The Problem With Habitual Lying Is Remembering the Old Lies

Why Does DOJ Say 300+ Terrorists Convicted?

February 8, 2010 – 6:44 PM | by: Mike Levine

Eric Holder

The “blogosphere” has been abuzz over whether Attorney General Eric Holder and others in the Obama Administration can accurately claim that more than 300 terrorists have been convicted in federal, civilian courts.

Holder employs the statistic in an effort to blunt criticism over the decision to try the five alleged 9/11 conspirators – and more recently, the alleged Christmas Day bomber – in a civilian court.

“We know that we can prosecute terrorists in our federal courts safely and securely because we have been doing it for years,” Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee in November. “There are more than 300 convicted international and domestic terrorists currently in Bureau of Prisons custody.”

And last week, in a letter to Republican leaders in the Senate, Holder used the statistic again, insisting that the handling of Umar F. Abdulmutallab, charged with trying to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day, comports with “long-established” practices.

“The Bush Administration used the criminal justice system to convict more than 300 individuals on terrorism-related charges,” Holder wrote in a letter to Republican leaders in the Senate.

But many online – and on Capitol Hill – wonder whether the Obama Administration is inflating numbers to make a political point.

One blog said the Obama Administration “appears to be creating a bit of mythology with their little list of imprisoned criminals with ‘histories’ and ‘nexuses.’”

So where did the Obama Administration get its “300″ statistic?

They insist they got it from the Bush Administration, and they say the information is readily available online.

“So those who say we just made up the number just need to go look at the old documents that were presented by the prior Administration,” a Justice Department spokesman told FOX News.

In fact, as part of a funding request submitted in 2008, the Bush Justice Department touted its “significant strides in the global war on terror,” noting that the department had already secured “319 convictions or guilty pleas in terrorism or terrorism-related cases” since the 9/11 attacks.

Two years before that, in September 2006, the Justice Department, then under the leadership of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, issued a “Terror Fact Sheet” stating that “288 defendants have been convicted or have pleaded guilty in terrorism or terrorism-related cases” since the 9/11 attacks.

And a year after that “Terror Fact Sheet” came out, Gonzales himself alluded to the statistic in a speech, telling a crowd at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy that the Bush Administration’s successes against terrorism were based on two key factors.

First, he said, was the decision to treat the 9/11 attacks as “acts of war,” which he said “enabled us to remove enemy combatants from the field of battle and collect intelligence.”

Second, he said, was “traditional law enforcement.”

“Planning a terrorist attack is a criminal offense, and the Department of Justice, along with our state and local law enforcement partners have also pursued would-be terrorists as criminals, frequently disrupting their plots before they are viable,” Gonzales said. “We have enjoyed great success utilizing the prosecutorial tools available within our criminal courts to disrupt and prevent further terrorist attacks on American soil in the past six years. In fact, since the September 11 attacks, hundreds of defendants have been convicted of or have pleaded guilty to terrorism-related offenses.”

Numbers, though, apparently have a tendency to change – or at least what qualifies as a “convicted terrorist” does.

During a major national security speech at the National Archives in May 2009, President Barack Obama said federal prisons “hold hundreds of convicted terrorists.”

But despite that previous claim and despite Holder’s recent statements regarding “300″ convictions, President Obama told CBS this past weekend that the Bush Administration “prosecuted 190 folks in these [civilian] courts, got convictions, and those folks are in maximum security prisons right now.”

Likewise, in September 2003, on the eve of the second anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush told a crowd at the FBI Academy in Virginia about his administration’s “solid results” against terrorism, including “more than 260 suspected terrorists [who] have been charged in the United States courts, [and] more than 140 [who] have already been convicted.”

But five years later, on the eve of the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the Bush White House released a “Fact Sheet” saying, “Since 9/11, more than two dozen terrorists and supporters have been convicted in the United States of terrorism-related crimes.”

As for who comprises the Justice Department’s list of “convicted international and domestic terrorists” in U.S. prisons, the Justice Department spokesman wouldn’t say.

(The funding request submitted in 2008 can be found here:
http://www.justice.gov/jmd/2009summary/html/004_budget_highlights.htm
)

(The 2006 “Terror Fact Sheet” can be found here:
http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2006/September/06_opa_590.html
)

(The Bush White House’s “Fact Sheet” can be seen here: 
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/09/20080910-5.html
)

8 Bloodthirsty Dictators Who Benefited From U.S. Aid

by DAN BERRY

Posted under Augusto Pinochet, Dictators, Ferdinand Marcos, Hitler, Hugo Banzer, Ian Smith, Idi Amin, Lists, Pol Pot, Vinicio Cerezo

Many of the world’s most repressive dictators have been friends of America. Tyrants, torturers, killers, and sundry dictators and corrupt puppet-presidents have been aided, supported, and rewarded handsomely for their loyalty to US interests. Traditional dictators seize control through force, while constitutional dictators hold office through voting fraud or severely restricted elections, and are frequently puppets and apologists for the military juntas, which control the ballot boxes. In any case, none have been democratically elected by the majority of their people in fair and open elections.

They are democratic America’s undemocratic allies. They may rise to power through bloody ClA-backed coups and rule by terror and torture. Their troops may receive training or advice from the CIA and other US agencies. US military aid and weapons sales often strengthen their armies and guarantee their hold on power. Unwavering “anti-communism” and a willingness to provide unhampered access for American business interests to exploit their countries’ natural resources and cheap labor are the excuses for their repression, and the primary reason the US government supports them. They may be linked internationalIy to extreme right-wing groups such as the World Anti-Communist League, and some have had strong Nazi affiliations and have offered sanctuary to WWll Nazi war criminals.

They usually grow rich, while their countries’ economies deteriorate and the majority of their people live in poverty. US tax dollars and US-backed loans have made billionaires of some, while others are international drug dealers who also collect CIA paychecks. Rarely are they called to account for their crimes. And rarely still, is the US government held responsible for supporting and protecting some of the worst human rights violators in the world.

8.  IAN SMITH – Prime Minister of Rhodesia

Ian Smith promised the whites who elected him Prime Minister of Rhodesia in 1982 that he would keep Rhodesia white, at any cost. To stop the black guerrilla fighters trying to overthrow his regime, Smith rationed food for Africans whom he believed were feeding the guerrillas. This cruel measure only served to starve the already undernourished black population. Studies found that over 90% of Rhodesia’s black children were malnourished and nutritional deficiencies were the major cause of infant death. Smith rounded up blacks into concentration camps he called “protective” villages. Believing that ignorant people were less likely to revolt, he cut funding for black education, spending $5 on each black child compared to $80 on each white child. His all white Parliament passed a law protecting officials who took actions for the suppression of “terrorism”, enabling the police and military to commit atrocities. An international trade boycott against Rhodesia arose, but while the US publicly condemned the government, it continued to do business there. In 1971, President Nixon lifted the chrome embargo against Rhodesia at a time when there was a surplus of chrome in the US. Blacks were eventually given the right to vote for some officials, but the opposition to Smith’s government grew so strong that he was ultimately forced to give up some power to blacks. In 1979, Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, a country primarily ruled by blacks.

7.  FERDINAND MARCOS – President of the Philippines

Ferdinand Marcos began his career with a bang. At age 21, convicted of gunning down Julio Nalundasan, his father’s victorious opponent in the Philippines first national elections, he went to prison. He was later release by a Supreme Court Justice who, like Marcos and his father, was a Nazi collaborator. Despite Marcos’s record as murderer, fake WWll hero and Nazi agent, he was elected Philippine President in 1965. Under Marcos, the Philippine national debt grew from $2 billion to $30 billion, but US corporations in the Philippines prospered, perhaps explaining why the US didn’t protest Marcos’s imposition of martial law in 1972. The Marcoses enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle, and they salted away billions of dollars in the course of their US-backed rule between 1965 and 1986.

The Carter Administration engineered an $88 million World Bank loan to Marcos, increased military aid to him by 300%, and called him a “soft dictator”. But a 1976 Amnesty International report identified 88 government torturers, and stated that alleged subversives had their heads slammed into walls, their genitals and pubic hair torched, and were beaten with clubs, fists, bottles, and rifle butts. By 1977, the armed forces had quadrupled and over 60,000 Filipinos had been arrested for political reasons. Yet, in 1981, Vice President George Bush praised Marcos for his “adherence to democratic principals and to the democratic processes”. Marcos was overthrown in 1986 by followers of Corazon Aquino, widow of an assassinated opposition leader.

Ferdinand and Imelda fled to Hawaii, only to be indicted in 1988 for fraud and tax evasion. Marcos died in 1989. Imelda returned to the Philippines in 1991 and stood unsuccessfully in the Presidential elections of 1992. In 1993 she was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment for criminal graft and to other long sentences for corruption. She is still free while she appeals. She was elected to Congress in May 1995. Meanwhile, in it attempts to recover the lost Marcos billions from Swiss bank accounts and other shadier locations the Philippines Government has, after paying its US lawyers, recovered the princely sum of $2,000.

6.  COLONEL HUGO BANZER – President of Bolivia

In 1970, in Bolivia, when then-President Juan Jose Torres nationalized Gulf Oil properties and tin mines owned by US interests, and tried to establish friendly relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union, he was playing with fire. The coup to overthrow Torres, led by US-trained officer and Gulf Oil beneficiary Hugo Banzer, had direct support from Washington. When Banzer’s forces had a breakdown in radio communications, US Air Force radio was placed at their disposal. Once in power, Banzer began a reign of terror. Schools were shut down as hotbeds of political subversive activity. Within two years, 2,000 people were arrested and tortured without trial. As in Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, the native Indians were ordered off their land and deprived of tribal identity. Tens-of-thousands of white South Africans were enticed to immigrate with promises of the land stolen from the Indians, with a goal of creating a white Bolivia. When Catholic clergy tried to aid the Indians, the regime, with CIA help, launched terrorist attacks against them, and this “Banzer Plan” became a model for similar anti-Catholic actions throughout Latin America.

5.  VINICIO CEREZO – President of Guatemala

According to Amnesty International, arbitrary arrest, torture, disappearance, and political killings were everyday realities for Guatemalans during decades of US financed military dictatorship. In January 1986, Christian Democrat leader Vinicio Cerezo was elected President and said he had “the political will to respect the rights of man”, but it didn’t take long to find out that his political will was irrelevant in the face of Guatemala’s well-oiled military machine. Hopes for change were dashed when Cerezo announced that Guatemala would continue to provide amnesty for all past military offenses committed from General Elrain Rios Montt’s coup in 1982 through the 1986 elections. Although Ronald Reagan’s State Department asserted “there has not been a single clear-cut case of political killing, within months of Cerezo’s inauguration, opposition leaders attributed 56 murders to security forces and death squads, while Americas Watch claimed that “throughout 1986, violent killings were reported in the Guatemalan press at the rate of 100 per month”. Altogether, Americas Watch says, tens-of-thousands were killed and 400 rural villages were destroyed by government death squads during Reagan’s term in office. Colonel D’Jalma Dominguez, former army spokesman, explains “For convenience sake a civilian government is preferable, such as the one we have now. If anything goes wrong, only the Christian Democrats will get the blame. It’s better to remain outside. The real power will not be lost.” Today, the real power still resides with the military.

4.  GENERAL AUGUSTO PINOCHET – President of Chile

Augusto Pinochet deposed democratically elected President Salvador Allende in 1973, and buried Chile’s 150 year old democracy. “Democracy is the breeding ground of communism”, says Pinochet. The bloody coup, in which Allende was assassinated, was carefully managed by the CIA and ITT. Tens of thousands of Chileans have been tortured, killed, and exiled since then, according to Amnesty International. A U.S. congressional delegation was told by inmates at San Miguel Prison that they had been tortured by “the application of electric shock, simultaneous blows to the ears, cigarette burns, and simulated executions by firing squads.” Despite Chile’s bad human rights record, the U.S. government continued to support Pinochet with international loans. Even the state-sponsored car-bomb assassination of Chile’s former Ambassador to the U.S., Orlando Letelier, did not convince the U.S. to break with Pinochet. In 1988 a plebiscite refused to extend Pinochet’s rule, so he altered the constitution to reduce the powers of the incoming elected President, and left himself head of the armed forces. All the other South American dictators are gone but Pinochet has found the perfect solution: Chile now has the squeaky-clean sheen of democracy yet he still has his finger on the trigger.

3.  IDI AMIN – General of Uganda

Amin was one of the most notorious of Africa’s post-independence dictators. A former heavyweight boxing champion in Uganda and a non-commissioned officer in the British Army there, Amin caught the attention of his superiors because of his efficient management of concentration camps in Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion in the 1950s, where he earned the title of “The Strangler”. Because of his loyalty to Britain and his strongly anti-communist stance, Amin was picked by the British to replace the elected Ugandan government in a 1971 coup. While in power, he earned a reputation as a “clown” in some circles in the West, but he was no joke at home. Amin brutalized his people with British and US military aid and with Israeli and CIA training of his troops. The body count of his friends, the clergy, soldiers, and ordinary Ugandans rose daily, but the West ignored his cruelty. As he continued to demand more aid and sophisticated weapons, he finally lost support. In 1979, his quest for more power lead him to invade Tanzania. In retaliation, he was overthrown by an invading Tanzanian / Ugandan army. Amin fled to Saudi Arabia, where he now lives a quiet life in a modest villa outside Jeddah, looking after his goats and chickens and cultivating his vegetable garden. Traditional Arab garb has replaced the bemedalled Field Marshal’s uniform of his heyday.

2.  POL POT – Commander of the Khmer Rouge

The bombing of Cambodia by the US from 1969 to 1972, left 600,000 civilians dead, millions of refugees, tens-of-thousands dying from disease and starvation, and the Cambodian economy and culture in ruins. Cambodians blamed the US and the puppet regime of Lon Nol for the country’s destruction, and gradually sided with the guerrilla army of the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot, which finally defeated Lon Nol, and took power in April, 1975. Once in power, Pol Pot emptied the cities, forcing the people into the countryside. Virtually all educated people were killed and more than 1.5 million people perished in this “holocaust”. Only when the Khmer Rouge was ousted by Vietnam in 1979, did the terror stop. Washington took steps to preserve the Khmer Rouge as a counter force to the Vietnamese. International relief agencies were pressured by the US to provide food and humanitarian assistance to the Khmer Rouge, which had fled to Thailand, and the US sent military aid as well. In 1982, in an effort to isolate the Vietnamese, the US forced together the three contending anti-Vietnamese groups, insisting that the Khmer Rouge be part of the negotiations. Cambodia continues to suffer from the devastation produced by both the US bombing and the Khmer Rouge atrocities. Pol Pot is considered to still be the power behind the Khmer Rouge, which has a strong presence in Cambodia today, thanks to the US.

1.  ADOLF HITLER – Chancellor of Germany

As German bombs fell on London and Nazi tanks rolled over US troops, Sosthenes Behn president and founder of the US based ITT corporation, met with his German representative to discuss improving German communication systems. ITT was designing and building Nazi phone and radio systems as well as supplying crucial parts for German bombs. Our government knew all about this, for under a presidential order, US companies were licensed to trade with the Nazis. The choice of who would be licensed was odd, though. While the Secretary of State gave the Ford Motor Company permission to make Nazi tanks, he simultaneously blocked aid to German-Jewish refugees because the US wasn’t supposed to be trading with the enemy. Other US companies trading with the Third Reich were General Motors, DuPont, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Davis Oil Co., and the Chase National Bank. President Roosevelt did not stop them, fearing a scandal might lead to another stock market crash or lower US moral. Besides, the same companies that traded with Hitler were supplying the US with its armaments, and some corporate leaders threatened to withdraw their support if Roosevelt exposed them. Henry Ford was a good friend of Hitler’s. His book — The International Jew — had Inspired Hltler’s Mein Kampf. The Fuhrer kept Ford’s picture in his office, and Ford was one of only four foreigners to receive Germany’s highest civilian award. As for Sosthenes Behn, at the end of the war, he received the highest civilian award for service to his country – the United States of America.

THE TRUTH ABOUT US JUSTICE

By Yvonne Ridley

Many of us are still in a state of shock over the guilty verdict returned on Dr Aafia Siddiqui.

The response from the people of Pakistan was predictable and overwhelming and I salute their spontaneous actions.

From Peshawar to Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore and beyond they marched in their thousands demanding the return of Aafia.

Even some of the US media expressed discomfort over the verdict returned by the jurors … there was a general feeling that something was not right.

Everyone had something to say, everyone that is except the usually verbose US Ambassador Anne Patterson who has spent the last two years briefing against Dr Aafia and her supporters.

This is the same woman who claimed I was a fantasist when I gave a press conference with Tehreek e Insaf leader Imran Khan back in July 2008 revealing the plight of a female prisoner in Bagram called the Grey Lady.

She said I was talking nonsense and stated categorically that the prisoner I referred to as “650” did not exist.

By the end of the month she changed her story and said there had been a female prisoner but that she was most definitely not Dr Aafia Siddiqui.

By that time Aafia had been gunned down at virtually point blank range in an Afghan prison cell jammed full of more than a dozen US soldiers, FBI agents and Afghan police.

Her Excellency briefed the media that the prisoner had wrested an M4 gun from one soldier and fired off two rounds and had to be subdued. The fact these bullets failed to hit a single person in the cell and simply disappeared did not resonate with the diplomat.

In a letter dripping in untruths on August 16 2008 she decried the “erroneous and irresponsible media reports regarding the arrest of Ms
Aafia Siddiqui”. She went on to say: “Unfortunately,
there are some who have an interest in simply distorting the facts in an effort to manipulate and inflame public opinion. The truth is never served by sensationalism…”

When Jamaat Islami invited me on a national tour of Pakistan to address people about the continued abuse of Dr Aafia and the truth about her incarceration in Bagram, the US Ambassador continued to issue rebuttals.

She assured us all that Dr Aafia was being treated humanely had been given consular access as set out in international law … hmm. Well I have a challenge for Ms Patterson today. I challenge her to repeat every single word she said back then and swear it is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

As Dr Aafia Siddiqui’s trial got underway, the US Ambassador and some of her stooges from the intelligence world laid on a lavish party at the US Embassy in Islamabad for some hand-picked journalists where I’ve no doubt in between the dancing, drinks and music they were carefully briefed about the so-called facts of the case.

Interesting that some of the potentially incriminating pictures taken at the private party managed to find the Ambassador was probably hoping to minimize the impact the trial would have on the streets of Pakistan proving that, for the years she has been holed up and barricaded behind concrete bunkers and barbed wire, she has learned nothing about this great country of Pakistan or its people.

One astute Pakistani columnist wrote about her: “The respected lady seems to have forgotten the words of her own country’s 16th president Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865): “You
can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some
of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time”.

And the people of Pakistan proved they are nobody’s fool and responded to the guilty verdict in New York in an appropriate way.

When injustice is the law it is the duty of everyone to rise up and challenge that injustice in any way possible.

The response – so far – has been restrained and measured but it is just the start. A sentence has yet to be delivered by Judge Richard Berman in May.

Of course there has been a great deal of finger pointing and blame towards the jury in New York who found Dr Aafia guilty of attempted murder.

Observers asked how they could ignore the science and the irrefutable facts … there was absolutely no evidence linking Dr Aafia to the gun, no bullets, no residue from firing it.

But I really don’t think we can blame the jurors for the verdict – you see the jury simply could not handle the truth.    Had they taken the logical route and gone for the science and the hard, cold, clinical facts it would have meant two things.  It would have meant around eight US soldiers took the oath and lied in court to save their own skins and careers or it would have meant that Dr Aafia Siddiqui was telling the truth.

And, as I said before, the jury couldn’t handle the truth. Because that would have meant that the defendant really had been kidnapped, abused, tortured and held in dark, secret prisons by the US before being shot and put on a rendition flight to New York. It would have meant that her three children – two of them US citizens – would also have been kidnapped, abused and tortured by the US.

They say ignorance is bliss and this jury so desperately wanted not to believe that the US could have had a hand in the kidnapping of a five-month -old baby boy, a five-year-old girl and her seven-year-old brother.

They couldn’t handle the truth … it is as simple as that.

Well I, and many others across the world like me, can’t handle any more lies. America’s reputation is lying in the lowest gutters in Pakistan at the moment and it can’t sink any lower.

The trust has gone, there is only a burning hatred and resentment towards a superpower which sends unmanned drones into villages to slaughter innocents.

It is fair to say that America’s goodwill and credibility is all but washed up with most honest, decent citizens of Pakistan.

And I think even Her Excellency Anne Patterson recognizes that fact which is why she is now keeping her mouth shut.

If she has any integrity and any self respect left she should stand before the Pakistan people and ask for their forgiveness for the drone murders, the extra judicial killings, the black operations, the kidnapping, torture and rendition of its citizens, the water-boarding, the bribery, the corruption and, not least of all, the injustice handed out to Dr Aafia Siddiqui and her family.

She should then pick up the phone to the US President and tell him to release Aafia and return Pakistan’s most loved, respected and famous daughter and reunite her with the two children who are still missing.

Then she should re-read her letter of August 16, 2008 and write another … one of resignation.

* Yvonne Ridley is a patron of Cageprisoners which first brought the plight of Dr Aafia Siddiqui to the world’s attention shortly after her kidnap in March 2003. The award-winning, investigative journalist also co-produced the documentary In Search of Prisoner 650 with film-maker Hassan al Banna Ghani which concluded that the Grey Lady of Bagram was Dr Aafia Siddiqui

The Terror-Industrial Complex

AP / Fareed Khan

Mohammad Ahmed, son of Aafia Siddiqui, takes part in a demonstration arranged by Human Rights Network.

By Chris Hedges

The conviction of the Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui in New York last week of trying to kill American military officers and FBI agents illustrates that the greatest danger to our security comes not from al-Qaida but the thousands of shadowy mercenaries, kidnappers, killers and torturers our government employs around the globe.

The bizarre story surrounding Siddiqui, 37, who received an undergraduate degree from MIT and a doctorate in neuroscience from Brandeis University, often defies belief. Siddiqui, who could spend 50 years in prison on seven charges when she is sentenced in May, was by her own account abducted in 2003 from her hometown of Karachi, Pakistan, with her three children—two of whom remain missing—and spirited to a secret U.S. prison where she was allegedly tortured and mistreated for five years. The American government has no comment, either about the alleged clandestine detention or the missing children.

Siddiqui was discovered in 2008 disoriented and apparently aggressive and hostile, in Ghazni, Afghanistan, with her oldest son. She allegedly was carrying plans to make explosives, lists of New York landmarks and notes referring to “mass-casualty attacks.” But despite these claims the government prosecutors chose not to charge her with terrorism or links to al-Qaida—the reason for her original appearance on the FBI’s most-wanted list six years ago. Her supporters suggest that the papers she allegedly had in her possession when she was found in Afghanistan, rather than detail coherent plans for terrorist attacks, expose her severe mental deterioration, perhaps the result of years of imprisonment and abuse. This argument was bolstered by some of the pages of the documents shown briefly to the court, including a crude sketch of a gun that was described as a “match gun” that operates by lighting a match.

“Justice was not served,” Tina Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network and the spokesperson for Aafia Siddiqui’s family, told me. “The U.S. government made a decision to label this woman a terrorist, but instead of putting her on trial for the alleged terrorist activity she was put on trial for something else. They tried to convict her of that something else, not with evidence, but because she was a terrorist. She was selectively prosecuted for something that would allow them to only tell their side of the story.”

The government built its entire case instead around disputed events in the 300-square-foot room of the Ghazni police station. It insisted that on July 18, 2008, the diminutive Siddiqui, who had been arrested by local Afghan police the day before, seized an M4 assault rifle that was left unattended and fired at American military and FBI agents. None of the Americans were injured. Siddiqui, however, was gravely wounded, shot twice in the stomach.

No one, other than Siddiqui, has attempted to explain where she was for five years after she vanished in 2003. No one seems to be able to explain why a disoriented Pakistani woman and her son, an American citizen, neither of whom spoke Dari, were discovered by local residents wandering in a public square in Ghazni, where an eyewitness told Harpers Magazine the distraught Siddiqui “was attacking everyone who got close to her.” Had Siddiqui, after years of imprisonment and torture, perhaps been at the U.S. detention center in Bagram and then dumped with one of her three children in Ghazi? And where are the other two children, one of whom also is an American citizen?

Her arrest in Ghazi saw, according to the official complaint, a U.S. Army captain and a warrant officer, two FBI agents and two military interpreters arrive to question Siddiqui at the police headquarters. The Americans and their interpreters were shown to a meeting room that was partitioned by a yellow curtain. “None of the United States personnel were aware,” the complaint states, “that Siddiqui was being held, unsecured, behind the curtain.” The group sat down to talk and “the Warrant Officer placed his United States Army M-4 rifle on the floor to his right next to the curtain, near his right foot.” Siddiqui allegedly reached from behind the curtain and pulled the three-foot rifle to her side. She unlatched the safety. She pulled the curtain “slightly back” and pointed the gun directly at the head of the captain. One of the interpreters saw her. He lunged for the gun. Siddiqui shouted, “Get the fuck out of here!” and fired twice. She hit no one. As the interpreter wrestled her to the ground, the warrant officer drew his sidearm and fired “approximately two rounds” into Siddiqui’s abdomen. She collapsed, still struggling, and then fell unconscious.

But in an article written by Petra Bartosiewicz in the November 2009 Harper’s Magazine, authorities in Afghanistan described a series of events at odds with the official version. The governor of Ghazni province, Usman Usmani, told a local reporter who was hired by Bartosiewicz that the U.S. team had “demanded to take over custody” of Siddiqui. The governor refused. He could not release Siddiqui, he explained, until officials from the counterterrorism department in Kabul arrived to investigate. He proposed a compromise: The U.S. team could interview Siddiqui, but she would remain at the station. In a Reuters interview, however, a “senior Ghazni police officer” suggested that the compromise did not hold. The U.S. team arrived at the police station, he said, and demanded custody of Siddiqui. The Afghan officers refused, and the U.S. team proceeded to disarm them. Then, for reasons unexplained, Siddiqui herself somehow entered the scene. The U.S. team, “thinking that she had explosives and would attack them as a suicide bomber, shot her and took her.”

Siddiqui told a delegation of Pakistani senators who went to Texas to visit her in prison a few months after her arrest that she never touched anyone’s gun, nor did she shout at anyone or make any threats. She simply stood up to see who was on the other side of the curtain and startled the soldiers. One of them shouted, “She is loose,” and then someone shot her. When she regained consciousness she heard someone else say, “We could lose our jobs.”

Siddiqui’s defense team pointed out that there was an absence of bullets, casings or residue from the M4, all of which suggested it had not been fired. They played a video to show that two holes in a wall supposedly caused by the M4 had been there before July 18. They also highlighted inconsistencies in the testimony from the nine government witnesses, who at times gave conflicting accounts of how many people were in the room, where they were sitting or standing and how many shots were fired.

Siddiqui, who took the stand during the trial against the advice of her defense team, called the report that she had fired the unattended M4 assault rifle at the Americans “the biggest lie.” She said she had been trying to flee the police station because she feared being tortured. Siddiqui, whose mental stability often appeared to be in question during the trial, was ejected several times from the Manhattan courtroom for erratic behavior and outbursts.

“It is difficult to get a fair trial in this country if the government wants to accuse you of terrorism,” said Foster. “It is difficult to get a fair trial on any types of charges. The government is allowed to tell the jury you are a terrorist before you have to put on any evidence. The fear factor that has emerged since 9/11 has permeated into the U.S. court system in a profoundly disturbing way. It embraces the idea that we can compromise core principles, for example the presumption of innocence, based on perceived threats that may or may not come to light. We, as a society, have chosen to cave on fear.”

I spent more than a year covering al-Qaida for The New York Times in Europe and the Middle East. The threat posed by Islamic extremists, while real, is also wildly overblown, used to foster a climate of fear and political passivity, as well as pump billions of dollars into the hands of the military, private contractors, intelligence agencies and repressive client governments including that of Pakistan. The leader of one FBI counterterrorism squad told The New York Times that of the 5,500 terrorism-related leads its 21 agents had pursued over the past five years, just 5 percent were credible and not one had foiled an actual terrorist plot. These statistics strike me as emblematic of the entire war on terror.

Terrorism, however, is a very good business. The number of extremists who are planning to carry out terrorist attacks is minuscule, but there are vast departments and legions of ambitious intelligence and military officers who desperately need to strike a tangible blow against terrorism, real or imagined, to promote their careers as well as justify obscene expenditures and a flagrant abuse of power. All this will not make us safer. It will not protect us from terrorist strikes. The more we dispatch brutal forms of power to the Islamic world the more enraged Muslims and terrorists we propel into the ranks of those who oppose us. The same perverted logic saw the Argentine military, when I lived in Buenos Aires, “disappear” 30,000 of the nation’s citizens, the vast majority of whom were innocent. Such logic also fed the drive to root out terrorists in El Salvador, where, when I arrived in 1983, the death squads were killing between 800 and 1,000 people a month. Once you build secret archipelagos of prisons, once you commit huge sums of money and invest your political capital in a ruthless war against subversion, once you empower a network of clandestine killers, operatives and torturers, you fuel the very insecurity and violence you seek to contain.

I do not know whether Siddiqui is innocent or guilty. But I do know that permitting jailers, spies, kidnappers and assassins to operate outside of the rule of law contaminates us with our own bile. Siddiqui is one victim. There are thousands more we do not see. These abuses, justified by the war on terror, have created a system of internal and external state terrorism that is far more dangerous to our security and democracy than the threat posed by Islamic radicals.

Blair Up To the Same Old Tricks to Silence Questioners

[Blair and Bush conspired against the Iraqi people--Period.  Sometimes "conspiracy theorists" are right on the money.] Blair attacks hunt for “scandal” over Iraq war decision Photos 1 of 1 Former British PM Tony Blair giving evidence to the Iraq Inquiry. LONDON: Former British prime minister Tony Blair has lashed out at the hunt for a “scandal” and a “conspiracy” over his controversial decision to back the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Speaking 10 days after he gave evidence at Britain’s latest inquiry into the war, Blair told US broadcaster Fox News on Monday that Britons had a “curious habit” which meant they could not accept others might hold different views. “There’s always got to be a scandal as to why you hold your view,” he said. “There’s got to be a conspiracy behind it, some great deceit that has gone on, and people just find it hard to understand that it is possible for people to have different points of view and hold them reasonably for genuine reasons.” The ex-head of government sparked anger in Britain when he told the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq conflict on January 29 that he had no regrets over removing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Relatives of British troops killed in Iraq shouted “liar” and “murderer” at him as he left the London hearing, and the British press attacked his defiant insistence that he had done the right thing. Britain provided the second largest contingent of troops to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, with a deployment that peaked at 46,000. It ended combat operations in Iraq in April 2009, when all but a handful of British troops started returning home. A total of 179 British service personnel were killed in the conflict. In Monday’s interview, Blair also rebuffed criticism that the removal of strongman Saddam from the region had emboldened Iran. “When people say that Saddam was the strongman that was the brake on Iran, I say that was our policy through the 1980s,” he told the broadcaster. “We supported Saddam against Iran. The result was an Iran-Iraq war in which there were one million casualties.” The best way to deal with Iran was to encourage freedom and democracy in its neighbours such as Iraq, he argued. “The very best way of dealing with (Iran’s) extreme ideas is to put before people a better idea,” added Blair, pointing to the example of democracy in neighbouring Iraq. Iran announced plans on Sunday to step up its uranium enrichment, a move that heightened tensions with Western nations which fear the Islamic republic is trying to develop its own nuclear weapon. Tehran insists its nuclear enrichment drive is purely peaceful.

Pakistan’s security forces accused of sabotaging ‘hearts and minds’ campaign

Tom Hussain, Foreign Correspondent

ISLAMABAD: A “hearts and minds” initiative by the Pakistani government to bring an end to a nationalist insurgency in the western province of Balochistan has been undermined by a shadowy “zero tolerance” campaign by security forces, it was claimed yesterday .

A public spat between Nawab Aslam Raisani, the chief minister of Balochistan, and the Frontier Constabulary, a paramilitary force commanded by army officers, erupted on January 15 when two Baloch students of the Government Degree College in Khuzdar were killed and four wounded in firing on a protest rally.

News reports and human rights activists said the shooting was carried out by the constabulary, but it denied even having deployed forces in Khuzdar at the time.

Khuzdar is an isolated district town some 350km south-west of Quetta, the provincial capital.

The shootings sparked a furore within the provincial assembly, as two cabinet ministers walked out in protest and strikes and angry demonstrations broke out across the province.

Mr Raisani, who heads the elected provincial government, was infuriated and accused the army commanders of the constabulary of “running a parallel government”, and by inference, of undermining federal government efforts to negotiate an end to a sporadic but vicious guerrilla war.

The insurgency has raged since the killing in April 2006 of Akbar Khan Bugti, a dominant tribal chief and former chief minister of the province, in a military operation ordered by the then president Pervez Musharraf.

Bugti and other tribal elders had clashed with the Musharraf administration over political autonomy and financial compensation for the exploitation of the province’s natural resources.

Mr Raisani has also ordered a judge of the Balochistan High Court to conduct an independent inquiry into the Khuzdar incident.

The chief minister’s comments were widely endorsed by other Baloch politicians.

“Such actions indicate that the provincial government is completely powerless,” Jahanzeb Jamaldini, president of the Balochistan National Party, told The Baloch Hal, an online English newspaper. “The province is in the control of the security forces, which are now hard for the provincial government to control.”

The Khuzdar shooting evoked a tit-for-tat response from nationalist guerrillas, who killed two soldiers and wounded two others in an attack on a constabulary vehicle in Khuzdar on January 23.

The Baloch Liberation Army, a notoriously violent guerrilla faction led by Barambagh Bugti, a grandson of the late Akbar Khan Bugti, later claimed responsibility for the attack.

The Khuzdar shootings and their political aftermath have come at an inopportune time – just weeks after landmark political and economic reforms aimed at assuaging wounded Baloch nationalist sentiment were unveiled.

Since general elections that restored parliamentary democracy to Pakistan in February 2008, the country’s major political parties have gone to extraordinary lengths to appease Balochi nationalists. Asif Ali Zardari, the president and an ethnic Baloch from Sindh province, publicly apologised on behalf of the federal government, shortly after assuming office in September 2008.

The positive sentiment the apology generated in Balochistan evaporated the following April, when three prominent nationalist leaders were reported detained by the constabulary and handed over to the intelligence agencies. Their corpses were found a week later.

A breakthrough was next achieved in September, when the Balochistan High Court ordered a police investigation into the circumstances of Bugti’s death, and the registration of a murder case against Mr Musharraf, who now lives in exile in London.

Further hopes of a negotiated political settlement were raised in November when the government unveiled a package of political and economic reforms.

Its reconciliatory tone was underlined by the withdrawal of cases against exiled insurgent tribal chiefs, who were also invited for talks; the issuing of a verified official list of nearly 1,000 missing political activists, most thought to have been detained by the military’s Inter Services Intelligence directorate and 20 of whom were released in December as a goodwill gesture; backdated compensation for federal exploitation of natural resources, including oil and natural gas, and increased provincial ownership of ventures involving the mining of copper and gold deposits, and the recruitment of 25,000 Balochs into various branches of the civil service.

The reforms, dubbed the Aghaz-i-Haqooq-Balochistan, or Beginning of Rights for Balochistan, package won the unanimous backing of the federal parliament on December 11.

In an unprecedented display of generosity on December 31, the governments of Pakistan’s three other provinces, including the opposition-led administration in Punjab, agreed to reduce their share of federal revenues to facilitate greater development spending in Balochistan.

Independent analysts said the federal government now had to act fast to prevent the political process from failing.

“It is not the first time that hawks in the establishment [meaning the army high command] are discouraging a political solution to the Balochistan conflict,” wrote Malik Siraj Akbar in an opinion article in the Daily Times, a liberal English-language newspaper published in Lahore.

“The government has to minimise the use of force by the security forces against the people of Balochistan in order to save the reconciliation process from being hijacked, and elements responsible for the Khuzdar firing incident must be brought to justice.”

thussain@thenational.ae

Islamabad’s ‘Gunboat’ Policy In Balochistan

Islamabad’s ‘gunboat’ policy

By Sanaullah Baloch

IN the past 60 years, the people of Balochistan have endured immense suffering. They have lost their sovereignty and identity, and have been ruthlessly exploited.

A peaceful, autonomous region before 1948, Balochistan now resembles the war-torn West African countries where resources have been turned into a curse rather than a cure for the native population.

The recent history of the Baloch people, particularly from 1948 onwards, has been marked by confrontation, segregation, exploitation and increasingly abysmal living conditions throughout the province. During this period, the central government’s priority has been to develop and expand the security network in Balochistan, in order to get what it wants. Put simply, Islamabad has adopted a clear and consistent ‘gunboat’ policy in order to remain in command of the province.

The establishment holds the Baloch people and their leadership responsible for the current state of affairs. Yet how can a region develop when it has more soldiers than teachers, more garrisons then universities, more naval bases than science and research centres? In Balochistan today, Frontier Corps (FC) cantonments outnumber colleges, there are more police stations than vocational training centres and more check-posts than government girls’ schools.

Neither politicians, nor the establishment in Islamabad, appear willing to understand and undo the colonial-style system that is the source of immense frustration for the people of this resource-rich province. Islamabad has always taken the approach of hiding Balochistan’s miseries behind empty packages and slogans. In reality, the central government has lost all moral and political command over Baloch land: it uses unethical methods such as fear and brutality to retain power in the region, in a manner that is reminiscent of the colonial era.

The killing recently of political activists in Khuzdar is not an exception: it represents a planned policy to decapitate the Baloch people’s leadership and terrorise the population. On Jan 15, a peaceful rally by the Baloch Students Organisation was fired upon by FC personnel and two young students-cum-political activists, Saddam Hussain and Ali Dost, were killed. Many other students were injured.

The protest was a democratic right of the Baloch youth to express their opposition to the killing of Baloch people in Karachi, and to lobby for the release of the soaring numbers of missing persons.

The broader aim underpinning the recent daylight murders of senior Baloch leaders is to prevent at all costs any mobilisation among the Baloch, or the raising of their political consciousness. Islamabad is using inhumane methods to intimidate Baloch political activists, seeking by such means to render impossible any organised struggle against the colonisation and exploitation of Baloch land and resources.

The establishment’s hidden motives are revealed by its policy of state-sponsored murder, such as that of Baloch leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti who was killed by Pakistani troops in August 2006. Other deaths include that of Balach Marri in November 2007 and Zahid Baloch in late 2008; prominent Baloch intellectual Jan Mohammad Dashti survived an attempt on his life last February.

In April last year, three prominent Baloch leaders — Ghulam Mohammad, chairman of the Baloch National Movement, Sher Mohammad Baloch, vice-president of the Balochistan Republican Party and Lala Munir Baloch, general-secretary of the Baloch National Front — were abducted and killed.

It appears, in fact, that certain sections of the establishment are making a deliberate attempt to irritate peaceful protesters and political groups: those who have opted for peaceful means of protest against military operations in the area and the human rights’ crisis. Although the conflict is inflicting immense pain and socio-economic losses on the Baloch masses, it translates to a source of power and monetary benefit for the institutions that represent the security establishment.

Who, after all, benefits from the prolonged conflict — the Baloch or the security establishment? The answer is simple: while replying to a question in the Balochistan Assembly on Jan 14 this year, the Balochistan home minister said that around Rs140m had been paid to the FC for performing duties related to maintaining law and order in the province. He added that millions of rupees were outstanding under this head. The FC is a federal force staffed largely by people from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Punjab.

The skimpy development budget of this impoverished province has been diverted towards the powerful FC and the security agencies, in order to allow them to continue their oppressive policies.

Meanwhile, due to the total absence of socio-economic development rural poverty in Balochistan has increased by 21 per cent between 1999 and 2008. Thousands of people have been killed, rendered missing or displaced during military offensives. The prolonged Balochistan-Islamabad conflict has, moreover, resulted in immense losses to the socio-economic development of the province, which have never been compensated for or even calculated by the central government.

Due to the appalling situation in the province, the Baloch youth has disassociated completely with the state and its policies. The recent deaths of their Baloch cousins in Lyari, Karachi, have rubbed salt on their wounds.

Balochistan’s youth is not only the victim of enforced disappearances and killings, it has also been deprived of all forms of contemporary education and employment. Compared to the 486 polytechnics, vocational institutes and computer science, commerce and law colleges in Punjab, Balochistan has just nine poorly developed centres for Quetta’s urban population.

The young people of Balochistan stand in dire need of schools, colleges, universities, professional and technical-training institutions. Above all, they need freedom and opportunities. They do not deserve to be repressed and killed. The writer is a Baloch leader and a former senator. balochbnp@gmail.com (Dawn, Karachi)

Wars sending U.S. into ruin

By ERIC MARGOLIS Obama the peace president is fighting battles his country cannot afford February 8, 2010 U.S. President Barack Obama calls the $3.8-trillion US budget he just sent to Congress a major step in restoring America’s economic health. In fact, it’s another potent fix given to a sick patient deeply addicted to the dangerous drug — debt. More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion. The latest example was the Soviet Union, which spent itself into ruin by buying tanks. Washington’s deficit (the difference between spending and income from taxes) will reach a vertiginous $1.6 trillion US this year. The huge sum will be borrowed, mostly from China and Japan, to which the U.S. already owes $1.5 trillion. Debt service will cost $250 billion. To spend $1 trillion, one would have had to start spending $1 million daily soon after Rome was founded and continue for 2,738 years until today. Obama’s total military budget is nearly $1 trillion. This includes Pentagon spending of $880 billion. Add secret black programs (about $70 billion); military aid to foreign nations like Egypt, Israel and Pakistan; 225,000 military “contractors” (mercenaries and workers); and veterans’ costs. Add $75 billion (nearly four times Canada’s total defence budget) for 16 intelligence agencies with 200,000 employees. The Afghanistan and Iraq wars ($1 trillion so far), will cost $200-250 billion more this year, including hidden and indirect expenses. Obama’s Afghan “surge” of 30,000 new troops will cost an additional $33 billion — more than Germany’s total defence budget. No wonder U.S. defence stocks rose after Peace Laureate Obama’s “austerity” budget. Military and intelligence spending relentlessly increase as unemployment heads over 10% and the economy bleeds red ink. America has become the Sick Man of the Western Hemisphere, an economic cripple like the defunct Ottoman Empire. The Pentagon now accounts for half of total world military spending. Add America’s rich NATO allies and Japan, and the figure reaches 75%. China and Russia combined spend only a paltry 10% of what the U.S. spends on defence. There are 750 U.S. military bases in 50 nations and 255,000 service members stationed abroad, 116,000 in Europe, nearly 100,000 in Japan and South Korea. Military spending gobbles up 19% of federal spending and at least 44% of tax revenues. During the Bush administration, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — funded by borrowing — cost each American family more than $25,000. Like Bush, Obama is paying for America’s wars through supplemental authorizations — putting them on the nation’s already maxed-out credit card. Future generations will be stuck with the bill. This presidential and congressional jiggery-pokery is the height of public dishonesty. America’s wars ought to be paid for through taxes, not bookkeeping fraud. If U.S. taxpayers actually had to pay for the Afghan and Iraq wars, these conflicts would end in short order. America needs a fair, honest war tax. The U.S. clearly has reached the point of imperial overreach. Military spending and debt-servicing are cannibalizing the U.S. economy, the real basis of its world power. Besides the late U.S.S.R., the U.S. also increasingly resembles the dying British Empire in 1945, crushed by immense debts incurred to wage the Second World War, unable to continue financing or defending the imperium, yet still imbued with imperial pretensions. It is increasingly clear the president is not in control of America’s runaway military juggernaut. Sixty years ago, the great President Dwight Eisenhower, whose portrait I keep by my desk, warned Americans to beware of the military-industrial complex. Six decades later, partisans of permanent war and world domination have joined Wall Street’s money lenders to put America into thrall. Increasing numbers of Americans are rightly outraged and fearful of runaway deficits. Most do not understand their political leaders are also spending their nation into ruin through unnecessary foreign wars and a vainglorious attempt to control much of the globe — what neocons call “full spectrum dominance.” If Obama really were serious about restoring America’s economic health, he would demand military spending be slashed, quickly end the Iraq and Afghan wars and break up the nation’s giant Frankenbanks.

:: Article nr. 63069 sent on 08-feb-2010 23:23 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=63069

Link: www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/eric_margolis/2010/02/05/12758511-qmi.html

China Taps New Gas and Oil in S. China Sea

Husky Energy Announces Third Discovery in South China Sea

CALGARY, ALBERTA–(Marketwire – Feb. 8, 2010) – John C.S. Lau, President & Chief Executive Officer of Husky Energy Inc. (TSX:HSE), is pleased to announce that Husky Oil China Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Husky Energy, has made its third significant gas discovery on Block 29/26 in the South China Sea.

The Liuhua 29-1 exploration well was drilled 43 kilometres northeast of the Liwan 3-1 Gas Field and 20 kilometres northeast of the LH 34-2 Gas Field in a water depth of 723 metres. The well encountered a gross gas column of 145 metres, with a significant thickness of high quality gas charged reservoir, and an oil zone was encountered in a deeper reservoir. The well tested natural gas at an equipment restricted rate of 57 million cubic feet (mmcf) per day, with indications that the future deliverability of the well could exceed 90 mmcf per day.

“The exploration discovery at Liuhua 29-1 is the third significant gas discovery in Block 29/26,” said Mr. Lau. “The three natural gas fields; Liwan 3-1, Liuhua 34-2, and Liuhua 29-1 have confirmed the resource potential as a major gas development project in the South China Sea and supports an earlier estimation of petroleum initially in place of 4 to 6 tcf (trillion cubic feet) for the Block.”

Beating the Drums of War In Lebanon

Beating the drums of war

Tension is escalating between Hezbollah and Israel hinting a new battle could likely break out this summer

• By Sami Moubayed, Special to Gulf News

• Israeli military drills, the thundering rhetoric of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, the aggressiveness of top officials in the Netanyahu government, and an indifferent Obama administration have all added to snowballing tension in the Middle East.
• Image Credit: Ramachandra Babu/©Gulf News

When the ceasefire went into effect on the Lebanese-Israeli border in 2006, nobody believed — not for a moment — that this was the end of conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. After all, none of Israel’s objectives were met in 2006: Israel Defence Forces’(IDF) soldiers were still held captive in Lebanon and far from being annihilated or weakened; Hezbollah emerged from the war stronger than before, even by testimony of the Israel army. Anybody familiar with the guiding ideology behind the Zionist State understands why 2006 was such a problem for Tel Aviv. The Israelis, simply said, cannot afford to “not win” a war with the Arabs.

Back in 1973, Israeli prime minister Golda Meir was forced to resign — not for losing a war, but simply, for not winning it. Much of that reasoning applied to former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, who stepped down in early 2009, having also not won, neither the 2006 war in Lebanon nor the 2008 war in Gaza.

Since then we have been hearing of a Phase II scenario between the two countries, speculated for the summers of 2006-2009. Why summer? One reason is that all of Israel’s wars have been in the summer, when the skies are clear and the soil is strong for Israeli army tanks, in 1967, 1982, and 2006. Only in March 1969 did the Israelis go into a winter battle with the Arabs — the Palestinians at Karameh in Jordan — and back then, bad weather prevented their air force from intervening, and led to a retreat of their ground forces, after a 10-hour battle. Once again, the drums of war are vibrating throughout the region, as tension escalates between Hezbollah and Israel, signalling that a new war will break out in the summer of 2010.

Israeli military drills, the thundering rhetoric of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, the aggressiveness of top officials in the Netanyahu government, and an indifferent Obama administration have all added to snowballing tension in the Middle East.

Neither the US nor Israel can tolerate the continuation of Hezbollah in Lebanon, a powerful player independent from their control, which has effectively shattered the myth of Israeli military supremacy, and lived to tell the story. The fact that the party is strongly represented in the Lebanese government and got its say on all crucial matters in Lebanese domestic affairs since 2006 only makes the reality harder to digest for the IDF.

Once again, this war would be a proxy one, with Israel serving as proxy for the US, and Hezbollah fighting with a fraction of the military might of Iran. The option of a US war on Iran, after all, still stands, although on-hold so long as the US remains grounded in Iraq. Hezbollah officials have been saying that unlike 2006, this won’t be a defensive war but one in which the party will use its full strength, hinting that they can delve deep into Israeli territory and occupy colonies along northern Israel, setting a precedent that would bring down the Netanyahu government, then strike at “Haifa and beyond Haifa.”

Last week, the crisis took a new turn as threats were fired back and forth between Damascus and Tel Aviv, with Syrian President Bashar Al Assad saying that Israel was not ready for peace, while his Foreign Minister Walid Al Mua’allem spoke of a “regional war” that would not spare Israeli cities, followed by a statement by the Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad Naji Al Otari, who said that Israel will strongly regret a war with Syria.

Who benefits from a regional war? Certainly, Hezbollah doesn’t want it and nor does Lebanon. The Saudis don’t want it, seeing that war would spell economic disaster for Lebanese Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri, along with political trouble, given that Hezbollah is strongly represented in his cabinet, which has pledged to “protect and embrace” the arms of Hezbollah.

Netanyahu agenda

Damascus has committed itself to peace following the Madrid Conference of 1991, based on the June 4, 1967 borders of Israel, and has repeatedly called for peaceful solutions in the Middle East, aimed at restoring the Golan Heights to Syria. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, wants this war to happen, for many reasons. One links directly to his Iran-o-phobia, seeing it as a prelude to a future confrontation with Iran.

Another is a desire from him to rank among Israeli leaders who fought wars and won with Arab states — another David Ben Gurion, Menachem Begin, or Ariel Sharon. He cannot afford to become another Ehud Barak or Olmert, helpless at crushing Palestinian resistance at home, or Hezbollah threats on Israel’s northern border. Fighting a war, and winning it, would empower Netanyahu in any peace talks with the Arabs and spare him the agony of engaging in any serious talks with the Palestinians.

The Israelis sound optimistic about this war, claiming that they learned from all their shortcomings in 2006 and are bent on never repeating them in 2010. For that matter, so has Nasrallah. The Israelis believe that there will be no Phase III for their conflict with Lebanon, claiming that this will indeed be the final battle, which will either bring down Nasrallah or Netanyahu.

Beneath the layers of Israeli rhetoric, everybody understands that the guerrilla tactics of Hezbollah, its lead advantage against the bulky Israel army, still stand. So does the difficult topography of South Lebanon, the grassroots popularity of Hezbollah, and the fact that Hezbollah has not been infiltrated by the Israelis — a factor that resulted in them being unable to strike at Nasrallah or any senior party commander in 2006. So is the religious drive of Hezbollah warriors, the stockpiles of sophisticated weapons, and the unwavering support of regional players like Iran and Syria.

Outcomes in war, however, are un-predictable, especially after 2006.

Sami Moubayed is editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine in Syria.

Four American Presidents and the Case Against Them for War Crimes In Iraq

PRESS RELEASE

STATEMENT ON THE CLOSURE OF THE LEGAL CASE FOR IRAQ IN SPAIN FILED AGAINST FOUR US PRESIDENTS AND FOUR UK PRIME MINISTERS FOR WAR CRIMES, CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY AND GENOCIDE IN IRAQ CALL FOR COORDINATED ACTION * SEE ALSO: LEGAL CASE IN SPAIN *INTRODUCTION TO THE LEGAL CASE, FILED BEFORE THE AUDENCIA NACIONAL ON 6 OCTOBER 2009.

For immediate distribution

Date: 7 February 2010

[Spanish] – [Arabic] - [Français]

MADRID/CAIRO: Public enquiries on the decision to wage war on Iraq that are silent about the crimes committed, the victims involved, and provide for no sanction, whatever their outcome, are not enough. Illegal acts should entail consequences: the dead and the harmed deserve justice.

On 6 October 2009, working with and on behalf of Iraqi plaintiffs, we filed a case before Spanish law against four US presidents and four UK prime ministers for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Iraq. The case presented spanned 19 years, including not only the wholesale destruction of Iraq witnessed from 2003, but also the sanctions period during which 1.5 million excess Iraqi deaths were recorded.

We brought the case to Spain because its laws of universal jurisdiction are based on principles enshrined in its constitution. All humanity knows the crimes committed in Iraq by those we accused, but no jurisdiction is bringing them to justice. We presented with Iraqi victims a solid case drawing on evidence contained in over 900 documents and that refer to thousands of individual incidents from which a pattern of accumulated harm and intent can be discerned.

When we brought our case, we knew that the Spanish Senate would soon vote on an amendment earlier passed by the lower house of parliament to curtail the application of universal jurisdiction in Spain. We were conscious that this restriction could be retroactive, and we took account of the content of the proposed amendment in our case filing. As we imagined, 2009 turned out to be a sad year for upholding universal human rights and international law in Spain. One day after we filed, the law was curtailed, and soon thereafter our case closed. Serious cases of the kind universal jurisdiction exists to address became more difficult to investigate.

One more jurisdiction to fall

Despite submitting a 110-page long referenced accusation (the Introduction of which is appended to this statement), the Spanish public prosecutor and the judge assigned to our case determined there was no reason to investigate. Their arguments were erroneous and could easily have been refuted if we could have appealed. To do so we needed a professional Spanish lawyer — either in a paid capacity or as a volunteer who wished to help the Iraqi people in its struggle for justice. As we had limited means, and for other reasons mostly concerning internal Spanish affairs, which were not our concern, we could not secure a lawyer in either capacity to appeal. Our motion for more time to find a lawyer was rejected.

We continue to believe that the violent killing of over one million people in Iraq since 2003 alone, the ongoing US occupation — that carries direct legal responsibility — and the displacement of up to a fifth of the Iraqi population from the terror that occupation has entailed and incited suggests strongly that the claims we put forward ought to be further investigated.

In reality, our case is a paramount example of those that authorities in the West — Spain included — fear. To them, such cases represent the double edge of sustaining the principle of universal jurisdiction. Western states used universal jurisdiction in the past to judge Third World countries. When victims in the global South began using it to judge Israel and US aggression, Western countries rushed to restrict it. Abandoning universal jurisdiction by diluting it is now the general tendency.

Call for wider collective effort to prosecute

We regret that the Spanish courts refused to investigate our case, but this will not discourage us. We have a just cause. The crimes are evident. The responsible are well known, even if the international juridical system continues to ignore Iraqi victims. Justice for victims and the wish of all humanity that war criminals should be punished oblige us to search for alternative legal possibilities, so that the crimes committed in Iraq can be investigated and accountability established.

At present, failed international justice allows US and UK war criminals to stand above international law. Understanding that this constitutes an attack — or makes possible future attacks — on the human rights of everyone, everywhere, we will continue to advocate the use of all possible avenues, including UN institutions, the International Criminal Court, and popular tribunals, to highlight and bring before law and moral and public opinion US and UK crimes in Iraq.

We are ready to make our experience and expertise available to those who struggle in the same direction. We look forward to a time when the countries of the global South, which are generally victims of aggression, reinforce their juridical systems by implementing the principle of universal jurisdiction. This will be a great service to humanity and international law.

Millions of people in Iraq have been killed, displaced, terrorised, detained, tortured or impoverished under the hammer of US and UK military, economic, political, ideological and cultural attacks. The very fabric and being of the country has been subject to intentional destruction. This destruction constitutes one of the gravest international crimes ever committed. All humanity should unite in refusing that law — by failing to assure justice for Iraqi victims — enables this destruction to be the opening precedent of the 21st century.

Ad Hoc Committee For Justice For Iraq

Press contacts:

Hana Al Bayaty, Executive Committee, BRussells Tribunal

+20 10 027 7964 (English and French) hanaalbayaty@gmail.com

Dr Ian Douglas, Executive Committee, BRussells Tribunal, coordinator, International Initiative to Prosecute US Genocide in Iraq

+20 12 167 1660 (English) iandouglas@USgenocide.org

Serene Assir, Advisory Committee, BRussells Tribunal (Spanish) justiciaparairak@gmail.com

Abdul Ilah Albayaty, Executive Committee, BRussells Tribunal

+20 11 181 0798 (Arabic) albayaty_abdul@hotmail.com

Dirk Adriaensens, Executive Committee, BRussells Tribunal

+32 494 68 07 62 (Dutch) dirkadriaensens@gmail.com

Web:

www.brusselstribunal.org

www.USgenocide.org

www.twitter.com/USgenocide

www.facebook.com/USgenocide

This statement:

http://brusselstribunal.org/LegalCaseSpain070210.htm

---

INTRODUCTION TO THE LEGAL CASE

FILED BEFORE THE AUDENCIA NACIONAL

ON 6 OCTOBER 2009

The following is the introduction to a legal case filed 6 October 2009 before the Audiencia Nacional in Spain against four US presidents and four UK prime ministers for commissioning, condoning and/or perpetuating multiple war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Iraq. The case was filed under laws of universal jurisdiction.

This case, naming George H W Bush, William J Clinton, George W Bush, Barack H Obama, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Anthony Blair and Gordon Brown, was brought by Iraqis and others who stand in solidarity with the Iraqi people and in defence of their rights and international law.

Introduction

The respondents herein identified in this complaint have all held or hold high public office in the administrations of the United States and the United Kingdom, and/or commanding authority in the respective armed forces of these countries, and whilst in command or in office actively instigated, authorized, supported, justified, executed and/or perpetuated:

1.              A 13-year sanctions regime on Iraq known and proven to have an overwhelmingly destructive impact on Iraqi public health, especially child mortality

2.             The use of disproportionate and indiscriminate military force, including numerous extra-legal strikes and bombing campaigns throughout the 1990s, entailing the purposeful destruction of Iraq’s water and health facilities, and defence capacities, and the widespread contamination of Iraq’s ecosphere and life environment by the unjustified and massive use of depleted uranium munitions

3.             The prevention by means of comprehensive sanctions, and/or military strikes, of the reconstruction of Iraq’s critical civil infrastructure, including its health, water and sanitation systems, and the decontamination of Iraq’s ecosphere/life environment, backed by the threat of Security Council veto where unanimity was not present for such strikes and/or the continuance of the sanctions regime

4.             The launching of an illegal war of aggression against Iraq based on deliberate falsification of threat assessment intelligence and systematic efforts to conceal from the general public in the United States and the United Kingdom, and other countries, along with parts of the military command structure of the respective armed forces deployed, the true aims and objectives of that war

5.             Establishing by design an occupation apparatus that by its incompetence, inexperience, corruption and/or ideological or sectarian alignment and actions would finalize the destruction of the Iraqi state and the attempted destruction of Iraqi national unity and identity, entailing an attack upon Iraqis as a whole and the intended destruction of the Iraqi national group as such.

The acts ordered and/or continued and perpetuated by the respondents identified in this complaint were unlawful in nature, were known to be and/or ought reasonably to have been known to be unlawful in nature, and were based on manifest and purposive lies, manipulations, deliberately misleading presentations of facts, and baseless assertions and other false justifications. The consistency of the propaganda effort that supported and contextualized these unlawful acts was such — and was aimed and known to be so — that it constituted an international campaign of demonization and dehumanization of Iraqis, the Iraqi nation, the Iraqi state, Iraq’s civil and military leadership, Iraq’s civil administrative apparatus, and Iraq in its Arab context. As such, and through actions taken and summarized below, the respondents:

1.              Deprived the Iraqi people of all or the majority of their fundamental rights as established and protected by international human rights law and international humanitarian law, expressed in the UN Charter and conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions, including the right of defence

2.             Structured and implemented policies that continue to deprive the Iraqi people of their sovereignty and the exercise of their freedom, human rights, and civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, as established and guaranteed by international human rights law and international humanitarian law, including the UN Charter and conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions

3.             Consistently gave political and legal cover to these acts, even as these acts were known to be and/or ought reasonably to have been known to be in violation of international law, including peremptory or jus cogensstandards of law

4.             Asserted and defended extra-legal immunity for all those engaged in acts that have attacked the protected rights of the Iraqi people, and established a pattern of impunity for those accused of such attacks by failing to adequately investigate and prosecute specific and general allegations of grave abuses, and/or to ensure responsibility is assumed throughout the chain of command that permitted or failed to prohibit such attacks, and/or dismissed or distorted numerous customary legal standards, including the laws of war and those that outlaw the preemptive use of force in international relations

5.             Abused and overran international law, the guarantor of international order, peace and security, which the United Nations System exists to protect and is deemed to embody, enshrined in the UN Charter, and upon whose foundation the Universal Declaration of Human Rights gains positive affect and final meaning.

Opportunity for redress for Iraqi victims in their own national jurisdiction is non-existent as Iraq remains occupied, its sovereign institutions dismantled and non-functioning. Despite numerous individual petitions submitted to its chief prosecutor, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has stated that it has no jurisdiction to hear cases of abuses and violations of human rights standards and international humanitarian law in Iraq. In light of US and UK threats to use permanent member veto power in the past, it is not foreseeable that the Security Council in the future will refer complaints in Iraq to the ICC, and nor can Iraqis wait for Security Council reform. Without effective investigation and prosecution of these abuses and violations, the international community runs the risk of allowing a precedent of unlawful action of such grave magnitude to be set without censure, thereby endangering the rights and dignity not only of Iraqis but also of people the world over. Such a precedent would be contrary to the UN Charter and the principles upon which the international order of states is deemed to be founded. The basis for public acceptance of a state of law is that it protects peace and defends the wellbeing of the people. Failure to investigate and effectively prosecute the catalogue of grave abuses and violations perpetrated by the respondents in Iraq, and against the Iraqi people, would constitute an ongoing and inherent threat to the basis of the international order in general and to international peace and security specifically.

Alongside those in official positions of authority, key political advisers, lobbyists, strategists and corporate representatives have also played a crucial role in the ideological and political justifications and legitimization sought and falsely proposed in order to execute the overall policy embraced, inclusive of an accumulated pattern of attacks, military and otherwise, that has lasted 19 years to date, culminating in the 2003 illegal war of aggression waged on Iraq and that continues to be executed despite wide and ongoing condemnation. Though there are nuances of responsibility inherent to the nature of policy construction and execution, the personal relations and interconnections between primary and secondary level individuals involved, and the groups or common circles to which they belong, testify to a large degree of cohesion present in intent and action among the respondents identified and those who support and benefit from the policies they have pursued. At the least, this shared intent is one of deliberate harm; at worst, it amounts to an objective intent to destroy for definable, and at times publicly enunciated, strategic, geopolitical and geo-economic reasons. Furthermore, none of the respondents can reasonably claim they did not have knowledge of the likely outcome of their policies, and those they supported, as all had not only participated in the design and execution of these policies, but they continued to execute said policies once their effects were widely known and had been proven to be detrimental to — and destructive of — the health, sovereignty and rights of the Iraqi people, and further have defended these policies and in majority continue to do so.

From the start of the implementation of a US-instigated and dominantly administered sanctions regime up to the present day, an approximate total of 2,700,000 Iraqis have died as a direct result of sanctions followed by the US-UK led war of aggression on, and occupation of, Iraq beginning in 2003. Among those killed during the sanctions period were 560,000 children. From 2003 onwards, having weakened Iraq’s civil and military infrastructure to the degree that its people were rendered near totally defenceless, Iraq was subject to a level of aggression of near unprecedented scale and nature in international history, occurring in parallel with the promotion of a partition plan for Iraq, the substantial direct funding of sectarian groups and militias that would play a key role in fragmenting the country under occupation, both administratively and in terms of national identity, the cancellation of the former state apparatus and the dismissal of its personnel entailing the collapse of all public services and state protection for the Iraqi people, the further destruction of the health and education systems of Iraq, and the creation of waves of internal and external displacement totaling nearly 5,000,000 Iraqis, or one fifth of the Iraqi population. By December 2007, the Iraqi Anti-Corruption Board reported that there were up to 5,000,000 orphans in Iraq, while the Iraqi Ministry of Women’s Affairs counts 3,000,000 widows as of 2009.

Such massive destruction of life, having as context a 19-year period of accumulated attacks, with numerous warnings and opportunities for remedy and a reversal of policy ignored, cannot be mere happenstance. Indeed, the paramount charge that must be investigated, and that plain fact evidence suggests, is that this level of destruction has been integral to the US and UK’s shared international policy for Iraq. The destruction in whole or in part of the Iraqi people as a national group, and depriving this group of all or the majority of its rights, appears from a reasoned account of the catalogue of violations, abuses and attacks to which the Iraqi people have been subject to be the unlawful means pursued purposely by the respondents in order to redraw by force the strategic and political map of the Arab region and Iraq’s place within that context, and to capture, appropriate and plunder, via the cancellation of the sovereignty of the Iraqi people and the destruction and fragmentation of their identity and unity as a national group, Iraq’s substantial natural energy resources. Historically, the Iraqi national group, variegated yet cohesive, was and continues to be, despite the aggression faced, firmly rooted in its overwhelming majority in the concept of citizenship of the Iraqi state — a state founded on public provision of services and a nationally owned energy industry. The policy that the respondents have sought and continue to seek to impose, that has entailed privatizing and seizing ownership of Iraqi citizens’ resources, along with the administrative and political partition of the former unitary state, is contrary to the basis of, and cohesion of, the Iraqi people as a national group.

Until prevented by effective legal investigation and precautionary action, it is highly likely that the combined US/UK strategy in Iraq will continue, though its tactics may change. Iraqis in the majority show no sign of surrendering their right to and belief in Iraqi citizenship, including sovereign control over Iraq’s natural resources. Between a belligerent foreign aggressor and a resilient, resistant people legal action is crucial to end the ongoing and by all likelihood perpetual slaughter of Iraqis and the destruction of their national identity and rights. We are before immoral and unlawful acts, contrary to the basis on which the international order of state sovereignty and peace and security rests, and that brought about and continue to pursue the destruction of the Iraqi state and attempted destruction of the Iraqi nation. Whereas 1,200,000 Iraqis, according to credible estimates, have lost their lives to violence since 2003 alone, the Iraqi people continue to lose their lives or at best live under constant fear of death, mutilation, detention, exile and lack of access to their rightful resources and freedoms. The sum of these conditions, the outcome of a pattern of purposeful action whose consequences could be foreseen, and of which detailed and compelling notice was served, situated in a context of false justifications, deceptions, and outright lies, and matched by the unlawful use of force, and disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force, amounts to substantive violations of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

As proof of the widespread impact of past and current US and UK policies, in 2009 the American Friends Service Committee, in collaboration with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), reported that some 80 per cent of Iraqis surveyed in Iraq had witnessed a shooting, 68 per cent had been interrogated or harassed by militias, 77 per cent had been affected by shelling/rocket attacks, 72 per cent had witnessed a car bombing, 23 per cent of Iraqis in Baghdad had had a family member kidnapped, and 75 per cent had had a family member or someone close to them murdered.

Military operations in Iraq from 2003 have already cost for the United States an estimated $800 billion, with long-term costs estimated at $1.8 trillion. By 2009, the estimated cost for the United Kingdom, according to figures released by the UK Ministry of Defence, was £8.4 billion ($13.7 billion). The United States continues to spend $12 billion on the war per month. There has been a total of 513,000 US soldiers deployed to Iraq since 2003. Some 170,000 were stationed during the “Surge” campaign of 2007, and 130,000 remain deployed as of June 2009. In addition to regular armed forces, the US administration is believed to employ up to 130,000 additional private security contractors and has refused to release official numbers in this regard. Security companies have been granted blanket immunity under Iraqi law. Equally, there is no effective mechanism, or hope, for Iraqis to hold US and UK forces to account directly.

The narration of facts that follows is substantiated with evidence detailed in the Annex. Other facts to be investigated while reported are not mentioned in the following.

[END]

Israel Coming Unhinged? A Loose Cannon in a Volatile Region

 

Sharmine Narwani

Senior Associate, St. Anthony’s College, Oxford University

Another war is looming in the Middle East, say the pundits. It is hard to ignore the whispers — now louder — when they are regularly punctuated by hostile statements from various officials in the region, leading further credence to a possible conflagration.

The likely site of the newest regional battle is the Levant. Funnily enough, nobody can pinpoint exactly where, although it is clear that Israel will be involved. Which should tell us something right there.

Since the Jewish state’s military attack on Lebanon in 2006, it has been itching for a "do-over." Why? Because for the first time in its history, Israel did not win a war. The month-long bombardment of Lebanon resulted in a stalemate — an intolerable outcome by the standards of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

To add to the indignity, it was a mere few thousand men — not even a national army — that took the IDF by surprise.

The cornerstone of Israel’s military strategy is deterrence — whether though brandishing a nuclear arsenal to warn off threatening nation-states, or by Gaza-style intensive attacks that send a strong message to a weaker party. This is a highly militarized state that has lived under the legacy of conflict its entire existence. Loss — or even perceived loss — is not an option.

So instead of self-examination, Israel’s conflicted, and increasingly right-wing political body unleashed a belligerent tone — angry, defiant, threatening, unfocused like a petulant and wounded child. Diversionary tactics came into play to focus domestic and international attention elsewhere and fill the frustrating void — Hamas in Gaza, the potential nuclear aspirations of Iran, Palestinian intransigence on peace talks, Hezbollah’s weapons, Syria, Turkey, anti-Semitism, the Goldstone Report.

In recent weeks, Israeli officials have made inflammatory statements about conflicts on half a dozen fronts.

SYRIA:
"When there is another war, you will not just lose it, but you and your family will lose power," right-wing Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman challenged Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Thursday, after Assad claimed that Israel is "driving the region towards war, not peace."

Lieberman went further and hit at the heart of any future Israeli-Syrian rapprochement: "We must bring Syria to realize that…it will have to give up on its ultimate demand for the Golan Heights." Israeli leaders have in the past accepted in principle that the Syrian Golan Heights, captured and occupied by Israel in 1967, would necessarily be part of any bilateral peace deal.

GAZA:
In January — one year after Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza that lead to the deaths of 1,400 Palestinians — Major General Yom Tov Samia, former head of the IDF’s Southern Command, told the Jerusalem Post: "We are before another round in Gaza… another war with Hamas is inevitable." And Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned Gaza’s leaders to "watch their step, and not to cry crocodile tears if they force [us] to take action."

The hue and cry about Hamas’ rockets hitting Israeli towns was Tel Aviv and Washington’s driving narrative in defense of Israel’s military actions in Gaza. Still is. But just this week, the Jewish State announced that a new $200 million rocket defense system called the "Iron Dome" will not be deployed against Gaza as promised. Too expensive for Gaza, says the military, explaining that it will be deployed elsewhere where there is more of an "imminent" threat.

And this comes after months of Israeli insistence that Hamas has significantly boosted its military capabilities and has obtained long-range rockets, mostly from Iran. So which is it — either they do or don’t have weapons, either they do or don’t pose a threat?

LEBANON:
No two other parties have been more relentlessly subjected to Israeli threats than Iran and Hezbollah. Last summer, after it was clear that the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah would likely participate at the cabinet level in any unity government formed following Lebanon’s June elections, Israeli leaders fell over themselves in their rush to issue warnings. Netanyahu, Barak and Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon all threatened that any border attacks would be blamed on the Lebanese central government — with repercussions.

Just last month, Israeli Minister Yossi Peled opined, "Without a doubt we are heading for another round (of battle) in the North. No one knows when, but it’s clear that it will happen."

And so both Hezbollah and Israel have moved weapons systems closer to their mutual borders.

IRAN:
Iran, in turn, has been the recipient of non-stop bombing threats from Israel over its civilian nuclear program, which the Jewish State claims is really a clandestine plan to build nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Never mind that some two dozen IAEA reports over six years show no diversion of materials to weaponization. Or that Israeli military intelligence has been extending the date for a finished Iranian nuclear warhead since the 1990s. Last June,Mossad Chief Meir Dagan declared the new date for the first Iranian nuke would be in 2014. But Israel’s war drums have kept beating as though these weapons were already sitting on launch pads, ready to go.

TURKEY:
Relatively new on the scene in the game of belligerent words is Turkey. A rare Israeli ally in the Middle East both in political and military terms, Turkey has drawn away from the alliance since Israel’s widely-criticized Gaza attacks last year, when Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out at the particularly brutal IDF campaign.

Things have gone from bad to worse since, culminating a month ago in the now-infamous Ayalon row when the Israeli deputy foreign minister publicly and deliberately humiliated Turkey’s ambassador in front of cameras. Israel has called Turkey anti-Semitic and very recently slammed the Turkish prime minister again when he drew attention to the continuing Israeli blockade of Gaza and its daily violations of Lebanese airspace.

**********

Some Israeli critics suggest that the destabilizing escalation in rhetoric may not just be as a result of Israel’s psychological loss in 2006, but more recently, because of an increased paranoia about international isolation — the result of war crimes allegations documented against Israel in the UN’s Goldstone Report about the Gaza war, and the country’s ongoing occupation of Palestinian lands.

In a stunning attack on his government two weeks ago, Israeli writer Gideon Levy wrote a commentary piece in Haaretz in which he takes to task their "cynical" use of Holocaust Remembrance Day to propagandize toward political ends:

"An Israeli public relations drive like this hasn’t been seen for ages. The timing of the unusual effort – never have so many ministers deployed across the globe – is not coincidental: When the world is talking Goldstone, we talk Holocaust, as if out to blur the impression. When the world talks occupation, we’ll talk Iran as if we wanted them to forget."

But the escalation of rhetoric from Israel’s right-wing government is not being viewed as simple political posturing — more, like a promise of battle. As concerned as the Jewish State may be about conflict on its borders, its neighbors — having been on the receiving end of superior Israeli weapons, and having suffered far larger numbers of civilian casualties — are taking these words very seriously.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, at a joint press conference with Spain’s Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos on Thursday pointed to this verbal escalation of hostilities by calling on Israel to "desist from making threats against Gaza, southern Lebanon, Iran and now Syria."

Because rhetoric after all creates a perception. And perception is 100% of politics — not to be played with when standing on a tinderbox. The Levant has always been rife with small-scale border skirmishes — that is the way of an area re-mapped by foreigners, with unnatural, artificial borders. But it is only Israel that has, since 1973, launched full-on military battles from these skirmishes. And without a doubt it is gearing up for a fight. Where, is anyone’s guess.

New Nuclear Power Plant for My Hometown?

Ohio, Duke considering nuclear plant

BY MIKE BOYER • MBOYER@ENQUIRER.COM

President Barack Obama’s call for a new generation of nuclear power plants could weigh on decisions about a possible new nuclear facility at the former uranium processing reservation in Piketon.

But nobody expects any significant activity soon.

It’s been more than six months since Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, U.S. Sen. George Voinovich, top officials from Duke Energy and other utility companies announced formation of the Southern Ohio Clean Energy Park Alliance.

The informal alliance was formed to explore development of a 1,600-megawatt nuclear generating plant at a "clean energy park," which could cost more than $10 billion, take more than a decade to build and create thousands of jobs.

"We are still in the initial stages of this project. We have a lengthy, methodical process we go through," said Sally Thelen, a Duke spokeswoman in Cincinnati.

The proposed Piketon facility, located about 95 miles east of Cincinnati, would be Ohio’s third nuclear power plant and the first since the Perry nuclear plant in Lake County came on line in 1987.

Duke, which is looking for cleaner sources of electric power, isn’t committed to building the plant but is seeking several million dollars in Department of Energy funding to study feasibility of the Piketon project and to initiate the lengthy site permitting process.

Obama singled out nuclear power in his State of the Union address, saying new nuke plants would create more clean-energy jobs.

The 104 nuclear reactors in operation in 31 states provide only 20 percent of the nation’s electricity. But they are responsible for 70 percent of the power from pollution-free sources, including wind, solar and hydroelectric plants, advocates say.

Duke said it is continuing to refine its timetable for the Piketon project and is talking to other utilities about participating in the project. The Southern Ohio Clean Energy Park Alliance also includes French-based nuclear plant builder Areva Inc. and USEC Inc., which manages the 3,700-acre site in Pike County.

The Energy Department said it is reviewing the proposal but wouldn’t comment further.

In the complex and costly world of nuclear power, such lengthy timetables aren’t unusual.

For example, Duke said, planning for its William States Lee III nuclear generating station, a 2,234-megawatt plant in Cherokee, S.C., started in 2005. A license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission wasn’t filed until 2007.

"We likely won’t hear on our license acceptance or rejection until 2012-2013," Thelen said.

The Obama administration wants to triple the Energy Department’s loan guarantee program for nuclear power to $54 billion, enough to support seven to 10 new reactors.

If Duke does move forward, it could apply for some of the loan guarantees.

First Waves of Economic/Social Crisis About to Wash Over Europe

Eurozone ‘pigs’ are leading us all to slaughter

The financial crisis is coming to a new, potentially more deadly phase, says Jeremy Warner.

By Jeremy Warner

The ‘pigs’ of the Eurozone are causing worries for the other members Photo: AFP/Getty Images

Are we about to enter a third, and this time fatal, leg of the financial crisis? The problems of euroland which have so unsettled markets this week – and in particular those of Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain (the "pigs", as they have become known in financial circles) – are worrying enough in themselves.

But they are also a proxy for much wider concern about how national governments extract themselves from the fiscal and monetary mire they have created in fighting the downturn. It’s proving messy, though, and they are running the risk of provoking an even worse crisis in the process.

Think of the three phases of the economic implosion like this. The first was a fairly conventional, if extreme, banking crisis where a cyclical overexpansion of credit and lending suddenly, and violently, corrects itself in a great outpouring of risk aversion.

In the second phase, governments and central banks attempt to counter the economic consequences of this crunch with unprecedented levels of fiscal and monetary support. Temporarily, at least, it seemed to work.

Until now, investors have been happy to finance the resulting deficits, in part because government bonds have seemed the only safe place to put your funds, but also because central banks have, in effect, been creating money to compensate for the paucity of private-sector credit. The mechanism varies from region to region, but much of this new money has found its way into deficit financing.

We are now entering the third, inevitable phase of the crisis where markets question the ability of even sovereign nations to repay their debts. Unnerved by this loss of fiscal and monetary credibility, governments and central banks are being forced, much sooner than they would have wished, to start withdrawing their support.

I say earlier than they would have wished because the recovery is not yet assured. Private demand and credit provision remain subdued. Policy-makers knew they would eventually have to abandon their fiscal and monetary support, but the timing of it may no longer be a matter of choice.

The first tremors around these so-called "exit strategies" occurred in Dubai a few months back when the emirate, fearing for its own solvency, shocked markets by announcing that it no longer stood behind the debts of its financially stretched state-owned enterprises. In this case, Dubai’s fellow and richer emirate, Abu Dhabi, eventually came to the rescue.

It is much less clear that Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland can rely on similar support, either from richer members of the euro area or the European Central Bank.

For the "pigs", membership of the euro excludes the easy option, which is to devalue and turn on the printing presses according to local needs. Instead, monetary policy, and increasingly fiscal policy too, are dictated by Germany and France, the core euro nations.

Whether the fiscal consolidation demanded is politically feasible looks questionable. And even if these countries do succeed in making the necessary adjustments, they may face a classic deflationary debt spiral, where slashing the deficit causes the economy to shrink further which, in turn, increases the deficit.

Little surprise, then, that one of the big bets in markets right now is that these distressed members of the euro will be forced either into default, or rather like Britain with the ERM in the early 1990s, out of the single currency altogether. Serious knock-on consequences for creditor economies would follow.

Yet to true believers in the doomsday scenario, even an outcome as extreme as this would not be the end of the crisis. Fiscal ruin is not confined to the southern European nations. The hors d’oeuvre consumed, it would be on to the main course – the default of one or more of the big, triple-A rated sovereigns. Financial and economic chaos would follow quickly in its wake.

There’s a world of worry out there, fed by self-interested speculators, which is proving hard to counter. Yet things rarely work out as predicted, and though nobody should be in any doubt about the scale of the economic adjustment still to be made in Western economies, more benign outcomes are still possible. Bigger, advanced economies with their own currencies are better placed to manage their exits than the "pigs".

However, right now, both Washington and London seem gripped by the sort of political paralysis that can indeed prove lethal. We should not assume that the sudden loss of market confidence that has afflicted Greece – essentially a developing market economy that should never have been in the euro in the first place – will be confined to the "pigs". The burgeoning size of public indebtedness the world over makes all economies vulnerable.

Even so, this week’s tremors should be seen as more of a warning than the beginning of a fatal endgame. The austerity of tighter fiscal and monetary conditions is coming to all of us. With or without the compliance of policy-makers, the markets will impose it. But it doesn’t have to be a rout.