Many media reports are linking the Tuareg tribesman of the Sahara to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb [EPA]
Are the Tuareg tribesmen of the Sahara, as many media reports are now intimating, allied to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)?
This question has become especially pertinent since the abduction of seven employees of two French companies from their living quarters in Arlit, northern Niger, in September.
The immediate reports on the hostage taking, for which AQIM has claimed responsibility, said that the kidnappers were heard to speak Arabic and Tamashek, the language of the Tuareg. This information subsequently appeared to be contradicted by a Tuareg guard who, having himself been attacked by the assailants, said that he heard them speaking Arabic and Hausa. He made no mention of Tamashek, but his evidence seems to have been ignored on the presumption that he would be unlikely to incriminate his own people.
Hundreds, possibly thousands, of media articles and broadcasts have followed the leads given by the Niger government, Amadou Toumani Touré (ATT), the president of Mali, Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, and Brice Hortefeux, the French interior minister, whose statements suggested that AQIM ‘subcontracted’ the abduction to the Tuareg.
Media hot seat
The Tuareg are the indigenous population of much of the Central Sahara and Sahel.
Today, their largest concentrations are in northern Niger and northern Mali where they comprise approximately 10 per cent of the national populations, numbering around 1 million in Niger and perhaps a fraction less in Mali.
Other Tuareg populations are in southern Algeria and south west Libya, where they comprise small minorities of around 50,000 or less in each country, with perhaps 25,000 to 50,000 in Burkina Faso and a small scattering in Mauritania.
It is among these larger communities, notably northern Mali and to a lesser extent Niger, that AQIM has embedded itself.
The following points go some way to answering this question:
• Although AQIM has claimed responsibility for the Arlit abduction, we do not yet know for certain the individuals involved in the raid. Individual Tuareg may or may not have been involved.
• Although the Tuareg ‘communities’ have always denied taking part in such criminal activities, most of their leaders and spokespersons recognise that ‘black sheep’ are to be found among all peoples. Among the Tuareg, especially in Niger and Mali where the recent (2007-2009) Tuareg rebellions have stuttered to unsatisfactory and perhaps only temporary states of ‘peace’, a not inconsiderable number of young ‘ex-rebel’ fighters have turned to banditry and ‘criminality’ as a means of economic survival. Some of this ‘opportunism’ is undoubtedly associated with AQIM’s activities. Indeed, many of the young, former rebels of Niger who have taken to banditry now live in and around Tamanrasset, the capital of Algeria’s extreme south, and might therefore well presume that their banditry in northern Niger is being sanctioned by the Algerian state.
• As Nicolas Roux remarked recently in addressing this subject in People with Voices: “If a French national were involved in a terrorist organisation, no one would declare ‘The French’ to be part of such activities.”
• In a similar vein, Boutali Tchewiren, the president of the Alhak-Nakal (Right to Land) Association and former spokesman of the Niger Tuaregs’ rebel MNJ (Mouvement des Nigériens pour la justice Mouvement), responded immediately to the accusatory comments from Niamey and Paris. “Just because some of the kidnappers spoke Tamashek, the whole Tuareg community should not be accused,” he told AFP. Tchewiren also rebuked Kouchner, who said that: “Those who took these men and women could be Tuaregs working to order. They will sell them to the terrorists, who are not themselves very numerous.” “That,” Tchewiren said, “is a serious accusation. It’s too gross and ridiculous to accuse the Tuareg people in this way. The Tuareg community is not responsible for the actions of a few individuals, even if they’re members of this community.”
• Similar objections came from Mali’s Tuaregs. On September 20, two Mali MPs, Alghabasse Ag Intalla and Bajan Ag Hamatou, who are both representatives of the Tuareg community, sent a strongly written protest to the French ambassador to Mali about the way in which the Tuareg were being stigmatised. They wrote: “You know, Excellency, that there has not been a single day, since a certain time, when ‘The Tuaregs’ have not been put in the hot seat by a press article, radio or other form of communication in regard to their supposed involvement in this or that infamy perpetrated in their region.”
‘Putative terrorists’
The point of what I have to say goes far beyond the mere question of whether some Tuareg may have been implicated in the Arlit heist. It is directed to the overall situation of the Tuareg since 2003, when the Americans launched the new Saharan-Sahelian front in the so-called ‘global war on terror’ (GWOT).
It is often argued that extreme Islamist movements find their support not only among ideologues but also – through their promise of a better ‘social alternative’ – from among the socially deprived, repressed and marginalised. In the Sahara-Sahel, especially since 2003, that has been the Tuareg. Indeed, the impact of the GWOT on the Tuareg peoples has been nothing short of catastrophic.
On the above premise, and when we consider what the Tuareg have endured at the hands of Washington and their own governments during the GWOT, not to mention the exploitation of their lands by foreign mining and oil companies, we might well ask why the Tuareg, instead of condemning AQIM, are not queuing up to join it ranks.
In fact, the reality of the GWOT in the Sahara-Sahel has not been about fighting ‘terrorists’, but about how the local governments, linked into the GWOT through Washington’s Pan Sahel (PSI) and Trans-Sahara Counter-terrorism initiatives of 2004 and 2005 respectively, have been provoking the Tuareg into taking up arms so that they might be categorised as ‘terrorists’ or, as one US state department analyst argued rather quaintly in the context of the assumed link between terrorism and trafficking, ‘putative terrorists’.
What the Tuareg have had to endure in the so-called GWOT is both shocking and shameful. Let me summarise:
The kidnapping of 32 European hostages in the Algerian Sahara in 2003, under the direction of Algeria’s intelligence and security services, the DRS, brought the immediate collapse of one of the main pillars of the Tuareg economy in southern Algeria. The loss of some 10,000 tourists in southern Algeria alone, spending an estimated $750 each, meant an annual loss of approximately $7.5mn, most of which found its way into the local Tuareg community.
Many of these Tuareg, faced with penury, were forced into shadowy and sometimes even ‘criminal’ activities, such as working for the various trans-Saharan trafficking businesses, either as fuel suppliers, drivers or guides.
From 2004 onwards, the governments of Algeria, Niger, Mali and Mauritania all used the pretext of the GWOT to crack down on legitimate opposition, civil society and ‘troublesome’ ethnic minorities such as the Tuareg. Tuareg communities throughout the region were constantly being provoked by their governments into rebellious behaviour, with the purpose of demonstrating to Washington the potential threat of terrorism within the Sahara-Sahel region. The pay-off for local governments was the financial and military largesse that comes with the blessing of Washington.
‘Explosion of anger’
The US-Algerian plan to create ‘false-flag’ terrorism incidents in the Sahara-Sahel was formulated in September 2002, with the first (botched) effort at kidnapping European tourists taking place in October that year. Tuareg in the region were aware of this incident and the following month wrote to the Algerian prime minister accusing the government of ‘sabotage’. The same Tuareg, in the name of the ‘citizens of Tamanrasset’, had already written to Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the Algerian president, warning him that unless the government ceased its harassment of local people “there was likely to be an explosion of local anger, the outcome of which could not be predicted”.
In July 2005, that anger exploded into two days of rioting during which some 40 of Tamanrasset’s commercial and government buildings were set on fire. Some 150 Tuareg youths were detained, with 64 jailed and the remainder fined. When their cases eventually came to court, it was revealed that the riots had been led by the secret police, acting as agents provocateurs. One prominent local citizen expressed the views of many when he said: “Now that they [the Algerian authorities] have the Americans behind them, they have become even bigger bullies.”
In 2004, four weeks after the arrival of US PSI special forces in the Sahel, Niger’s government provoked the Tuareg into taking up arms by imprisoning a leading Tuareg politician on trumped up accusations of murder. He was released after 13 months without any charges brought against him.
In May 2006, Algeria’s DRS, accompanied by some 100 US special forces, supported and orchestrated a Tuareg rebellion in northern Mali. Four months later, the DRS, with the complicity of the US, paid the same Tuareg substantial sums of money to attack the renowned Algerian ‘outlaw’ Mokhtar ben Mokhtar in northern Mali in order to give the impression to the outside world that there really was ‘terrorism’ in the Sahara. At least five Tuareg were killed.
In early 2007, a major Tuareg uprising, again provoked by the Niger government, but with Algeria’s DRS believed to have been involved, broke out in northern Niger and lasted for almost three years. As in Mali, where an equally protracted rebellion began a few months later, a conclusive peace agreement is still awaited.
Disenfranchised
The main cause of the Niger rebellion was the Tuaregs’ demand for a share in the benefits of the exploitation and development of their region’s natural resources, notably the massive uranium mining operations being undertaken by international companies.
In Mali, the underlying cause of the rebellion was the perceived disenfranchisement and marginalisation of the Tuareg and the failure of the government to fulfill the commitments of a peace agreement ensuing from an earlier rebellion during the 1990s.
In both countries, fighting became gruesome, especially in Niger where the regime of the now deposed President Mamadou Tandja adopted the genocidal strategy of attacking and killing Tuareg civilians, especially old men, women and children. The UN failed to acknowledge written notification of Niger’s genocide, let alone act on it, while the UN secretary general’s special envoy subsequently failed abjectly to even make meaningful contact with the rebels before himself being taken hostage by AQIM.
In February 2008, Malian forces swept through Mali’s north east region, ransacking and looting the border garrison town of Tin Zaouatene and driving the entire civilian population into the desert. Although no one was reported killed, the action provoked revenge attacks against the Malian army by Tuareg rebels and an escalation of the overall conflict.
The number of Tuareg killed in these and related incidents is not known precisely, but can be estimated at around 500.
As for their economy and livelihoods, tourism, reduced to near zero in southern Algeria after the 2003 hostage-takings, has gone the same way, but in bigger numbers, in Niger and Mali. Recently, Point Afrique, the main charter flight operator into the region, curtailed flights to Tamanrasset, Djanet and Timimoun in southern Algeria; Agades in Niger; Atar in Mauritania and Gao in Mali. Estimated tourist numbers across the region have fallen from close to 100,000 a year to almost zero, an estimated loss of perhaps $50mn to $75mn.
With the Niger army killing Tuareg livestock and AQIM’s circumscription of nomadic movement in Mali, pastoralism, along with most other commercial activities (other than banditry and drug trafficking), has also been decimated. Not surprisingly, most NGOs have also left the region.
‘Terror zone’
Two new sets of maps of the Sahara-Sahel epitomise the anger of the Tuareg towards their own governments, Washington and foreign mining and oil companies.
One, produced by the Pentagon in 2003, just after it fabricated its new Sahara-Sahelian front in the GWOT, portrays the Tuareg domain as a ‘Terror Zone’.
The second, produced by the regions’ governments, shows the same Tuareg domain as a chequer-board of mining and oil prospecting concessions licensed to hundreds of foreign oil and mining companies.
The first map reflects Washington’s self-fulfilling prophecy. The US’ original act of ‘state terrorism’ in the Sahara-Sahel, implemented by Algeria’s DRS, is finally taking on a life and momentum of its own and threatening to change the face of north west Africa for good.
The second reflects how the Tuareg are being dispossessed of their lands without a word of consultation and in contravention of a raft of international conventions and protocols relating to the rights of indigenous peoples.
Marginalised by their governments; ignored by the international community and deprived by the GWOT of their livelihoods, but still skilled fighters, the question now being asked is whether the Tuareg, especially in Mali, where the AQIM presence is greatest, will attempt to take matters into their own hands.
Jeremy Keenan is a professorial research associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, and author of The Dark Sahara: America’s War on Terror in Africa.
TRANSCRIPT: This week marks the one year anniversary of the release of emails and documents from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia that we now know as Climategate.
Sitting here now, one year later, it’s becoming difficult to remember the importance of that release of information, or even what information was actually released. Many were only introduced to the scandal through commentary in the blogosphere and many more came to know about it only weeks later, after the establishment media had a chance to assess the damage and fine tune the spin that would help allay their audience’s concern that something important had just happened. Very few have actually bothered to read the emails and documents for themselves.
Few have browsed the “Harry Read Me” file, the electronic notes of a harried programmer trying to make sense of the CRU’s databases. They have never read for themselves how temperatures in the database were “artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures” or the “hundreds if not thousands of dummy stations” which somehow ended up in the database, or how the exasperated programmer resorts to expletives before admitting he made up key data on weather stations because it was impossible to tell what data was coming from what sources.
Few have read the 2005 email from Climategate ringleader and CRU head Phil Jones to John Christy where he states “The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only 7 years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.” Or where he concludes: “As you know, I’m not political. If anything, I would like to see the climate change happen, so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences. This isn’t being political, it is being selfish.”
Or the email where he broke the law by asking Michael Mann of “hockey stick” fame to delete a series of emails related to a Freedom of Information request he had just received.
Or the email where he wrote: “If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone. We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind.”
Or the other emails where these men of science say they will re-define the peer review process itself in order to keep differing view points out of the scientific literature, or where they discuss ousting a suspected skeptic out of his editorial position in a key scientific journal, or where they fret about how to hide the divergence in temperature proxy records from observed temperatures, or where they openly discuss the complete lack of warming over the last decade or any of the thousands of other emails and documents exposing a laundry list of gross scientific and academic abuses.
Of course, the alarmists continue to argue—as they have ever since they first began to acknowledge the scandal—that climategate is insignificant. Without addressing any of the issues or specific emails, they simply point to the “independent investigations” that they say have vindicated the climategate scientists.
Like the UK parliamentary committee, which issued a report claiming that Phil Jones and the CRU’s scientific credibility remained intact after a rigorous one day hearing which featured no testimony from any skeptic or dissenting voice. After the release of the report, the committee stressed that the report did not address all of the issues raised by climategate and Phil Willis, the committee chairman admitted that the committee had rushed to put out a report before the British election.
Or the Oxburgh inquiry, chaired by Lord Ron Oxburgh, the UK Vice Chair of Globe International, an NGO-funded climate change legislation lobby group. The Oxburgh inquiry released a five page report after having reviewed 11 scientific papers unrelated to the climategate scandal that had been hand-picked by Phil Jones himself. It heard no testimony or evidence from anyone critical of the CRU. Unsurprisingly, it found the climategaters not guilty of academic misconduct.
Regardless of what one thinks of the veracity or independence of these so-called investigations into the climategate scandal itself, what has followed has been a catastrophic meltdown of the supposedly united front of scientific opinion that manmade CO2 is causing catastrophic global warming.
In late November of 2009, just days after the initial release of the climategate emails, the University of East Anglia was in the hotseat again. The CRU was forced to admit they had thrown away most of the raw data that their global temperature calculations were based upon, meaning their work was not reproducible by any outside scientists.
In December of that year, the UN’s Copenhagen climate talks broke down when a negotiating document was leaked showing that–contrary to all prÑit would be the third world nations bearing the brunt of a new international climate treaty, with punishing restrictions on carbon emissions that would prevent them from ever industrializing. The document, written by industrialized nations, allowed the first world to emit twice as much carbon per person as the third world, and was widely seen as an implementation of a eugenical austerity program under a “green” cover. This agenda was further exposed by the influential Optimum Population Trust in the UK, which began arguing that same month that rich westerners offset their carbon footprints by funding programs to stop black people from breeding.
In January 2010, the United Nations’ much-lauded Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change began to fall apart as error after error began to emerge in this supposedly unassailable peer-reviewed, scientific document asserting human causation of catastrophic climate change. That month it was revealed that a passing comment to a journalist from an Indian climatologist that the Himalayan glaciers could melt within 40 years found its way into the much-touted Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fourth report on climate change via a World Wildlife Fund fundraising pamphlet. When IPCC defenders tried to pass the universally derided prediction off as a legitimate mistake, the coordinating lead author of that section of the report admitted that the IPCC knew that the report was based on baseless speculation in a non-peer reviewed work, but included it because “We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.”
Later that month, doubt was cast on another claim in the IPCC report, this one that 40% of the Amazon rainforest was in danger of disappearing due to manmade global warming. These doubts were confirmed in July when the claim was sourced back to pure, unverified speculation on the now-defunct website of a Brazilian environmental advocacy group. Just this month, the exact opposite of the original claim was shown to be the case when a new study appeared in Science demonstrating that forests in past warming periods were not decimated but in fact blooming with life, experiencing a “rapid and distinct increase in plant diversity and origination rates.”
Also in January, the UK Information Commissioner ruled that researchers at the CRU had broken the law by refusing to comply with Freedom of Information requests, but that no criminal prosecution would follow because of a statute of limitations on prosecuting the illegal activity.
In February, the UK Guardian revealed that a key study co-authored by Phil Jones that purported to show there was no such thing as the well-researched Urban Heat Island effect was found to have relied on seriously flawed data. This, according to the Guardian, led to “apparent attempts to cover up problems with [the] temperature data.”
In September, John Holdren, the man who had previously advocated adding sterilizing agents to the water supply to combat the overpopulation problem which he thought would ravage the Earth by the year 2000, and who currently is the Science czar in the Obama White House, advocated a name change for global warming to “climate disruption,” further affirming the theory’s non-scientific status as an unfalsifiable prediction that anything that ever is due to manmade carbon dioxide.
Later that month, Britain’s prestigious Royal Society rewrote its climate change summary to admit that the science was infused with uncertainties and that “It is not possible to determine exactly how much the Earth will warm or exactly how the climate will change in the future…”
In October, a carbon reduction advocacy group called 10:10 released a video to promote its campaign in which those skeptical about participating in the program are literally blown up.
And just this month, Scientific American, a publication that has been noted for publishing increasingly alarmist reports about the reality and the dangers of manmade-2 induced global warming, a poll of its own readers that found over 77 believe natural processes to be the cause of climate change and almost 80 responded that they would not be willing to pay a single penny on schemes to “forestall” the supposed effects of supposedly-manmade global warming (warming that even climategate scientist Phil Jones now admits is no longer taking place).
And this is only the briefest of overviews of the range of information that Climategate.tv has been tracking over the past year. The reports undermine the data, its sources, the scientific processes used, the scientists themselves, and their conclusions. It shows that the main temperature records that are used to determine the highly-problematic concept of the global mean temperature are in fact in the hands of scientists like Phil Jones and James Hansen with a direct stake in the continuation of the alarmist scare. When these scientists are questioned on the sources of their data they advocate deleting emails and even deleting data itself. They admit that key data underlying their calculations has already been deleted.
And yet, with all of this, they have the audacity to continue to suggest that there is overwhelming concensus on the “science” of global warming. They call for public debates with skeptics who they invariably accuse of being funded by Big Oil, and then, when those debates are actually organized, they then back out of those debates. They then continue to call for the imprisonment of anyone who dares to question this supposed iron-clad .
And now, they are preparing to meet once again.
Next month, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will descend on Cancun, Mexico, to once again try to hammer out a globally-binding agreement on the restriction of carbon emissions. They will once again act as if carbon dioxide is a vile poison and not one of the essential ingredients of life on this planet. They will once again pretend that a causal link between carbon dioxide and catastrophic or unprecedented warming has been established. They will once again pretend that inflicting severe austerity on the third world in the name of greening the earth is anything other than eugenics by another name.
This year, though, there will be a difference. The public at large is another year older, another year wiser, and less prepared than ever to accept unquestioned the dire assertions of grandstanding politicians and the scientists they fund that the world is on the brink of imminent destruction. When they say the science is certain and settled, we will know better. When they say that this is humanity’s last chance, we will see them for the Chicken Little’s they have always been.
This is not a call for complacency. In fact, now that the public is more skeptical than ever about the climategaters and others of their ilk, the danger of binding international agreements enacted by unelected institutions and empowering global taxation is at an all-time high. They are hoping to ram through an agreement that will put the final nail in the coffin of climate realism before the corpse of the global warming hoax even has the chance to rot.
We have to speak out against this fraud now, and more loudly than ever. We must make our voices heard when we assert that science is about honesty, about openness, about the search for the truth, and that those who reject those principles will no longer be heeded by a public that has been stretched long past the point of credulity.
Once again the UN-funded scientists and politicians are telling us that the hour is nigh, and perhaps, for once, they are right. The end is almost here for those who are trying to establish their global governance in the name of a scientific fraud. If we continue to speak out on this issue, perhaps there will be no UNFCCC conference next year after all.
For if climategate has taught us anything, it is that just one year can make all the difference.
George W. Bush is on a roll—a money roll with a $7 million advance for his book Decision Points and a rehabilitation roll to paint his war crimes as justifiable mass-slaughter and torture.
His carefully chosen interviewers—NBC’s Matt Lauer and Oprah Winfrey—agreed to a safe pre-taping to avoid demonstrations and tough questions. Requests for him to speak are pouring in from business conventions and other rich assemblages willing to pay $200,000 for “the Decider’s” banalities. This is “Shrub’s” month in the sun.
In his first week of book promotion, he was asked about anything he would have done had he known then what he knew now—especially regarding Iraq and its encircled dictator. Well, he deplored receiving “false intelligence” about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction which was one of several false claims he fed the American people before invading Iraq in 2003. But he has no regrets, saying that “the world was undoubtedly safer with Saddam gone.”
But was it safer for over a million Iraqis who lost their lives due to the invasion, over 4 million refugees, 4500 American soldiers lost, 1100 amputees, tens of thousands injured, sick and tens of thousands more GIs coming back with trauma to lost jobs, broken families and permanent damage to their health.
Was it worth a trillion dollars to blow apart the country of Iraq and incur many more enemies? Was it worth starting a war paid for by a massive debt handed to our children so that George W. and Dick Cheney could give themselves and their rich buddies a massive tax cut? Ex-presidents possess self-excusing delusions, but this is non compos mentis run amuck.
Then there is his escape from legal sanctions because the law enforcers in the Justice Department act as if Bush and Dick Cheney are above the law. “What is Attorney General Holder waiting for,” declared conservative/libertarian former Judge Andrew Napolitano, the legal analyst for Fox News, adding that Holder should criminally prosecute both Bush and Cheney for their many crimes. Just as a Justice Department task force was about to do to Richard Nixon after he resigned his office in 1974, for far lesser crimes, when President Ford pardoned him.
I asked Bruce Fein, an associate deputy attorney general under Ronald Reagan, constitutional rights litigator, author of books and articles and many Congressional testimonies on the imperial presidency, and its unlawful penchant for Empire, for his reaction. Here is his response:
“Former President Bush’s selective memoir is a little like Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. With the exception of authorizing waterboarding, a form of torture, Bush neglects his serial vandalizing of the Constitution and the federal criminal code: five years of illegal surveillances of Americans on American soil; a war against Iraq without proper authorization by Congress; illegal detentions of enemy combatants without accusation or trials; hundred of unconstitutional signing statements professing an intent to refuse to faithfully execute the laws; unconstitutional defiance of congressional subpoenas; and, employing unilateral executive agreements to circumvent the treaty authority of the Senate over military commitments.”
“Despite his constitutional literacy, President Obama has balked at faithful execution of the laws against torture, warrantless spying on Americans, or obstruction of justice perpetrated by Bush and his servile minions. On that score, Obama resembles President Nixon, who was impeached by the House Judiciary Committee and forced to resign for sneering at his constitutional obligation to enforce, not ignore the laws.
“If Obama believes exculpatory circumstances justify non-prosecution of Bush-Cheney,” Fein continued, “then he should pardon them as authorized by the Constitution. A pardon must be accepted by the recipient to be effective, and acknowledges guilt and the inviolability of the rule of law. Ignoring lawlessness at the highest levels like Obama wounds the rule of law, and creates a precedent that lies around like a loaded weapon ready to destroy the Constitution. Obama himself is thus violating his oath of office by nonfeasance.”
Lawyer Fein is not referring to a one time episode like Watergate but a recurrent, pattern of massive outlawry here and abroad stretching for years. In 2005-2006, the large and very conservative American Bar Association, led by its then president, corporate attorney, Michael Greco, convened three task forces that produced white papers documenting three patterns of Bush’s unconstitutional behavior. Mr. Fein served on the panel that condemned the outpourings of Presidential signing statements. Although addressed and sent to President Bush, the ABA received no response to these unprecedented condemnations.
Our legal system and Constitution touted as the greatest in the world, decay when we allow epidemics of grave violations by the President and other White House violators to be rewarded for their unconstitutionalism and criminality.
On Armistice Day, November 11, 2010, The Washington Post put on page one the excruciating, but brave struggle of quadruple amputee, Marine Cpl. Todd A Nicely trying to make the best of his surviving an explosive device in Afghanistan. On the reverse page two there was a picture of a smiling George W. Bush signing his book. He is getting away with it.
Holding Bush/Cheney accountable by the soldiers he sent to kill and die in illegal wars, with few exceptions such as the Military Families Speak Out (MFSO.org) and the Iraq Veterans Against the War (ivaw.org) and Veterans for Peace (veteransforpeace.org) are not being made in public by enough soldiers after their service. Many know who was responsible but under pressure from their superiors and not wanting, along with their families, to admit publically that they suffered and fought in vain, they remain silent. With their credibility, more of them need to exert real patriotism and speak out against the militant White House draft-dodgers and their neo-con advisors who drove them and our country into these boomeranging, destructive wars.
The Post completed this grim trilogy with a full page color ad by the profitable munitions manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, which taxpayers paid for, thanking the “commitment” and “sacrifice” of those who are serving today in America’s military forces.
For the political cowards and their corporate profiteers, wars do not demand their sacrifice, they only invite their manipulative flattery. Same old racket, recalling double Congressional Medal of Honor winner, Marine General Smedley Butler whose book “War Is A Racket” said it all decades ago.
Of course more members of another profession should declare itself for prosecution—the one million-strong licensed attorneys sworn to uphold the law as “officers of the court”!
“You cannot be completely happy with all these wounds—both in your body and in your mind.” — 15 year-old child soldier
The phenomenon of child soldiers, like genocide, slavery and torture, seems like one of those crimes that no nation could legitimately defend. Yet the Obama administration just decided to leave countless kids stranded on some of the world’s bloodiest battlegrounds.
The administration stunned human rights groups last month by sidestepping a commitment to help countries curb the military exploitation of children. Josh Rogin at Foreign Policyreported that President Obama issued a presidential memorandum granting waivers from the Child Soldiers Prevention Act to four countries: Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and Yemen. The memo instructed Secretary of State Hilary Clinton that it is in our “national interest” to continue extending military aid to those countries, despite their failure to comply with the rules Congress passed and George W. Bush signed in 2008.
A thumbs-up for child soldiers from the pen of President Obama? Whitehouse spokesperson P.J. Crowley explained it was a strategic decision to ease the 2008 law. The rationale is that on balance, it’s more effective for the U.S. to keep providing military assistance that will help countries gradually evolve out of the practice of marshaling kids to the battlefield, rather than isolating them.
According to the Christian Science Monitor, Crowley argued, “These countries have put the right policies in place… but are struggling to correctly implement them.” The New York Times reported that administration spokespeople also cited the countries’ crucial role in global counter-terrorism efforts.
Strategically granting certain countries a pass on child rights reflects Washington’s warped attitude toward the global human rights regime. The U.S. has failed to ratify, or simply ignored, numerous human rights protocols, and our ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child has languished. Human Rights Watch points out, “Only the United States and Somalia, which has no functioning national government, have failed to ratify the treaty.” (Although we did ratify two optional protocols in 2002, relating to child soldiers and other forms of exploitation.)
Somalia, by the way, is one of just two countries that the White House allowed to be sanctioned under the 2008 law; the second was Burma. Presumably this is because Somalia is not receiving direct military funding, reports the Monitor. Yet the U.S. continues to support Somali government forces as they fight Islamic insurgents—with the help of a large force of child soldiers. (To their credit, Somalia has at least promised the U.N. they”ll stop arming kids eventually, according to the Washington Post).
Maybe you could argue that the U.S. is so “advanced” it needn’t bother with rules about children’s rights to education and whatnot. Obama’s waivers might be seen as realpolitik in areas like Yemen, whose military we support as part of our sprawling counter-terrorism operations. But the bottom line is that the administration has carved out an exception to a law intended to ethically guide the flow of U.S. aid money around the world.
According to the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, which holds America to the same scrutiny that countries like Uganda and DRC routinely face in the media, we benefit indirectly and directly from the exploitation of child fighters:
In 2006 the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) registered 59 children in detention during 16 visits to five places of detention or internment controlled by the USA or the UK in Iraq. US soldiers stationed at the detention centres and former detainees described abuses against child detainees, including the rape of a 15-year-old boy at Abu Ghraib, Iraq, forced nudity, stress positions, beating and the use of dogs. Following US troop increases in Iraq in early 2007, US military arrests of children there rose from an average of 25 per month in 2006 to an average of 100 per month. Military officials reported that 828 were children held at Camp Cropper by mid-September, including children as young as 11. A 17-year-old was reportedly strangled by a fellow detainee in early 2007. In August 2007 the USA opened Dar al-Hikmah, a non-residential facility intended to provide education services to 600 detainees aged 11-17 pending release or transfer to Iraqi custody. US military officials excluded an estimated 100 children from participation in the program, apparently on the grounds that they were “extremists” and “beyond redemption”.
Omar Khadr, the young Canadian detainee at Guantanamo Bay, remains trapped in a Kafkaesque quasi-judicial system without regard to the fact that he was a child when captured. Rights advocates like Monia Mazigh in Ottowa have called for Khadr to be recognized as a child soldier, but the administration seems to think securing a conviction in Kangaroo Court takes precedence over international law. And because Khadr, like the other Gitmo prisoners, is identified with that faceless dark horde the U.S. has branded “terrorists,” Americans aren’t even inclined to see him as a human being, let alone as a juvenile soldier deserving of sympathy.
So America’s hypocrisy on children in war has many layers. Obama condemns the practice in theory, then undermines federal law by issuing waivers for our partners in Africa and the Middle East. And of course, Washington sees no problem with punishing child soldiers as adults when they’re aligned with the terrorists who are bent on destroying America.
UN Treaties alone obviously won’t demobilize all the world’s child soldiers, but their main role is to put down a legal placeholder. And it’s that moral guidepost that the U.S. undermines every time it waives parallel U.S. laws based on the “national interest.”
Obama’s memorandum may look jarring on paper, but it’s grimly consistent with Washington’s agenda of waging war indefinitely, without boundaries, against an enemy we can no longer really define. The U.S. supports warfare that uses children as weapons, warfare that kills civilian children indiscriminately, warfare that ultimately sends our own children to perish on foreign soil. And so America marches on in a world of conflict where the first casualty is innocence itself.
Muslims were planning to blow up a bunch of jetliners enroute from London to America – or so say George Bush and Tony Blair.
Muslims without tickets.
Muslims without passports.
Muslims without bombs.
Muslims without a clue … and they aren’t the only ones, it turns out. Without a clue, that is.
What kind of bombs? TATP bombs, short for triacetone triperoxide. What’s more, Bush and Blair told us that Muslims favor the TATP bomb, mixed on the spot with separate liquids. With that lie, both Bush and Blair foreclosed any possibility that the Muslims involved actually were guilty. With that lie, both Bush and Blair disclosed themselves for the treasonous, lying criminals that they are. Why? Glad you asked.
To Build the Impossible Bomb
You see … it can’t be done. It quite simply cannot be done. Not in any airplane toilet. Not with any resources that might be available aboard any airplane other than Tom Swift’s Flying Lab. Not with the time afforded by a Trans-Atlantic flight. And certainly – not by anybody without chemistry lab training and experience – not under the circumstances claimed, anyway.
If Muslims favor TATP bombs – and there is evidence to support the claim that Muslims use TATP bombs – then Muslims who might do so know full well the limitations and hazards inherent to such an explosive. No Muslim in his right mind would attempt what has been claimed, because he would know it can’t be done – and, believe me, doing it under any circumstances would require a Muslim in his right mind. At best, the guy simply would kill himself, and do little damage to the plane’s toilet. Regardless, nobody would be allowed the opportunity to spend hours in the toilet … not aboard a jetliner. In a moment, I will prove to you why TATP simply cannot be made aboard jetliners, but first, please be really clear about the significance of that fact: that it conclusively proves Bush and Blair to be lying weasels. Not just dumb. Not just stupid. Lying, treasonous, unforgivable, murdering bastards.
TATP or Not TATP? – That is the Question
A friend with a doctorate in chemistry sent me the following:
“According to the official government story, TATP (triacetone triperoxide) was the explosive these conspirators were planning to manufacture aboard the airliners.
“This story is not plausible for a number of reasons, but let’s take a quick look at just enough of the science so as not to provide anybody with a guide to making an actual bomb: TATP is made from hydrogen peroxide solution, acetone and sulfuric acid. The reaction can be carried out with just about any concentration, but is best done with concentrated solutions of both peroxide and acetone.
“The peroxide and acetone can be pre-mixed, but the acid must be added, a drop at a time, to the solution, all the while continuously stirring it and keeping it continuously chilled. This step of the process will take several hours, during which the fumes given off will be substantial and quite overpowering, thus a lab-quality air evacuation system is required. (ES: right here, the whole idea of a TATP bomb becomes ludicrous. Difficult in a lab, but impossible in an airplane due to the environment – the toilet – and the time requirement.)
“One then must let the resulting solution stand for an extended period at temperatures above the freezing point, but definitely below 10 Celsius (50 Fahrenheit). Above 10 Celsius, the TATP does not form; instead, diperoxide forms, which is so unstable it cannot be worked with. The time required for the reaction to go to completion is at least 24 hours and often several days.
“Once the TATP forms, it crystallizes as snowflakes from the solution and must be harvested by filtration and the liquid discarded. The TATP then is dried and carefully stored until needed. It must be stored below 10 Celsius or it converts spontaneously to the unstable diperoxide.
“There is neither the time, the workspace nor the other materials required to make TATP on an airliner. The time required, the temperatures required, the workspace required and the need to dry the chemical prior to use preclude this story being reasonable. This chemical process is much more sensitive than making, for example, nitroglycerin.”
The technically proficient reading this will recognize that a necessary step has been omitted and some others have been altered in critical ways. None of these purposeful camouflages alter the ingredients or the time, care and equipment required. Nor will I describe how TATP can be fabricated beforehand and then detonated aboard an airliner in flight. After all, though we want to demonstrate the impossibility of what has been claimed, we don’t want anybody actually trying this at home – and there really are some genuine whack jobs out there. After all, we elect some of them to public office.
An excellent (and humorous) on-line discussion by British writer Thomas Greene, also as to why TATP simply cannot be made aboard a plane: “Mass murder in the skies: was the plot feasible?” Mr. Greene agrees with my friend, the PhD in chemistry, and concludes his description of the process of creating TATP with: “So the fabled binary liquid explosive – that is, the sudden mixing of hydrogen peroxide and acetone with sulfuric acid to create a plane-killing explosion, is out of the question.”
So it’s impossible to make TATP as claimed, yet still they confiscate liquids from us, including sodas and baby formula, not to mention toothpaste and, even, lipsticks? Even if possible to make TATP as claimed, the individual smells of peroxide, acetone and sulfuric acid are obvious enough to preclude people having to be shaken down and terrorized by the airport Gestapo in this fashion. You have to wonder: Just exactly what is going on?
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
Incidentally, British officials often claim that the “London 7/7” train/bus bombings, without any proof whatsoever, were done by Muslims with TATP in their backpacks. Those explosions, per eyewitnesses, came from beneath the floors, where the explosive had to have been placed earlier, then detonated either remotely or via timer. And Blair fed Bush some of the lies he has been caught out in by so many. Need any more proof that Blair is a liar, as well?
Did you know that, with a huge and increasingly restless Muslim population in England, only 12% of all British Muslims arrested on terror charges ever end up being charged with a crime, while only 2% get convicted, almost always of something minor and never of anything related to terrorism? You heard about the arrests, though, didn’t you? Why the difference? Because the war on terror quite simply is a war on us, not on Muslims.
In the government’s eyes, we are the terrorists. In the memorable words of my buddy, Al: “The Patriot Act – so named because it was designed to find and eliminate Patriots before they expose how corrupt our government has become.” Why does government fear us so? What does it know that we do not? In other words, exactly what is it that our government officials intend to do to us, such that they feel the need to create a police state so as to protect themselves from us?
They Hate Our Freedoms
Don’t forget: They hate our freedoms. Bush, Blair and the others, that is. Not the Muslims. However, the Muslims are getting downright pissed about our wading into their countries, either directly or via Israel, then killing and maiming everybody in sight and destroying their villages, roads and cities. The Muslims now have every reason to hate us. Honestly – do you really blame them?
One week after 9/11, in a televised speech to Congress, Bush laid down the mantra – his justification for eternal war: “Americans are asking, why do they hate us? … They hate our freedoms…
I nearly puked when I first heard Bush say it. I cannot tell you the response it now provokes, else they would come and take me away, for sure.
Just for fun, click here for an excellent video accounting by MSNBC’s otherwise lamentable Joe Scarborough on the verbal and mental acuity of our President.
Bush has run out of the sort of lies that “fool all of the people some of the time.” Now he is left only with fooling “some of the people all of the time.” Regrettably, those people, who believe anything told them by CNN and Fox News, are beyond our reach because, as comedian Ron White likes to say: “You can’t fix stupid!” There is a segment of both America and Britain that quite simply will roll along, believing anything that Bush, Blair and their controlled media have to say.
However, now you and I know better, don’t we? In fact, most of us no longer believe anything that Bush and Blair tell us. What’s more, we now know better than to believe anything Bush and Blair ever did tell us!
Yes, it has become more than clear why there is so much killing all around the world these days. They hate our freedoms. There’s only one problem: “They” are you, Mr. Bush … you and the other members of the blood-thirsty and oil-hungry Zionist regime running America, Britain, Israel and most of the rest of the Western World these days.
You clearly have demonstrated, Mr. Bush, with your appointment of Zionists and incompetent sycophants (all too often, one and the same) into every crack, crevice and cubby of your administration, with your stacking of the courts, with your abandonment of the rule of law, with your purging of the military officer corps, with your shocking misuse of our military enlisted personnel and with your treasonous disdain for the Constitution … that it is you who hates our freedoms! You sort of told us the truth back in 2001. What you neglected to mention was that you meant your entire administration and the criminal cabal for which you are but a belly-crawling, lickspittle lackey.
You first proved just whom you meant hated our freedoms with your abysmally-misnamed Patriot Act. With the increasing revelations of your involvement in 9/11, still more of us awakened. Torture. Murder. Illegal spying on us. Now, with event after event, lie after lie, there is a huge number of Americans wise to your lying. And our number grows every day!
To Dream the Impossible Dream
Meanwhile, your days are numbered, Mr. Bush. First, we’re going to replace every single Congressman, Republican and Democrat alike, who voted you the right to conduct war in our name without a formal declaration – every single Congressman who voted support for Israel’s campaign of genocide against innocent civilians in the Middle East. Lieberman was just the first. Then we’re going to impeach and convict you, then remove you from office, for the highest crimes ever committed against America by a sitting President. Then, Mr. Bush, you will be handed over to an appropriate tribunal to be tried for your war crimes. Finally, Mr. President, it will be our singular honor and pleasure to witness your being hanged by the neck until you are dead, as judges like to say, for your unspeakable crimes against humanity, both at home and abroad.
Oh … and, Mr. Bush? May your soul burn in Hell for all of eternity.
My name is Edgar J. Steele. Thanks for listening. Please visit my web site, www.ConspiracyPenPal.com, for other messages just like this one.
Miracle of miracles, memories of an even younger, crusading Rivera talking on his show, Geraldo at Large on Fox News about the “Building What?” TV ad campaign!
Geraldo began with the standard reference to all those edgy protestors who rallied in front of Larry Silverstein’s new Building 7, shouting “9/11 was an inside job.” He added “c’mon, get a life.” But then, lo, he turned the phrase to say perhaps these protestors weren’t so nutty after all.
Now, he said, there was evidence that Building 7 was taken down in a classic internal demolition. He then introduced his panel, Bob McIlvaine (who looked ready to jump out of his skin). Bob had lost a son in Tower 1 and still carried a deep grief that often, understandably turned to anger. Geraldo treated him with all due respect. He also introduced engineer Tony Szamboti to explain the technical aspect of the internal demolition. It was good to see Rivera willing to help explain the technical talk in TV speak to his audience.
The first was that “Building What?” had been the response of Justice Edward Lehner, who did not know about Tower 7 not being hit by airliner but being “pulled” instead at the request of its owner, Larry Silverstein, at 3 PM on 9/11/2001. See Silverstein’s YouTube film with his exact words, ending with we (the firemen and he) had decided to “pull it.” The truth is that the fires caused by any falling debris from Tower 1 were out. But the “pull it,” or internal demolition Silverstein was asking for occurred only two hours and 20 minutes later at 5:20 PM on 9/11. Experts claimed it was impossible to create an internal demolition like Tower 7’s in two hours and 20 minutes. You’d need more like two and a half months. So it clearly implies there was extended pre-planning before for the tragedy of 9/11.
The occasion for Justice Lehner making his “Tower What?” statement was his denial to a proposal from NYCCAN for a ballot initiative to ask NYC voters if they wanted a new investigation of 9/11’s events (beyond the 9/11 Commission of Omission Report, which did not even mention Tower 7). NYCCAN had delivered 81,000 signatures, more than originally required, which had been checked for accuracy, yet rejected by Justice Lehner because he felt the voting booth was not the venue for making the request. Either that or the authorities were frightened out of their wits that so many people had responded.
In fact, the affiliated organization, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, led by architect Richard Gage, had gathered some 1300 plus signatures of engineers and architects from around the US and the world, and sent it with a signed petition for a new investigation to the United States Congress.
Cynics of course will argue that 81,000 out of 8 million New Yorkers (even discounting infants, children, teens, the infirm and non-voters) was a small percentage of the electorate. But considering that a working New York justice did not know what Tower 7 stood for was indicative of the huge gap in 9/11 knowledge, a gap that crossed the spectrum of class, age, education, profession, ethnicity, race, religion, and political parties. This general gap of hard data on what happened on 9/11 has largely been due to the lack of mass media presentation. This makes Rivera’s coverage, short as it was, more laudable and courageous.
The 30-second “Building What?!”TV spot goes a long way to triggering the interest of all those who need to need to know more. Tower 7’s takedown is the smoking gun, the paradigm for the internal and external explosions that had taken down Towers 1 and 2. See the TV spot here.
Of course, with the help of Szamboti, Rivera explained to the Fox audience that this internal demolition couldn’t have been set up in such a short time but more likely in advance. And now there was a TV commercial that had been produced with quick cuts of four victim family members, including McIlvaine and Manny Badillo, then a woman who lost a nephew, another woman who lost her son, continuing the narrative. The commercial then cut to Tower 7’s top floors as they literally plummeted downward in two seconds, the entire 47-floor, steel-frame building going down into its footprint in 6.5 seconds. The visual was repeated several times.
Of Course, Silverstein received $500 million in insurance to rebuild a taller, wider Tower 7, the only completed WTC building in sight nine years later.
Rivera was helpful too in framing questions to MacIlvane and Szamboti that almost answered themselves, though the responses of his guests added to what he said. When he asked MacIlvane if he thought 9/11 was an inside job, Bob pushed the question aside and said, “I’m interested in finding out who murdered my son.” Both guests acknowledged that time constraints of TV sound-bite news did not allow for fuller explanations. But the visual that Building 7 went down as described was right there in the commercial for anyone to see. As a result, Geraldo admitted he believed there was more to 9/11 than had met his previous experience.
Now take a look at the full Geraldo At Large Segment, Note: the “Building What?” TV campaign is presently running and needs your support to keep running. It’s as worthwhile a contribution as you can possibly make to the well-being of New York City, America and the world, since 9/11 was the inciting incident for George Bush’s War on Terror. All the pain, death, and cost in blood and money, rest on understanding this keystone event and its true perpetrators.
Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer and life-long resident of New York City. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.
I’ve been thinking about Venezuela, as I often do. I live here most of the year, sometimes in the shantytowns of Caracas, sometimes along the Caribbean coast and sometimes inland, either in the Andes or near the Venezuela/Colombia border, south of Lake Maracaibo. It is a wonderful country with wonderful people, although I suppose that one could say the same thing about any other place on earth, depending on one’s point of view. But I love Venezuela.
I fell in love with Venezuela … and with my wife, who is Venezuelan … almost thirty-five years ago. As it happened, and without my consent, I was born in Canada, the result of love-making between a French Canadian father and a Latina mother … in the days when there were very few “mixed” marriages. When growing up in Canada, I was treated as an outcast by most teachers and by most adults, especially when they discovered that my mother was a Native … which “explained” why I had, unlike the vast majority of children in Canada at the time, jet-black straight hair, dark eyes and darker skin. As I grew up I dreamed of going away, anywhere where my skin color did not matter … but, alas, as I have so far discovered, after having been in 34 countries, skin color does matter, almost anywhere in the world, although to differing degrees.
Here in Venezuela, skin color matters, especially to many of those of lighter shades, meaning, those of European ancestry. It is much the same in Canada, but with one marked difference. In Canada, the majority are whiter-skinned and the minority are darker-skinned. In Venezuela, the vast majority of the people, unlike what one may believe when watching “Miss Universe,” are darker-skinned. (We are not told this in the media or in travel brochures.) The minority, about 20%, are whiter-skinned … and they hold most of the “wealth” in the country. To most whiter-skinned Venezuelans, that is, to the minority, darker-skinned Venezuelans, the majority, are essentially uneducated laborers, thieves or drunks … and to many whiter-skinned Venezuelans, darker-skinned Venezuelans are “monkeys from the hills,” as they are sometimes called. As an aside, Globovision, one of Venezuela’s “news” media outlets (copycatting CNN, as far as I can see), alluded to this a few years ago, when openly and laughingly comparing, live on TV, Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s President, to the monkey-people from Planet of the Apes. (You can search for the date of this event by searching “oscar heck mugabe” on the VHeadline.com search engine.)
Most “middle-class” and wealthy Venezuelans, the minority, live in huge homes or apartment buildings surrounded by barb-wired and electrified, ten-to-twelve- foot (or higher) fences or walls equipped with armed guards in order to “protect” themselves from the “ignorant, thieving savages.” We are not told about this in the media outlets which many non-Venezuelans read, hear or watch … Venezuelan media outlets such as El Universal, El Nacional, Tal Cual, Venevision, RCTV, Globovision (and many others) … or “trusted” non-Venezuelan media outlets such as CNN … or Fox, The Economist, CTV, the BBC, The Globe and Mail, and so on and so forth …
… even documentaries misrepresent reality …
(Why, just yesterday we were stuck in traffic in the bus in Las Mercedes, one of Caracas’ “trendy” USA-copycat mid-to-upper class districts, and my jaw fell to the floor – but I picked it up — as I watched people going in and out of a specialized car dealership which sells armoured private vehicles, such as bullet-proof SUVs. I was wondering, “What kind of society buys and sells armoured vehicles at a local car dealership? Why would anyone need an armoured vehicle? What kind of people drive around in these?)
So why would I love Venezuela?
Because I live and work with the majority, with the poorer, darker-skinned, more “normal” people … with “El Pueblo.”
For centuries, since the time when the Europeans left the fetid, disease-filled, crime-ridden and overcrowded lands which they inhabited, in order to “discover” (or rather plunder) other territories – which already existed and were inhabited by millions – the average Venezuelan, the majority, has been exploited, firstly as slaves, and then as meagrely-paid slave-wagers. We were never taught that in history class … and the mass-media certainly doesn’t say anything about this … and this not only applies to Venezuela, but to perhaps as much as 80% of the territory of the earth we live on.
No wonder Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s democratically-elected President, became (and is still) so popular with the majority of Venezuelans.
Chavez knows that Venezuela was not “discovered” by Europeans. It already existed, and so did a large population of people inhabiting these lands, many of whom were massacred and raped and maimed by Europeans … and many of whom died from the Europeans’ filth-induced diseases, some of those diseases being intentionally transmitted to the Natives in order to “get rid of the savages.” Those who were spared were to be “white-cized” with the convenient excuse of being “Christianized.” We were never taught this in history class, were we? But Chavez speaks of such things …
Chavez knows that this “get rid of the savages” or “white-cize them” mentality still exists today in Venezuela, as it does in any part of the world where the Europeans have set foot. In Canada, for example, the Europeans were “nice to the savages,” but only after slaughtering hundreds of thousands (and perhaps millions). Being “nice to the savages” was to “give” them small portions of basically useless land, which the Europeans had stolen from the Natives in the first place, on which to live. “Being nice to the savages” was to also kidnap the Native children from the tepees and ship them off like animal-cargo to white Christian torture schools, conveniently called “residential schools.” For those who are interested, especially the younger generation who wishes to learn some truth, research “residential schools in Canada” on the web. You will be amazed at the fact that until the last generation (the 1970s), these “legal” white Christian and governmental torture-and-rape centers still existed and operated amongst us “fantastically civilized” Canadians. We were never taught this in history class … and I took history lessons in the 1970s! And still, in Canada, such facts are obscured by politicians, by the media, by the educational system and by Canadian society as a whole. In Venezuela, when Chavez talks, he speaks openly about such similar facts. He is not scared to speak the truth. The new system of education in Venezuela tries to bring to light the truth, or as much of it as possible … instead of conveniently hiding it.
Chavez knows that exploitation, war, theft, lies, dishonesty, deceit, individualism, selfishness, consumerism and repression of the masses are all symptoms — or rather mechanisms — of capitalism. I would go beyond that and include “legal” murder and rape as well, which are used in “legal” capitalist warfare (especially against the darker-skinned) … and I would also include the use of the Christian religion for capitalist purposes.
How come the prime minister of Canada doesn’t talk about such issues openly? Why does Chavez?
This is one of the main reasons why I love Venezuela … besides the heat, the warmth of the people, the fabulous landscapes, its mysteries, the Caribbean coast, the magic …
Panel discussion. Glenn speaks at 30 minutes into the discussion.
Glenn Greenwald:
At roughly 53:00, the Q-and-A session with the audience began, and the first questioner was NPR’s national security reporter Dina Temple-Raston, whose Awlaki reporting I had criticized just a couple days earlier for uncritically repeating claims told to her by anonymous Pentagon officials. She directed her rather critical multi-part question to me, claiming, among other things, that she had seen evidence of Awlaki’s guilt as a Terrorist (which she had not previously reported or described in any detail), and that led to a rather contentious — and, in my view, quite revealing — exchange about the role of journalists and how Awlaki can and should be punished if he is, in fact, guilty of any actual crime:
While Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) may have claimed responsibility for the parcel bomb plot, it’s worth considering how this latest Yemen-linked terror scare has been a gift to their avowed enemies.
A mere two weeks before the discovery of mail bombs addressed to “two places of Jewish worship in Chicago,” Rupert Murdoch sounded prescient as he received an award from the Anti-Defamation League for his support of Israel. “The terrorists continue to target Jews across the world,” declared the media mogul in his acceptance speech. “But they have not succeeded in bringing down the Israeli government – and they have not weakened Israeli resolve.” Equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, the Fox News owner smeared the growing worldwide condemnation of Israel’s rogue behaviour as an “ongoing war against the Jews.” … continue
The unfolding drama of the Brazil-Turkey nuclear deal and the Obama Administration’s reactive push to move a draft sanctions resolution in the United Nations Security Council will have profound effects on the character of international relations for years to come. At least two such effects warrant particular attention.
First, for those in official Washington or anywhere else who still doubt that the “post-American world” is here, the deal to refuel the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) brokered by Brazil and Turkey should serve as a blaring wake-up call. As we noted earlier, two rising economic powers from what we used to call the “Third World” have now asserted decisive political influence on a high-profile international security issue. And, in doing so, they have signaled that Washington can no longer unilaterally define terms for managing such issues. As a consequence, President Obama’s most serious foreign policy challenge—repairing America’s image as a global leader—just got more daunting.
Second, by answering Brazil and Turkey’s extraordinary diplomatic effort with an arrogant assertion of the P-5’s power to demand the rapid imposition of new sanctions on Iran and reinstating a demand that Iran must suspend enrichment to avoid new sanctions, the Obama Administration is following a course that could inflict serious damage not only on America’s global standing, but also on the legitimacy of the Security Council itself.
As we noted previously, getting P-5 agreement on a substantially watered down and incomplete draft resolution is not the same as ensuring the requisite nine affirmative votes for it. But, even if Washington is able to ram new sanctions through a deeply divided Council, that course carries huge long-term risks. Already, Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan is questioning the Council’s “credibility” to deal with the Iranian nuclear issue. If Washington torpedoes the new nuclear deal before it can be tested, expect Turkey, Brazil, and others to intensify this sort of challenge to the Council’s legitimacy—with support not just from Iran but from a broad range of “non-aligned” countries.
The Obama Administration has only itself to blame for this situation, because it has approached—and is still approaching—the Iranian nuclear issue with unilateral hubris worthy of George W. Bush. The Administration has continued to insist that Iran cannot indigenously enrich uranium, even as part of a broader nuclear deal. It took what should have been a straightforward technical discussion on refueling the TRR—a thoroughly safeguarded facility in the middle of Tehran that produces medical isotopes—and turned it into a highly politicized effort to exchange most of Iran’s low-enriched uranium for promises of new fuel at some unspecified point in the future. Washington then demanded that other countries unquestioningly support these positions.
When rising powers like Brazil, Turkey, and China were reluctant to go along, the Administration thought it could browbeat them into submission. Speaking “privately”, Administration officials questioned whether the presumed ambitions of Brazilian President Lula—who leaves office in December—to become the first non-American World Bank president or the next UN secretary general could be realized if he antagonizes Washington over Iran. Last week, Secretary of State Clinton publicly ridiculed Turkish Foreign Minister Davutoğlu’s efforts to mediate a nuclear compromise. And U.S. officials told Chinese counterparts that, if Beijing does not support tough new sanctions against Iran, Washington would not be able to restrain Israeli military action, putting China’s energy supplies at risk.
But these rising powers were not prepared to be browbeaten. For Brazil—which gave up its own nuclear weapons program but insists on continuing uranium enrichment—the idea that Washington could unilaterally redefine the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regarding enrichment was especially odious. For Turkey, under a popular, democratically elected Islamist government, the idea that Iran’s nuclear program would be treated differently because Iran is governed by Islamists was equally unacceptable. China has longstanding objections to international sanctions, and has consistently advocated diplomacy as the best way to deal with the Iranian nuclear issue.
The Obama Administration insisted that the proposal to refuel the TRR advanced in October by the IAEA’s former Director General, Mohamed ElBaradei, be treated as a non-negotiable, “take it or leave it” proposition. Last month, though, Baradei himself said the proposal should not be treated this way. Since last October, Iran has consistently said that it accepted in principle the idea of a “swap” to refuel the TRR, but wanted to negotiate the specific terms of a deal. So, as the Administration made itself diplomatically irrelevant, Brazil and Turkey set out on their own to broker a compromise.
The Brazilian-Turkish deal makes explicit what the October proposal obfuscated: Iran has the right to enrich uranium on its territory. Realistically, the chances that Iran would ever surrender its enrichment program are now virtually nil. But the Obama Administration—like its predecessor—refuses to make the shift from working quixotically to stop the unstoppable to negotiating rigorous verification measures for Iran’s enrichment facilities to ensure they are not producing weapons-grade fissile material. Now, others have stepped into the breach and redefined the Iranian nuclear issue for the Administration.
The new nuclear deal also undermines claims of the Obama Administration—which, like its predecessors, maintains no diplomatic presence in Iran and has had extremely limited contact with Iranian officials—to a monopoly on sound judgments about Iranian decision-making and policy. For months, Administration officials—and most U.S.-based Iran analysts—have asserted that the Islamic Republic is too internally conflicted to have a coherent international strategy or make important decisions. Senior Brazilian, Chinese, and Turkish officials who have invested significant amounts of time in substantive discussions with Iranian counterparts argued to Washington for months that a nuclear deal was possible. But Secretary Clinton and others in the Obama Administration thought they knew better—and said so publicly.
In fact, Iran has worked purposefully—dare we say strategically—to cultivate relations with important rising powers, like Brazil and Turkey, as well as China. And, this week, Tehran showed that it can take major decisions. Can the same things be said of the Obama Administration?
President Obama, who came to office professing a new U.S. approach to international engagement, allowed himself to be upstaged by new powers because he has been unwilling to match his rhetoric with truly innovative diplomacy that takes real notice of other countries’ interests. If he does not close this gap, America’s global leadership will continue to decline. And, the institutional architecture for global governance in the 21st century–to which Obama has professed rhetorical support–will be put at risk.
UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk holds a press conference on the final report of his mandate, 22 October 2010. (UN Photo)
The following is an oral presentation made by Richard Falk, Special Rapporteur on the Situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territories occupied since 1967, to the United Nations General Assembly on 20 October 2010:
As this is my last report to the General Assembly in my term as Special Rapporteur on the Situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 it seems appropriate to describe some of the special difficulties that have faced the mandate-holder in discharging the functions of the position. The most salient of these difficulties involves the non-cooperation of the Government of Israel. Israel has refused to fulfill its obligations as a member of the United Nations by its repeated failures to allow the special rapporteur to enter Israel so as to visit periodically the occupied territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza ever since his expulsion on 14 December 2008 from Ben Gurion Airport when attempting to enter the country. This level of non-cooperation greatly exceeds that associated with the efforts of my predecessor, the distinguished South African international lawyer John Dugard who was allowed to enter Israel for purposes of the mandate, but denied access to Israeli political and military officials charged with administering the occupation. It should be pointed out that this record of non-cooperation was extended to such related important UN undertakings, including the “Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict,” widely known as the Goldstone report, and more recently in relation to the fact-finding panel appointed by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to investigate the allegations surrounding the flotilla incident of 31 May 2010. In each of these instances Israel reinforced this posture of non-cooperation by engaging in a politics of deflection, defaming the messenger and the auspices rather than contesting and responding to the findings and recommendations of the reports.
The United Nations may also be faulted by its failure to respond more strongly to complaints arising from this Israeli pattern of non-cooperation. It sets a most unfortunate precedent that has been coupled by the unwillingness to implement the recommendation made by my prior reports, as well as in relation to the Goldstone report. Widely-held impressions of Israeli impunity are thereby encouraged, as well as the lack of political will within the United Nations itself to take the obligations of international law seriously, and even those associated with its own Charter.
This mandate has also been hampered to some extent, as well, by the Human Rights Council and by the Palestinian Authority. In my initial report to the Human Rights Council I proposed that the mandate be reformulated to allow for the consideration of Palestinian violations of international human rights law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law, but this proposal was widely criticized and ignored. There were understandable concerns about creating the misleading impression that both parties, the occupier and the occupied, were equally responsible in a situation where one side was in control and the other being victimized. The realities of fact and law preclude an indulgence of such a false symmetry, and would only have had the public relations advantage of balancing the apparent scope of inquiry. Such an adjustment would have taken some account of criticisms suggesting that an impression of bias and unfairness was embedded in the mandate, but it was not to be due to strong opposition among the majority of governments represented in the Human Rights Council to making any modifications in the existing language of the mandate. Although in recent months I have enjoyed helpful cooperation from the Palestinian Authority by way of feedback and the supply of helpful information pertaining to the occupation, earlier in my tenure I felt considerable pressure from the Palestinian Authority on my independence as a special rapporteur, particularly with respect to reporting accurately on the situation within Gaza. I was also disappointed by the failure of the Human Rights Council to do more to support my independence, despite my forwarding of a formal complaint to the Coordinating Committee. As with the issue of non-cooperation, there is an unfortunate precedent set if the Human Rights Council is not vigilant in its protection of the independence of its mandate holders.
My latest report itself focuses on several important developments pertaining to the occupation. It points out that due to the very acute issues associated with the persisting blockade of Gaza, there has been a tendency to overlook Israeli encroachments on the rights of the Palestinian people living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It concludes that the cumulative effects of the settlements, the security wall and the extensive settler only road network has been to establish a new political reality — converting the conditions of de jure occupation into a set of circumstances properly understood as de facto or creeping annexation. In a different manner, but with comparable results, the extension of Jewish presence in East Jerusalem by way of unlawful settlements, house demolitions, revocations of Palestinian residence rights, makes it increasingly difficult to envisage a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, another widely-assumed premise of the Quartet Roadmap and expectations associated with past and present inter-governmental negotiations.
Such an assessment is important as it has been assumed that the occupation was temporary and reversible in conformity to Security Council Resolution 242 calling for Israeli withdrawal from territory occupied during the 1967 War and forming the political and ethical foundation for the widely-held assumption that Palestinian rights of self-determination would be satisfied by the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on presently occupied territories. International negotiations, including those presently paused, have proceeded on that assumption. However, if the conditions on the West Bank and East Jerusalem are substantially irreversible for political and practical reasons, it becomes misleading and diversionary to continue adherence to the two-state consensus. To the extent that this annexationist perception is accurate it lends credibility to the assertion that the Israeli occupation has many features of settler colonialism, and if so, runs directly contrary to the rights of all peoples to live free of alien rule, a position affirmed in common Article 1 of both UN human rights covenants and an elemental feature of international customary law. This view is furthered by the apartheid features of the occupation based on dual and discriminatory legal structure for the occupied Palestinians and the unlawfully present settler population, the restrictions on Palestinian mobility, permit and residence manipulations, and roads on which Palestinians are disallowed. To indicate these apartheid features is not intended to set up a comparison with apartheid South Africa, but to call attention to the anti-apartheid norm embodied in the Convention Against the Crime of Apartheid, and then incorporated into the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998) that in Article 7 made apartheid a distinct crime against humanity.
Because so much attention has been devoted to Gaza during the course of the last several years it is often assumed that material conditions in the West Bank are acceptable. Such an impression is strengthened by reports that economic growth in the West Bank reached 8.5 percent in 2009, mainly as a result of capital investment clustered around Ramallah. What is not sufficiently noticed is the actual living realities of the people. For instance, in a 2009 study by Save the Children, UK (STCUK) entitled “Life on the Edge” it was reported that in Area C, which is totally under Israeli military administration and comprises 60 percent of West Bank territory, the conditions of the more than 40,000 Palestinians are worse than in Gaza. According to STCUK 79 percent of the communities in Area C are unable to provide sufficient nutritious food to the Palestinian inhabitants as compared to 61 percent of communities in Gaza. STCUK concluded that the overall situation in Area C for all human necessities including health clinics, food, water and shelter had reached “a crisis point.” Another important set of issues surrounds a surge of settler violence directed against the person and property of Palestinian living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including documented attacks on mosques and the burning, and even poisoning, of many olive trees on Palestinian land. Here, too, the response of the international community to this unlawful violence has been disappointing, as has been consistent failures of the Israeli occupying forces to fulfill their obligations to protect Palestinian and their property and to apprehend Israeli perpetrators.
The situation is Gaza remains disturbing from the perspective of human rights and international law despite the welcome partial easing of the comprehensive blockade in the aftermath of the 31 May attack on the six-ship flotilla carrying humanitarian assistance. As the British Prime Minister observed on 27 July 2010 during a visit to Turkey, “Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.” According to the latest available information the entry of basic necessities to Gaza remains at one-third the level that existed prior to when the blockade was established in June 2007. Furthermore, the economy of Gaza had depended on the ability to export, and this has continued to be prohibited by Israeli policy, with the resulting destruction of more than 90 percent of Gazan entrepreneurial activity. The blockade is a form of collective punishment, prohibited by Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and was declared unlawful by the Human Rights Council panel tasked with investigating the flotilla incident on the further reasoning that the suffering inflicted on the civilian population of Gaza was disproportionate to any Israeli security justification. The panel report also found, in conformity with the overwhelming consensus among informed opinion, that the attacks on the flotilla in international waters were contrary to international law and reliant on excessive force. It should be pointed out that the isolation of the 1.5 million residents of Gaza for several years, including the disallowance of study in West Bank universities and normal social contact with family members, exerts enormous psychological pressure that is contrary to the obligations of the occupying power to ensure as much normalcy as possible for the occupied civilian population, subject only to legitimate security concerns.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, it seems relevant to call attention to two of the recommendations in the report that arise from the legal analysis of the occupation. In particular, it is time, after 43 years, to acknowledge the intolerable burdens of prolonged occupation on a civilian population. The report urges a formal study of the human rights aspects of prolonged occupation under either the auspices of the Human Rights Council or of a respected nongovernmental organization such as the International Committee of the Red Cross or Human Rights Watch. Such a study should pay particular attention to the plight of persons confined to refugee camps in the occupied territories and neighboring countries, as well as to overall human rights, which is an aggravated consequence of occupation. The other recommendation that seems responsive to recent developments is to encourage UN support for both efforts to send humanitarian assistance direct to the people of Gaza in defiance of the persistence of the unlawful blockade and the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign that seeks to respond to the failure of Israel to uphold its obligations under international law with respect to the Palestinian people. The BDS campaign represents a recognition that neither governments nor the United Nations are prepared or able to uphold Palestinian rights. In this respect, it should be recalled that the anti-apartheid campaign of the late 1980s was strongly endorsed by the United Nations.
It is important, distinguished delegates, that urgent and tangible attention be devoted by this body to the ongoing ordeal of the Palestinian people whose fundamental rights are being daily violated in numerous and ways. This intolerable, immoral and unlawful occupation must be brought to an end, and there is no present prospect that traditional diplomacy will achieve this goal. The United Nations will be judged now and in the future by whether it contributes, at long last, to the long-deferred realization of the Palestinian right of self-determination, and thereby brings a just peace to both peoples.
Part One, The Record, treats the history of garlic as evidence. From the clay garlic bulb placed in an Egyptian grave nearly six thousand years ago, through the Ebers Papyrus, through Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen, the Arab physicians under Avicenna, the medieval herbals, Culpeper, and the plague years, to the last era in which Western physicians prescribed garlic as a matter of course, which ran from 1850 to 1945. It closes with the living traditions that never stopped using it, and with the folklore of charms, vampires and the evil eye.
Part Two, The Chemistry and the Evidence, sets out what is known about why a clove has no smell until it is cut, and why the order of crush, rest and heat changes the medicine. It then reads the clinical evidence against the historical record — bacteria, blood and vessels, cancer epidemiology, metals and fatigue — and names the trials that went against garlic as directly as the trials that went for it, including the 2007 Stanford trial funded by the US National Institutes of Health which found that raw garlic, garlic powder and aged garlic extract moved LDL cholesterol no more than placebo did. It then turns to onion, garlic’s closest relative, and reads the newer evidence published since 2015, before closing with the whole of the record through the terrain lens.
Part Three, Why Medicine Set It Aside, asks the question directly. One chapter contrasts the pharmaceutical model of isolating a single active compound with the folk model of combining whole plants, and reports what the garlic evidence says about which model works better. One chapter examines the economics of research on a plant that cannot be patented. One chapter — Fire Cider — tells the story of a folk preparation whose name was taken into a United States trademark by a Massachusetts company in 2012, and won back by three herbalists in 2014 who documented forty years of prior use through Rosemary Gladstar and her students into the older tradition.
Part Four, Garlic in Practice, is the working manual — the kitchen pharmacy, traditional uses by body system, a full chapter on safety and interactions, and a complaint-by-complaint practical guide. The book closes with The Trial That Was Never Run — a one-chapter reading of the whole evidential architecture.
At the back: two appendices (a traditional list of uses, and a preparation quick-reference), a full bibliography, and a live index.
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Part One, The Record, treats the history of garlic as evidence. From the clay garlic bulb placed in an Egyptian grave nearly six thousand years ago, through the Ebers Papyrus, through Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen, the Arab physicians under Avicenna, the medieval herbals, Culpeper, and the plague years, to the last era in which Western physicians prescribed garlic as a matter of course, which ran from 1850 to 1945. It closes with the living traditions that never stopped using it, and with the folklore of charms, vampires and the evil eye.
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