FreedomHater

Jim Hoagland - Cairo's Camp David Bargain Endures - washingtonpost.com

2009-01-16T07:23:00.000-08:00

Jim Hoagland - Cairo's Camp David Bargain Endures - washingtonpost.com: "Such inspiration is badly needed for Palestinians and Israelis right now. They have not been able to find a sustainable equilibrium in peacemaking efforts that have been punctuated by prolonged guerrilla warfare, two intifadas, waves of suicide bombings and rocket attacks launched against Israel, and recently by Israel's bloody three-week assault on the Gaza Strip and the leadership of Hamas."

In his description, we see that until "recently" Israel has not contributed anything to the lack of progress in reaching peace. The continual building of settlements in the West Banks has not happened. The control of Gaza's borders; land sea and air since before Hamas took power is constructive. The building of walls and fences beyond Israel's pre '67 borders is of no consequence. The refusal to talk to the elected Hamas government is immaterial. The daily disruption of life by Palestinians by checkpoints, occupation soldiers is all well and good. The breaking of the ceasefire with Hamas on November 4 2008 is an illusion.

How can we take serious opinions that are so completely one sided? The failure of reaching a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine is a failure of both sides and in fact of the US which is anything but a fair broker. As has been repeated endlessly the seeds of a solution is obvious. A return by Israel to the pre '67 borders and removal of all colonists established in the land conquered in that war. This of course to be accompanied by a cessation of violence by both sets of combatants.

Israel using Holocaust guilt to continue Gaza op, says British MP - Haaretz - Israel News

2009-01-15T13:47:00.000-08:00

Israel using Holocaust guilt to continue Gaza op, says British MP - Haaretz - Israel News: "Kaufman, a frequent critic of Israel who was raised as an Orthodox Jew, commented on the claim that large numbers of the Palestinian victims were militants. 'I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants,' he said.

Kaufman urged the British government to impose an arms embargo on Israel.

'My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town.... A
German soldier shot her dead in her bed, he said. My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza,' the MP said."

George Bush 'shamed' Condoleezza Rice, says Ehud Olmert - Telegraph

2009-01-13T06:57:00.000-08:00

George Bush 'shamed' Condoleezza Rice, says Ehud Olmert - Telegraph. A demonstration of US government's traditional fair handedness in the Israel Palestine conflict...

Op-Ed Contributor - What You Don’t Know About Gaza - NYTimes.com

2009-01-09T12:46:00.000-08:00

Op-Ed Contributor - What You Don’t Know About Gaza - NYTimes.com - a short piece by Rashid Khalidy that reminds us of some inconvenient facts about the events in Gaza.

This reminded me of another "forgotten" issue; the involvment of the US in the takeover of Gaza by Hamas. The Gaza Bombshell at Vanity fair. Not news, but still probably unknown to most.

In the Economist The hundred years' war has a reasonably fair outline of where we are in Gaza.

Finally in Haaretz Hamas seeks Gaza war of attrition ending in IDF pullout offers a view of where this may end in the short term.

2007-06-13T17:24:00.000-07:00

Today I read that the US, in it's continuing effort to advance human rights, come up with a blacklist of countries that have failed to stop trafficking people. Can you guess the 2 countries in the Americas which are in that list?

Let's see. It can't be Columbia can it? No much too civilized. Maybe Haiti? No not likely. How about Panama. Not a chance. Ah yes, of course, what a surprise. Cuba and Venezuela.

And then they wonder why people apply a hint of salt to the US's good intentions...

2007-06-09T09:03:00.000-07:00

When is a wall not a wall?

In the New Yorker we get the following paragraph:

In 2005, Banksy travelled to the West Bank, where he painted the security fence at Bethlehem with a trompe-l’oeil scene of a hole in the concrete barrier, revealing a glittering beach on the other side; it looked as if someone had dug through to paradise.

The article contains a photo and caption as well.
A Banksy trompe-l’oeil painting on a security fence in the West Bank.

Strange that the painting in the photo seems to be on a big motherfucking wall, while the fence in front of it is paint free. I wonder if they got the wrong painting.

2007-05-21T06:44:00.000-07:00

Today's morsel:

Rising from the dust of the city's Green Zone it is destined, at $592m (£300m), to become the biggest and most expensive US embassy on earth when it opens in September.

It will cover 104 acres (42 hectares) of land, about the size of the Vatican. It will include 27 separate buildings and house about 615 people behind bomb-proof walls. Most of the embassy staff will live in simple, if not quite monastic, accommodation in one-bedroom apartments.

and later...

Toby Dodge, an expert on Iraq at Queen Mary, University of London, has just come back from a month spent in Iraq, largely in the Green Zone. He thinks the Americans are unlikely to pull out of Iraq fully until the end of the next presidency at the earliest, and so the new embassy will serve its purpose for several years to come.

"A fortress-style embassy, with a huge staff, will remain in Baghdad until helicopters come to airlift the last man and woman from the roof," he said, adding his own advice to the architects of the building: "Include a large roof."

There is one added irony - the embassy is one of the few major projects the administration has undertaken in Iraq that is on schedule and within budget.

2007-05-19T10:25:00.000-07:00

From the Guardian:

The general was on the phone to another officer when I entered. He was jokingly threatening the caller: "Shut up or I will send democracy to your town."

2006-08-15T07:28:00.000-07:00

Feel the racism. Richard Cohen writes in the Washington Post:

But the lesson of Iraq and, now, Lebanon, is that zealots make tough enemies. It was one thing for Israel to fight apathetic and hapless Egyptians, Iraqis, Jordanians, Syrians and Lebanese. Those armies consisted of the indifferent: Sure, these Arabs opposed Israel, but they were mostly unaffected by it and would rather live with it than die fighting it. Even the Palestinians proved to be not much of a battlefield foe. This has not been the case with Hezbollah or, in Iraq, the various groups of fanatics who would blow themselves up for reasons that we could not begin to fathom. Hezbollah is now described in terms once reserved for the Japanese army of World War II. "If you are waiting for a white flag coming out of the Hezbollah bunker, I can assure you it won't come," said Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan, a member of the Israeli army's general staff.
This zealotry, this ideology, this religious fervor is not something we in the West -- and that includes Israel -- know how to deal with.

According to Mr. Cohen, "apathetic and happless" Arabs are normal and understandable, but determined ones who resist the attacker/occupier are consumed by incomprehenciple "zealotry" and "religious fervor". In his world view "we could not begin to fathom" resistence to the forces of good exemplified by the US/Israeli war machines.

Mr. Cohen, history teaches us that defence of ones homeland is quite normal, even for non fanatic islamo facist rag heads (or whatever you may want to call those who resist the crusading forces of good).

2006-08-14T07:21:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day of the ceasefire in Lebanon. From the BBC monitoring service:

LI XUEJIANG IN CHINA'S RENMIN WANG:
The UN Security Council actually could not secure any achievements because of US obstruction... So were there really no winners? Not exactly - US arms dealers certainly made ill-gotten gains.

Good to see something positive in these dark times

From Haaretz, this uplifting quote from Israel:

"If our fighters deep in Lebanese territory are left without food our water, I believe they can break into local Lebanese stores to solve that problem," Brigadier General Avi Mizrahi, the head of the Israel Defense Forces logistics branch, said Monday.

I guess not enough US tax dollars are being sent for rations. Quite right that the Lebanese civilians should pay for the Israeli destruction occupation of their country.

Interesting though is the last sentence of this article:

According to Mizrahi, the logistics branch is prepared for the possibility that combat soldiers will have to remain in Lebanon during the winter.

No doubt, if Israel is still occupying Lebanon in Januarry Condy/Bush will be "surprised"...

This reminds me of another Condi fragent from July 21:

I think we are beginning to see the outlines of a political framework that might allow the cessation of violence in a more sustainable way tied to 1559, tied to -- what is there in the G-8 statement. The elements are becoming quite clear. But I have no interest in diplomacy for the sake of returning Lebanon and Israel to the status quo ante. I think it would be a mistake.
What we're seeing here, in a sense, is the growing -- the birth pangs of a new Middle East and whatever we do we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East not going back to the old one.

Note that she want a cessation of violence for "1559", not to stop the killing and destruction. I'm sure in her reading 1559 ias all about dissarming Hezbollah...

And a final observation. I have not heard much mention of an important paragraph in the new UN resolution:

18. Stresses the importance of, and the need to achieve, a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East, based on all its relevant resolutions including its resolutions 242 (1967) of 22 November 1967 and 338 (1973) of 22 October 1973;

Resolution 242 is the one calling for "Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict".
I find it positive that there is official recognition that the latest Lebanon war is linked to the 1967 war and resultant occupations.

2006-08-10T10:10:00.000-07:00

George Bush once again demonstrates the depth of his understanding of the reasons for animosity against the United States. Describing the alleged plot to bomb planes from the UK to the US he said it was a:

stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom.

It could not possibly have anything to do with US/UK policies in recent years towards Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, ...

No it is because the bad guys hate that Bush and others "love freedom".

The thousands of dead Afghanis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Lebanese are birth-pangs of freedom love and democracy exporting.

2006-08-07T07:33:00.000-07:00

I had a hard time locating the 7 point plan presented by the Lebanese government for a ceasefire. But finally found it here.
It was presented I believe on July 26:

An undertaking to release the Lebanese and Israeli prisoners and detainees through the ICRC.

The withdrawal of the Israeli army behind the Blue Line, and the return of the displaced to their villages.

A commitment from the Security Council to place the Shebaa Farms area and the Kfarshouba Hills under UN jurisdiction until border delineation and Lebanese sovereignty over them are fully settled. While in UN custody, the area will be accessible to Lebanese property owners there. Further, Israel surrenders all remaining landmine maps in South Lebanon to the UN.

The Lebanese government extends its authority over its territory through its own legitimate armed forces, such that there will be no weapons or authority other than that of the Lebanese state as stipulated in the Taef national reconciliation document.

The UN international force, operating in South Lebanon, is supplemented and enhanced in numbers, equipment, mandate and scope of operation, as needed, in order to undertake urgent humanitarian and relief work and guarantee stability and security in the south so that those who fled their homes can return.

The UN, in cooperation with the relevant parties, undertakes the necessary measures to once again put into effect the Armistice Agreement signed by Lebanon and Israel in 1949, and to insure adherence to the provisions of that agreement, as well as to explore possible amendments to or development of said provisions, as necessary.

The international community commits to support Lebanon on all levels, and to assist it in facing the tremendous burden resulting from the human, social and economic tragedy which has afflicted the country, especially in the areas of relief, reconstruction and rebuilding of the national economy.

Compare and contrast to the US/French plan

A few naive questions:

Why this plan did not get much reporting in the press?

Why Siniora's speech contained in the above link was under reported?

Since BushBlair are all for promoting democracy in the Middle East, why this plan was not used as the basis of the UN proposal?

Why the UN proposal is asymmetric in who can continue violence?

Why the UN proposal allows continuation of Israeli occupation?

2006-08-05T15:22:00.000-07:00

By the way, there are constant references in the press in recent days of how Hezbollah was responsible for the killing of US marines in Lebanon in 1982. To the best of my knowledge this was never proved.

According to Caspar Weinberger who was Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration from 1981 to 1987, in a 2001 interview:

But we still do not have the actual knowledge of who did the bombing of the Marine barracks at the Beirut Airport, and we certainly didn't then.

2006-08-05T11:09:00.000-07:00

Today I was listening to NPR morning edition, when this wonderful piece came along (To listen, go here and move forward to about 1:50)

Scott Simon: I know you have been out to see a port area there in town that has been struck recently. What can you tell us?

Ivan Watson: Scott, It’s called Uzai - it’s a little fishing port to the south of the city [Tyre] and it was hit 2 nights ago repeatedly.

Ah – the buildings around the port have largely been demolished and I cannot tell whether or not they were some kind of Hezbollah installation or not.

What was striking though was the port itself.

There were several hundred fishing boats had been stationed there and it appeared that Israeli aircraft had repeatedly straffed those little fishing boats destroying all of them but not really bombing the concrete pier that ran out into the port.

Ah – these boats were the livelihood for fishermen who make maybe $600 a month.

Um - the fishermen were joking, calling their sunken boats “Hezbollah aircraft carriers” and were questioning what the strategic value of such an attack could have been.

Scott Simon: mmmhmm. I, I suppose the Israelis were worried that small boats can in fact be used to transport missiles in and out?

Ivan Watson: [3 seconds silence] Perhaps eh Hezbollah has claimed several rocket attacks though, against Israeli warships over this three week conflict.

Mr. Simon's joke is almost as good as that of the fishermen!!!
At least I hope that was a joke. And not an attempt to make this latest destruction appear justified for military reasons.

2006-08-04T06:54:00.000-07:00

A fine example of the New York Times's way of using omission to create propaganda. In an article entitled Hezbollah Leader Says Attacks Are Justified they state

"The Islamic resistance will hit Tel Aviv, and it is capable of doing that with God’s help," Sheik Nasrallah said in the speech, broadcast on the group’s television network, al Manar.

In most other reports, including this one from Haaretz (Israel):

"If you bomb our capital Beirut, we will bomb the capital of your usurping entity... We will bomb Tel Aviv," Nasrallah said.

So the a reader of the NYT would be unaware that the threat to bomb Tel Aviv was in response to an attack by Israel.

2006-07-30T20:38:00.000-07:00

Now for the big question, is Hezbollah a "terrorist" organization? Most of the world does not think so. An interesting article in today's Guardian explains:

Interestingly, some of the earliest suicide bombings commonly attributed to Hizbullah, such as the 1983 attacks on the US embassy and marine barracks in Beirut, were believed by American intelligence sources at the time to have been orchestrated by the Iraqi Dawa party. Hizbullah barely existed in 1983 and Dawa cadres are said to have been instrumental in setting it up at Tehran's behest. Dawa's current leadership includes none other than the new Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, feted last week in London and Washington as the great hope for the future of the Middle East. As the old saying goes, today's terrorist is tomorrow's statesman - at least when it suits us.

and this very interesting comment on why the US calls organizations like Hezbollah terrorist:

The US state department's annual reports on terrorism also list operations carried out against the Israeli Defence Force as examples of terrorism. The US government justifies this conclusion by way of a logical contortion that defines Israeli troops as "non-combatants", despite the fact that Israel continues to occupy territory in Lebanon and Palestine with military force. The intention is not just to stamp out terrorism as commonly understood, but also to stigmatise perfectly legitimate acts of resistance.

2006-07-30T20:20:00.000-07:00

The NYT can at times be comical. In an article entitled "From Carnage, U.S. Gains a Concession" we are told:

The contents of the diplomatic package are basically set, and Bush officials said Ms. Rice would lay out its terms on Monday. Under the proposal, Israel and Lebanon would agree to a cease-fire as part of a larger pact that would include installing 15,000 to 20,000 international peacekeepers throughout southern Lebanon, American and Israeli officials said. The Lebanese government would work to disband Hezbollah, and the United States and other countries would funnel money and send military officials to help train the Lebanese Army, so that it could work to prevent future attacks on Israel. Israel would agree to talks on whether it would withdraw from a disputed border area known as Shabaa Farms, a Hezbollah demand.

Where to start?

So the US needed carnage to “gain a concession”? The enormous aid the US gives the state of Israel gave it no leverage?

The Lebanese army will be trained “so that it could work to prevent future attacks on Israel”? I was under the impression that that was the role of the Israeli army, which already gets massive aid from the US. Surely the role of the Lebanese army should be to prevent attacks BY Israel.

Hezbollah should be disbanded. The force that was most fundamental in freeing Lebanon from decades of Israeli occupation should be disbanded? Why?

And Israel's "concessions" in all this? To "agree to talks on whether it would withdraw from a disputed border area known as Shabaa Farms". How painful. And while I know that the dispute about the Shabaa farms is about whether they are part of Lebanon or Syria. But the naive reader will think that the dispute is about whether these are occupied in the first place.

2006-07-30T07:58:00.000-07:00

Bush/Blair/Olmert are helping to unify the Middle East. From a poll in Lebanon:

The survey showed 87 percent support for Hizbullah's retaliatory attacks on northern Israel.

The survey showed that a large majority of Lebanese do not consider the US to be an honest mediator (89.5 percent). A similar survey conducted by the Beirut Center for Research and Information published in As-Safir on January 31 showed 38.2 percent support for the US role in Lebanon. This drop is due to the close political cooperation between the US and Israel.

2006-07-30T07:36:00.000-07:00

The war on Lebanon continues (bbc):

More than 54 civilians, at least 34 of them children, have been killed in a town in south Lebanon in the deadliest Israeli strike of the conflict so far.

As we all know, because Bush told us so, while explaining the lack of urgency in getting a cease fire:

And secondly, it's really important for people to understand that terrorists are trying to stop the advance of freedom, and therefore, it's essential that we do what's right and not necessarily what appears to be immediately popular.

and, as we all know, because we were told so by the Israeli minister of justice (!!!!), this is a perfectly justified step in the war on terror:

Everyone in southern Lebanon is a terrorist and is connected to Hizbollah.

If people remembered past last week, they would recall the name of the village where this happened, Qana

Qana, southern Lebanon - It was a massacre. Not since Sabra and Chatila had I seen the innocent slaughtered like this. The Lebanese refugee women and children and men lay in heaps, their hands or arms or legs missing, beheaded or disembowelled. There were well over a hundred of them. A baby lay without a head. The Israeli shells had scythed through them as they lay in the United Nations shelter, believing that they were safe under the world's protection. Like the Muslims of Srebrenica, the Muslims of Qana were wrong.

2006-07-29T12:22:00.000-07:00

As usual, Rami G. Khouri makes interesting points in the Daily Star:

Two important markers of Arab public opinion emerged this week. The first is the Saudi Arabian royal court statement issued Wednesday warning against the "grave and unpredictable consequences" of the continued Israeli aggression against Lebanon. It simultaneously appealed to and warned the international community - with the US singled out by name - that if the Arab offer to live in peace with Israel fell victim to Israeli "arrogance," only the war option would remain. For the normally discreet, patient and peaceful Saudis to issue such a statement was about a strong a signal as we are ever likely to get of elite Arab concern with the consequences of the current mood among Arab publics.

The second important marker is a national public opinion poll of Lebanese, conducted this week by the respected Beirut Center for Research and Information with Lebanese-American University political science professor Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, measuring public attitudes to the current situation. The striking results showed 87 percent of all Lebanese supported Hizbullah's military response to the Israeli attacks (including, notably, 89 percent of Sunnis and 80 percent of Christians). Five months ago, just 58 percent supported the resistance movement's right to remain armed. And 89 percent of respondents said the US was not an honest broker and did not respond positively to Lebanon's concerns.
...
Most Arabs ignore their regimes and applaud or support those who actively resist Anglo-American-Israeli aggression. The face of Arab public opinion will continue to change in these directions, until legitimate grievances are redressed and people throughout the Arab world feel they are treated like dignified human beings rather than disposable animals.

2006-07-29T10:57:00.000-07:00

How can Thomas Friedman be regarded as an expert on the Middle East?
From his latest diarrhoea:

And I mean madness. We've seen Sunni Muslims in Iraq suicide-bomb a Shiite mosque on Ramadan; we've seen Shiite militiamen torture Sunnis in Iraq by drilling holes in their heads with power tools; we've seen Jordanian Islamist parliamentarians mourning the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, even though he once blew up a Jordanian wedding; we've seen hundreds of Palestinian suicide bombings of Israeli cafes and buses; and we've seen Israel retaliating by, at times, leveling whole buildings, with the guilty and the innocent inside.

According to the wise man, the Israelis "retaliate", "at times", whereas the Moslems...

No doubt the 700 civilians killed by the Israelis in Lebanon are all accidents.

Friedman sees "hundreds of Palestinian suicide bombings of Israeli cafes and buses" but not the thousands of Palestinians killed during the same period by Israeli, US supplied weapons. He does not see the tens of thousands of Palestinians made homeless. He does not see the millions having their lives made hell by a 40 year occupation.

He forgets the tens of thousands killed in Lebanon in previous Israeli invasions.

He forgets to mention the 10s (maybe 100s) of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans killed by US and UK forces in Bush's war of terror.

No, all he sees is Moslem attrocities and Israeli accidents, all caused by lack of modernity of them thar Arbs.

2006-07-27T14:25:00.000-07:00

From the daily star

Hizbullah has already agreed to a five-point package that can be quickly implemented once a cease-fire is in place: the exchange of prisoners, and end to Israel's occupation of the Shebaa Farms, maps of Israeli-laid mindefields in South Lebanon, an end to Israeli air, land and sea incursions into Lebanese territory, and the deployment of the Lebanese Army in South Lebanon. If Israel is actually serious about not returning to the previous status quo - or to an even worse future - these five points provide an excellent formula for reaching that objective.

2006-07-27T11:45:00.000-07:00

Sir Stephen Wall, a former top foreign policy adviser to Tony Blair, writing in the New Statesman:

There are times, such as the past two weeks, when a British prime minister should have been thinking less about private influence and more about public advocacy. Could the Prime Minister really not speak up for the simple proposition that the slaughter of innocent people in Lebanon, the destruction of their country and the ruin of half a million lives were wrong and should stop immediately? "What kind of ceasefire?" Blair asks. One that stopped the horror, even for 24 hours, would be a start.

2006-07-27T09:03:00.000-07:00

Fisk has been writing about Lebanon. Interesting little vignette:

The only civilian walking these frightening roads was a goatherd, shepherding his animals around the huge craters. Talking to him, it emerged that he was almost stone deaf and could not hear the bombs. In this, it seemed, he had a lot in common with Condoleezza Rice.

2006-07-27T05:38:00.000-07:00

Lebanese Prime Minister Signora says:

"what future other than one of fear, frustration, financial ruin and fanaticism can stem from the rubble?" "Is the value of human life less than in Lebanon than that of citizens elsewhere? Are we children of a lesser God? Is an Israeli teardrop worth more than a drop of Lebanese blood?" "Can the international community continue to stand by while such callous retribution by the state of Israel is inflicted upon us?" "Is this what is called legitimate self-defence?"

The result of the summit:

For an immediate ceasefire: UN, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece, Jordan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Canada and Cyprus
Against: US and Britain.
Result: no immediate ceasefire

Israel's response:

"We received yesterday at the Rome conference permission from the world... to continue the operation," Justice Minister Haim Ramon said.

He said that in order to prevent casualties among Israeli soldiers battling Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon, villages should be flattened by the Israeli air force before ground troops move in.

"All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah," Mr Ramon said.

We have been warned. Let no one say "we did not know".

And remember that Dianne Feinstein's only statement on all this is: "we will not waver in our support", support for the Israeli government, whatever its policies, not support for civilians of any ethnicity killed in this conflict.

2006-07-26T07:02:00.000-07:00

In the washington post we get this

The Rice delegation also hinted that it was exploring actions against outside governments subverting Lebanon's sovereignty, Welch said. The United States strongly believes that Iran in particular facilitated and encouraged the July 12 Hezbollah cross-border raid that seized two Israeli soldiers and sparked the crisis. The administration also holds Syria responsible for abetting the radical Shiite Muslim group."

The "amusing" part is that Condi does not see Israel's actions as "subverting Lebanon's sovereignty", as of course the US did not subvert Iraq's sovereignty. From a different perspective, see At the heart of the Lebanon crisis lie the lethal mistakes of George Bush:

As for complaints from Britain and Europe about the 390 civilians killed in Lebanon, those are a reminder of the more than 3,000 civilians killed in the 2001 onslaught against Afghanistan: how was that proportionate exactly? Kim Howells was right to be appalled by what he saw in Beirut. But he surely would have been just as shocked had he visited the Iraqi city of Falluja after the Americans had turned it to rubble.

Interesting too that the New York Times uses this title Israel to Occupy Area of Lebanon as Security Zone to inform us of the killing of UN observers by Israeli forces.

The BBC reports:
Israel troops 'ignored' UN plea

UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon contacted Israeli troops 10 times before an Israeli bomb killed four of them, an initial UN report says.

but does not neglect to carry a long piece informing us how Israel is behaving completely correctly.

2006-07-24T06:38:00.000-07:00

On Sunday Dianne Feinstein chose to attend a "Israel Solidarity Rally"

Stand Against Terrorism... Stand With Israel
Stand Together

Join Senator Dianne Feinstein in Supporting Israel THIS Sunday, July 23 at 12 NOON at Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco!

Original invite here.

This is while the Israeli actions have led to some 400 civilian deaths and 500,000 refugees.

This morning, in the New York Times, in an article titled To Flee or to Stay? Family Chooses Too Late and Pays Dearly, we read:

An Israeli rocket, which Lebanese officials said was likely fired from a helicopter, slammed into the center of the Shaitos’ van as it sped round a bend a few miles west of their village, and the van crashed into a hillside. Three occupants were killed: an uncle, Mohammad; the grandmother, Nazira; and a Syrian man who had guarded their home. The missile also critically wounded Mrs. Shaito and her sister. Eleven others suffered less severe wounds.

2006-06-29T18:49:00.000-07:00

Looks like the same sort of propaganda that was used on Iraq, the Serbs, ... to convince the US populace of the inhumanity of the enemy is now being applied to Iran.
Those of us with memories that extend further than last week may remember, in preparation for the first Gulf War, the false reports of how Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait threw babies out of incubators.

In preparation for a potential attack on Iran, the new, completely false, allegation is that Iran has passed laws to force non Muslims to wear colored badges, similar to those forced on Jews, homosexuals and others by Nazis. It was later retracted, but not before it had spread round the world reinforcing the required message Iran=Nazi Germany.

What makes the propaganda almost comical is the retraction published by the paper which carried the original story. It went like this:

Experts say report of badges for Jews in Iran is untrue

and was accompanied by a photo of a "A yellow badge worn by Jews in Nazi Germany during the 1940s".
So, imagine this report:

Experts say that George W. Bush is not a child molester

accompanied by a picture of "A 12 year old child molested by a German SS soldier."

2006-06-11T12:10:00.000-07:00

Today we hear of a triple suicide in Guantanamo. Prisoners there are held without charge or trial, in a prison set up intentionally outside the jurisdiction of US, or any other, law. What do the purveyors of democracy have to say?

Colleen Graffy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy:

good PR move to draw attention

Rear Admiral Harris, comander of Guantanamo prison camp:

They have no regard for life, either ours or their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.

From the BBC

2006-03-02T05:25:00.000-08:00

In a Zogby poll of US soldiers in Iraq, amongst other interesting opinions

Almost 90% think war is retaliation for Saddam’s role in 9/11...

and

...An overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year,...

2006-03-01T21:38:00.000-08:00

Today Anne Applebaum in Tolerating the Intolerable (Washington Post,) informs us of problems in modern Britain including

the nasty strain of anti-Semitism on the far side of the British left (Livingstone has just called Ariel Sharon a war criminal, clearly a favorite insult, as well)

If an utterance that Sharon may be a war criminal is proof of anti-Semitism then anti-Semitism, surely this diminishes the evil of that term. If I were to accuse Idi Amin of being a war criminal would that prove that I was an anti black racist?

Conflating criticism of Israeli policies or of Israeli politicians with anti-Semitism just diminishes the stigma attached to a very real evil of racism.

For reference, Sharon was found personally responsible by the Israeli Kahan Commission for the Sabra and Shatilla massacres in Lebanon and it was recommended that he resign as defense minister.

2005-06-01T20:27:00.000-07:00

Been a long time. I've been busy helping out with the OccupationWatch website and prettifying the AxisOfEvildoers one.

Some comments on recent events:

Earlier this week we had the AI report on human rights to give us nightmares. Amnesty points out that the torture, killings and other atrocities committed by US forces are inconsistent with the lofty rhetoric about freedom and such like. According to the miserable failure in this latest press conference, we can just dismiss AI's report as yet more America (freedom/God/Apple Pie)-hating BS:

In terms of the detainees, we've had thousands of people detained. We've investigated every single complaint against the detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth. And so it was an absurd report. It just is. And, you know -- yes, sir.

Yes, they "disassemble" this:

A short aside. Does anyone else think it strange that there is a need to airbrush out TESTICLES when showing torture? Do most people find hairy sacks more shocking than torture? Is a penis more disturbing than people abusing other humans? Another case of Old Europe I suppose.

I need to admit to my shame that I was unaware of the scale of the horror in Africa. Now that sounds truly like TERROR, but do we give a fuck? Thanks to AI for trying to bring all this to the attention of the world

Nancy Pelosi delivered yet another anti Palestinian talk to AIPAC while two senior AIPAC employees are being indicted for espionage against the US. (Why is it that Anti Palestinian does not sound as bad as Anti Semitic - they are Semites too?) My favorite quote? Gotta be this one:

There are those who contend that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This is absolute nonsense. In truth, the history of the conflict is not over occupation, and never has been: it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist.

It is all about a country's right (what other country makes claim to such a right?) to exist trumping the right of 4 million HUMANS to live free of occupation. Personally I believe people have rights, not countries, but I'm an old European, and therefore no doubt an anti Semite. Incidentally if, as the anti Palestinian crowd insist, criticism of Israeli crimes is anti Semitism, then I'm proud to be labeled as such by them. But they should stand still while I call them racist, colonialist religious supremacists.

2005-03-21T07:15:00.000-08:00

Israel plans to build 3,500 new homes in the West Bank to cement its hold on Jerusalem, government sources said on Monday

Haaretz reports.

The blueprint for two new neighborhoods linking the settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim to East Jerusalem appeared to flout the U.S.-backed peace road map whose final vision is disputed by Israel and the Palestinians.

The road map requires a halt to settlement-building on land Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and which Palestinians want as part of a future state.

But U.S. President George W. Bush said in 2004 that Israel, which intends to quit the occupied Gaza Strip this year, could expect to keep some West Bank settlement blocs under an accord.

2005-03-19T19:25:00.000-08:00

Strange religious news. In Greece the religion (the church?) is being exposed:

The revelations are mind-boggling. Almost daily, men once revered as paragons of virtue have been exposed as lascivious money-grabbers. Recorded conversations of eminent clerics engaging in 'love talk' have been broadcast on television, secret bank accounts revealed, and malfeasance unearthed, with priests emerging as central players in activities as disparate as trial-fixing, antiquities smuggling and election rigging. Highlighting a raft of lurid sexual claims, one newspaper splashed what was purported to be a 91-year-old priest in bed with a woman across its front page.

'In many ways, the Greek Orthodox Church has been revealed for what it is: a completely amoral and unethical multinational company'

Meanwhile in Jesusland (USA USA USA) we have slightly different developments:

In several US states, Imax cinemas - including some at science museums - are refusing to show movies that mention the subject or suggest that Earth's origins do not conform with biblical descriptions.

2005-03-07T12:31:00.000-08:00

John Bolton named as US ambassador to the UN! From the BBC:

He has in past been quoted as saying there is no such thing as the United Nations.

He also reportedly said in 1994 that it would not make any difference if the UN headquarters in New York lost 10 of its storeys.

Here is a description by Pilger:

The "crazies" include John Bolton, Under Secretary of State, who has made a personal mission of tearing up missile treaties with the Russians and threatening North Korea, and Douglas Feith, an Under Secretary of Defence, who ran a secret propaganda unit "reworking" intelligence about Iraq's weapons. I interviewed them both in Washington.

BOLTON boasted to me that the killing of as many as 10,000 Iraqi civilians in the invasion was "quite low if you look at the size of the military operation."

For raising the question of civilian casualties and asking which country America might attack next, I was told: "You must be a member of the Communist Party."

2005-03-07T06:51:00.000-08:00

Good article on fighting homophobia in "Kansas" and on the relations with the fight for civil rights. Gary Younge in the Guardian:

There are two main reasons why this comparison jars with many. The first is blatant homophobia. It is far easier to marginalise the lesbian and gay agenda if you can sever any association between it and other struggles for equality. The second is latent homophobia, which argues that such comparisons trivialise racism, as though the right to love who you want and still keep your job, your home and sometimes your life is a trifling matter.

Those who insist that one is worse than the other should remember that this is not a competition. Sadly, there is enough misery to go around. People like the Phelpses will make sure it stays that way. They don't need our help.

2005-03-06T10:17:00.000-08:00

The subtle way in which Palestinians are vilified when compared to Israelis is demonstrated in this paragraph from the New York Times:

In February, 13 Palestinians were killed, according to the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group. Most were militants, though teenage civilians were among the dead, Palestinians said. All five Israeli deaths came in the Tel Aviv bombing.

We are informed that "most" of the Palestinians are militants. We are told nothing of the fact that most of the Israeli dead were soldiers. Not that it particularly matters, but neither does it matter what portion of the Palestinian dead are militants, whatever that means. In fact, outside Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post I have seen no mention that the Israeli dead were anything other than civilians.

2005-03-02T09:23:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wonder whether journalists have the same understanding of language as other people. From The Guardian

The family had not suffered any particular grievance at the hands of the Israelis, Ibrahim said, although he was detained in 1989 and held for 18 months without trial.

The town has lost a large part of its livelihood because the separation barrier has cut it off from its 825 acres (334 hectares) of farmland.

In theory they can reach it through a gate, but it is rarely open, and the Israelis have begun chopping down some of the trees.

I wonder what would constitute a particular grievance?

2005-02-22T22:45:00.000-08:00

Who is the terrorist?

The "settlers" told by "man of peace" Sharon to "grab every hilltop" continue their good work. From Haaretz:

A number of times from the end of 2000 to the end of 2003, the villagers had no water to their homes after unknown perpetrators smashed the water pipes and threw building waste into the water holes.

Oxfam volunteered to finance the pipes' repair, but they were vandalized again. Oxfam then encased the pipes above the surface with concrete and built an iron cage around the water holes to protect them. However, once again the concrete and pipes were smashed and the drinking water fouled with dirty diapers and other waste.

In November 2003, Italian volunteers helped the villagers seal the water hole openings with concrete. But in a few months the villagers started suffering from liver infections and stomach diseases. The contaminated water was banned for use until January this year, when after heavy rainfalls the pollution was reduced. The villagers started using it again, until 10 days ago.

But remember. The Palestinians need to stop the violence before discussion of a state for them can begin.

A couple of days ago in an editorial in the NYT we were told:

The Europeans need to bend too. They should commit themselves to a much greater role in training Iraqi security forces. And they must join the United States in declaring Hezbollah a terrorist organization, because it is, and because the message to terrorists must be one and only one.

To the best of my knowledge Hezbollah has not engaged in terrorism (unless one accepts the new US/Israeli definition of terrorism as any attack on occupation forces) for many years. The occasional anti aircraft fire into the occupied Shabaa Farms is usually (always?) a response to Israeli military aircraft entering Lebanese air space.

2005-02-09T19:51:00.000-08:00

In Europe vs. America Tony Judt discusses differences between these two.

America, it seems, is better than Europe at creating jobs. So more American adults are at work and they work much more than Europeans. What do they get for their efforts?

Not much, unless they are well-off. The US is an excellent place to be rich. Back in 1980 the average American chief executive earned forty times the average manufacturing employee. For the top tier of American CEOs, the ratio is now 475:1 and would be vastly greater if assets, not income, were taken into account. By way of comparison, the ratio in Britain is 24:1, in France 15:1, in Sweden 13:1.[2] A privileged minority has access to the best medical treatment in the world. But 45 million Americans have no health insurance at all (of the world's developed countries only the US and South Africa offer no universal medical coverage). According to the World Health Organization the United States is number one in health spending per capita—and thirty-seventh in the quality of its service.

As a consequence, Americans live shorter lives than West Europeans. Their children are more likely to die in infancy: the US ranks twenty-sixth among industrial nations in infant mortality, with a rate double that of Sweden, higher than Slovenia's, and only just ahead of Lithuania's—and this despite spending 15 percent of US gross domestic product on "health care" (much of it siphoned off in the administrative costs of for-profit private networks). Sweden, by contrast, devotes just 8 percent of its GDP to health. The picture in education is very similar. In the aggregate the United States spends much more on education than the nations of Western Europe; and it has by far the best research universities in the world. Yet a recent study suggests that for every dollar the US spends on education it gets worse results than any other industrial nation. American children consistently underperform their European peers in both literacy and numeracy.

2005-02-09T06:51:00.000-08:00

Amira Hass on the Israeli occupation and the resistance to it:

That's the upside down method: occupy them, their land, their natural resources, take over their lives and judge them as criminals when they resist us - when they kill either civilians or soldiers. We admit we killed civilians, but the "war" apparently not only justifies our cruelty, it erases it. On the other hand, the war - in other words, the occupation, in other words, the war for the preservation of the loot from the 1967 war: the settlements - does not justify or even explain their cruelty in our eyes.

If the Palestinians had warplanes and tanks so their killing was sterile, they would prefer to use those. And then, even if they killed Jewish civilians, they would not be called murderers with blood on their hands but enemy soldiers. And when caught they would be considered prisoners of war. If the policy makers of the Olso Accords really were thinking about peace the way they are said to have been, they would have freed all those prisoners. But then, like now: those who speak about gestures and then only free Marwan Barghouti's son, even if it was at Abbas' request, continue to operate with the old diskette of the colonialist who throws candy to the natives.

2005-02-04T06:56:00.000-08:00

In the process of spreading freedom liberty and apple pie round the world a boy must have some fun too. Here is how Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis has fun with the natives of the empire:

"Actually, it's a lot of fun to fight. . . . It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right upfront with you, I like brawling," he said at the forum in San Diego.

"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil," he added. "You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them."

We are told that he is "one of the country's bravest and most experienced military leaders"

I am reminded of General Boykin who also has an "outstanding record":

He told one gathering: "Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. He's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this."

In January, he told Baptists in Florida about a victory over a Muslim warlord in Somalia, who had boasted that Allah would protect him from American capture. "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real god and his was an idol," Gen Boykin said.

He also emerged from the conflict with a photograph of the Somalian capital Mogadishu bearing a strange dark mark. He has said this showed "the principalities of darkness. . . a demonic presence in that city that God revealed to me as the enemy".

2005-01-30T08:35:00.000-08:00

One of these "Only in America" moments. The "American Family Association" publishes an article with the title:
Children's TV Unites to Launch Pro-Homosexual Campaign of 'Tolerance'
SpongeBob, Arthur, Pooh, Bob the Builder, Little Mermaid, Many Others Enlisted in Stealth Effort

This follows the education secratery Margaret Spellings' complaint about, cover your eyes, lesbians, in Buster the bunny.
DOE Director Calls PBS to Account for Pro-Homosexual Cartoon
Ex-Homosexual Evangelist Says 'Buster Bunny's Been Busted' ... and Rightly So

2005-01-20T08:18:00.000-08:00

The US "takes down" another UN official, Peter Hansen, head of UNRWA. According to the Guardian:

The Israeli ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, often attacked Mr Hansen, saying he was exceeding his remit and calling him an "Israel hater".

2005-01-17T14:02:00.000-08:00

Yet another "only in JesusLand". It would appear that people have complained to the FCC claiming that the opening ceremony for the Athens Olympics were obscene. From the Washington Post:

my children saw an exposed breast during the opening eremonies

also

"How could NBC be allowed to show the male genitalia on national television" during the opening ceremonies.
"I am referring to when the giant white mask that broke apart into a statue of a nude man," the writer explained. (Actually, the writer is referring to the gigantic replica of a Cycladic head, so popular around 2700 B.C., that broke apart to reveal a replica of a Kouros sculpture, all the rage around the 6th century B.C

I enjoyed the LA Times piece on this:

Greece does not wish to be drawn into an American culture war.

2005-01-17T10:57:00.000-08:00

An old Barbara Bush quote that I just saw today (March 18 2003) in Mark Crispin Miller's book Cruel and Unusual. It is referenced here. A fine example of compassionate conservatism:

But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?

The book also reminded me of that golden oldie by Bush the Lesser from 2001:

Now, the American people have got to go about their business. We cannot let the terrorists achieve the objective of frightening our nation to the point where we don't conduct business or people don't shop.

2005-01-16T22:04:00.000-08:00

Seymour Hersh reports in the New Yorker on the Bush administration's plans to continue their crusades. Onward Christian soldiers, now to Iran.

“This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.”

2005-01-12T13:05:00.000-08:00

Why is Israel leaving the Gaza strip? Well one reason may be because it is one of the poorest places on earth. The CIA tells us unemployment is 50% (ranked 185 in the world) and GDP per capita is $600 (ranked 229)

Incidentally, I must commend the CIA factbook in that when talking of the Israeli population they say:

Population:6,199,008
note: includes about 187,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, about 20,000 in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, more than 5,000 in the Gaza Strip, and fewer than 177,000 in East Jerusalem (July 2004 est.)

Mnost commentators ignore the Jerusalem settlers.

2005-01-12T06:46:00.000-08:00

According to the Washington Post:

The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein.

No weapons found. So, no doubt the media will start firing journalists, editors, who unquestioningly parroted the US administration's line taking us up to war. Surely these reporting failures are as important as the errors in the Dan Rather/CBS reporting on the miserable failure's war record.
And what of al the Iraqi scientists and bearcats held in captivity while the search for non weapons went on? When will they be released, and will they be compensated?

From the BBC website:

Former head of UN weapons inspections Hans Blix also said there was no surprise in the announcement.

"We have believed that there weren't any weapons since around May or June 2003. First came David Kay in September 2003 [who said] that he hadn't found any weapons and that was a big sensation - but he thought that there were programmes still," he told the BBC.

"But then came Duelfer last November [who] said that he hadn't seen any programmes, but maybe Saddam would have intended to restart the programme, and there is no evidence of that.

Mr Blix said he assumed it would be natural for the United States to now report their finding to the UN Security Council "because the US took the inspections out of the hands of the UN to undertake it themselves".

2005-01-11T22:28:00.000-08:00

Is life in the US so much better than that in "old europe" countries such as Greece, France? Depends on what you mean by life.

Infant Mortality Rate: deaths/1,000 live births

country	total population	male	female
US	6.63	7.31	5.91
Greece	5.63	6.19	5.04
France	4.31	4.83	3.78

Life Expectency

country	total population	male	female
US	77.43	74.63	80.36
Greece	78.94	76.44	81.59
France	79.44	75.8	83.27

Literacy: definition: age 15 and over can read and write

country	total population	male	female
US	97	97	97
Greece	97.5	98.6	96.5
France	99	99	99

GDP/Capita

country	GDP
US	$37,800
Greece	$20,000
France	$27,600

2005-01-11T19:39:00.000-08:00

The BBC reports the donor levels for tsunami relief. If you ever hear US-supremassists crowing about their generosity compared to the "euro-weenies" tell them that US=$550m, Germany $1.1bn and the EU $628m.

2005-01-11T08:03:00.000-08:00

In the Guardian today, a first hand account from 'liberated' Fallujah. The concluding paragraph:

The US military destroyed Falluja, but simply spread the fighters out around the country. They also increased the chance of civil war in Iraq by using their new national guard of Shias to suppress Sunnis. Once, when a foreign journalist, an Irish guy, asked me whether I was Shia or Sunni - the way the Irish do because they have that thing about the IRA - I said I was Sushi. My father is Sunni and my mother is Shia. I never cared about these things. Now, after Falluja, it matters.

2005-01-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

Rahul Maharajan pointed me to this article in Newsweek:

" Following that model, one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. "

Some while ago there was a Sy Hersh article on the Israeli finger in such a plan...

"Israeli intelligence and military operatives are now quietly at work in Kurdistan, providing training for Kurdish commando units and, most important in Israel’s view, running covert operations inside Kurdish areas of Iran and Syria. Israel feels particularly threatened by Iran, whose position in the region has been strengthened by the war."

Now that Negroponte and Sharon are working together to assure the freedom of Iraqis we can all feel secure and happy.

2004-08-23T22:05:00.000-07:00

Even the NYT has realized that blindly supporting Ariel Sharon's lunacy may be not the best possible policy.

To be just, workable and sustainable, any peace plan will have to divide that land into two coherent territories that are defensible and economically viable. The presence of more than 250,000 Israeli settlers scattered across the occupied West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights, leaving aside the added complications of East Jerusalem, make that division immeasurably harder.

Incidentally adding the colonisers in East Jerusalem takes their numbers to more like 400,000.

2004-08-23T22:01:00.000-07:00

More Abu Graib revelations from the Washington Post.
"There were two MP dog handlers who did use dogs to threaten kids detained at Abu Ghraib"

Compassionate liberation. Four more years.

2004-08-21T20:58:00.000-07:00

Bush in his ad tells us of the 'liberation' of Iraq, Afghanistan. We are told "At this Olympics there will be two more free nations -- and two fewer terrorist regimes."

In Sports Illustrated members of the Iraqi football (soccer) team give their views. One player says: "Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign. He can find another way to advertise himself."

Another player:"How will he meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women? He has committed so many crimes."

The coach: "The American army has killed so many people in Iraq. What is freedom when I go to the [national] stadium and there are shootings on the road?"

More on this from the Guardian, the coach: "We do not have freedom in Iraq, we have an occupying force. This is one of our most miserable times. Freedom is just a word for the media."

Meanwhile in Afganistan, the Red Cross is pulling out because it is so unsafe, following Medecins Sans Frontieres who declared they are leaving some time ago (link).

2004-08-18T15:10:00.000-07:00

Comments on the 2004 Democratic Party platform :
The word "terror" appears 59 times.
The phrase "war on terror" 7 times.
The word "homeland" 10 times.
The word "security" 57 times.
The word "education" 29 times.
The word "hunger" appears 2 times.
The word "homeless" 1 time.
The word "unemployed" 1 time.

We are told "U.S. and international policies must take into consideration the best interests of the Iraqi people", I suppose an improvement over the Bushies but hardly a powerful statement of support for the rights of Iraqis.

On Israel/Palestine, we are told "we will ensure that under all circumstances, Israel retains the qualitative edge for its national security and its right to self-defense". The Palestinians, (of course) need to be "committed to fighting terror" while accepting that "Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and should remain an undivided city", in other words that occupied East Jerusalem will never be part of a Palestinian state.
The Democrats give away more Palestinian rights: "The creation of a Palestinian state should resolve the issue of Palestinian refugees by allowing them to settle there, rather than in Israel."
My favorite is: "Furthermore, all understand that it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949."
I guess I am not one of all, neither are the vast majority of the Palestinians, nor numerous Israeli activists, US Jewish groups, the United Nations, the International Court, the European Union, the Geneva Conventions, ...

2004-05-20T22:35:00.000-07:00

Thumbs up.

2004-05-19T06:22:00.000-07:00

Haaretz:

Eight Palestinians were killed and dozens were wounded Wednesday afternoon when Israel Defense Forces helicopter gunships and tanks fired missiles and shells at a crowd of protestors in Rafah refugee camp, in the southern Gaza Strip.

The IDF said in a statement that it had not targeted the crowd; military sources one of the tank shells either passed through a nearby abandoned building or went off course and hit the demonstrators.

Palestinian witnesses said most of those killed were school children, The witnesses also said that four missiles were fired from the air.

At least sixty people, including many women and children, were wounded in the incident, witnesses said. The incident brings the day's death toll in the area to 13.

This comes after a few days of home demolitions and of course strong denounciation by the US here

House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-Texas) told the AIPAC conference on Monday that he would urge passage of a House resolution saying there is no right of return for Palestinians "and that Israel will not retreat behind
the 1967 borders."

House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) also said he would spearhead a resolution.

Bush said: "Finally, AIPAC elected a president I can kiss"

Rice, speaking in Berlin after a meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, said the United States had told Israel "that some of their actions don't create the best atmosphere."

For the last few days Israel has been demolishing homes in Rafah in the process killing dozens and leaving thousands homeless. Amnesty International reported that "More than 10% of Gaza's agricultural land has been destroyed in the past three and a half years" and destroyed "More than 3,000 homes"

2004-05-18T22:04:00.000-07:00

Amira Hass: "Neither the armed men nor the weapons smuggled through the tunnels are a strategic threat to Israel. Rarely do they manage to strike successfully at the soldiers and cause real pain. Usually, they are merely a nuisance for the military patrols that routinely fire into Rafah, whether they have been fired on or not. But the danger posed by the armed men and the tunnels is so inflated that the statistics of destruction and death sown by Israel in Rafah go largely ignored - in Israel. In Rafah, on the other hand, it feeds the conclusion reached the other day by a religious lawyer. 'Everyone in Israel - opposition, left, Labor - bears responsibility for what their government is doing here.'"

2004-05-16T13:49:00.000-07:00

Suprisingly Newsweek reports on the policies involved in bringing freedom and the american way to the evildoers of Afghanistan/Iraq:

"The White House was undeterred. By Jan. 25, 2002, according to a memo obtained by NEWSWEEK, it was clear that Bush had already decided that the Geneva Conventions did not apply at all, either to the Taliban or Al Qaeda. In the memo, which was written to Bush by Gonzales, the White House legal counsel told the president that Powell had 'requested that you reconsider that decision.' Gonzales then laid out startlingly broad arguments that anticipated any objections to the conduct of U.S. soldiers or CIA interrogators in the future. 'As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war,' Gonzales wrote to Bush. 'The nature of the new war places a �high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians.' Gonzales concluded in stark terms: 'In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.'"

2004-05-16T02:04:00.000-07:00

Sy Hersh: "The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld's decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of elite combat units, and hurt America's prospects in the war on terror."

2004-05-12T14:22:00.000-07:00

BBC: "An Islamic militant website has shown a video apparently showing the beheading of an American in Iraq.
The video showed five men in headscarves and ski masks cutting off the man's head with a knife.
Moments earlier the victim, bound and dressed in an orange jumpsuit, said he was an American from Philadelphia.
The group, thought to be linked to al-Qaeda, said it was carrying out the killing in retaliation for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers."

The brutality continues.

2004-05-12T06:54:00.000-07:00

Another star is O'Reilly Factor in this case interviewing Sy Hersh and displaying his skills as a journalist

O'REILLY: Continuing now with investigative reporter Seymour Hersh from Washington, who has the cover story in 'The New Yorker' magazine about the Iraq torture situation.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but what I see unfolding here from what you told me and then General Karpinski told me is that there is a tension between the interrogators who wanted to find out by you know, using means that are dubious information, and the military police who basically who objected to some of these techniques.
But you can understand that like Vietnam, you have people shooting at Americans, blowing them up, and then running into mosques and hiding behind children and all of that. So how far do we go to get the information that protects our own troops?
That I guess is the essential question that led to this scandal, correct?
HERSH: Yes, but one of the things, the problem you have, of course you have to go if you're dealing with hardened Al Qaeda. There's not much mercy. And none of us would have much mercy.
The problem here is they were picking on people that they hadn't made any differentiation on. They didn't know. And you know, and the kind of stuff that was going on, Mr. O'Reilly, when you take an Arab man and you make him walk naked in front of other men, this is the greatest shame they can have. And then you have them simulate homosexual activities. You have young women and young men, the women in particular, videotaping and photographing them doing this. This is actually a form of torture and coercion.
O'REILLY: No, there's no question about it. And there's no question. There's no justification for it. But how do you wind up in a prison if you're just innocent and didn't do anything? See, our commanders and ourembedded reporters tell me that they're way too busy to be rounding up guys in the marketplace and throwing them into prison.
So I'm going to dispute your contention that we had a lot of people in there with just no rap sheets at all, who were just picked up for no reason at all. The people who were in the prison were suspected of being either Al Qaeda or terrorists who were killing Americans and knew something about it.
HERSH: The problem is that it isn't my contention. It's the contention of Maj. Gen. Taguba, who was appointed by General Sanchez to do the investigation.
It's his contention, in his report, that more than 60 percent of the people in that prison, detainees, civilians, had nothing to do with the war effort.
O'REILLY: How did they get there then? Because I...
HERSH: Because how do they get into the prison?
I'll tell you how they get there. You bust the guy that doesn't have anything to do. You humiliate him. You break him down. You interrogate him. He gives up the name of you want to know who is an insurgent, who is Al Qaeda? He gives up any name he knows.
O'REILLY: Do you really believe that U.S. forces were sweeping Baghdad, and the others -- you're just picking people up off the street for no reason?
HERSH: Well, inevitably you get people in a sweep that have nothing to with what you're looking for.
O'REILLY: All right, now that's true. But to the number of...
HERSH: Of course.
O'REILLY: ...50 percent, I'm not buying that. I mean, I could be wrong. But I'm going on the basis of our reporters in the field. And I'm asking them, have you ever seen any of these -- no. These guys are way to busy. They got stuff to do all day long. They're not sweeping people up.
HERSH: We're talking about last fall, when things weren't as acute as they are now, certainly it's a terrible situation right now. And everybody -- nobody is sweeping anything. They're in forced protection.
O'REILLY: Right.
HERSH: But last fall, things were much calmer. People were being swept. This did happen.
O'REILLY: All right.

2004-05-12T06:47:00.000-07:00

Senator Inhofe gets the prize for trying hard to get to the bottom of US crimes:

SEN. INHOFE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I -- well, first of all, I regret I wasn't here on Friday. I was unable to be here. But maybe it's better that I wasn't, because as I watched the -- this outrage, this outrage everyone seems to have about the treatment of these prisoners, I was, I have to say -- and I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment. The idea that these prisoners -- you know, they're not there for traffic violations. If they're in cell block 1-A or 1-B, these prisoners, they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents...
SEN. INHOFE: Mr. Chairman, I also am -- and have to say, when we talk about the treatment of these prisoners, that I would guess that these prisoners wake up every morning thanking Allah that Saddam Hussein is not in charge of these prisoners. When he was in charge they would take electric drills and drill holes through hands, they would cut their tongues out, they would cut their ears off. We've seen accounts of lowering their bodies into vats of acid. All these things were taking place. This was the type of treatment that they had...
SEN. INHOFE: I am also outraged that we have so many humanitarian do-gooders right now crawling all over these prisons, looking for human rights violations while our troops, our heroes, are fighting and dying. And I just don't think we can take seven -- seven bad people.

2004-05-11T12:39:00.000-07:00

Army Times: "Around the halls of the Pentagon, a term of caustic derision has emerged for the enlisted soldiers at the heart of the furor over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal: the six morons who lost the war.
Indeed, the damage done to the U.S. military and the nation as a whole by the horrifying photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees at the notorious prison is incalculable.
But the folks in the Pentagon are talking about the wrong morons.
There is no excuse for the behavior displayed by soldiers in the now-infamous pictures and an even more damning report by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba. Every soldier involved should be ashamed.
But while responsibility begins with the six soldiers facing criminal charges, it extends all the way up the chain of command to the highest reaches of the military hierarchy and its civilian leadership.
The entire affair is a failure of leadership from start to finish. From the moment they are captured, prisoners are hooded, shackled and isolated. The message to the troops: Anything goes. "

Pretty incredible considering the source.

2004-05-10T06:49:00.000-07:00

Got this from Empire Notes: "Pentagon. Time Magazine has obtained an email that warns Pentagon employees about the Taguba report:

THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS REPORT IS CLASSIFIED; DO NOT GO TO FOX NEWS TO READ OR OBTAIN A COPY.

"

Magnificent. Read the actual report at F*X as a pdf document.

2004-05-09T20:17:00.000-07:00

Amnesty International: "Shortly after the transfers of prisoners to Guantanamo Bay had begun, Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld was asked whether ''hooding.., shaving, chaining, perhaps even tranquillizing some of these people is violating their civil rights''. He replied: ''It simply isn't.... all one has to do is look at television any day of the week, and you can see that when prisoners are being moved between locations, they're frequently restrained in some way with handcuffs or some sort of restraints''.(117) On 15 January 2002, reacting to criticisms of the treatment of the detainees, he said: ''They are being treated vastly better than they treated anybody else over the last several years... It's not going to be a country club, but it will be humane''.(118) On 8 February 2002, he said: ''Notwithstanding the isolated pockets of international hyperventilation, we do not treat detainees in any manner other than a manner that is humane.''(119) A few days later, President Bush said that the Guantanamo detainees were being treated ''incredibly humanely''. The President added that the USA ''is mindful of the need to respect people's rights.''(120)"

2004-05-09T20:10:00.000-07:00

Guardian: "Mr Rumsfeld did not apologise for the Red Cross reports of unarmed Iraqi prisoners being shot to death by military personnel in watchtowers. He said nothing of the 'interrogation techniques' developed by US intelligence agencies and taught to security services the world over, including here. He expressed no regret for employing private contractors to question people who were accused of no crime, then hiding their sadistic behaviour from public scrutiny. He never mentioned how sorry he might be for turning over captives to other governments using even cruder torture methods. He showed no contrition for continuing to hide hundreds of people in Guant�namo Bay away from the law. Such leaders have placed themselves outside the bounds of international law, their own code of justice and their much-admired constitution. In doing so, they have also removed the protection of law from those who follow their orders. "

2004-05-09T19:44:00.000-07:00

A reminder that torture is not quite as un-american as some would have us believe

Kubarkin: 'Faced with a FOIA lawsuit, the Central Intelligence Agency recently released an interrogation manual to the Baltimore Sun that details brutal methods of extracting information from resistant sources. The "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation" manual does more than simply outline various psychological and physical torture tactics: it demonstrates a real-world application of the CIA's mind control research and offers clues on the agency's role in human rights abuses around the world. This report examines the historical context of the interrogation manual, the MKULTRA connection, and the manual itself, presented here verbatim for the first time online.'

Slightly newer is "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual' (1983)". Some interesting stuff here about it and its use in Honduras where Negropontre, our new ambassador to Iraq served.

The report itself (and more) is here, and a page with corrections.

2004-05-09T19:41:00.000-07:00

Sy Hersh: 'No amount of apologetic testimony or political spin last week could mask the fact that, since the attacks of September 11th, President Bush and his top aides have seen themselves as engaged in a war against terrorism in which the old rules did not apply. In the privacy of his office, Rumsfeld chafed over what he saw as the reluctance of senior Pentagon generals and admirals to act aggressively. By mid-2002, he and his senior aides were exchanging secret memorandums on modifying the culture of the military leaders and finding ways to encourage them “to take greater risks.” '

2004-05-09T08:55:00.000-07:00

washingtonpost.com: "Americans from President Bush down have been shocked by reports of abuse of detainees in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, and many would agree with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that such treatment is 'un-American.' But U.S. human rights activists say there is much evidence that similar abuse regularly occurs in our own prisons, without drawing nearly as much public outrage. "

2004-05-08T20:50:00.000-07:00

News: "If anything, the story of these photographs is the story of the West's inability to believe the darkness at the heart of the occupation until it was staring them in the face. The Iraqis already knew, because most have a relative, a friend or an acquaintance who has been detained by the occupation forces at some time and has seen at first hand what goes on inside the prisons and detention centres.
...
Reports that the pictures have lost the US support among Iraqis are wide of the mark: there was no support left after the débâcle of their heavy-handed onslaught on Fallujah. But these pictures have heaped fuel on the fire - a fact not lost on the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who took advantage of the media attention following a US attack on his Mehdi Army to attack President George Bush over Abu Ghraib in his Friday sermon."

2004-05-08T18:13:00.000-07:00

washingtonpost.com: A Sorry State: "To the rest of the world Bush's apologies are mere exercises in damage control. The same president who spoke of leading God's crusade against Evil and who basked in the self-congratulatory aura of his invincible warriors will have difficulty convincing the rest of humanity that he really cares about a few brutalized Arabs.
Given the president's simultaneous and reiterated insistence that neither he nor his staff have done anything wrong and that there is nothing to change in his policies or goals, who will take seriously such an apology, extracted in extremis? Like confessions obtained under torture, it is worthless. As recent events have shown, America under Bush can still debase and humiliate its enemies. But it has lost the respect of its friends -- and it is fast losing respect for itself. Now that is something to feel sorry about."

2004-05-08T11:02:00.000-07:00

BBC: "One British source even said: 'I still don't despair that we can create a society which is better than that of Saddam Hussein' - a stunningly unambitious target compared to what was envisaged. "

2004-05-08T07:30:00.000-07:00

Rumsfeld: "We're functioning with peacetime constraints, with legal requirements, in a wartime situation in the Information Age, where people are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise."

Not concerned with crimes but with the distribution of the images...
By the way, these guys all talk of this torture, murder, abuse as "wrongdoing". Is this different to "evildoing"?

2004-05-07T15:16:00.000-07:00

Guardian On the US treatment of prisoners: "'Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people,' said President Bush plaintively. Indeed, but it is in the nature of the circumstances that Bush has authorised for holding 10,000 prisoners without trial, many in unknown, secret prisons. 'That's not the way we do things in America,' he says. Indeed, it is only the way America does things when it goes abroad; the American constitution protects its own citizens. The self-blinding American myth is that a 'freedom-loving nation' built on the ideals of Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson could never do such things. "

2004-05-07T14:04:00.000-07:00

Since the US is the greatest, most advanced place on earth I was curious to see how it compares to Greece on certain statistics

Infant mortality rate:
CIA: US
total: 6.75 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 6.02 deaths/1,000 live births (2003 est.)
male: 7.46 deaths/1,000 live births
CIA: Greece
total: 6.12 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 5.57 deaths/1,000 live births (2003 est.)
male: 6.64 deaths/1,000 live births

Life expectancy at birth:
CIA: US
total population: 77.14 years
female: 80.05 years (2003 est.)
male: 74.37 years
CIA: Greece
total population: 78.89 years
female: 81.65 years (2003 est.)
male: 76.32 years

Literacy:
CIA: US
total population: 97%
female: 97% (1979 est.)
male: 97%
CIA: Greece
total population: 97.5%
total population: 97.5%
female: 96.5% (2003 est.)
male: 98.6%

2004-05-07T13:19:00.000-07:00

GENERAL ASSEMBLY ADOPTS REVISED RESOLUTION ON QUESTION OF PALESTINE: "The General Assembly affirmed this afternoon that the status of the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, remained one of military occupation, as it adopted a revised resolution on the question of Palestine.

By a recorded vote of 140 in favour to 6 against (Israel, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, United States), with 11 abstentions, the Assembly also affirmed that the Palestinian people had the right to self-determination and to sovereignty over their territory, and that Israel had only the duties and obligations of an occupying Power. (See Annex.)"

Just out of curiosity I wanted to see what these nations were so I pulled out the trusty CIA factbook.

Marshall Islands: "After almost four decades under US administration as the easternmost part of the UN Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, the Marshall Islands attained independence in 1986 under a Compact of Free Association. Compensation claims continue as a result of US nuclear testing on some of the atolls between 1947 and 1962. The Marshall Islands have been home to the US Army Base Kwajalein (USAKA) since 1964."

Micronesia, Federated States of: "In 1979 the Federated States of Micronesia, a UN Trust Territory under US administration, adopted a constitution. In 1986 independence was attained under a Compact of Free Association with the US. Present concerns include large-scale unemployment, overfishing, and overdependence on US aid."

Nauru: "Nauru's phosphate deposits began to be mined early in the 20th century by a German-British consortium; the island was occupied by Australian forces in World War I. Nauru achieved independence in 1968 and joined the UN in 1999. Nauru is the world's smallest independent republic."

Palau: "After three decades as part of the UN Trust Territory of the Pacific under US administration, this westernmost cluster of the Caroline Islands opted for independence in 1978 rather than join the Federated States of Micronesia. A Compact of Free Association with the US was approved in 1986, but not ratified until 1993. It entered into force the following year, when the islands gained independence. "

2004-05-07T12:13:00.000-07:00

Azmi Bishara: The dynamic of occupation: "I find it absurd that US officers grumble about how the resistance fighters mingle with civilians so that occupation forces cannot distinguish between the two. Well, these combatants are actually civilians under arms. What does the US army expect them to do, set up a camp outside Falluja? The combatants mix with the civilian population because they are civilians, because they live in civilian homes. The occupation comes without civilians because it is far removed from home, because its soldiers are not sleeping in their own homes -- they only bomb the homes of others. The aerial bombardment of a civilian house leaves mutilated bodies. The media has just carried scenes of the Israeli bombardment and its effect on the bodies of Al- Rantisi and his companions. What was that if not mutilation?"

2004-05-06T13:01:00.000-07:00

washingtonpost.com: "But Mr. Rumsfeld's decisions helped create a lawless regime in which prisoners in both Iraq and Afghanistan have been humiliated, beaten, tortured and murdered -- and in which, until recently, no one has been held accountable. "

2004-05-06T12:45:00.000-07:00

President Bush Meets with Al Arabiya Television on Wednesday: "We will deal with his militias, as will the Iraqi forces deal with these militias. Militias are people who are willing to kill, intimidate and try to take matters into their own hands, which is not the way democracy functions. Free societies do not allow thugs to roam streets and hold people hostage to their whims. The Iraqis will deal with Mr. Sadr. "

Article II of the US bill of rights says: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

So, is he going to get rid of that, or more likely, "democracy"? After all this article is probably the most important one to him...

2004-05-06T12:07:00.000-07:00

washingtonpost.com: The pictures keep on coming in.

2004-05-05T12:20:00.000-07:00

A Wretched New Picture Of America (washingtonpost.com): "Reputation, image, perception. The problem, it seems, isn't so much the abuse of the prisoners, because we will get to the bottom of that and, of course, we're not really like that. The problem is our reputation. Our soldiers' reputations. Our national self-image. These photos, we insist, are not us."

2004-05-04T23:16:00.000-07:00

Guardian: "I've seen a photo of a young American soldier with two Iraqi boys. There is no nakedness or torture, but it is no less nasty for that. The boys are holding a cardboard sign. They and the soldier are smiling and doing a thumbs up. He is pointing at the cardboard sign, on which he's written: 'Lcpl Boudreaux killed my Dad. then he knocked up my sister!' Imagine the scene: Lance Corporal Boudreaux, a soldier on a liberating, civilising mission, asks the natives to pose for a 'memento'. He gives them the sign to hold. What lie did he tell them about its message? 'Iraq is liberated', or 'Mission accomplished'? And who, in this scene, is the more civilised?"

Here is the purported picture.

Of course this could just be a Photoshop creation. Snopes has no definitive answer.

2004-05-02T20:55:00.000-07:00

Guardian: 'Among the most stunning decisions taken is the handover of the interrogation of prisoners of war to private firms. Employees from the firms Caci and Titan now reportedly fill such roles as interrogators and translators...

This leaves a vacuum. Phillip Carter, a former US army officer now at UCLA Law School, notes: "Legally speaking, they [military contractors] fall into the same grey area as the unlawful combatants detained at Guantánamo Bay."'

2004-05-02T19:06:00.000-07:00

Guardian: 'NAJAF, Iraq (AP) - Dhia al-Shweiri spent several stints in Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, twice under Saddam Hussein's rule and once under American. He prefers Saddam's torture to the humiliation of being stripped naked by his American guards, he said Sunday in an interview with The Associated Press.'

But remember Bush told us they hate us because they hate freedom and that people are no longer disappearing into political prisons, torture chambers, and mass graves so why worry?

2004-05-02T18:57:00.000-07:00

Gideon Levy: 'When will the soldiers at long last start talking? When will their consciences get the better of them? When will they sit at home and tell the truth about what they did in their army service in the territories?'

As usual Levy describes the reality of Israeli occupation with humanity and anger.

2004-05-02T18:54:00.000-07:00

Robert Fisk: "Why are we surprised at their racism, their brutality, their sheer callousness towards Arabs? Those American soldiers in Saddam's old prison at Abu Ghraib, those young British squaddies in Basra came -- as soldiers often come -- from towns and cities where race hatred has a home: Tennessee and Lancashire."

2004-05-01T17:36:00.000-07:00

Bush: "Because free societies do not harbor terrorists; free societies do not threaten people or use weapons of mass destruction."

Now, the only use of nuclear weapons so far is that of the US against Japan in 1945. In Bush's terms, the US was a 'free society' so he lies on the WMD issue. The US also harbors terrorists, for example Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch, so he lies on the terrorist issue too.

Bush Lies? Yes, he constantly lies.

2004-05-01T17:33:00.000-07:00

Sy Hersh: 'Specifically, Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" at Abu Ghraib. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also by members of the American intelligence community... Taguba’s report listed some of the wrongdoing:
Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.'

photos

Bush: "One year later, despite many challenges, life for the Iraqi people is a world away from the cruelty and corruption of Saddam's regime. At the most basic level of justice, people are no longer disappearing into political prisons, torture chambers, and mass graves -- because the former dictator is in prison, himself."
Also: 'A year ago, I did give the speech from the carrier, saying that we had achieved an important objective, that we'd accomplished a mission, which was the removal of Saddam Hussein. And as a result, there are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms or mass graves in Iraq'

2004-04-30T07:04:00.000-07:00

Terry Jones has a funny one on the distortion of language in Iraq.
Guardian: "Then there's the problem of what the Americans are going to call the Iraqis - especially the ones that they kill. You can call people who are defending their own homes from rockets and missiles launched from helicopters and tanks 'fanatics and terrorists' only for so long. Eventually even newspaper readers will smell a rat."

Which reminds me of several other similar ones lying around.
Paul de Rooij: Glossary of the Iraqi Occupation
A Glossary of Warmongering
Glossary of Occupation

And from a pro Israeli occupation view
CAMERA: Dictionary of Bias

2004-04-29T22:29:00.000-07:00

Guardian: "One of the soldiers, Staff Sgt Chip Frederick is accused of posing in a photograph sitting on top of a detainee, committing an indecent act and with assault for striking detainees - and ordering detainees to strike each other.
He told CBS: 'We had no support, no training whatsoever. And I kept asking my chain of command for certain things ... like rules and regulations.'
His lawyer, Gary Myers, told the Guardian that Sgt Frederick had not had the opportunity to read the Geneva Conventions before being put on guard duty, a task he was not trained to perform. "

Not having been taught the Geneva Conventions, how could he possibly have known that it was wrong?
Remember, they hate us for our freedoms.

2004-04-29T11:38:00.000-07:00

60 Minutes II: "60 Minutes II acquired graphic photos of U.S. troops mistreating and humiliating Iraqi POWs. Dan Rather spoke to Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt about the military's probe of the events."

You can see some of the images here. American prudishness: torture images are OK, but people's butts and genitals are airbrushed out...

2004-04-26T22:51:00.000-07:00

BBC: "But in an interview with Reuters news agency, Mr Powell said that while the new government would take full sovereignty over the country, it would have to give some of it back to the Americans so that the US would still be in command of its own troops.
'I hope they will understand that in order for this government to get up and running - to be effective - some of its sovereignty will have to be given back, if I can put it that way, or limited by them,' Mr Powell said.
'It's sovereignty but [some] of that sovereignty they are going to allow us to exercise on their behalf and with their permission.' "

2004-04-24T07:40:00.000-07:00

washingtonpost: "'Our soldiers and our Marines have the inherent right of self-defense,' Kimmitt said. 'Whether that is somebody who is trying to defend their city, which seems to be somewhat of a ludicrous concept, or somebody who's just out to kill an American, both of those will find the full force of the United States Marine Corps and the coalition brought down on them.' "

Why is "trying to defend their city" "somewhat of a ludicrous concept"?

2004-04-23T12:21:00.000-07:00

BBC : "Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says he no longer feels bound by a promise to the US not to harm veteran Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
In a TV interview, Mr Sharon said he had informed US President George W Bush about the change in his position when they met in Washington last week. "

2004-04-22T10:55:00.000-07:00

BBC: "Maj Gen Martin Dempsey said about 10% of new officers were rebels and a further 40% had left their jobs - but the rest 'stood tall and stood firm'. "

No doubt these are all "deadenders", or "foreign terrorists" and other evildoers. Trouble is, this leaves at best 50% being freedomloving good dooers.

2004-04-21T22:13:00.000-07:00

Guardian: "'The Greeks have this Mediterranean mentality that is like the syrtaki dance, we start very slow and then speed up,' says Costis Hadjidakis, an MEP. 'That's why we've now started working 24 hours a day. The Greeks are very lazy and very disorganised but they're also very clever. When they decide to work they can create miracles.' "

Couldn't resist this...

2004-04-21T20:24:00.000-07:00

Miserable Failure: International bodies can be important in the war against terror if they're effective. They're lousy in the war against terror is they're not effective, because this is a results-oriented game we're in right now. We've got to be effective to stop them.

Who are them? International bodies? I guess so. After all they did prove that they had no relevance.

I would urge you to see the movie "Osama." It's hard for the American mentality to grasp how barbaric the Taliban was toward women in Afghanistan. So see the movie, and then maybe -- it'll speak better than I can possibly speak. Burl is always accusing me of not being able to speak so good anyway.

See. He does want Americans to be informed. Go see "Osama". But he is cute in his stupidity isn't he? Burl, whoever that is thinks so anyway.

We all thought he had weapons. We found out -- the truth will be known over time. We found out he had the ability to make weapons. He had the capability. I think the intent was clear. After all, he hated America. He paid suiciders to go kill Jews.

It is all so clear. He had ability and capability and America hatred and Jew hatred.

See, free societies don't promote terror.

No, I guess not. How many civilians died in Iraq? In Viet Nam? Chile? El Salvador? Nicaragua? Palestine? Hiroshima? Nagasaki? Dresden? No indeed. Free societies don't promote terror.

Now look, there's a debate, I readily concede -- some people don't believe if you're a Muslim or an Arab you can be free. I just strongly disagree with that thought. I think everybody yearns to be free, and I think everybody can self-govern. I remind you, some people thought the Japanese could never self-govern or be free. And, yet, as I said in my press conference the other day, I had the honor of sitting down to dinner with President Koizumi -- or Prime Minister Koizumi. And we're talking about North Korea, which I'll get to here in a second.
It's amazing -- he's a great guy, by the way. Elvis Presley is one of his favorites. (Laughter.) His favorite movie was Gary Cooper in "High Noon." One time he walked up to me and said, "You like Cooper." (Laughter.) I said, "I'm like Cooper?" He said, "Yes." (Laughter.) I finally figured out what he meant. (Laughter.)

Yes. Quite.

The long-term strategy of this government is to spread freedom around the world. And I believe -- I told you, a free Iraq will be a major change agent for world peace. I also believe a free Palestinian state would be a major change agent for world peace. Ariel Sharon came to America and he stood up with me and he said, we are pulling out of Gaza and parts of the West Bank. In my judgment, the whole world should have said, thank you, Ariel. Now we have a chance to begin the construction of a peaceful Palestinian state.

Well yes, Thank you Ariel, thank you ever so much. Did I say thank you? Thank you. Thanks for the 2,400 dead Palestinians including 460 children and some 600 Israelis killed including some 100 children (thanks B'Tselem). Thank you. Thank you Ariel. Thank you Dubya.