has . . .

• Spent trillions projecting U.S. power around the globe . . .


• Provoking blowback in the form of terrorism, which . . .


• Has served as an excuse for the war on the Bill of Rights

The President's current budget proposal promises more of the same. It freezes most spending except for national defense, which will rise by 7% for the Pentagon and 11% for Homeland Security. The grand total for the defense budget is a whopping $515 billion, and this does not include spending for Iraq! But . . .

It seems to us that our defense establishment is perfectly tailored to fight enemies we do not have, and to create the conditions of occupation and aggressive forward projection that serve as a recruitment pitch for the enemies we do have. We are paying through the nose to make ourselves less safe, to hasten bankruptcy, and to shred our Constitution. Meanwhile, our economy crumbles.

Do You Really Want a Democratic President? Obamasize!

He's picked up the endorsements of over 100 notable feminists, CA 1st Lady Maria Shriver, Ted Kennedy, and many more - people you'd have thought would have backed Hillary. He has managed to keep the race tight against a powerful Clinton campaign machine, including its wafting aroma of spousal incumbancy success, and that sense of "inevitability" as well as that sense of Hillary being a "victim" whose woes we should somehow share, and assuage with the Presidency.

But Barack Obama's biggest selling point is his electability in the general election. Hillary is just too divisive a character, victim or not, capable or not, regardless...

Trey Ellis said it best:

I gave money three years ago to his senatorial campaign and personally have
never really considered voting for anyone else. I haven't yet advocated for
others to vote with me because despite the rancor from zealots in both camps,
Obama and Hillary are both centrists Democrats reading from the exact same
hymnal. I don't know any married couples who disagree on less. All this talk of
an historic battle for the future direction of the Democratic party is just the
same kind of hogwash HBO uses to hype prizefights.

What has become
clear, however, from the religious-like fervor of Obama believers and the
venomous hatred from Hillary haters, is that she has been so wounded by this
campaign that she will be too weak to lead us to victory in November.
Hyper-capable as she is, she's a hard woman to love. At least on her own.
Obama's breathtaking rise has at least already won him the VP nod but the
strength of his current surge will, I believe, eventually win him the
nomination.

Fairly or unfairly Obama has been christened the new Kennedy while
Hillary has been tarred the old Nixon. I just don't see how she recovers from
that.

Obama has unquestionably tapped into something profound and lacking in
this country. Let us gather around him now and get ready for the real push, the
real hard work, of wrestling power away from a handful of ultra-conservative
plutocrats who, for going on eight years now, have turned this nation into one
that we hardly even recognize.
Let's take it back with Obama.

Gaza's Inner Breakout: Human Freedom for a Week, or ...

Laila at Raising Yousef has a great post on the breakout from Gaza, joined by some interesting comments, too. Here's a sample of the thought-provoking and sensitive outlook Laila brings to this usually-backburnered subject (picture from her blog):

People often ask me why such things-meaning people powered civil protests that can overcome even the strongest occupation- don't happen sooner, or more often, or at all for that matter. We underestimate the power of occupation to destroy a people's will to live, let alone resist and and attempt to change the situation. This is the worst thing about occupation, whether a military occupation like Israel's, or a political one like Hosni Mubarak's in his own country. And it is only when you can overcome the psychological occupation, the occupation of the mind, that the military occupation in all its manifestations can be defeated.

Tying this in with Mubarak's occupation of Egypt is such an astute observation. And the devastation to the society there is also real, but as for now, Gaza is a true humanitarian disaster area, thanks to Israel's illegal and unconscionable collective punishment policy - and the occupation itself.

All the stats on the humanitarian disaster can be found here on Heathlander's important post.

Worried about the Economy? $11 Billion a Month of Your Tax Dollars Goes for War

Republicans always talk about "fiscal responsibility." They blame Dems for "government spending". Never mind that historically, in the last century or so, Republicans are always gutting the economy and wasting money on profligate wars. Now they've saddled us with a war that is essentially a farce and a lie - written in blood and bleeding dollars - I mean, hemorrhaging dollars - by the hour. Here's a little news to chew on:

The Iraq war may not dominate U.S. news reports as the carnage drops, but a new report underscores the financial burden of persistent combat that is helping run up the government's credit card.

"Funding for U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and other activities in the war on terrorism expanded significantly in 2007," the Congressional Budget Office said in a report released on Wednesday.

War funding, which averaged about $93 billion a year from 2003 through 2005, rose to $120 billion in 2006 and $171 billion in 2007 and President George W. Bush has asked for $193 billion in 2008, the nonpartisan office wrote.

"It keeps going up, up and away," Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad said of the money spent in Iraq since U.S. troops invaded in 2003.

"We're seeing the war costs continue to spiral upward. It is the additional troops plus additional costs per troop plus the over-reliance on private contractors, which also explodes the costs," said Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat who opposed the war.

Since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Congress has written checks for $691 billion to pay for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and such related activities as Iraq reconstruction, the CBO said.

There are around 158,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and 27,000 in Afghanistan.

$11 Billion a Month

Of the total, the CBO estimated that $440 billion had been spent on fighting in Iraq launched with the goal of ousting President Saddam Hussein from power and securing weapons of mass destruction that were never found.

All of the Iraq and Afghanistan war money - about $11 billion a month - is effectively being put on a government credit card at a time when U.S. government debt has skyrocketed to more than $9 trillion, up from around $5.6 trillion when Bush took office in January 2001.

They say they'll "cut taxes". Does this mean "borrow the money from China instead"?And does anyone give a damn what those taxes are being spent on? On "security" and "anti-terror" done by creating killing fields overseas that will blowback some time soon ... maybe December 21, 2012 or so...

Criminalizing Anti-Torture Efforts: Is This America???

Please check out this important article in the Nation.

On Monday, January 28th, Joanne Anderson, Ozone Bhaguan, Le Anne Clausen, Elizabeth Klancher, Art Landis, Ed Lewinson, Chris Lieberman, Diane Lopez Hughes, Tiel Rainelli, Gus Roddy and Stephen Schweitzer will face federal criminal trial for trespass - punishable up to six months in federal prison.
These eleven human rights activists are part of the faith-based group SOA Watch which stages annual protests and vigils calling for the School of the Americas to be closed down on the amply documented grounds that its alumni--Latin American soldiers from various US allies--are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Central and South America.
...
Click here to learn more about SOA Watch, click here to make a contribution to support the group's efforts, click here if you'd like to join SOA Watch's Research Working Group and click here if you'd like to volunteer on one of the organization's campaigns.

They Do Starve Children, Don't They?

The NYT takes the stance that although

The neglect and mistreatment of the 1.5 million Palestinians trapped in the
Gaza Strip is a disgrace, and a very dangerous one. They are pawns in the
struggle among Hamas, which controls Gaza and uses the territory to
bombard Israel daily; its rivals in the Fatah movement that run the
Palestinian Authority and the West Bank; and Israel.

Oops editors! You mentioned Israel twice, presumably because NYT readers might have missed it the first time. Anyway, as I was saying, after the NYT staff gets past this necessary bit of humanitarian-sounding jive, they get to the meat:

Hamas has turned a deaf ear to the Gazans’ plight, refusing to negotiate peace
or accept Israel’s right to exist.

Oh, those nasty Hamas guys! They "refused" to negotiate peace? Or refused to accept the terms of humiliation, not terms of endearment, that were offered as "peace" - or shall we say, force-fed? And for those who are force-fed propaganda, Hamas actually is willing to accept Israel's right to exist - but not as Fatah-defined and Annapolis-defined "Jewish state", because that opens the way, in their understanding, for Israel to expel thousands of Palestinians from their now-free-to-be Jewish-only state, causing even more refugees, misery, etc. The line that Jews would not be welcome in a Palestinian state (Wow, and I'll bet they feel real bad about this possibility) has been more or less quashed by the brave Daniel Barenboim's acceptance of Palestinian citizenship - before a state even exists...

Arab states, who for years have pleaded the Palestinian case and have
thrown their support behind the Annapolis peace process, must use their
influence (and their oil profits) to pressure Hamas’s leaders to halt rocket
attacks, renounce terrorism and align with Fatah in pursuit of a peace deal.
Egypt, whose stature as a peacemaker has withered under President Hosni
Mubarak, should take immediate, robust steps to shut down the tunnels that allow
arms and money to flow to militants in Gaza.

So it's the Arabs again who have to bear the brunt of responsibility because, as we all know, Israelis are innocent occupiers, pure as the driven snow, and totally incapable of acting any way other than as militant, robotic occupiers, being pure as aforementioned, and therefore it's the Arabs who have to do the dirty work of taking "robust steps". And since when have Arabs been noted to take "robust steps" except in the path of securing some petty dictator his little immutable world? And who is Hosny Mubarak except a petty dictator who takes very, very robust steps - or should I say "stomps" - in the path of securing his little immutable world? Which world is located in Sharm el-Sheikh, far, far from the madding crowds of Cairo and those other dust-ridden dirty enclaves of seething humanity.

Don't the Israelis see that the Arabs are just like them? The sheikhs in their crystal-pure palaces in Dubai and Saudi Arabia like to look at those messy, uncouth crowds as much as Israelis in their European-style luxuries like to get down with Palestinians. But all that uppity-ness and wealth has a price, the price of disconnect.

And the fate of Gaza is the responsibility of that irresponsible, floating decimal point-dream Israel, and that means Gaza's people's fate should be on Israel's conscience.

They do have a conscience ... don't they?

Olmert's Cool with Starving Civilians & Children; But Not All Israelis Are

Count on Amy Goodman to give us this interview with Israeli and Palestinian "fighters-turned-peace-activists".

Those "activists" can be found on this website for "combatants for peace", and their agenda and activities are worth checking out. As Gaza becomes a symbol of Israeli cruelty and unconscionable callousness towards Palestinian families and residents, there remains signs that genuine humanity still exists in Israel, in the form of people with hearts.

The following is the interview, not in "blockquote" format because that tends to mess up the copy:

The United Nations is accusing Israel of collectively punishing the Palestinian population in Gaza by cutting off fuel supplies as part of a blockade of the Gaza Strip. In the midst of the deepening crisis, we speak with Israeli and Palestinian peace activists Yonatan Shapira and Bassam Aramin. They are from a group called Combatants for Peace that is made up of former fighters from both Israel and the Occupied Territories. Shapira is a former captain in the Israeli Air Force and Black Hawk pilot squadron. Aramin was an armed member of Fatah and spent seven years in an Israeli prison. His ten-year-old daughter Abir was shot dead by an Israeli soldier last year.

Guests:
Yonatan Shapira, Former Captain in the Israeli Air Force and Black Hawk pilot squadron. In 2003 he authored “The Pilots’ Letter,” refusing to participate in attacks in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Bassam Aramin, Former Fatah fighter, now a peace activist with Combatants for Peace. Spent seven years in an Israeli prison. His ten-year-old daughter Abir was killed on January 16, 2007, when an Israeli Border Police jeep fired rubber bullets in a school zone. He is also the head of the Al Quds Association for Democracy and Dialogue.

(7/21/2006)
AMY GOODMAN: Following widespread international criticism, Israel has agreed to allow some food, medicine and fuel into the besieged Gaza Strip that depends on Israel for fuel and electricity. The move comes after three days of air strikes last week that killed thirty Palestinians and four days of total closure and almost no electricity. Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said the temporary easing of restrictions is not a long-term solution.
SAMI ABU ZUHRI: [translated] The Israeli announcement of supplying Gaza with more fuel does not mean solving the crisis in Gaza. The real crisis of our Palestinian people is the continuation of siege on the Gaza Strip.
AMY GOODMAN: Israeli officials agreed to temporarily lift the blockade after protests around the world and censure from the European Union. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert addressed his party on Monday and denied exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
PRIME MINISTER EHUD OLMERT: [translated] We will not allow a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but we have no intention of making their lives easy. As long as these hardships are greater, providing there are no humanitarian blows, not in hospitals, not in clinics, not with young children, not with helpless people, we will not allow it. But in no way will we let them live comfortable and pleasant lives. As far as I’m concerned, all the residents of Gaza can go on foot and have no fuel for cars, because they have a murderous terrorist regime that doesn’t allow people in the south of Israel to live in peace.
AMY GOODMAN: In the midst of this deepening crisis, I spoke to an Israeli and Palestinian peace activist: Yonatan Shapira and Bassam Aramin. They are from a group called Combatants for Peace that’s made up of former fighters from both Israel and Palestine. Bassam Aramin spent seven years in an Israeli prison, was an armed member of Fatah, the Palestinian political faction once led by Yasser Arafat. Bassam’s ten-year-old daughter Abir died one year ago after being shot by Israeli soldiers while she was on her way home from school. Yonatan Shapira is a captain in the Israeli Air Force and Black Hawk pilot squadron—well, he was. In 2003, he authored the “Pilots’ Letter,” refusing to participate in attacks against Palestinians.
I spoke to the two former fighters on Thursday about their efforts for peace and their thoughts on attacks in Gaza. I started by asking Yonatan Shapira how he went from being a pilot in the Israeli military to a peace activist.
YONATAN SHAPIRA: I was a captain in the Israeli Air Force and flew Black Hawk, which is mostly rescue helicopter in the Israeli Air Force. And after a long, long process of becoming aware of the world they live in and mostly the occupation and the war crimes that my government and my army is part of, I decided to refuse to be part of this circle of revenge. The reason for that were many. I think especially the assassinations that started to happen during the Sharon government, especially one assassination that caused the loss of many innocents, fifteen innocent, including nine children and babies, that led me and many of my friends—
AMY GOODMAN: What was your involvement in that?
YONATAN SHAPIRA: Oh, I was not involved in any shooting directly on anyone, because I flew rescue missions and I landed commando forces. But I felt that it doesn’t matter. If you shoot yourself or you land soldiers that are shooting someone or your friend in the other squadron is dropping bombs on innocents, once you are part of it, once you are part of a society even, once you are part of the world, you have responsibility, especially if you’re part of an air force that is being sent on a daily basis to kill. And most of the people who died there are innocents, just like happened in the last days.
And I found other people in the air force that agree with me and were willing to sign the letter that I authored saying that we are no longer willing to follow illegal and immoral orders. That was called the “Pilots’ Letter." We published it in September 2003.
AMY GOODMAN: And how unusual was that letter?
YONATAN SHAPIRA: We were not the first Israeli refusers. We were not the first Israelis to say we are not going to be part of these war crimes anymore. But it’s the first time that a pilot organized and did something like that. And in Israel, which, as you know, it’s a very militaristic society, when the pilots are saying something like that, it broke a lot of—people were pissed off. People saw it as a rebellion. That was more than four years ago.
Later on, we decided that it’s important to refuse, but just refusing to be part of something illegal and immoral and just refusing to be part of war crimes is not enough. You have to try to fix the wrongdoing that you were part of. And then, with many other people who refused to military service and to be part of the occupation in the Israeli side and Palestinian ex-fighters in the Palestinian side, people who were many years in Israeli prisons, we formed this group, which we called “Combatants for Peace.” In Arabic, it’s [Arabic translation]; and in Hebrew, [Hebrew translation]. I know the name is a bit militaristic itself, but the idea is that we are going to have a joint struggle this time. And, in a way, the Israelis who woke up, the ex-fighters, are joining the Palestinian nonviolent struggle for liberation. And this is something that didn’t happen before. We have a lot of organizations of Israelis and Palestinians that are struggling together against the occupation, but not as former fighters.
AMY GOODMAN: Bassam Aramin, talk about how you came to Combatants for Peace. You were in Israeli prison for seven years. Talk about your family and how it has dealt with the occupation, your daughter.
BASSAM ARAMIN: Well, actually, I arrested in 1985 for seven years in the Israeli jails.
AMY GOODMAN: As a Fatah fighter.
BASSAM ARAMIN: As a Fatah member, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: How old were you?
BASSAM ARAMIN: I was seventeen years.
AMY GOODMAN: Where did you live?
BASSAM ARAMIN: In Hebron, Sayer village, with a group of six children. Then, after the jail, briefly, we start to think that we are more than sixty years fighting one each other, and no result. Israel is not safe, and Palestine is not free. And the majority from the both sides know that the final solution could be two states. And the big question is, why we are dying now if we know the solution even.
We must be very courage when we take our weapons, to be courage also to speak loudly what we believe. We know that this conflict cannot be solved in a military solution. It means we must find another way to fight against the occupation. We will never accept the occupation anyway. The Israelis must be responsible for their occupation. From this point came the idea of Combatants for Peace. We established this organization in 2005 by four Palestinians and seven Israelis. Now we are around 400 ex-combatants from both sides.
Personally, I paid the price for one year exactly, the 16th of January. Abir, this day, must be alive. One Israeli soldier shot and killed her in Anata in her school—in front of her school. She was—
AMY GOODMAN: What is your daughter’s name?
BASSAM ARAMIN: She was ten years old, Abir.
AMY GOODMAN: Abir.
BASSAM ARAMIN: Abir means the smell of the flower. Abir, she wasn’t a fighter. She don’t belong to Fatah or Hamas. She was just a child. And all the times our message that in Combatants for Peace, we want to protect our children.
AMY GOODMAN: And what happened?
BASSAM ARAMIN: It was a normal day. When Israeli soldier came, Israeli [inaudible] and shoot her from a distance of fifteen meters in her head without any demonstrations. It’s a quiet day. And they look at her when she fell down and still going without any help or—
AMY GOODMAN: Was in the morning or afternoon?
BASSAM ARAMIN: Yes, it’s in the morning, 9:30, after she finished her examination with her sister and two friends, after she bought a candy. Yeah, very [inaudible].
AMY GOODMAN: Where were you at the time?
BASSAM ARAMIN: I was on my way to work in Ramallah. And her school told me that Abir was fell down, they want her mom. They don’t told me that someone shot her. And when I asked the—called home back to tell her mom to go to the school, I found her sister Arin crying and shouting, and her sister—her friend also told me that Abir was shot in her head by an Israeli soldier. And this is by—it was a shock. And when I called back the school, they told me that they bring her to the Palestinian hospital in East Jerusalem. She spent two days in Israeli—I bring her to Hadassah Hospital in Israel. After two days, she died. And I still continue asking myself forever why, and there is no answer.
AMY GOODMAN: Has this case been investigated?
BASSAM ARAMIN: Actually, yeah. To be honest, they opened an investigation after three days, and they closed it after three weeks, because they haven’t any evidence that they are involved in this incident. And before they declared that they closed the file, I have interview with Israeli Channel Two. I told them that they will close the file, like the 971 Palestinian kids which have been killed since 2000. It’s not a unique case. But because it’s my life aim, I will bring this killer to the justice. It’s not political. My daughter go to school, and someone came to kill her and escaped. I want the criminal to stand in front of the justice.
AMY GOODMAN: Bassam Aramin is a former Fatah fighter, spent seven years in an Israeli prison. Yonatan Shapira, former captain in the Israel Air Force and Black Hawk pilot. This is Democracy Now! We’ll come back to this conversation, then we’ll be joined in Detroit by Grace Lee Boggs. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We go back to the discussion with Yonatan Shapira, former captain in the Israeli Air Force and Blacks Hawk pilot squadron, author of the “Pilots’ Letter." Bassam Aramin is a former Fatah fighter, spent seven years in an Israeli jail. Last year, his daughter Abir was killed by the Israeli Defense Forces. I asked Bassam to talk about how Palestinians respond to his now working with the Israelis.
BASSAM ARAMIN: You know, there is some difficults. Palestinian people, under the military direct occupation—and just the other day, they killed more than twenty-four Palestinian innocent. But we try to convince the people that there is no choice. We must, in spite of our patterns of pain, we must talk together. We must fight together against the occupation, Israelis and Palestinians. This is the only way that we can create peace for our kids.
AMY GOODMAN: Yonatan Shapira, with the latest news—and every day something else is breaking—as we record this interview, Israel continuing the latest assault on the Gaza Strip, while Palestinian militants intensify rocket fire, three Palestinian civilians, including a thirteen-year-old, were killed Wednesday when an Israeli missile hit their car. Israel called the attack an “error.” The killings came one day after nineteen Palestinians lost their lives, the highest single-day Palestinian death toll in more than a year.
YONATAN SHAPIRA: You know, now they use more drones and unmanned planes to do these crimes. They don’t need anymore to convince the pilots to shoot in Gaza, although there are many attacks by attack helicopters like Apache and stuff like that. But I think that many of the missions are done by the commander, that he can sit far away in a closed room in a commander ship in Tel Aviv or something like that and just press a button, and people are getting killed. And this distance between the decision to the result is what I think in the history calls the most horrible crimes ever. And—
AMY GOODMAN: You’re saying that the drones release the missiles, the bombs.
YONATAN SHAPIRA: I don’t know in that specific case, but in many cases now and during the last years, they use drones, yeah. At the beginning, they tried to collaborate, and it was kind of a secret. But now anyone—everyone knows. And Israel is selling these drones to other countries. It’s one of our top products in the military industry that is blooming in a way. You know, the occupation is not so bad for some people in my society and in your society. It’s actually benefiting many people.
AMY GOODMAN: You mean the military contractors?
YONATAN SHAPIRA: Exactly, and the weapons industry. And I don’t think that you have to be a military expert or have a Ph.D. in political science and to be one of these fancy scholars in Washington institutions to know that the results of this scientific experiment that we have in Gaza, for example, locking millions of people—million-and-a-half people without food, electricity, medicine—no one can go out, no one can go in—that’s a military—you don’t have to know anything about history. It’s obvious that you’re going to have people that are going to resist. And I grew up, you know, learning the history of my people and how they resisted in Warsaw Ghetto, where they didn’t have any choice.
AMY GOODMAN: In the Warsaw Ghetto in World War II in Poland.
YONATAN SHAPIRA: Yeah, they knew that they are going to be killed sooner or later.
AMY GOODMAN: By the Nazis.
YONATAN SHAPIRA: And the last thing that they could do is to fight back. And I’m against what the Hamas is doing. I’m completely against the Kassam rocket. And people are getting killed sometime and harmed in the Israeli side. I’m aware of that, and I’m against that. And all of us in our group, in our organization, are against that. But what can you expect from people when you treat them like that, in such a brutal occupation, such a brutal situation? What do you want them to do?
AMY GOODMAN: Bassam, what do you tell other teenagers who, like you at seventeen, took up arms against Israel, see that only as the answer, see a lot of people in their community, young people, being killed and injured? How do you say to them, “The answer is not what I did”?
BASSAM ARAMIN: Actually, I was their age, and I know how they are thinking. If you give them hope or another direction, they will have something to choose. But in our case, there is nothing to choose, just to resist. The create from us fighters, in spite we are children. We start to make like education, peace education or nonviolence education with all these teenagers, that they must to learn now, to complete their education, to give them an alternative way with the Israelis. We started to make groups from young people with the Israelis to know something about the other side.
AMY GOODMAN: Bassam Aramin, former Fatah fighter, Yonatan Shapira, former captain in the Israeli Air Force, they are both part of a group called Combatants for Peace. We will link to their website at democracynow.org.

Massacre: Israel's Answer to Calls for Peace

Heathlander's great post on this subject (from whence this image also is derived) needs to be read by all who are interested in achieving a lasting peace in the Middle East. Obviously, Israel is going to have to change their policies and attitudes, or peace will never be achievable. All that will be achievable is oppression and chaos.

“The killing of some 40 Palestinians in Gaza in the past week, the targeting of
a Government office near a wedding party venue with what must have been foreseen
loss of life and injury to many civilians, and the closure of all crossings into
Gaza raise very serious questions about Israel’s respect for international law
and its commitment to the peace process…
Recent action violates the strict
prohibition on collective punishment contained in the Fourth Geneva Convention.
It also violates one of the basic principles of international humanitarian law
that military action must distinguish between military targets and civilian
targets…
Those responsible for such cowardly action are guilty of serious war
crimes and should be prosecuted and punished for their crimes.”
- John
Dugard, UN special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian
territories, speaking on Saturday.

Canada: US on Torture List

The NY Times reports:

A training manual for Canadian diplomats lists the United States among
countries that potentially torture or abuse prisoners.
...
The manual appears to contradict the public stance of Canada’s
Conservative government, which accepts assurances from the United States that it
does not mistreat prisoners, including those at Guantánamo
Bay, Cuba.
One Canadian, Omar Khadr, is being held there; he was
captured in Afghanistan in 2002.

Of course, the U.S. "spokesperson" categorically denied that the U.S. tortures. This is in keeping with U.S. policy: if it looks bad, lie your way out of it.

The manual, in the form of a PowerPoint presentation, is used for training
diplomats in how to protect Canadians detained by foreign governments from
torture and how to handle suspicions that inmates are abused.
The torture
training program for diplomats was set up largely because of the case of Maher
Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian.
He was detained in 2002 by United States
officials, who sent him to Syria after reviewing erroneous information from
Canada suggesting that he was linked to terrorist activities.
A Canadian
inquiry concluded that Mr. Arar was tortured while in Syrian custody. Last year
the Canadian government paid Mr. Arar and his family 11.5 million Canadian
dollars in compensation.

Government positions are for public consumption and disinformation. Training manuals are for reality. Yes, even Canada knows, and has to be careful, that the U.S. does torture people - without trial, of course.

Gitmo: Weapon Against Free Speech, Al-Jazeera Specifically

Democracy Now! has a great interview with the brother of a Guantanamo detainee, the cameraman for Al-Jazeera, Sami al-Haj, who is being held without charge in the infamous U.S. gulag for torture and rights-abuses in the name of the so-called "Global War on Terror". Here is a transcript of that interview. It highlights the fact that the U.S. government has been targeting Al-Jazeera because of alleged ties with Al-Qaeda - merely based on the fact that it has been reporting on Al-Qaeda and received news releases from the organization. Imagine taking such actions on news agencies here merely for receiving news releases from, say, the Ku Klux Klan, or the Communist Workers' Party. It's all about freedom of speech - bulldozed internationally, courtesy of Bushco, in the name of Security. And War. And being afraid, very afraid of ... them:

AMY GOODMAN: It has been six years since the US set up the prison at Guantanamo in the so-called “war on terror.” Over 800 men and boys, so-called "enemy combatants,” have been held without charge at Guantanamo since January 11, 2002. Not one of these prisoners has been put on trial. Hundreds have been released without charge after years in detention. Four prisoners have committed suicide; many others have tried to do so. Today, 275 people are still imprisoned at Guantanamo.
We turn now to the case of one of these prisoners. His name is Sami Al-Haj. He’s thirty-eight years old, an Al Jazeera cameraman, arrested in Pakistan, December 2001, while traveling to Afghanistan for work with Al Jazeera. He was transferred to US custody, flown to Bagram Air Base—six months later, flown to Guantanamo Bay. He’s been in prison there without charge ever since. Sami Al-Haj has been on hunger strike since January 7th of last year. He’s believed to be in deteriorating health.


ASIM AL-HAJ: [translated] Before I make my statement, I would like to say that Sami Al-Haj is a victim of a political operation against Al Jazeera, which Washington does not approve of. And as evidence of this is the fact that he was interrogated 130 times. And during these times, the interrogations were all about Al Jazeera and alleged relations between Al Jazeera and al-Qaeda.
They tried to induce him to work as a spy for American intelligence in return for US citizenship for him and for his family and to help him even write a book, on the condition that he would spy on his colleagues at Al Jazeera. For example, if you look at the allegation that he was involved in sales of rockets or missiles to Afghanistan, I mean, how could a reporter or a media person traveling to a country he’s never been to before carry this? Would he carry these in his luggage or what?
AMY GOODMAN: How does this make you feel about the United States, Asim?
ASIM AL-HAJ: [translated] We believe that what the American administration does is apart from what the American people do and feel. We feel that the American people are peaceful, good people, and we love them.
And what is happening now leads to or begs the question: how come he was never tried in a civil court? How come the evidence against him is not presented publicly? And why does the American administration insist on maintaining his detention, despite earlier promises of his release? And why is it that he is being kept in Guantanamo, while many other detainees, including leaders in al Taliban and people who had actually carried arms, are being released?
And if Sami dies, who will be responsible for this? And to who would we—if we were to file suit, that would be against whom? The most difficult thing for a human being is to be subject to injustice against which you cannot do anything, for yourself or for in support of others.
AMY GOODMAN: Asim, tell us about your brother. How is his health right now? How long has he been at Guantanamo?
ASIM AL-HAJ: [translated] Right now, Sami is suffering deteriorating health, both physically and mentally.
AMY GOODMAN: How do you know? How do you communicate with him in prison?
ASIM AL-HAJ: [translated] We have no means of communicating with him, except through very infrequent letters. So far, since his imprisonment, we have had about ten such letters. These letters contain very little, other than greetings and best wishes during the days of feasts, and all the rest is redacted.
We send most of our letters through the Red Cross, and sometimes we send some letters through his attorney, who visits with him every two or three months. And all the news that we have on information regarding his deteriorating health have come to us by way of his attorney. Every time he goes to visit, he comes back with worse news.
AMY GOODMAN: Is your brother—is Sami Al-Haj on hunger strike, and how long has it been?
ASIM AL-HAJ: [translated] On the 7th of January of this year, he has been on hunger strike for one year.
AMY GOODMAN: How can he survive?
ASIM AL-HAJ: [translated] According to his attorney, he is fed twice a day through a nasal gastric tube. He also drinks water. And we’re told that he is also given some pills.
AMY GOODMAN: Asim, I was talking to Clive Stafford Smith, his attorney. He says that he sent a letter to his seven-year-old son. Sami has sent a letter to Mohammed in the case of his death.
ASIM AL-HAJ: [translated] Are you asking about details of this letter?
AMY GOODMAN: Yes.
ASIM AL-HAJ: [translated] The letter reads, “My beloved son Mohammed, I ask you to listen to your mom and to do well in school.” And in this letter, he says, “If you’re asking about your father, your father is in chains in an island that is thousands of kilometers away.” And he also says, “I am full of hope that I will return to see you and to be with you when you start talking.”
AMY GOODMAN: Asim Al-Haj, do you think Al Jazeera is doing enough to try to free your brother?
ASIM AL-HAJ: [translated] In the beginning, it seemed as though Al Jazeera was not doing enough, and we were wondering why. Al Jazeera then informed us that they were trying to do their work sort of behind the scenes in as diplomatic a manner as possible in order not to complicate things. Then, when they failed to accomplish any results, then they started to try to get him freed in a public manner. And now we are very satisfied with their work. In fact, we’re very grateful for what they do.
AMY GOODMAN: What are they doing?
ASIM AL-HAJ: [translated] First of all, Al Jazeera supports his family, his wife and his son, in Doha, Qatar. And they are also waging a campaign both on the legal front and also in the media.
What we understand is that the American government has imposed some conditions to free Sami and the other eight Sudanese prisoners out of the original twelve, because three have been released. So they have given the Sudanese government a list of these conditions.
AMY GOODMAN: What are these conditions?
ASIM AL-HAJ: [translated] I have had no access to this document, but what I understand is, one of the worst things in it is that the Sudanese government must pledge that Sami and the other released detainees would not leave Sudan. And the other is that there would have to be a pledge that they would not be making declarations and statements about anything that they have suffered since their detention, and also some guarantees that American intelligence would have access to them at any time.
We reject these conditions. We consider this an assault on Sami’s rights and simply an extension of his detention just being in the Sudan.
Now, I would like to make my statement in English.
AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead, please.
ASIM AL-HAJ: I don’t simply want to appeal to people’s feelings. I want them to use their minds. Why is there an information and media cover-up on Guantanamo? Why has the world and its international institutions failed to press the United States to abide by international law? Show your proof. Try us or set us free. Open all prisons connected to the so-called “war on terror” for international investigation, or shut them down now. Keep media away from politics. Why Sami Al-Haj are being punished? Free Sami Al-Haj now!
AMY GOODMAN: Asim Al-Haj, the brother of Sami Al-Haj. He’s been imprisoned at Guantanamo for more than five years, imprisoned overall for close to six years. If you’d like to see the video images, the photographs of Sami Al-Haj and his family, you can go to our website at democracynow.org. Asim Al-Haj was speaking to us from Khartoum, Sudan. I spoke to him on Friday.

Israeli Conductor Daniel Barenboim becomes Palestinian Citizen

There are two ways to resolve conflict: attack, or communicate. Communication is always the most difficult of the two, and usually the most rewarding. It requires courage, free-thinking, and iron-clad optimism, sometimes called faith.
Daniel Barenboim, the world renowned Israeli pianist and conductor, in becoming a Palestinian citizen, has demonstrated both. Let's hope the rewards will extend beyond the music world.

According to reuters,
"It is a great honor to be offered a passport," he said late on Saturday after a Beethoven piano recital in Ramallah, the West Bank city where he has been active for some years in promoting contact between young Arab and Israeli musicians.
"I have also accepted it because I believe that the destinies of ... the Israeli people and the Palestinian people are inextricably linked," Barenboim said. "We are blessed -- or cursed -- to live with each other. And I prefer the first."
"The fact that an Israeli citizen can be awarded a Palestinian passport, can be a sign that it is actually possible."

As quoted by the New York Times:

“I hope that my new status will be an example of Israeli-Palestinian coexistence,” he said after a concert in the West Bank town of Ramallah on Saturday.

Barenboim also founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in 1999 with the late Edward Said (who died in 2003), which he called "an orchestra against ignorance", consisting of Israeli and Arab musicians who share a passion for music. The orchestra played Carnegie Hall last December. He is also known for playing Wagner, the composer preferred by Nazis, whose work is banned in Israel - as he puts it, to look beyond the racist hatred of the man to the higher work of his music. Adding to the symbolism is the fact that the orchestra does its intensive practice in Spain, in the area of Andalusia, where notably Jews, Muslims and Christians once lived together in harmony.

Accepting the Palestinian passport is in obvious contradiction of the common Zionist line that if Palestinians had a viable homeland, there should be no "right of return" because Jews are not welcome in Palestine. Apparently, Palestine has welcomed its first Jew, who in turn has welcomed association with Palestine, envisioning the neighborhood "outside the box" of sectarian hatreds, seeking higher ground for mutual cooperation.

Let's follow this conductor's lead and work on symphony rather than non-stop belligerence and discord. Those with more power have more responsibility to lead the way. Not shaken by the warmongering tones of those calling for revocation of his passport (a real non-starter) and condemning his actions, Barenboim undoubtedly won over many former enemies by his daring and creative example for how peace could actually work.