Barack Obama: Torturer-and-Assassin-in-Chief
By Jacob G. Hornberger | September 9, 2010
The Ninth Circuit’s ruling yesterday in the case of Binyam Mohamed vs. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. confirms two things: the U.S. government wields the omnipotent, unreviewable power to torture people and, two, that Barack Obama, despite his much ballyhooed pre-election campaign hype about “change,” is actually just serving George W. Bush’s third term in office.
The plaintiffs’ claims against Jeppesen arose out of the CIA’s infamous kidnapping and rendition program, in which the CIA kidnaps people and then transports them to brutal foreign regimes for the purpose of torture. According to the plaintiffs’ complaint, which the Court was required to accept as true for purposes of ruling on the defendant’s motion to dismiss, the victims were subjected to horrible medieval-like torture techniques, such as breaking of bones, cutting into sexual organs, and pouring of painful liquids into open wounds.
The U.S. government intervened in the case, claiming that the suit should be dismissed based on the “state-secrets doctrine,” a pernicious doctrine that is found nowhere in the Constitution but which, the Court held, trumps the due process provisions of the Bill of Rights.
The government claimed that to allow the suit to go forward would entail the disclosure of government secrets, which would supposedly threaten national security.
The government’s position, however, which the court unfortunately bought into, is sheer nonsense. The state-secrets doctrine does nothing more than protect government officials from having their wrongdoing disclosed to the American people. That’s its purpose. That’s its effect.
Contrary to the government’s plea and the Court’s holding, the government’s secrets regarding its torture and rendition program have nothing to do with so-called national security. National security is invoked in order to protect federal officials from criminal and civil liability for their commission of serious crimes.
What should the Court have done? It should not only have let the case go forward, it should have expressly ordered that the plaintiffs were fully entitled, through pre-trial discovery, to delve into every nook and cranny of this dark, nefarious program and to disclose everything about it to the American people and the people of the world. At the end of this road, the nation would continue to stand, in fact on a much more solid moral foundation.
No doubt there would be some insecurity suffered by CIA agents and their enablers, similar to the insecurity that CIA officials undoubtedly felt after being convicted of serious crimes regarding kidnapping, rendition, and torture in Italy. But the security of federal officials who have engaged in wrongdoing is not the same as the security of the nation.
After the John Kennedy assassination, the U.S. government ordered all documents in the case to be kept secret from the American people for 50 years, based on the ludicrous notion that national security was at stake. The claim was ridiculous. The documents were kept secret for one purpose only: to hide from the American people the overwhelming evidence that contradicted the official findings of the Warren Commission. When much of the hidden evidence was finally released in the 1990s, in the wake of the storm produced by Oliver Stone’s movie JFK, the nation remained standing. National security was never at stake. What was at stake was government credibility, which, deservedly, received serious blows from the disclosure of what the government had claimed were national-security secrets some 30 years before.
The Ninth Circuit’s ruling confirms that we now live in a country in which the president and his military and paramilitary forces can torture anyone they want with impunity. Add to that the president’s claim of power to assassinate anyone he wants. How is all this different from any ordinary totalitarian dictatorship? Sure, the torturer-and-assassin-in-chief is democratically elected, but so what? What difference does that make to the victims?
The Constitution called into existence a federal government with limited, enumerated powers. If a power wasn’t enumerated, it couldn’t be exercised. Where are the powers to torture and assassinate people? One searches the Constitution in vain for them. Moreover, how can a ludicrous “state-secrets doctrine,” which appears nowhere in the Constitution, trump the express restrictions on power that the American people imposed on federal officials with the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment?
Ultimately, the root of this evil weed lies in U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. Empire goes abroad and stirs up hornets’ nests. That produces rage among the victims, which then manifests itself in terrorist retaliation. The terrorist retaliation is then used as the excuse by federal officials to ignore the Constitution and the Bill of Rights by claiming omnipotent powers to wage “war on terrorism,” including the power to torture people and the power to assassinate people.
Americans would be wise to pull the evil weed out by its root, which means dismantling America’s overseas military empire, bringing all the troops home from everywhere and discharging them, abandoning all overseas bases and relinquishing any ownership or leasehold rights to such properties, dismantling the standing army and military-industrial complex, and restoring America’s founding principles of anti-militarism, anti-imperialism, anti-interventionism, and a limited, government constitutional republic to our land.
US Government Report Argues for Police Force for American Interventions Overseas
By Matthew Harwood | t r u t h o u t | 07 September 2010
In May 2009, the federally financed RAND Corporation published a 183-page report, “A Stability Police Force for the United States: Justification and Options for Creating US Capabilities”. The report, conducted for the US Army’s Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI) at the Army War College, examined the need for a “stability police force” (SPF), which it described as “a high-end police force that engages in a range of tasks such as crowd and riot control, special weapons and tactics (SWAT) and investigations of organized criminal groups.” Most soldiers do not possess the specialized skills an SPF officer needs to prevent violence, the report notes. “Most soldiers are trained to apply overwhelming force to secure victory, rather than minimal force to prevent escalation.” The SPF would also train indigenous police forces, much like what occurs today in Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to the study led by Terrence K. Kelly, a senior researcher at RAND, the United States clearly needs an SPF. “Stability operations have become an inescapable reality of US foreign policy,” the report states. The RAND report estimates that creating such a paramilitary police force would cost about $637 million annually, require about 6,000 personnel and that it should be headquartered inside the US Marshals Service (USMS), not the US Army.
“Of the options considered,” the RAND report argues, “this research indicates that the US Marshals Service would be the most likely to successfully field an SPF, under the assumptions that an [military police] option would not be permitted to conduct policing missions in the United States outside of military installations except under extraordinary circumstances and that doing so is essential to maintaining required skills.” The idea here is that members of an SPF would be a “hybrid force” and could be embedded in police and sheriff departments nationwide to retain their policing skills when not deployed overseas. When needed, a battalion-sized SPF unit could be deployed in 30 days.
This recommendation did cause a small number of libertarians to take notice of the report after it was published because of the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids using the military for domestic policing inside the United States. Libertarian William Grigg blogged on LewRockwell.com that he feared that an SPF could be used domestically. “If ‘peacekeepers’ end up patrolling American streets, they probably won’t be foreigners in blue berets, but homegrown jackboots commanded by Washington,” Grigg wrote. Chris Calabrese, a legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, was less fearful of an SPF, but he told Truthout that the report’s recommendation to headquarter “a super police force that would be deployed both foreign and domestically in the US Marshals Service” did violate the spirit of the Posse Comitatus Act.
“In essence, you have this force that would in theory be a civilian force that would be part of the US Marshal Service but they would be deployed as part of the Army and the military forces,” Calabrese said. “That would be their primary deployment purpose. Their civilian purpose would be secondary. They describe it as a training purpose. So who does this police force work for then?”
Talking to WorldNetDaily in January, Kelly did say an SPF could be deployed in the United States, although that’s not what their primary purpose is.
“If there were a major disaster like Katrina it could be deployed in the U.S. but that’s not the purpose of the research,” he said. “It’s important to point out that the goal was to create a force that’s deployable overseas. If it’s to be used in the United States it would be a secondary thing and then only in an emergency.”
The RAND Corporation would not make any of the report’s authors available for an interview. Emails to the USMS asking for a comment on the report and its recommendations also went unanswered.
Calabrese also said there are practical concerns behind such a force outside of the Posse Comitatus Act. “It’s also somewhat strange,” he said. Calabrese wonders what would happen when SPF personnel get called up from wherever they’re embedded to deploy overseas. “What happens to all the police work they’re doing domestically?” he asked.
But the RAND report has more implications for the future of US foreign policy than it does about the militarization of police inside the United States. It signals that some defense and peace intellectuals believe that the United States will continue to intervene in fragile and failing states. After listing the stability operations that the United States has participated in since the end of the cold war – Panama (1989), Somalia (1992), Haiti (1994), Bosnia (1995), Kosovo (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003)and Haiti again in 2004 – the RAND report notes this trend will continue. “There are several countries where the United States could become engaged in stability operations over the next decade, such as Cuba and Sudan,” according to the report. – Full article
America’s Economy Is Not Here to Pay for Wars
By Jason Ditz | Lew Rockwell | September 8, 2010
In a recent speech at Wayne State University in Detroit, America’s top military commander, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen declared that the most serious threat to America’s national security is the national debt. His argument for this was that the debt and its deleterious effect on America’s economy could hinder the growth of military expenditures.
Mullen further lamented that current estimates have the federal government paying some $600 billion in interest on the debt in 2012 adding, “That’s one year’s worth of defense budget.”
But America’s civilian economy isn’t just something to be taxed to pay for war, and America’s civilian population is not just a collection of potential recruits and sources of revenue for the military. The military is supposed to be here to serve America, not the other way around.
And without downplaying the various serious economic consequences of America’s national debt, Admiral Mullen’s comments betray a very disturbing (and increasingly common) view of the American economy as little more than fuel for its ever-growing war machine.
In fact the $600 billion interest payment is coming in no small part because Admiral Mullen and the rest of the military’s leadership has been pressing for unprecedented increases in military spending. Now, having spent America’s economy to the brink of ruin, Admiral Mullen has the nerve to complain that the harm he has already done is hampering the harm he intends to do.
It isn’t even true, incidentally, that the $600 billion is “one year’s worth of defense budget.” Not anymore it isn’t. In fact President Obama is seeking over $700 billion for fiscal year 2011, and that is one budget item that, whether there is a Republican or Democrat in office, we always expect to grow.
But just 10 years ago it would’ve been two years worth. In 2000 America was spending around $300 billion on its military. That was by far the biggest military budget on the planet. If America still had a $300 billion military, it would still be the largest by far.
Instead America is barreling into the future with a military budget that rivals the rest of the world combined, and an endless wish list of very expensive new military goals. Is it really such a mystery that this is unsustainable?
The purpose of Admiral Mullen’s visit and his assorted talks in Detroit were to admonish local industry leaders that the “patriotic” thing to do was to hire more former soldiers, while insisting that “industry, community and military leaders share the same goals.” One wonders how industry and community leaders feel about an endless series of wars bankrupting the nation, but it can only be assumed that they feel differently than the admiral does.
Though many Americans are reluctant to openly criticize the nation’s military leadership in time of war, Admiral Mullen’s comments make it very clear how little regard he has for us and it is high time we, as Americans, make it clear that this country cannot and will not be sacrificed at the altar of a series of wars whose only goal seems to be fleecing the American taxpayer of an ever growing portion of what he produces. We’ve been down that road for the past decade and we can all see where it has led.
Blair Reveals Cheney’s War Agenda
By Robert Parry | September 6, 2010
Ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s new memoir offers the expected rationalizations for his joining in an illegal, aggressive war against Iraq, even to the point of quibbling about the death toll. But Blair does reveal how much more war was favored by Vice President Dick Cheney and the neocons.
In A Journey: My Political Life, Blair depicts Cheney as believing the United States was at war not only with Islamic terrorists but with “rogue states that supported them” and that “the only way of defeating [this threat] was head-on, with maximum American strength.”
Cheney wanted forcible “regime change” in all Middle Eastern countries that he considered hostile to U.S. interests, according to Blair.
“He would have worked through the whole lot, Iraq, Syria, Iran, dealing with all their surrogates in the course of it – Hezbollah, Hamas, etc.,” Blair wrote. “In other words, he [Cheney] thought the world had to be made anew, and that after 11 September, it had to be done by force and with urgency. So he was for hard, hard power. No ifs, no buts, no maybes.”
Over the years, there have been indications of this larger neoconservative strategy to attack America’s – and Israel’s – “enemies” starting with Iraq and then moving on to Syria and Iran, but rarely has this more expansive plan for regional war been shared explicitly with the American public.
Usually, the scheme could be found only in obscure neocon policy papers or as part of Washington scuttlebutt. After the Iraq invasion, a favorite neocon joke was whether to next head west toward Damascus or east to Tehran with the punch line, “real men go to Tehran.”
Under this neocon plan, once “regime change” was achieved in Syria and Iran, then Israel’s front-line adversaries, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories, would be left impoverished and isolated. Israel could dictate settlement terms to the Palestinians and incorporate the Jewish settlements on prime West Bank land into a Greater Israel.
A Clean Break
The early outlines of this aggressive concept for remaking the Middle East predated the 9/11 attacks by half a decade, when a group of American neocons, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, went to work for Israeli Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu during his 1996 campaign for prime minister.
The neocon strategy paper, called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” advanced the idea that only regime change in hostile Muslim countries could achieve the necessary “clean break” from the diplomatic standoff that had followed inconclusive peace negotiations.
Under the “clean break,” Israel would no longer seek peace through mutual understanding and compromise, but rather through confrontation, including the violent removal of leaders such as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.
The plan called Hussein’s ouster “an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right,” but also one that would destabilize the Assad dynasty in Syria and thus topple the power dominoes into Lebanon, where Hezbollah might soon find itself without its key Syrian ally. Iran also could find itself in the cross-hairs of “regime change.”
But what the “clean break” needed was the military might of the United States, since some of the targets like Iraq were too far away and too powerful to be defeated even by Israel’s highly efficient military. The cost in Israeli lives and to Israel’s economy from such overreach would have been staggering.
In 1998, the U.S. neocon brain trust pushed the “clean break” plan another step forward with the creation of the Project for the New American Century, which urged President Bill Clinton to seek the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
However, Clinton would only go so far, maintaining a harsh embargo on Iraq and enforcing a “no-fly zone” which involved U.S. aircraft conducting periodic bombing raids. Still, with Clinton or his heir apparent, Al Gore, in the White House, a full-scale invasion appeared out of the question.
The first key political obstacle was removed when the neocons helped engineer George W. Bush’s ascension to the presidency in Election 2000. However, the path was not fully cleared until al-Qaeda terrorists attacked New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, leaving behind a political climate across America for war and revenge.
Though Hussein had no hand in 9/11 and rejected al-Qaeda’s religious extremism, Bush and Blair clambered onboard for an invasion of Iraq. Their differences were mostly tactical, such as whether to present the WMD case to the United Nations or to simply act unilaterally with the so-called “coalition of the willing.”
According to Blair’s memoir, hardliner Cheney opposed going to the UN at all, but Blair argued that the move was politically necessary and won over Bush during a visit to Camp David on Sept. 7, 2002.
“Once George declared he was in favour of going the UN route, the visit relaxed,” Blair wrote. “Dick Cheney had been there for part of the time, and made it clear he was not for going down the UN route. He was unremittingly hard line.”
Common Ground
But Blair explained that Cheney’s aggressive attitude differed from the Bush-Blair approach only by degree, not fundamentally. In that regard, Blair said he considered Cheney as unfairly maligned by progressives and many centrists.
“To those on the left, he is, of course, an uncomplicated figure of loathing,” Blair wrote. “Even for the middle ground, they tend to reach for the garlic and crucifixes. You have to go pretty far right to find Dick’s natural constituency.
“My take on him was different from that of most people. I thought he had one central insight which was at least worth taking seriously. He believed, in essence, that the U.S. was genuinely at war. … [And his response was] we’re coming after you, so change or be changed.”
Though acknowledging that Cheney’s “attitude terrified and repelled people,” Blair expressed a degree of solidarity with the former vice president, saying:
“I did not think [Cheney’s position] was as fantastical as conventional wisdom opined. It is one struggle. Our enemy has an ideology. It does threaten us. The ultimate answer is in the spread of democracy and freedom. It is even possible to conceive of this, in different language, as being a progressive position, certainly where removing someone like Saddam was concerned.
“My problem with the way he put it and wanted to do it was that the manner of doing it was incomplete. Precisely because the war was based loosely around an ideology, the fight had to be waged and won at the level of ideas and in a way that would appeal not to us, but to those who had fallen or might fall prey to that ideology.
“In other words, it couldn’t be a hard-power strategy alone. It had to encompass more than military might. It had to engage the people out in the Middle East, in the Muslim world, and had to build alliances within that world.
“This wasn’t some namby-pamby peacenikery; it was a critical part of winning.”
In other words, Blair saw Cheney’s determination to overthrow U.S.-disliked leaders in the Middle East as more a problem of PR tactics than core strategy.
Despite the widespread impression that Cheney’s grandiose neocon scheme for remaking the Middle East through warfare represented an extreme vision, Blair indicated that he and other supposed moderates shared Cheney’s broader determination to replace anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli governments across the Middle East with more compliant regimes under the banner of “democracy.”
That, in turn, suggests the danger of a wider regional war has not fully abated.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com
Taliban: Withdrawal of oocupation forces must precede shura
Paktribune | September 6, 2010
PESHAWAR: Rejecting the formation of high council for peace by the Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the Taliban Sunday said due to occupation of the country by the foreign forces such councils could not bring any fruit.
Taliban spokesman Qari Muhammad Yousaf told the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) about 150,000 foreign soldiers had occupied Afghanistan and the foreigners were carrying out the activities of the state from ordinary issues to the parliamentary election affairs. “In such conditions what does formation of high council for peace mean,” he questioned.
“Formation of a new shura in the name of peace is a repeat of the former failed experiences. The shura makers and its members are slaves of others and they have no power,” he remarked.
The spokesman repeatedly said that neither the Afghan authorities had the power nor the peace council would have the supremacy, adding Afghanistan had been occupied and the foreigners were running everything.
Asked by the AIP that if the aforesaid shura was given power and authority, then would the Taliban be ready for negotiations with the shura, he said the real reason behind the conflict was presence of foreign forces. “All problems are because of the presence of occupying forces. All the problems will be resolved after the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan.”
Hebron: soldiers convert Palestinian home into military base
Israeli soldiers have erected tents on the roof of the Salayma family’s home and are occupying the building
6 September 2010 | ISM Media
Al Baqa’a, HEBRON – On Friday the Israeli army raided a Palestinian house in Hebron and converted it into a military base, forcing a family of 14 to move into the first floor of their home.
The following day the soldiers took over the roof as well. Yesterday an ISM activist visited the Salayma family in Al Baqa’a, east of Hebron, and spoke to Salem Salayma about the situation.
He said that now the roof has been taken over, soldiers have been on and off the roof constantly. Yesterday morning, at about 8am, six soldiers carried out some kind of exercise around our house, running up the hill, sitting in shooting positions and moving up and down the road. He added that sometimes the army move around in the area, walking or driving, and all the families in the area are very scared. When they see soldiers, they close the house, and stay inside because they fear the soldiers themselves – as well as the settlers who have been moving around the area regularly since the shooting of four settlers last week, and have carried out several attacks on Palestinians.
Salayma, who is in his forties, lives with his family who in total number 14, including 4 children. At present 5 family members are living on the second floor of the occupied house, and 9 are on the first floor. Now, the family has been ordered to vacate the upper floor by next Sunday, so the soldiers can expand their military base. The only reason given for the takeover of the Salayma home has been “security reasons” and no alternative provisions have been made for the family. Since their arrival soldiers have been using the house’s bathroom, water and electricity, without asking.
United Nations personnel logged a report from the family yesterday and Salayma says he wants to hire a lawyer to prevent the military from taking over his house. However, any court case would not happen for at least two weeks and by that time the military occupation of the house will likely be complete.
Salaymi, has not been out of the house since the soldiers came, because he fears for his family. He is also deeply worried however because this means he is losing the income he needs to support his family since he has not been able to go to work. He has also been unable to attend prayers.
Analysts: Iraq war ‘partly to blame’ for financial crisis
Stiglitz and Bilmes: Recession will be longer because of war
The financial crisis that rocked the world in 2008 and still reverberates today was “due at least in part” to the Iraq war, which also made it more difficult for the government to react when economic problems happened, argue two prominent policy makers.
In an article in Sunday’s Washington Post, former Clinton-era economic adviser Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University public policy lecturer Linda J. Bilmes say that the Iraq war forced the US to take on more debt than it had to, and caused in part the rising oil prices that resulted in large amounts of money flowing out of the US economy.
To counter the effects of those trends, fiscal policy makers had to keep interest rates unnaturally low, causing the securities and real estate bubbles that burst at the start of the recession, the authors say.
The authors also amended their assessment from several years ago that the Iraq war’s true cost is around $3 trillion, saying new information suggests that the cost goes “beyond” that estimate.
Saying what might have been is always difficult, especially with something as complex as the global financial crisis, which had many contributing factors. Perhaps the crisis would have happened in any case. But almost surely, with more spending at home, and without the need for such low interest rates and such soft regulation to keep the economy going in its absence, the bubble would have been smaller, and the consequences of its breaking therefore less severe. To put it more bluntly: The war contributed indirectly to disastrous monetary policy and regulations.
The Iraq war didn’t just contribute to the severity of the financial crisis, though; it also kept us from responding to it effectively. Increased indebtedness meant that the government had far less room to maneuver than it otherwise would have had. More specifically, worries about the (war-inflated) debt and deficit constrained the size of the stimulus, and they continue to hamper our ability to respond to the recession. With the unemployment rate remaining stubbornly high, the country needs a second stimulus. But mounting government debt means support for this is low. The result is that the recession will be longer, output lower, unemployment higher and deficits larger than they would have been absent the war.
Stiglitz and Bilmes estimate that about a quarter of the debt increase the US saw during the first five years of the war are attributable to the war — about $900 billion of a $3.6 trillion rise in the debt. They also estimate that the war added about $10 to the cost of a barrel of oil, amounting to a cost of $250 billion to the US economy.
In articles in the Times of London and the Washington Post two years ago, Stiglitz and Bilmes estimated that the cost of the war, including the costs to the US economy, amounted to $3 trillion. At the time, the Pentagon questioned their assertion.
“It appears that our $3 trillion estimate (which accounted for both government expenses and the war’s broader impact on the U.S. economy) was, if anything, too low,” the authors state.
“Reimagining history is a perilous exercise. Nonetheless, it seems clear that without this war, not only would America’s standing in the world be higher, our economy would be stronger,” the authors conclude.
JINSA: Road to Peace Runs Through Tehran
As noted in the September 2 Talking Points, the hard-line neoconservative Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) is pushing the old neocon meme that the ‘road to Middle East peace runs through’… well, anywhere but Jerusalem. This time, of course, it’s Tehran.
The latest JINSA Report, the organization’s policy e-newsletter, calls Iran the “elephant” in the room that went unmentioned in U.S. President Barack Obama’s Iraq address, as well as the “elephant” in Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The JINSA Report says that prospects for long-term success in Iraq will be “short-lived” unless the U.S. figures out what the elephant is and “how to tame it or remove it.” JINSA’s description of Iranian involvement in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories makes clear this prescription applies to those strategic challenges as well.
This theme is of course familiar to anyone who has followed JINSA since the run-up to the Iraq War. Just after September 11, 2001 — on September 14, to be exact — the top U.S. policy priority listed in the JINSA Report was the provision of ”all necessary support to the Iraq National Congress, including direct American military support, to affect [sic] a regime change in Iraq.” (The Iraqi National Congress and its leader, the neocon darling Ahmad Chalabi, have since been revealed to have had extensive ties to Iran, with Chalabi even accused of spying for the Islamic Republic, making JINSA’s outrage at Iranian influence in Iraq somewhat ironic, to say the least.)
On March 19, 2002, just one year prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, JINSA made the exact same point about Iraq it is now making about Iran: in order to bring regional actors at odds with the U.S. to heel, the U.S. must remove their patron (in Iraq’s case, Saddam Hussein) from power. This 2002 JINSA Report warns:
…the Oslo process in the 1990s had shifted attention from the greater dangers posed by Iraq. We believed, then and now, that only after the regional situation was stabilized in America’s favor would the Palestinians be prepared to acquiesce to legitimate American and Israeli demands about security and legitimacy. It wouldn’t work the other way around.
This analysis should be of no surprise coming from JINSA, an organization funded by Irving Moskowitz, the bingo and gambling magnate who has had a close relationship with both the Likud party of Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu and the most radical settler movements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Unsurprisingly, Moskowitz has also funded leading neoconservative institutions here — notably AEI, Center for Security Policy and Hudson — which connects him to figures instrumental in implementing the invasion of Iraq. Co-founded by Michael Ledeen, Richard Perle, and Stephen Bryen, JINSA itself is advised by the likes of Anne Bayefsky (see Eli’s recent post), John Bolton, Dick Cheney, Douglas Feith, and Jim Woolsey.
Dyed-in-the-wool neoconservatives like the JINSA advisers have a known fondness for the policies of the Likud party. So it’s again no surprise to see that Netanyahu has long promoted the position that first solving the Iran problem will suddenly allow Israel some latitude in Arab-Israeli peacemaking. This notion, known as ‘reverse linkage’ rather than the militarily-accepted ‘linkage’ that says the opposite, was espoused by Netanyahu’s National Security Advisor, Uzi Arad, just they were coming into office. In March 2009, Arad told Reuters:
[T]he order of priority is: blunt Iran first, move vigorously on peace after, and based on that. Should you act in the wrong order…you will have a sterile, perhaps failed process with the Palestinians and at the same time you will end up with a nuclear Iran.
So now those same figures who brought us the Iraq war are using the same talking points — eerily echoing the Israeli right — to drum up support for escalating measures against Iran. We’ve seen this movie before.
Israel confiscates Jerusalem land to build Jewish war memorial
Palestine Information Center – 03/09/2010
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The Israeli occupation authorities has decided to build a war dead memorial on lands that belong to Palestinian citizens in Sheikh Jarrah suburb in the occupied city of Jerusalem, well-informed Hebrew sources revealed Thursday.
According to the sources, the Israeli administration of Jerusalem municipality wants to build the memorial to remember Israelis who were “killed at the hands of Palestinian aggressors”.
It added that members of the municipal council were set to ratify the decision during a municipal session two week from now, pointing out that the place was “the most suitable location for the memorial”.
The sources estimated the confiscated Palestinian land to be 6,500 sq meters, but Palestinians believe that the Israeli step was only part of the Israeli occupation authority policy to expand the settlement activities and to distort Arab identity in occupied Jerusalem.
“We found the place as the most suitable site for such crucial civil needs, and we found no reason to hinder the use of those lands for Israeli public needs and for matters we view as of Jewish and national values”, said Yaer Jabay, the member of the Jewish municipal council.
The Israeli decision to confiscate the land came on the eve of the kicking-off of the US-sponsored direct Israeli-Fatah negotiations, which the great majority of the Palestinian people oppose.
Yemen ‘abandons’ human rights
By Andrew Wander | Al-Jazeera | August 25, 2010
Yemeni authorities have carried out grave human rights abuses as part of an internationally-backed crackdown on a range of security threats facing the country, rights groups have said.
In a report issued on Wednesday, Amnesty International says that growing US concern over al-Qaeda’s presence in Yemen, combined with domestic challenges to the legitimacy of the government, has prompted a marked deterioration in the human rights situation in the impoverished country.
The group says that over the past year, the Yemeni government has carried out vicious military campaigns, arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings as it faces international pressure to tackle al-Qaeda-affiliated groups, and seeks to quell a growing secessionist movement in the south while fighting periodic battles with Houthi rebels in the north.
“Yemeni authorities are abandoning human rights in the name of security,” the report, entitled Cracking Down Under Pressure, says, cataloguing a range of abuses carried out by government forces against opposition groups in Yemen.
Al-Qaeda threat
Amnesty International says that some of the violations have been carried out under the pretext of complying with international demands to prevent al-Qaeda and other groups from launching attacks from the country.
“An extremely worrying trend has developed where the Yemeni authorities, under pressure from the USA and others to fight al-Qaeda, and Saudi Arabia to deal with the Houthis, have been citing national security as a pretext to deal with opposition and stifle all criticism,” says Malcolm Smart, Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa director.
The US has dramatically expanded its counter-terrorism operations in Yemen since an al-Qaeda-affiliated group attempted to blow up a transatlantic airliner over Detroit last December.
Human rights activists operating in Yemen say that the subsequent security crackdown, which has seen increased military and diplomatic co-ordination between the Yemeni and US governments, has coincided with a major increase in reports of human rights abuses.
“There are many people who have been arrested and jailed as a result of American demands,” says Khaled al-Anisi, the executive director of the Yemen-based National Organisation for Defending Rights and Freedoms.
“Other people have been killed by the Americans and by Yemenis for America’s sake.
“Because this security cooperation is beneficial to the Americans, they ignore the human rights situation in the country.”
Counter-productive
The US has been criticised for carrying out recent drone attacks in Yemen which have killed civilians, including a high profile incident in May when the deputy governor of a Yemeni province was killed by a missile as he tried to talk al-Qaeda members into abandoning their fight.
Yemen’s government has never officially admitted the extent of its cooperation with Washington, but US officials have been more forthcoming in explaining the scope of their operations in the country, making the so-called “shadow war” against al-Qaeda an open secret in Sana’a.
But far from increasing Yemen’s security, some believe that the US is sacrificing the domestic legitimacy of Yemen’s government in a bid to ensure its own security.
“American policy in this country is done without respect for the Yemeni state, without respect for the Yemeni constitution,” al-Anisi says. “That makes people feel that [the] government is just a policeman for the US, and makes al-Qaeda stronger here.”
Abdul-Ghani al-Iyrani, a Yemeni political analyst, agrees that the campaign is having counter-productive results.
“It contributes to the fundamental problem in the political situation in Yemen, which is the erosion of the government’s grass-roots legitimacy,” he says.
Scorched Earth
But he says that al-Qaeda related operations represent only a “small part” of the human rights abuses being carried out by the government. Worse, he says, were the violations last year.
The Amnesty report offers disturbing details of the Yemeni government’s “Scorched Earth” military operation against the Houthis, during which it carried out heavy aerial bombardment of civilian areas, displacing more than a quarter of a million people.
When the fighting spilled over the border into Saudi Arabia, Riyadh joined military operations in Yemen, sending troops and aircraft to attack Houthi rebel positions as tens of thousands of civilians were trapped in the area.
“The Yemeni government’s Scorched Earth operation between August 2009 and February 2010 signalled the deployment of military forces against the Houthis on a scale not witnessed before, particularly after Saudi Arabian forces joined in,” the report says.
Al-Iyrani says that during the fighting many civilians were left stranded with no food as the city of Sada’a was besieged by Yemeni forces. “What happened in Sada’a was just unspeakable,” he says, accusing the government of leaving thousands of civilians ‘starving’ during the operation.
Secessionist movement
After negotiating a ceasefire with the Houthis in February, Yemeni authorities turned their attention to quashing a growing secessionist movement in the south of the country, where many people believe they are subject to discrimination by the government.
The report says that the government has carried out a campaign of “unlawful killings, arbitrary arrests and the use of excessive force against peaceful demonstrations” against southern Yemenis who want formal independence from the north, under the guise of fighting terrorism.
The government has accused the Southern Movement, a loose coalition of political groups calling for greater rights for people in the south, of having links with al-Qaeda, and has set up special “terrorism” courts in which to try activists.
Amnesty has called on Yemen’s government to ensure that its security operations respect human rights concerns, and says that the US and Saudi Arabia should play a more constructive role in preventing such abuses.
“Enforced disappearances, torture and other ill-treatment, and extrajudicial executions are never permissible, and the Yemeni authorities must immediately cease these violations,” Smart says.
“It is particularly worrying that states such as Saudi Arabia and the US are directly or indirectly aiding the Yemeni government in a downward spiral away from a previously improving human rights record.”
Haifa University students prepare to rally against leftist teachers
Ma’an/Agencies – August 26, 2010
HAIFA — Students at Haifa University reportedly prepared a list of “Pro-Palestinian” professors and a group of activists were preparing a boycott campaign targeting their classes and lectures.
Israel’s Hebrew Language daily newspaper Ma’ariv said a campaign began on Tuesday, targeting 20 lecturers from the sociology and political science departments who they said “participate in demonstrations against Israeli troops and the Israeli government” or who have publicly spoken out against them.
“We won’t choose courses of these lecturers and we won’t attend their lectures. It is unthinkable that at a time when our friends are fighting or receiving blows from activists on a ship that calls itself a peace ship that these lecturers stand up and demonstrate and speak out against these soldiers,” one student was quoted as saying.
“What is taking place here is fascism,” another student told the paper, “this is the beginning of a repulsive attempt to shut people up who think differently. If the lecturers make statements that try to make historic justice, they deserve praise.”
The University issued a statement to the paper, saying “Haifa University takes a serious view of any attempt to carry out an academic boycott or an attempt to harm academic freedom.”
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China names world’s ‘hacking empire’
RT | March 15, 2022
Calling the US a “hacking empire” of the world, the Chinese Foreign Ministry urged Washington to stop “malicious” cyber activities following reports that American hackers subverted a network in China to launch attacks on Russia and Belarus.
“China is gravely concerned about cyberattacks against other countries that originate from the US and use China as a springboard,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told reporters at a press briefing on Monday.
Zhao was commenting on recent Chinese media reports that hackers, mainly from the US but also from NATO allies Germany and the Netherlands, recently hijacked a Chinese computer network for cyberattacks, 87% of which targeted Russia.
“Against the background of the Ukraine situation, such a move may produce the negative effect of misleading the international community and spreading disinformation,” Zhao said, pointing out that “a former US senior official called publicly for launching cyberattacks on Russia not long ago.”
This appeared to be a reference to Hillary Clinton, former US secretary of state and presidential candidate, who made the calls in an MSNBC interview at the end of February. … continue
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