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AMD talks with US crumble; Russia beefs up early-warning radar

RT | 11 January, 2012

The Russian Defense Ministry announces plans for extensive new early-warning radar system as talks with US and NATO over the controversial European missile defense system hit the wall.

The announcement comes on the heels of President Dmitry Medvedev’s pledge to fortify national defense.

In addition to a newly inaugurated radar system located in Kaliningrad, several more radar stations will be placed on combat duty in 2012, Alexei Zolotukhin, an official with the Russian Defense Ministry press service for Aerospace Defense Troops, told reporters on Sunday.

“The new radar station Voronezh-DM, located in the Kaliningrad region, became part of the missile attack warning system in late 2011,” Zolotukhin said. “A radar station is fully ready to be put on combat duty in the Leningrad region. Another radar station has been launched in the Krasnodar Territory.”

A new generation radar station will also be launched in the Irkutsk Region, he revealed.

The spokesman said the new radar will go online following a series of state tests to be conducted this year.

Responding to Washington’s reluctance to cooperate with Moscow in a US missile defense system in Eastern Europe, President Medvedev in November said Russia would deploy strike systems in the west and south of the country and deploy Iskander missiles in the Kaliningrad Region. Russia has repeatedly warned that without its full participation in the system, situated just miles from the Russian border, it will be forced to respond to what it perceives as a threat to national security.

The Russian leader also reminded his American colleagues that Russia reserves the right to withdrawal from New START if the two sides fail to reach agreement over missile defense in Europe.

“In the event of unfavorable developments, Russia reserves the right to halt further steps in the disarmament sphere and, respectively, weapons control,” Medvedev said. “Besides, given the inseparable interconnection between the strategic offensive and defensive weapons, grounds may appear for our country’s withdrawal from the New START treaty.”

This was not the first time Moscow warned the US and NATO over the missile defense system, which Russia views as a potential threat to its national security. At the G-8 Summit in Deauville, France, in May, Medvedev warned that the world was heading toward another arms race.

“After 2020, if we do not come to terms, a real arms race will begin,” Medvedev warned.

Despite repeated warnings, the US and NATO seem determined to push ahead with missile defense without Russia’s cooperation, and despite the fact such a decision could sink the “reset” in relations forged between Medvedev and US President Barack Obama.

On April 8, 2009, Medvedev and Obama met at Prague Castle signed the biggest nuclear arms pact in a generation, which promised to shrink the limit of nuclear warheads to 1,550 per country.

Robert Bridge, RT

January 11, 2012 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | 1 Comment

International Solidarity Movement volunteers encounter settler attack and sexual harassment in Hebron

By Emma and Meriam | 10 January 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

Around midnight on January 10th two international, female activists were attacked by a middle aged settler woman living in the occupied area of Hebron.

After entering Shuhada Street, which is closed to Palestinians, the two women encountered a settler woman who threw a large rock at them unprovoked. When they turned to see their attacker, the woman kicked them and tried to choke them by their kuffiyehs, Palestinian scarves worn in solidarity. Both internationals called for help and screamed, but the Israeli soldier on duty some 30 meters away did not intervene. The settler woman once again picked up a rock to renew her attack.

Knowing that if they were to defend themselves they would face assault charges, the two activists chose to flee their attacker instead. The soldier did nothing to either prevent nor respond to the attack, and when the internationals asked him to call the police, the soldier said simply he did not see anything.

When asked about his indifference to the attack, the soldier answered, “What would you do if someone is bothering the h*ll out of you?” and, “I’m not allowed to leave the area around my checkpoint.”

When the police finally arrived, the same soldier translated since the police officer refused to bring along an English-speaker. The police and soldiers took advantage of the situation to make fun of, cat call, and attempt to flirt with the international women.

Although they were given a detailed account of what happened, the police wrote nothing down and gave no information about what steps would be taken to address the event or prevent future occurrences.

When it was obvious that the police were not taking down any details, the internationals suggested them to raid the area’s Israeli settler neighborhood in the same way as soldiers raid Palestinian neighborhoods when there is a suspicion of a stone-throwing. The internationals were told not to interfere or to instruct the police in how to do their jobs, and were then ordered to leave the street.

As the internationals walked home, a police car and army jeep drove up and continued at a walking pace, sandwiching the women in between the vehicles. As they walked the police continued shouting and whistling cat calls at the internationals.

Hebron or al Khalil is a Palestinian city in the south of the West Bank. A few hundred Israeli settlers occupy the very city center from within, in an area known as H2. The Israeli army has implemented a policy of apartheid and strict separation citing the protection of the Jewish illegal settlers. Movement restrictions affects tens of thousands of Palestinian residents and have led to the destruction of Hebron’s commercial center and mass abandonment of the area, and have forced people to leave their homes. Yet, the approximately 2000 soldiers stationed in the area do little or nothing to prevent settler attacks against Palestinians, which continue to escalate. In addition, Israeli soldiers control entries and exits of H2 with several checkpoints. In cases of emergency, Palestinians’ lives are sometimes left in the hands of their occupiers, since neither Palestinian ambulances nor police are allowed into the occupied area of H2.

The occupation is illegal under international law, and many reports have raised concerns of human rights violations against Palestinians living in the area. In addition, there are many accounts where the soldiers have either stood by or assisted settlers in attacks against Palestinian residents and homes.

Attacks on internationals are nothing compared to what Palestinians face on a daily basis. International Solidarity Movement views the recent attack and the failures of soldiers and police to intervene as a further escalation and approval of settler violence, intended to worsen already unbearable circumstances for Palestinians living under occupation.

Emma and Meriam are volunteers with International Solidarity Movement (names have been changed).

January 11, 2012 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | 4 Comments

Guantanamo Chief Military Defense Lawyer Orders His Attorneys Not to Agree to Communication Monitoring

ACLU | January 11, 2012

Citing Attorney-Client Privilege, Col. J.P. Colwell Tells Military Lawyers That Following New Prison Rules Would Be Unethical

NEW YORK – The top defense lawyer for the Guantánamo military commission system has ordered the attorneys under his command not to comply with rules issued by the Guantánamo prison chief that require Defense Department screening of all written materials lawyers want to send to their clients.

In an email sent Sunday and obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, Marine Col. J.P. Colwell, the chief military defense counsel for the commissions, informed all military commission defense lawyers that they were ethically obligated to refuse to follow the rules, which were issued last month. The email is available on the ACLU website.

“Col. Colwell joins an honorable line of Guantánamo military lawyers who have opposed superiors’ attempts, ostensibly in the name of security, to undermine longstanding rules necessary for a fair trial,” said Zachary Katznelson, senior staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. “In seeking to force military defense counsel to cast aside their professional ethical obligations of client confidentiality, the new rules fly in the face of American justice and tradition. Once again, the government’s actions show exactly why these cases need to be in federal court where the rules are established, fair and effective.”

Guantánamo’s commander, Navy Rear Adm. David Woods, issued the rules on monitoring legal communications on Dec. 27. Under the rules, any information provided by lawyers that military censors found objectionable, such as communications about U.S. personnel who tortured the prisoners, could be kept from the prisoner and brought to the attention of the base commander. This would eliminate attorney-client privilege.

The new prison rules say that defense attorneys must agree in writing to the monitoring as a condition of communication with their clients. In his email, Colwell told military commission defense lawyers that they should not sign the monitoring agreement, and if they already had signed, then they should immediately withdraw from the agreement. Citing the ethics codes that govern every branch of the military, Colwell wrote that following the agreement and revealing such information would be “in violation” of rules for professional conduct.

The rules on communication monitoring issued by Guantánamo’s commander are available at:

www.aclu.org/national-security/orders-governing-logistics-defense-counsel-access-and-written-communications

More information on Guantánamo is available at:

www.aclu.org/close-guantanamo

January 11, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Israel ‘confiscates PA tent delivery’

Ma’an – 11/01/2012

RAMALLAH -Israel on Tuesday confiscated 75 tents belonging to the Palestinian Authority and detained drivers delivering the tents, ministers said.

Israeli forces confiscated five vehicles delivering the tents to residents of Khan al-Ahmar near Jericho, the PA cabinet said in a statement.

The drivers of the vehicle and employees of the company contracted to deliver the tents were detained and taken to Beit El military camp.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld had no immediate comment but said he would look into the report.

Israel is planning to demolish Khan al-Ahmar, a Bedouin community near Maale Adumin settlement, and forces have already destroyed homes in the camp. Settlers have filed a petition for the demolition of Khan al-Ahmar’s school.

The PA cabinet said the confiscation of tents was in line with Israel’s plan “to extradite the residents from their area by destroying and confiscating all means of life.”

January 11, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

‘US builds hospitals in Georgia, readies for war with Iran’

RIA Novosti | 10 January, 2012

The United States is sponsoring the construction of facilities in Georgia on the threshold of a military conflict in Iran, a member of Georgian opposition movement Public Assembly, Elizbar Javelidze has stated.

According to the academician, that explains why President Mikhail Saakashvili is roaming the republic opening new hospitals in its regions.

“These are 20-bed hospitals…It’s an American project. A big war between the US and Iran is beginning in the Persian Gulf. $5 billion was allocated for the construction of these 20-bed military hospitals,” Javelidze said in an interview with Georgian paper Kviris Kronika (News of the Week), as cited by Newsgeorgia website.

The opposition member stated that the construction is mainly paid from the American pocket.

In addition, airports are being briskly built in Georgia and there are talks of constructing a port for underwater vessels in Kulevi on the eastern Black Sea coast in Georgia.

Javelidze believes that it is all linked to the deployment of US military bases on the Georgian soil. Lazika – one of Saakashvili’s mega-projects, a new city that will be built from a scratch – will be “an American military town”. According to the politician, “a secret airdrome” has already been erected in the town of Marneuli, southern Georgia.

The opposition member wondered who would protect Georgia in case if Iran fires its missiles against US military facilities on the territory of the Caucasian state.

All in all, about 30 new hospitals and medical centers were opened in the former Soviet republic in December last year. The plan is to build over a hundred more.

As for Lazika, the Georgian president announced his ambitious idea to build a second-largest city in Georgia, its western economic and trade center, at the end of 2011. According to the plan – which was slammed by his opponents and many analysts – Saakashvili’s dream-town will become home to at least half a million people within a decade.

January 11, 2012 Posted by | Militarism | 1 Comment

US Trying to Press Resolute China on Iran

Al-Manar | January 11, 2012

China disappointed US efforts on Wednesday to press it on Iran sanctions.

China hopes “Iran and the IAEA will stress cooperation and earnestly carry out the safeguards and clarify pending issues in the Iranian nuclear program as soon as possible,” said foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin as US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was holding meeting with Chinese leaders on the Iranian issue.

“To place one country’s domestic law above international law and press others to obey is not reasonable,” he added.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has announced that it will send inspectors to the Islamic Republic of Iran very soon.

The IAEA made the announcement on Tuesday, about a month after Iran renewed its invitation to the agency’s inspectors to visit the country’s nuclear sites.

Earlier in the day, the Iranian envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, said that the hype created by the West over the beginning of enrichment activities at Iran’s Fordo nuclear site is “exaggerated” and “politically motivated.”

January 11, 2012 Posted by | Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

‘IAEA leaked secret info to Iran enemy’

Press TV – January 11, 2012

A senior lawmaker says assassination of Iranian scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan proves that the confidential information provided to international bodies by Iran has been leaked to the country’s enemies.

“The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) must be trusted by nations because nations and governments give their documents to the agency,” said speaker of the Majlis (parliament) National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Kazem Jalali on Wednesday.

“How the enemies of [the Islamic] establishment have obtained the names and information of our country’s elite is a question we would like to know the answer to,” he added.

Jalali stressed that the IAEA, international community and the UN nuclear agency’s member states using their membership against the Islamic Republic must be held accountable for their actions.

The lawmaker said the resemblance of the Wednesday assassination and other Zionist-American killings indicate that the “principle of assassination has been institutionalized in the American system and Zionist regime.”

“Assassinations like what happened in Tehran this morning lack operational value as such assassinations are called blind [acts of terror] which prove the maximum frustration of the enemies because they have not been able to weaken the [Iranian] nation’s resolve and therefore resort to any shameful measure,” Jalali said.

Ahmadi Roshan was a Sharif University of Technology chemical engineering graduate and served as the deputy director of marketing at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility.

On Wednesday morning, an unknown motorcyclist attached a sticky bomb to Ahmadi Roshan’s car near Allameh Tabatabaei University in Tehran.

Ahmadi Roshan was immediately killed as the result of explosion, and his driver, who had sustained injures, passed away a few hours later in hospital.

The latest terrorist attack comes as Iran has reached an agreement with the P5+1 — Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States plus Germany – to hold negotiations in Turkey.

The US, Israel and their allies accuse Iran of pursuing a military nuclear program and have used this allegation as a pretext to sway the UNSC to impose four rounds of sanctions on Iran.

Based on these accusations, they have also repeatedly threatened Tehran with the “option” of a military strike.

This is while in November 2011, some of the US presidential hopefuls called for conducting covert operations ranging from assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists to launching a military strike on Iran as well as sabotaging Tehran’s nuclear program.

The calls for assassinations are not idle threats as a number of Iranian scientists have been assassinated over the past few years. Professor Majid Shahriari and Professor Masoud Ali-Mohammadi are among the victims of these acts of terror.

On November 29, 2010, Shahriari and Fereydoun Abbasi were targeted by terrorist attacks; Shahriari was killed immediately and Dr. Abbasi, the current director of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, only sustained injuries.

Iran says as the UN Resolution 1747, adopted against Tehran in March 2007, cited Abbasi’s name as a “nuclear scientist,” the perpetrators were in a position to trace their victim.

According to reports, Ahmadi Roshan had recently met International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, a fact which indicates that the IAEA has leaked information about Iran’s nuclear facilities and scientists.

January 11, 2012 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | 4 Comments

Israeli Source: Assassination of Iranian Nuclear Scientist Joint Mossad-MEK Operation

By Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam | January 10th, 2012

An Iranian news agency reports that a fourth Iranian nuclear scientist has been assassinated.  Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was a professor specializing in petroleum engineering at a technical university and director of  Natanz’s uranium enrichment facility.  Mehr news agency said he was “deputy director of the commercial department of the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility.”  He was killed by a bomb attached to the side of his car by two men on a motorcycle.  My own confidential Israeli source confirms today’s murder was the work of the Mossad and MEK, as have been a number of previous operations I’ve reported here.

The killing took place at or near a Teheran university.  The method recalls another series of assassinations that occurred of Fereidoun Abbassi Davani (who was seriously wounded) and his colleague Majid Shahriari (who was killed).  Today’s killing occurred two years to the day after the assassination of another scientist, Masoud Ali Mohammadi.

Reuters also adds this:

An [Iranian ] official [said]…”The bomb was a magnetic one and the same as the ones previously used for the assassination of the scientists, and is the work of the Zionists (Israelis)” Fars quoted Deputy Governor Safarali Baratloo as saying.

Witnesses told Reuters they saw two people on the motorbike stick the bomb to the car.

Time also offers a comprehensive report.

France’s right-wing Le Figaro newspaper offers (this is an English language report on the story) a window into the types of training and recruitment the Mossad engages in to prepare for such sabotage missions.  It reports that Israeli agents identify Iranian Kurdish recruits who are living in exile in Iraqi Kurdistan.  There they train them in “spycraft and sabotage:”

…The Iranian assets are being prepared for conducting operations inside [Iran] as part of Israel’s undercover intelligence war against Iran’s nuclear energy program. The Baghdad source told the French daily that part of Israel’s sabotage program against sensitive Iranian nuclear facilities, which includes targeted assassinations of Iranian nuclear experts, is directed out of the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, “where [Mossad] agents have stepped up their penetration.”  For this, “the Israelis are using Kurdish oppositionists to the regime in Iran, who are living as refugees in the Kurdish regions of Iraq”, the source told Le Figaro.

Although the article makes no mention of official or unofficial sanction of the Israeli operations by the Iraqi Kurdish authorities, it implies that the alleged Mossad activities are an open secret in Iraqi Kurdistan. This is not the first time that allegations have surfaced in the international press about Israeli intelligence activities in Kurdistan. In 2006, the BBC flagship investigative television program Newsnight obtained strong evidence of Israeli operatives providing military training to Kurdish militia members. The program aired video footage showing Israeli expects drilling members of Kurdish armed groups in shooting techniques and guerrilla tactics.

The Israeli government denied having authorized any such training, while Iraqi Kurdish officials refused to comment on the report. But Israeli security experts told the BBC that it would be virtually impossible for Israeli trainers to operate inside Iraqi Kurdistan “without the knowledge of the Kurdish authorities.”

Iraqi Kurdistan may be one of the few places in the Arab world in which an Israeli is welcome, even Israeli spies.

There also can be little doubt that the U.S. comes into this mix, as the Iraqi Kurdish authorities maintain extremely good relations with U.S. officials in that country.  And it’s hard to believe that we aren’t playing a role in expediting this mischief in any way we can.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it every time something like this happens: assassinations like the one today accomplish nothing.  It doesn’t fundamentally harm Iran’s nuclear program.  It doesn’t deter Iran or its scientists from pursuing the research and whatever scientific goals they may have.  These are shameful acts by a shameful Israeli government exploiting Iranian terrorists for their own ends.  I find it disgusting that Israel can get away with such acts with impunity.

I am not a supporter of Iran’s nuclear program.  But I am even less a supporter of assassination as state policy, and that includes my own nation, whose president seems especially enamored of targeted killings, even of U.S. citizens.

January 11, 2012 Posted by | War Crimes, Wars for Israel | 1 Comment

Condemn Use of U.S. Military to Escort Scab Grain Ship in Longview WA

Philly Workers’ Voice Blog

San Francisco Labor Council Resolution – Adopted January 9, 2012  by unanimous vote

Whereas, EGT, a joint venture led by multinational grain giant Bunge, agreed to hire union Longshoremen when accepting millions in taxpayer funds to build a huge new grain exporting terminal at the Port of Longview WA, but once the terminal was built has tried to void its contract and refused to hire ILWU labor. With the use of brutal police and courts and 220 arrests in the 225 member ILWU Local 21, EGT has managed to get enough scab grain across picket lines into the new terminal that EGT appears poised to load a ship soon in violation of their agreement with the port;  and

Whereas, a solidarity caravan of thousands of union members and community activists – endorsed by ILWU Locals 10 and 21, the S.F. and Cowlitz County (Longview) labor councils and many others – is being organized to support our brothers and sisters in Longview, for an emergency mass protest when requested to do so, to confront union-busting by Wall Street on the Waterfront; and

Whereas, according to Longshore & Shipping News, within a month, the empty grain ship will be escorted by armed U.S. Coast Guard vessels and helicopters, from the mouth of the Columbia River to the EGT facility. The Coast Guard is an integral part of the US Armed Forces, operating under the Department of Homeland Security (except when engaged in combat operations abroad, as it did in Iraq, when it operates under the Navy); and

Whereas, this is the first known use of the US military to intervene in a labor dispute on the side of management in 40 years – not since the Great 1970 Postal Strike when President Nixon called out the Army and National Guard in an (unsuccessful) attempt to break the strike. The use of the Armed Forces against labor unions is something you expect to see in a police state. This is part of a disturbing trend where the US military, acting as enforcers for the 1%,  is poised to be used against our own people, as exemplified by the new law allowing the military to imprison US citizens indefinitely without trial; and

Whereas, now the US military, which has been oppressing, bombing and threatening other nations [a military that’s paid for with the workers’ taxes] is now being used against us, against American working people and our unions. To quote ILWU international President McEllrath: “ILWU’s labor dispute with EGT is symbolic of what is wrong in the United States today. Corporations, no matter how harmful the conduct to society, enjoy full state and federal protection while workers and the middle class get treated as criminals for trying to protect their jobs and communities.”

Therefore be it Resolved, that the San Francisco Labor Council condemn in the strongest terms the announced use of US Armed Forces (Coast Guard) to provide an armed sea and air escort for the empty grain ship, which is due to call at the new EGT grain terminal, Port of Longview, Washington, to load scab grain for export to Asia. We condemn this use of the military as part of a union-busting campaign to lower the cost of labor on the waterfront and destroy the union;

And be it further Resolved, that the San Francisco Labor Council join with allies in other cities on the West Coast to participate in any press conferences and demonstrations that are organized to denounce this use of the military to intervene in a labor dispute on the side of Wall Street on the Waterfront;

And be it finally Resolved, that the Council circulate this resolution to affiliated unions, Bay Area labor councils, the California Labor Federation, as well as labor bodies in Oregon and Washington, for concurrence and action, and urge labor leaders including Richard Trumka and Mary Kay Henry to take a strong stand against this brazen assault on our labor rights and civil liberties.

January 10, 2012 Posted by | Economics, Solidarity and Activism | 1 Comment

Psychologists’ Collusion in Ongoing Illegal Detentions

By TRUDY BOND, ROY EIDELSON, BRAD OLSON AND STEPHEN SOLDZ | CounterPunch | January 10, 2012

As we commemorate the 10th anniversary of the arrival of the first prisoners at Guantánamo Detention Center, several thousand miles away sits another United States detention facility, less well-known but with a history perhaps even more gruesome. Obscured throughout the decade-long “global war on terror,” the detention center at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan is where two detainees died in December 2002. Initial autopsies at the time ruled both deaths homicides, according to a 2,000-page confidential Army file obtained by the New York Times. Autopsies of the two dead detainees found severe trauma to both prisoners’ legs. The coroner for one of the dead noted, “I’ve seen similar injuries in an individual run over by a bus.”

In January 2009, to much fanfare, newly-elected President Barack Obama signed a directive  authorizing the closing of Guantánamo Detention Center. But a month later the new administration discreetly told a federal judge that military detainees at Bagram had no habeas corpus rights to challenge their imprisonment. At the same time, the Pentagon was moving forward on plans to build a new prison in Bagram, renamed the “Detention Facility in Parwan” (DFIP). This facility was designed to accommodate 600 prisoners under normal conditions and as many as 1,100 during a “surge.”

Today, President Obama has abandoned his inaugural pledge to close Guantánamo and there are more than 3,000 detainees at Bagram — five times the number of prisoners when the president  took office — with a scheduled expansion of the facility by the end of 2012 to house up to 5,500 detainees. One troubling constant across the developments at Bagram is the presence and involvement of psychologists at these facilities, which clearly violate international legal standards for the treatment of detainees. Among the military psychologists present during the early years of the Bagram prison were Colonel Morgan Banks, Captain Bryce Lefever, and Colonel Larry James, notable for their key roles in formulating American Psychological Association (APA) much-criticized ethics policy on psychologist-assisted interrogations.

According to Banks’ biographical statement, he “spent four months over the winter of 2001/2002 at Bagram Airfield.” More broadly, Banks provided technical, consultation, and interrogation support to all Army psychologists. He also assisted in establishing the Army’s first permanent SERE training program. As for Lefever’s biosketch, it notes that he also served at the detention center at Bagram Air Base. He “was deployed as the Joint Special Forces Task Force psychologist to Afghanistan in 2002, where he lectured to interrogators and was consulted on various interrogation techniques.”

The third military psychologist, James, was the Chief Psychologist for the Joint Intelligence Group at Guantánamo when, according to his book, Fixing Hell, he flew to Afghanistan to transfer three juveniles who had been forcibly and arbitrarily detained at Bagram. James described these boys as “the most fragile . . . children [he] had ever met,” yet he oversaw their being loaded onto a cargo plane at Bagram Air Force Base, “bound [and] blindfolded,” for a flight that typically lasted over 20 hours. Others who appear to have been transferred from Bagram to Guantánamo that same day reported being chained around the waist, wrists, back and ankles and the intense pain of being unable to speak, see, hear, move, or even stretch or breathe properly. The boys were essentially kidnapped, and were returned home a year later, having never had access to legal counsel and having never been charged with a crime.

Public information about exactly what transpires at Bagram today is scarce. The BBC was allowed a rare, one-hour visit to the new Parwan/Bagram prison in 2010. The report noted that “Prisoners are kept in 56 cells, which the prisoners refer to as ‘cages’. The front of the cells are made of mesh, the ceiling is clear, and the other three walls are solid. Guards can see down into the cells from above.” These detainees were moved around in wheelchairs, wearing goggles and headphones to block sight and sound.

In 2011, Daphne Eviatar, an attorney for Human Rights First, interviewed 18 former detainees from the main facility in Parwan and was permitted to observe seven detainee hearings there. In her detailed report she noted:

After many years of completely denying detainees in Afghanistan the opportunity to defend themselves against arbitrary detention, the United States government has finally implemented a hearing process that allows detainees to hear the charges against them and to make a statement in their own defense. Although a significant improvement, these new hearings fall short of minimum standards of due process required by international law.” [Emphasis added.]

In a subsequent interview with CBS News, Eviatar stated:

[Parwan] is worse than Guantánamo because there are fewer rights…There was no evidence presented, there was no questioning of the government’s evidence, whether this person had done anything wrong, whether he deserved to be in prison. So that’s a real problem — you have a complete lack of due process.

And in 2010 the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) confirmed the existence of a separate, second detention facility at Parwan. Many former prisoners have referred to it as the Tor Jail, translated as “Black Jail.” Nine former prisoners interviewed separately by the BBC spoke of almost identical treatment there: distressingly cold cells, perpetual loud noise, constant light, and, violating any sense of privacy, camera surveillance. One former prisoner said American soldiers made him dance to music to obtain permission to use the toilet.

Today, there are clear indications that psychologists continue to be involved in the detention and interrogation of detainees at Parwan/Bagram. Such activities stand in direct contravention of APA policy based on a 2008 petition resolution. Approved through a member-led referendum, this resolution prohibits psychologists from working in settings where “persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g., the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions) or the US Constitution (where appropriate), unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights” (or if they are providing treatment for military personnel).

Significant evidence that psychologists are working at Bagram/Parwan in violation of APA policy comes in part from a symposium on “Operational Problems in Behavioral Sciences” sponsored by the United States Air Force Medical Service in August 2011. The first slide of the partially redacted powerpoint presentation on the “BSCT Mission” describes the role of the Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT) as providing: “…psychological expertise and consultation in order to assist the command in conducting safe, legal, ethical, and effective detention facility operations, intelligence interrogations, and detainee debriefing operations” (OTSG/MEDCOM Policy Memo 09-053).

A later slide reveals that the current BSCTs at the Parwan Detention Facility are composed of a psychologist or forensic psychiatrist, who must be licensed for independent practice, and a “behavioral science technician.” Further confirming the presence of psychologists, a June 2010 newspaper article about Parwan by the military editor of the Fayettville Observer notes: “Air Force Maj. Colin Burchfield, 34, a clinical psychologist, observes the behavior of both detainees and guards on TV monitors.”

Disturbingly, and contrary to the APA’s 2008 referendum policy, one of the key documents still used to support the ongoing involvement of psychologists at the Parwan facility is an earlier 2005 report from the APA’s “Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security” (the PENS Report). The PENS Report, cited in the Operational Problems powerpoint presentation described above, endorsed psychologists’ engagement in detainee interrogations — despite evidence that psychologists were involved in abusive interrogations and practices that violate international law.

Six of the nine voting members of the PENS Task Force were on the payroll of the U.S. military and/or intelligence agencies. Five of these six served in chains of command that had been accused of the kinds of abuses that led to the creation of the Task Force, including the three psychologists linked to the early Bagram prison: Dr. Morgan Banks, Dr. Bryce Lefever, and Dr. Larry James. The PENS Task Force concluded that psychologists have an important role to play in keeping interrogations “safe, legal, ethical, and effective,” and the APA Board approved the PENS Report in a highly unusual emergency vote.

The APA’s claims that it stands strongly against torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment are belied by the organization’s repeated failure to take assertive and meaningful action. There is no clearer example than the continuing participation of psychologists in detention and interrogation activities at the Parwan/Bagram prison — a site where international law itself is seemingly confined indefinitely to a small, dark cell.

But health professionals, human rights advocates, and intelligence professionals of conscience worldwide have refused to accept this status quo. One noteworthy and promising effort is an online petition campaign calling for the annulment of APA’s PENS Report. The initiative has been supported by many distinguished members of APA, as well as non-psychologists such as psychiatrists Robert Jay Lifton and bioethicist Dr. Steven Miles; scholar-activists such as Daniel Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky; attorneys who have represented Guantanamo detainees; eminent veterans of the intelligence community; and many other psychologists and human rights advocates. Please consider joining this call and signing the petition at www.ethicalpsychology.org/pens.   

~

Trudy Bond is an independent psychologist, steering committe member of Psycholgoists for Social Responsibility, and a member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology.  For questions, responses or media contact, please contact her at drtrudybond@gmail.com.

Roy Eidelson is a clinical psychologist and the president of Eidelson Consulting, where he studies, writes about, and consults on the role of psychological issues in political, organizational, and group conflict settings. He is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, associate director of the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at Bryn Mawr College, and a member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology. Roy can be reached at reidelson@eidelsonconsulting.com.

Brad Olson is an assistant professor and co-director of the Community Psychology Ph.D. Program in downtown Chicago. He is President-Elect of Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR) and co-founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology.

Stephen Soldz is a psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He edits the Psyche, Science, and Society blog. Soldz is a founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology and served as a psychological consultant on several Guantánamo trials. Currently Soldz is Past-President of Psychologists for Social Responsibility [PsySR].

January 10, 2012 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | 1 Comment

“Think of the crimes you are doing to the people” – protestors challenge Israeli road apartheid

Video uploaded by on January 10, 2012
Ali Abunimah writes:

Today Palestinians attempted to drive on the road from Jericho in the Jordan Valley in the Israeli occupied West Bank, up to Ramallah. As many of the roads in the occupied West Bank are reserved for the exclusive use of Jewish settlers, Palestinians found themselves violently blocked, and then arrested by Israeli occupation forces.

Haitham al-Khatib posted this video of what happened. People tweeted about the protest using the hashtag #CarProtest.

January 10, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

The Delusions of ‘Liberal’ Zionism

By Roger Sheety | Palestine Chronicle | January 10, 2012

The most recent diatribe by Israeli writer A. B. Yehoshua published by Haaretz represents the latest nail in the ideological coffin of so-called liberal Zionism.  Writing out of his comfortable home in Haifa, a city that was ethnically cleansed of most of its original Palestinian residents by the end of 1948 through multiple terror campaigns and massacres, Yehoshua spends an entire article at once fuming over what he calls Palestinian “passivity” in the face of daily Israeli brutality in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and simultaneously dreading what he believes is the inevitable forthcoming bi-national state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Yehoshua personifies a certain type much favoured by the Israeli/Western left, a supposed liberal Zionist who speaks of co-existence and dialogue and yet can barely tolerate the indigenous Palestinian population that remains so close to him; a novelist and playwright with several awards to his name, who is written about and praised endlessly by Zionist apologists (particularly in North America) as an example of Israeli liberalism and generosity.  Harold Bloom, the eminent American literary critic, referred to him as “a kind of Israeli Faulkner” in the New York Times.  According to the Village Voice, “Yehoshua’s stories find their way right into the unconscious … Nobel prizes have been given for less.”

Yet for all his apparent sensitivity, his artistic pathos and various accolades, he remains a man who can scarcely hide a deep-seated contempt for Palestinians and non-Zionist Jews alike.  By their words you shall know them, therefore let us more closely examine Yehoshua’s Haaretz article, titled “An unwelcome intro to the bi-national state” which begins as a response to an earlier article by Avraham Burg:

“Apart from the religious camp (owing to the structure of its religious identity), apart from the camp of the secular extremist right (owing to the violence of its fantasies), and apart from the post-Zionist left (owing to its humanitarian-cosmopolitan vision), all other political and ideological camps in Israel grasp and articulate the fact that a bi-national state in Eretz Israel is a dangerous and unfavorable possibility, both in the short term and (more particularly) in the long term.”

In his odd division of Israeli society as it stands, Yehoshua fails to mention the indigenous Palestinian citizens of Israel who form about twenty percent of the state.  He also fails to mention the four million Palestinians currently living under harsh Israeli military occupation in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank.  The several more millions of Palestinians in Diaspora and exile, who are entitled to return to their usurped homes under international law, also do not exist for Yehoshua.  It is not clear then, after all these classifications, who exactly does Yehoshua speak for besides himself?  He also informs us without explanation that bi-nationalism, as he sees it, is a terrible thing, that it is a “dangerous and unfavorable possibility both in the short term and (more particularly) in the long term.”

A clarification of Yehoshua’s dread, however, comes in this paragraph:

“Even if many of us believe that it is possible to prevent the creation of such a state through forceful political steps, there still remains an obligation to prepare for it, both intellectually and emotionally, just as we prepare for other states of emergency. The aim of such preparation is to guarantee that a bi-national state will not undermine Israel’s democratic structure, and will not completely destroy the Jewish-Israeli collective identity that took shape over the past several decades.”

At this point the reader must ask, what does Yehoshua mean by “bi-nationalism”?  Although he is afraid to come out and say it, most know that, within the context of Palestine/Israel, what Yehoshua really means by “bi-nationalism” is a true democracy:  full and equal rights for all regardless of ethnic or religious background; one person, one vote, a non-apartheid entity between the river and the sea—this is what frightens and disturbs him and other Zionist ideologues.  Indeed, so dangerous is democracy to Yehoshua that Israel must prepare for it as it “prepares for other states of emergency.”

But who is to blame for this creeping, ominous bi-nationalism (that is, real democracy)?  It is not only those do-gooders in Israel, the “humanitarian-cosmopolitans” as he calls them (that is, non-Zionist Jews), who are at fault, but also the Palestinians.  “We must realize that a bi-national state would not arise solely due to Israel’s doings,” Yehoshua writes, “its establishment also would be abetted by the silent cooperation of Palestinians, both within Israel and beyond its borders.”  Thus, not only are Palestinians at fault for being indigenous to Palestine, but they are also to blame for demanding to be treated as full equals to Israelis.  What chutzpah.

Further, Palestinians are conspiring to bring about this evil bi-nationalism through what he calls Palestinian passivity:

“This [Palestinian] vision also explains the otherwise unfathomable passivity of the Palestinians with regard to organizing civil, non-violent protest against the settlements. Perhaps it also accounts for their staying asleep at nights when thugs burn their mosques.  Unlike their brethren in Syria and other Arab states – who, bare-chested, confront army bullets fired by their own compatriots – the Palestinians passively watch accelerated settlement construction; and with their sub-conscious patience they drag us toward a bi-national state.”

Here we arrive at the climax of Yehoshua’s colonial hubris, for it seems that he is not at all aware that Palestinians have been resisting colonial powers and demanding recognition of their inalienable rights long before there was ever such a thing as the apartheid entity of “Israel.”  In fact, only a few weeks before Yehoshua penned his article, Mustafa Tamimi, 28, was murdered by Israeli Occupation forces in his village of Nabi Saleh, shot in the face by a cowardly “soldier” with a high-powered tear gas gun while hiding in his armoured vehicle.  Tamimi was indeed figuratively “bare-chested,” to use Yehoshua’s childish, clichéd, macho language, as he confronted his aggressors but it did not save him from his fate.  During that same week, Israeli bombers also killed and maimed several Palestinians in Gaza who, “bare-chested” or not, were unlikely to even see their killers before being obliterated by Israeli bombs.

Yehoshua, however, also extends his colonialist attitude to other Jews, or at least to those who do not agree with him:

“Simultaneously, relying on thousands of years of ‘expertise,’ the Jews once again inseminate and cultivate themselves in the womb of another people’s identity, a people that belongs to the huge Arab nation.  In so doing, Jews here act exactly as their ancestors did in the Ukraine, Poland, Yemen, Iraq and Germany; partly out of fear, partly out of passion, the Jews pull themselves toward a situation that brought calamity to them in the past and which, still more poignantly, will deliver a mortal blow to any possibility of national normalization under Israeli sovereignty.”

What is one to make of such bizarre incoherence?  Yehoshua, as according to Zionist ideology, conflates the histories, experiences and aspirations of, for example, Yemeni Jews to those of Ukrainian Jews.  They all act, think and feel the same, you see.  Not only that, but by behaving as if they were indigenous to their countries of birth (which in reality they are), they also “pull themselves toward a situation that brought calamity to them in the past…”  In other words, it’s their own fault if they were persecuted in their countries of birth because they dared to belong there; they “inseminate and cultivate themselves in the womb of another people’s identity” in his words.  Furthermore, this would be tragic not because of the persecution as such but because it would prevent “any possibility of national normalization under Israeli sovereignty.”

For Yehoshua, Jews living outside of Israel live in a state of abnormality and artificiality.  To become normal and real they must, naturally, move to Israel.  “Diaspora Judaism is masturbation,” he once told The Jerusalem Post, “Here [in Israel], it is the real thing.”  To the New York Times he stated that a “full Jewish life could only be had in the Jewish state” and that Jews outside of the state were only “playing with Judaism.”  In a speech to the American Jewish Committee he stated, “[Diaspora Jews] change [their] nationalities like jackets.  Once they were Polish and Russian; now they are British and American. One day they could choose to be Chinese or Singaporean… For me, Avraham Yehoshua, there is no alternative… I cannot keep my identity outside Israel. [Being] Israeli is my skin, not my jacket.”

As offensive as this is, it remains perfectly consistent with Zionist ideology which still views Judaism, a religion, in nineteenth century European racialist, supremacist and nationalist terms.  Yehoshua thus remains the unrepentant colonialist par excellence, for he knows what is best not only for Palestinians, who trouble him so much by their mere existence, but also for non-Zionist Jews who freely choose to live within the nationality and country of their birth as is their right.

Unlike more openly racist anti-Palestinian figures like Avigdor Lieberman, Newt Gingrich and the increasingly unhinged Benjamin Netanyahu, Yehoshua, like many other supposed liberals, conceal and couch their hostility to Palestinians within artistic and academic pretensions, sophistry, figurative language and whatever lavish acclaim is given them.  But scratch just a little below the surface and you discover that Yehoshua’s liberalism goes no further than his ingrained ideology; a liberalism which, when it approaches the Palestinian person in particular, suddenly stops and fully reverses itself.  There is a clear and concise word for this phenomenon—it is called hypocrisy.

– Roger Sheety is a writer and researcher.

January 10, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | 3 Comments

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