Does anybody know if our honorable client-state, Saudi Arabia, has crucified (sic) Ali al-Nimr, the teenager so sentenced last year?
He was only 17 years old when he was condemned to death by crucifixion (sic) for participation in an illegal demonstration and for a large number of other offences, including “setting up a page on his Blackberry with over 800 people, naming it ‘The Liberals,' with the goal of inciting demonstrations by way of sending pictures of the demonstrations, their time/locations and inviting people to participate"?
I can't find any follow-up coverage in the press, although there are plenty of happy and not-so-happy stories about Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his efforts to "stabilize" the Saudi monarchy.
For instance, have they yet chopped the head off Mujtaba al Sweikat, the 17-year-old arrested, at the airport on his way to matriculate at the University of Western Michigan, for “supervising” a group on Facebook and “photographing the demonstrations, which is punishable according to the cybercrime bill”? And has the disabled teenager Munir Al-Adam been beheaded yet for his participation in Arab spring protests?
All these executions would be crimes under international law, by the way. Any word from Turtle Bay or The Hague?
--
Postscript: Despite a deadly war he is waging against neighboring Yemen, Saudi Arabia's King Salman has been awarded 'Personality of the Year' for his role in “uniting and protecting” the Muslim community.
Showing posts with label war crimes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war crimes. Show all posts
Learning from the past
Ben Ferencz, 98, was a prosecutor the Nuremberg trials.
What does the last surviving prosecutor at Nuremberg think the trials achieved? Listen to a BBC interview here.
What does the last surviving prosecutor at Nuremberg think the trials achieved? Listen to a BBC interview here.
Rectal feeding and rehydration...
Something new to think about.
Oliver Laughland takes a look at some of the ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ used by the agency: How the CIA tortured its detainees: Waterboarding, confinement, sleep deprivation (The Guardian).
Oliver Laughland takes a look at some of the ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ used by the agency: How the CIA tortured its detainees: Waterboarding, confinement, sleep deprivation (The Guardian).
The Long War
In Julius Caesar, Brutus argues that "Th'abuse of greatness is when it disjoins / Remorse from power." Thus Lincoln, in whose character cohabited forcefulness, caution and morality, will be honored through generations, long after Bush and Obama, the facilitators of endless war and apologists for the slaughter of innocents, are mercifully consigned to oblivion.
Ain't it the truth
"From our use of drones to the detention of terrorist suspects, the decisions we are making will define the type of nation and world that we leave to our children." -- President Barack Obama, 2013-05-23
The Long War: Will the international community stop the drones?
A senior United Nations official is expected to call on the United States next week to stop Central Intelligence Agency drone strikes against people suspected of belonging to Al Qaeda, complicating the Obama administration’s growing reliance on that tactic in Pakistan. -- U.N. Official to Ask U.S. to End C.I.A. Drone Strikes by Charlie Savage (New York Times 2010-05-27).
War Crimes: No longer possible to blame the Senate for U.S. footdragging on landmine treaty
Senators and Representatives Support Ban on Landmines: Letters Sent to President Obama (United States Campaign to Ban Landmines press release).
A letter signed by 68 senators, asking the administration to join the 1997 Landmine Ban Treaty, was delivered to President Obama on Tuesday. The signers include 10 Republicans and two Independents and constitute more than the two-thirds of the Senate needed to ratify a treaty.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (VT-D) and Sen. George Voinovich (OH-R) circulated the Senate letter, and a similar letter in support of the Senate initiative, circulated by Rep. James McGovern (MA-D) and Rep. Darrell Issa (CA-R) in the House of Representatives, was also delivered to President Obama. The existence of the letters was made public on May 8, but the final versions, with all signatures, was delivered Tuesday.
In describing the use of antipersonnel landmines, Sen. Patrick Leahy said, “The idea that a modern military like ours would be using indiscriminate, victim-activated weapons today is hard to reconcile with our current military objectives, particularly when you consider that the two countries (Iraq and Afghanistan) where our troops are fighting are parties to the treaty and the members of the coalition that we are leading in Afghanistan are also parties to the treaty."
The Administration launched a review of U.S. landmine policy late last year, and in the letters the legislators say that they are “confident that through a thorough, deliberative review the Administration can identify any obstacles to joining the Convention and develop a plan to overcome them as soon as possible.”
Rep. James McGovern, who circulated the letter in the House, said, "A thorough review will show that the U.S. can play an even greater role in the world on landmines by formally joining the ban. The Senate letter demonstrates the support is there."
The Congressional letters follow a letter sent to President Obama on March 22 by leaders from 65 national nongovernmental organizations that also urge the U.S. to relinquish antipersonnel landmines and join the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty without delay.
“The strong support these letters have received shows that Congress is firmly behind accession to the Mine Ban Treaty,” said Zach Hudson, the coordinator of the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines (USCBL). "The U.S. has not used these barbaric weapons in 19 years. With these letters, Congress adds its voice to that of the American people in calling on our government to join our NATO allies—and all of the 158 nations that have joined this treaty—and eliminate the use of landmines once and for all.”
Read the Senate Letter
Read the House Letter
Read the NGO Letter
Action: Tell Pres. Obama and Sec. Clinton that you support the treaty.
A letter signed by 68 senators, asking the administration to join the 1997 Landmine Ban Treaty, was delivered to President Obama on Tuesday. The signers include 10 Republicans and two Independents and constitute more than the two-thirds of the Senate needed to ratify a treaty.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (VT-D) and Sen. George Voinovich (OH-R) circulated the Senate letter, and a similar letter in support of the Senate initiative, circulated by Rep. James McGovern (MA-D) and Rep. Darrell Issa (CA-R) in the House of Representatives, was also delivered to President Obama. The existence of the letters was made public on May 8, but the final versions, with all signatures, was delivered Tuesday.
In describing the use of antipersonnel landmines, Sen. Patrick Leahy said, “The idea that a modern military like ours would be using indiscriminate, victim-activated weapons today is hard to reconcile with our current military objectives, particularly when you consider that the two countries (Iraq and Afghanistan) where our troops are fighting are parties to the treaty and the members of the coalition that we are leading in Afghanistan are also parties to the treaty."
The Administration launched a review of U.S. landmine policy late last year, and in the letters the legislators say that they are “confident that through a thorough, deliberative review the Administration can identify any obstacles to joining the Convention and develop a plan to overcome them as soon as possible.”
Rep. James McGovern, who circulated the letter in the House, said, "A thorough review will show that the U.S. can play an even greater role in the world on landmines by formally joining the ban. The Senate letter demonstrates the support is there."
The Congressional letters follow a letter sent to President Obama on March 22 by leaders from 65 national nongovernmental organizations that also urge the U.S. to relinquish antipersonnel landmines and join the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty without delay.
“The strong support these letters have received shows that Congress is firmly behind accession to the Mine Ban Treaty,” said Zach Hudson, the coordinator of the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines (USCBL). "The U.S. has not used these barbaric weapons in 19 years. With these letters, Congress adds its voice to that of the American people in calling on our government to join our NATO allies—and all of the 158 nations that have joined this treaty—and eliminate the use of landmines once and for all.”
Read the Senate Letter
Read the House Letter
Read the NGO Letter
Action: Tell Pres. Obama and Sec. Clinton that you support the treaty.
Saturday Catchup 2010-05-15
Mad Crowd Disease: "A new strain of populism is metastasizing before our eyes, nourished by the same libertarian impulses that have unsettled American society for half a century now. Anarchistic like the Sixties, selfish like the Eighties, contradicting neither, it is estranged, aimless, and as juvenile as our new century. It appeals to petulant individuals convinced that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone, and that others are conspiring to keep them from doing just that. This is the one threat that will bring Americans into the streets. Welcome to the politics of the libertarian mob." -- The Tea Party Jacobins by Mark Lilla (New York Review of Books 2010-05-09).
Alone Together (Naturally): A call for more freedom is really a demand for power, "our power to make real choices, about not only our personal lives but about the forces determining the quality of life in our communities." So many of the factors that affect our opportunity, our freedom to thrive -- general access to quality education and to health care, say, or to public transport and libraries and parks, or to clean air and potable water, to say nothing of police and fire protection -- all require a fair and functioning society. We can’t even achieve the state of being “left alone,” alone. -- Why Freedom Should Be the #1 Issue for Progressives by Frances Moore Lappé (AlterNet 2010-05-13).
The (Tea) Party is over: When trouble comes, those who complain the loudest about big government are the first ones with their hands out for federal help. "Until tea partiers are willing to tear up their Social Security cards and Medicare cards, and reject all help from the FBI, Coast Guard, EPA, FEMA, or any other federal agency, they're nothing but a bunch of phonies." -- The Death of the Tea Party Movement by Bill Press (Baraboo News Republic 2010-06-09).
I'd say Что делать?, but that'd kinda be like raising a red flag: Here's a video from a grass roots campaign that is working to "wrest control of our economy from the big banks, crony capitalists and financial elites:"
( Watch on YouTube.) Action: Go to ForOurEconomy.org, download their 12-point primer on how to seize a measure of control over our economic lives; join; donate; protest.
Change Watch: "There is nothing inherently good about compromise. The ability to form a good compromise, when it is necessary, is an important skill. But you should compromise only when you can’t completely achieve what you want without it. If you have sufficient votes or support for your position and think it is the best choice of action, then you should pursue it. Compromising in that instance is stupid. The problem with Washington is the fake 'compromise fetish' (which is similar to the 'bipartisan fetish') that turned compromise into the desired goal–without regard to policy value or whether there is a need to compromise in the first place. What is the source of this fetish? Compromise destroys accountability. Politicians hate being held accountable and so they have a vested interest to support this fetish and those who share it." -- Compromise Fetishists: How Secret Deals Obscure Accountability, Subvert Democracy by Jon Walker (FireDogLake 2010-05-08).
Or to put it another way, summer's (almost) here and the time is right for fighting in the streets:
Or watch it on YouTube.
Don't want what they're smokin': "Just days after the White House released their inherently flawed 2010 National Drug Control Strategy (Read NORML’s refutation of it on The Huffington Post here and here), and mere hours after Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske told reporters at the National Press Club, 'I have read thoroughly the ballot proposition in California; I think I once got an e-mail that told me I won the Irish sweepstakes and that actually had more truth in it than the ballot proposition,' the Associated Press takes the entire U.S. drug war strategy and rakes it over the coals. It’s about damn time!" -- After 40 Years, $1 Trillion, US Drug War “Has Failed to Meet Any of Its Goals” by Paul Armentano (AlterNet 2010-05-13).
Recycling Rhetoric: "The term has so widely used that it is in danger of meaning nothing. It has been applied to all manner of activities in an effort to give those activities the gloss of moral imperative, the cachet of environmental enlightenment. 'Sustainable' has been used variously to mean 'politically feasible,' 'economically feasible,' 'not part of a pyramid or bubble,' 'socially enlightened,' 'consistent with neoconservative small-government dogma,' 'consistent with liberal principles of justice and fairness,' 'morally desirable,' and, at its most diffuse, 'sensibly far-sighted'.” -- Theses on Sustainability: A Primer by Eric Zencey (Orion magazine 2010-5/6).
Following up on Jon Stewart's brilliant impersonation of Glenn Beck a couple of months back, Lewis Black brings on a diagnosis of Beck's Nazi Tourette's Syndrome:
Or go to The Daily Show.
Budget whoas: Underpinning Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s speech last week on Pentagon spending is an understanding of what Spencer Ackerman calls the "mutually distorting relationship between unsustainable defense budgets and political courage" (Gates Claims Eisenhower’s Mantle, Challenging Pentagon Overspending -- Attackerman 2010-06-08).
Someday, won't we just run out of places to invade?: The House is about to vote on a $33 billion bill "war funding," a euphemism for legislation that will pay for the Obama administration's escalation of the war against Afghanistan that must have George Orwell spinning in his grave. The White House is asking the House to treat the expanded war as a fait accompli. In an excellent account of how we got here, David Swanson asks "how much money are we talking about exactly? Well not enough, evidently, for the teabagging enemies of reckless government spending to take notice. Clearly not enough for the labor movement or any other advocates of spending on jobs or healthcare or education or green energy to disturb their slumbers. God forbid! Yet it's still a sizeable number by a certain reckoning. After all, 33 billion miles could take you to the sun 226 times. And $33 billion could radically alter any non-military program in existence. There's a bill in the senate, for instance, that would prevent schools from laying off teachers in all 50 states for a mere $23 billion. Another $9.6 billion would quadruple the Department of Energy's budget for renewable energy. Now, what to do with that extra $0.4 billion?" Victory at all costs in Afghanistan by David Swanson (Asia Times 2010-05-13).
With friends like these...: "The British government has estimated that 70 percent of the terror plots it has uncovered in the past decade can be traced back to Pakistan. Pakistan remains a terrorist hothouse even as jihadism is losing favor elsewhere in the Muslim world. From Egypt to Jordan to Malaysia to Indonesia, radical Islamic groups have been weakened militarily and have lost much of the support they had politically. Why not in Pakistan? The answer is simple: from its founding, the Pakistani government has supported and encouraged jihadi groups, creating an atmosphere that has allowed them to flourish. It appears to have partially reversed course in recent years, but the rot is deep." -- Terrorism’s Supermarket: Why Pakistan keeps exporting jihad by Fareed Zakaria (Newsweek 2010-05-07).
You think?: "The notion that the government can, in effect, execute one of its own citizens far from a combat zone, with no judicial process and based on secret intelligence, makes some legal authorities deeply uneasy." -- U.S. Approval of Killing of Cleric Causes Unease by Scott Shane (New York Times 2010-05-13).
Be prepared: "In the raw aftermath of a successful attack, it will be very hard for an American president to shift the debate in a more productive and honest direction. Imagine if, after a fatal attack, President Obama responded by proposing greater outreach to Muslim communities domestically and around the world, in an effort to undercut radicalization. That is precisely what we and other nations should be doing, but it would undoubtedly be decried as a weak, starry-eyed reaction by our commander in chief, especially after an attack that revealed deficiencies in our counterterrorism system. But right now, after a near-miss, there is a better opportunity to adjust than in an emotionally charged period when the nation is mourning. Though a good dose of political courage would still be required, it would constitute a major improvement to our debate if leaders could come together now and agree on a few key points about our efforts to battle terrorism." -- The Times Square bomb failed. What will we do when the next bomb works? by Richard A. Clarke (The Washington Post 2010-05-09).
First it was our boys in Afghanistan doing a cover of Lady Gaga. Now, from Iraq, “Watch: Straight Soldiers Show Their Support for Gays in the Military by Dancing to Ke$ha”:
The future's last half century: "Fifty years ago this Sunday, Theodore Maiman and his fellow scientists at Hughes Research Laboratory shined a high-power flash lamp on a ruby rod, triggering a beam of coherent light: the first laser.
It wasn’t long before the Pentagon started dreaming up military applications, and futurists were predicting that our soldiers would all get ray guns. Well, not quite. But lasers have revolutionized the U.S. military — changing the way it targets bombs, scares off insurgents, and, yes, blows stuff to bits." Wired's Danger Room remembers some of the greatest hits (and biggest misses) from the first half-century of military lasers. -- 50 Years of Real-Life Ray Guns by Noah Shachtman (Danger Room 2010-05-14).
Not on our airwaves leased from the American people you won't: Faux News refused this ad from the progressive veterans organization Vote Vets:
(also available on YouTube). What's doubly odd is that only a few weeks ago they were running an even stronger spot by same outfit.
Present Shock: A new report from Brookings reveals that our nation now faces five “new realities” that are redefining who we are, where and with whom we live, and how we provide for our own welfare, as well as that of our families and communities. In each of these five areas -- growth and outward expansion, population diversification, aging of the population, uneven higher educational attainment, and income polarization -- the nation reached critical milestones in the 2000s that make those underlying realities too large to ignore any longer. And large metropolitan areas -- the collections of cities, suburbs, and rural areas that house two-thirds of America’s population -- lay squarely at the forefront of these trends. -- State of Metropolitan America: On the Front Lines of Demographic Transformation (pdf) (The Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program 2010).
Burke's Without Peerage: Sometime toward the end of the last millennium, Jerry Wexler and I, spending a happy couple of hours sharing music we liked, discovered that both of thought that, if there was such a thing as the greatest soul singer of all time, it was probably Solomon Burke. Still is.
Or go to YouTube.
Alone Together (Naturally): A call for more freedom is really a demand for power, "our power to make real choices, about not only our personal lives but about the forces determining the quality of life in our communities." So many of the factors that affect our opportunity, our freedom to thrive -- general access to quality education and to health care, say, or to public transport and libraries and parks, or to clean air and potable water, to say nothing of police and fire protection -- all require a fair and functioning society. We can’t even achieve the state of being “left alone,” alone. -- Why Freedom Should Be the #1 Issue for Progressives by Frances Moore Lappé (AlterNet 2010-05-13).
The (Tea) Party is over: When trouble comes, those who complain the loudest about big government are the first ones with their hands out for federal help. "Until tea partiers are willing to tear up their Social Security cards and Medicare cards, and reject all help from the FBI, Coast Guard, EPA, FEMA, or any other federal agency, they're nothing but a bunch of phonies." -- The Death of the Tea Party Movement by Bill Press (Baraboo News Republic 2010-06-09).
I'd say Что делать?, but that'd kinda be like raising a red flag: Here's a video from a grass roots campaign that is working to "wrest control of our economy from the big banks, crony capitalists and financial elites:"
( Watch on YouTube.) Action: Go to ForOurEconomy.org, download their 12-point primer on how to seize a measure of control over our economic lives; join; donate; protest.
Change Watch: "There is nothing inherently good about compromise. The ability to form a good compromise, when it is necessary, is an important skill. But you should compromise only when you can’t completely achieve what you want without it. If you have sufficient votes or support for your position and think it is the best choice of action, then you should pursue it. Compromising in that instance is stupid. The problem with Washington is the fake 'compromise fetish' (which is similar to the 'bipartisan fetish') that turned compromise into the desired goal–without regard to policy value or whether there is a need to compromise in the first place. What is the source of this fetish? Compromise destroys accountability. Politicians hate being held accountable and so they have a vested interest to support this fetish and those who share it." -- Compromise Fetishists: How Secret Deals Obscure Accountability, Subvert Democracy by Jon Walker (FireDogLake 2010-05-08).
Or to put it another way, summer's (almost) here and the time is right for fighting in the streets:
Or watch it on YouTube.
Don't want what they're smokin': "Just days after the White House released their inherently flawed 2010 National Drug Control Strategy (Read NORML’s refutation of it on The Huffington Post here and here), and mere hours after Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske told reporters at the National Press Club, 'I have read thoroughly the ballot proposition in California; I think I once got an e-mail that told me I won the Irish sweepstakes and that actually had more truth in it than the ballot proposition,' the Associated Press takes the entire U.S. drug war strategy and rakes it over the coals. It’s about damn time!" -- After 40 Years, $1 Trillion, US Drug War “Has Failed to Meet Any of Its Goals” by Paul Armentano (AlterNet 2010-05-13).
Recycling Rhetoric: "The term has so widely used that it is in danger of meaning nothing. It has been applied to all manner of activities in an effort to give those activities the gloss of moral imperative, the cachet of environmental enlightenment. 'Sustainable' has been used variously to mean 'politically feasible,' 'economically feasible,' 'not part of a pyramid or bubble,' 'socially enlightened,' 'consistent with neoconservative small-government dogma,' 'consistent with liberal principles of justice and fairness,' 'morally desirable,' and, at its most diffuse, 'sensibly far-sighted'.” -- Theses on Sustainability: A Primer by Eric Zencey (Orion magazine 2010-5/6).Following up on Jon Stewart's brilliant impersonation of Glenn Beck a couple of months back, Lewis Black brings on a diagnosis of Beck's Nazi Tourette's Syndrome:
Or go to The Daily Show.
Budget whoas: Underpinning Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s speech last week on Pentagon spending is an understanding of what Spencer Ackerman calls the "mutually distorting relationship between unsustainable defense budgets and political courage" (Gates Claims Eisenhower’s Mantle, Challenging Pentagon Overspending -- Attackerman 2010-06-08).
Someday, won't we just run out of places to invade?: The House is about to vote on a $33 billion bill "war funding," a euphemism for legislation that will pay for the Obama administration's escalation of the war against Afghanistan that must have George Orwell spinning in his grave. The White House is asking the House to treat the expanded war as a fait accompli. In an excellent account of how we got here, David Swanson asks "how much money are we talking about exactly? Well not enough, evidently, for the teabagging enemies of reckless government spending to take notice. Clearly not enough for the labor movement or any other advocates of spending on jobs or healthcare or education or green energy to disturb their slumbers. God forbid! Yet it's still a sizeable number by a certain reckoning. After all, 33 billion miles could take you to the sun 226 times. And $33 billion could radically alter any non-military program in existence. There's a bill in the senate, for instance, that would prevent schools from laying off teachers in all 50 states for a mere $23 billion. Another $9.6 billion would quadruple the Department of Energy's budget for renewable energy. Now, what to do with that extra $0.4 billion?" Victory at all costs in Afghanistan by David Swanson (Asia Times 2010-05-13).
With friends like these...: "The British government has estimated that 70 percent of the terror plots it has uncovered in the past decade can be traced back to Pakistan. Pakistan remains a terrorist hothouse even as jihadism is losing favor elsewhere in the Muslim world. From Egypt to Jordan to Malaysia to Indonesia, radical Islamic groups have been weakened militarily and have lost much of the support they had politically. Why not in Pakistan? The answer is simple: from its founding, the Pakistani government has supported and encouraged jihadi groups, creating an atmosphere that has allowed them to flourish. It appears to have partially reversed course in recent years, but the rot is deep." -- Terrorism’s Supermarket: Why Pakistan keeps exporting jihad by Fareed Zakaria (Newsweek 2010-05-07).
You think?: "The notion that the government can, in effect, execute one of its own citizens far from a combat zone, with no judicial process and based on secret intelligence, makes some legal authorities deeply uneasy." -- U.S. Approval of Killing of Cleric Causes Unease by Scott Shane (New York Times 2010-05-13).
Be prepared: "In the raw aftermath of a successful attack, it will be very hard for an American president to shift the debate in a more productive and honest direction. Imagine if, after a fatal attack, President Obama responded by proposing greater outreach to Muslim communities domestically and around the world, in an effort to undercut radicalization. That is precisely what we and other nations should be doing, but it would undoubtedly be decried as a weak, starry-eyed reaction by our commander in chief, especially after an attack that revealed deficiencies in our counterterrorism system. But right now, after a near-miss, there is a better opportunity to adjust than in an emotionally charged period when the nation is mourning. Though a good dose of political courage would still be required, it would constitute a major improvement to our debate if leaders could come together now and agree on a few key points about our efforts to battle terrorism." -- The Times Square bomb failed. What will we do when the next bomb works? by Richard A. Clarke (The Washington Post 2010-05-09).
First it was our boys in Afghanistan doing a cover of Lady Gaga. Now, from Iraq, “Watch: Straight Soldiers Show Their Support for Gays in the Military by Dancing to Ke$ha”:
The future's last half century: "Fifty years ago this Sunday, Theodore Maiman and his fellow scientists at Hughes Research Laboratory shined a high-power flash lamp on a ruby rod, triggering a beam of coherent light: the first laser.
It wasn’t long before the Pentagon started dreaming up military applications, and futurists were predicting that our soldiers would all get ray guns. Well, not quite. But lasers have revolutionized the U.S. military — changing the way it targets bombs, scares off insurgents, and, yes, blows stuff to bits." Wired's Danger Room remembers some of the greatest hits (and biggest misses) from the first half-century of military lasers. -- 50 Years of Real-Life Ray Guns by Noah Shachtman (Danger Room 2010-05-14).Not on our airwaves leased from the American people you won't: Faux News refused this ad from the progressive veterans organization Vote Vets:
(also available on YouTube). What's doubly odd is that only a few weeks ago they were running an even stronger spot by same outfit.
Present Shock: A new report from Brookings reveals that our nation now faces five “new realities” that are redefining who we are, where and with whom we live, and how we provide for our own welfare, as well as that of our families and communities. In each of these five areas -- growth and outward expansion, population diversification, aging of the population, uneven higher educational attainment, and income polarization -- the nation reached critical milestones in the 2000s that make those underlying realities too large to ignore any longer. And large metropolitan areas -- the collections of cities, suburbs, and rural areas that house two-thirds of America’s population -- lay squarely at the forefront of these trends. -- State of Metropolitan America: On the Front Lines of Demographic Transformation (pdf) (The Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program 2010).
Burke's Without Peerage: Sometime toward the end of the last millennium, Jerry Wexler and I, spending a happy couple of hours sharing music we liked, discovered that both of thought that, if there was such a thing as the greatest soul singer of all time, it was probably Solomon Burke. Still is.
Or go to YouTube.
Saturday Catchup 2010-05-08
Perceptions: Let’s start with a game. It's called 'Imagine.' Playing is simple: Take recent happenings in the news, scenes where white people are the main actors and imagine they were black folks or other people of color instead. The object of the game is to predict the public reaction to events or incidents in the news if the persons who are driving the action were of color rather than white. Whoever gains the most insight into the workings of race in America wins. -- Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black by Tim Wise (Ephphatha Poetry 2010-04-22). An effective antidote to the mainstream media's habitual, mindless racism.
Give Arizona back to Mexico: "When conservatives...think of racial profiling, they seem to think of a straw man. The image is something like an evil officer out of the Jim Crow South, full of 'prejudice' (itself a fairly silly and inaccurate way to describe racism), enacting his hatred by stopping black people or Latinos arbitrarily. Although it is arbitrary and unfair in terms of who gets targeted, racial profiling also fits into a set of structures guiding police behavior. If cops want to stop someone, they'll be able to cite some legitimate-sounding suspicion, whether it is actually legitimate or not. Profiling doesn't need to feel like profiling to the police, and they don't need to be secret Klansmen to enforce racial discrimination. It shows up way before you get to that point, among ordinary officers who probably just think they're doing their duty." -- E-mail reveals Arizona law was designed to maximize harassment by Gabriel Winant (Salon 2010-05-03).
Can you say putz?: "Joe Lieberman's latest exercise in demagoguery -- his plan to strip citizenship rights from Americans allegedly involved in terrorism -- has been quickly and incisively condemned (as "madness" by Andrew Sullivan, among others). But like Arizona's dangerous, unconstitutional immigration law, it seems likely to garner support from a majority or substantial minority of Americans who will assume that they won't be victimized by it -- that it will only target other people, namely presumptively guilty terrorists. In fact, Lieberman's proposal, combined with an obscure network of federal laws enabling the executive branch to designate individuals and groups as terrorists, with no due process, would put millions of innocent Americans at risk of arbitrarily losing their citizenship." -- Joe Lieberman Means You by Wendy Kaminer (The Atlantic 2010-05-05).
Coffee break:
Or go to YouTube.
What, me worry?: "The roots of mass apathy are found in the profound divide between liberals, who are mostly white and well educated, and our disenfranchised working class, whose sons and daughters, because they cannot get decent jobs with benefits, have few options besides the military. Liberals, whose children are more often to be found in elite colleges than the Marine Corps, did not fight the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 and the dismantling of our manufacturing base. They did nothing when the Democrats gutted welfare two years later and stood by as our banks were turned over to Wall Street speculators. They signed on, by supporting the Clinton and Obama Democrats, for the corporate rape carried out in the name of globalization and endless war, and they ignored the plight of the poor. And for this reason the poor have little interest in the moral protestations of liberals. We have lost all credibility. We are justly hated for our tacit complicity in the corporate assault on workers and their families. Our passivity has resulted, however, in much more than imperial adventurism and a permanent underclass. A slow-motion coup by a corporate state has cemented into place a neofeudalism in which there are only masters and serfs. And the process is one that cannot be reversed through the traditional mechanisms of electoral politics." -- No One Cares by Chris Hedges (truthdig 2010-06-03).
Our fragile polity: The decline in Congressional oversight stems from a complete break from the historical perception within Congress itself that first and foremost it is a separate branch of government. Once upon a time, very powerful Democratic chairmen would have no trouble going after Democratic or Republican administration wrongdoing. And, at least as importantly, they were aggressive at preserving their power in the Congress to access information from the Executive branch. But now they've become so deferential -- both Democrats and Republicans -- to the executive branch, especially when it comes to national security, that it's appalling. The fundamental problem is that Congress doesn't have the same sense of itself that it used to -- certainly not when brash leaders like Lyndon Baines Johnson were in charge. They took their power really seriously and they were not afraid to use it. -- Congressional Oversight Crippled By Institutional Anemia, Reformer Says by Dan Froomkin (Huffington Post 2010-05-05).
What Jed Bartlet would do: How Hollywood Presidents Would Solve America’s Problems by Peter Baker (New York Times 2010-04-30).
"Britain needs change" was the refrain of the hotly contested election in the U.K. this week. But did that mean changing the name of the Isle of Man to "the Isle of Men, Women, Children and Some Animals?" That is just one of the questions posed by the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, a lampoon of the British political scene that has been running for nearly three decades. While the big parties cross swords over deficits and immigration, Loony proposals include knighthood for Ozzy Osbourne, adding the Loch Ness Monster to the endangered-species list and creating a 99-pence coin (to end the nuisance of carrying pennies). -- In the Longest-Running Joke In Politics, Life Imitates Farce -- Britain's Loony Party Feuds Over Bookies And Term Limits; Glue and Chocolate by Paul Sonne and Alistair MacDonald (Wall Street Journal 2010-05-06).
And speaking of jokes, lets hope Paul Campos is right that, if she is nominated to be one of the Supremes, Elena Kagan will be laughed out of town: The Next Harriet Miers? by Paul Campos (DailyBeast 2010-05-01).
Freedom of the press has declined for the eighth year in a row, according to Freedom House’s annual report. And while the media has focused on the lack of media freedoms in such suspect locales as China and Venezuela, they’ve virtually ignored the U.S. position – No. 24 (PDF).
Foxhole humor: Here is a swell video by some U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan doing an affectionate send-up of Lady Gaga:
Or watch it on YouTube.
Time to pack in AfPak: The pilots waging America’s undeclared drone war in Pakistan could be liable to criminal prosecution for “war crimes,” a prominent law professor told a Congressional panel Wednesday. Well, no wonder. The CIA has been allowed to use drones to attack a broader range of targets, according to the L.A.Times. Previously, drones were only able to fire on enemies on an approved list a few dozen times a year, but now they are able to attack several times a week. Danger Room reminds us that once upon a time, the CIA had to know a militant’s name before putting him up for a robotic targeted killing. Now, if the guy acts like a guerrilla, it’s enough to call in a drone strike; it’s another sign of that a once-limited, once-covert program to off senior terrorist leaders has morphed into a full-scale -- if undeclared -- war in Pakistan. And finally, less well known, but perhaps equally dubious, is the State Department’s counter-narcotics air force, staffed by mercenaries.-- Drone Pilots Could Be Tried for ‘War Crimes,’ Law Prof Says by Nathan Hodge (Danger Room 2010-04-28)
At least "Pakistan is not an ungovernable Somalia. The numbers tell the story. At least 55% of Pakistan's 170 million-strong population are Punjabis. There's no evidence they are about to embrace Talibanistan; they are essentially Shi'ites, Sufis or a mix of both. Around 50 million are Sindhis - faithful followers of the late Benazir Bhutto and her husband, now President Asif Ali Zardari's centrist and overwhelmingly secular Pakistan People's Party. Talibanistan fanatics in these two provinces -- amounting to 85% of Pakistan's population, with a heavy concentration of the urban middle class -- are an infinitesimal minority. The Pakistan-based Taliban -- subdivided in roughly three major groups, amounting to less than 10,000 fighters with no air force, no Predator drones, no tanks and no heavily weaponized vehicles -- are concentrated in the Pashtun tribal areas, in some districts of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), and some very localized, small parts of Punjab." Although, wait until we're done with it. -- The myth of Talibanistan by Pepe Escobar (Asia Times 2010-05-01).
Activism: The New York Times reported on a lesser-known Big Apple tradition –- one that has nothing to do with hot dogs, Broadway or spitting obscenities at strangers. For the last 330 Wednesdays, a group of elderly women (and a couple of elderly men) have met on 5th Avenue to protest the American presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. The demonstrations began Jan. 14, 2004 and are still going strong. -- Badass Anti-War Grannies Still At It, After 330 Straight Weeks by Byard Duncan (AlterNet 2010-05-07).
This has been around a while, but despite the poor quality of the picture it's still fun to watch Marty Robbins' reaction to Merle Haggard's impersonation of him:
Or go to YouTube.
Serpico Redux: Two years ago, a police officer in a Brooklyn precinct became gravely concerned about how the public was being served. To document his concerns, he began carrying around a digital sound recorder, secretly recording his colleagues and superiors. He recorded precinct roll calls; his precinct commander and other supervisors; street encounters; small talk and stationhouse banter; in all, he surreptitiously recorded hundreds of hours of cops talking about their jobs. Made without the knowledge or approval of the NYPD, the tapes provide an unprecedented portrait of what it's like to work as a cop in New York City. They reveal that precinct bosses threaten street cops if they don't make their quotas of arrests and stop-and-frisks, but also tell them not to take certain robbery reports in order to manipulate crime statistics. The tapes also refer to command officers calling crime victims directly to intimidate them about their complaints. -- The NYPD Tapes: Inside Bed-Stuy's 81st Precinct by Graham Rayman (Village Voice 2010-05-04)
It's reassuring that even in the noughts a mainstream band could still upset the fuzz. Rock and roll!:
Or go to YouTube.
Give Arizona back to Mexico: "When conservatives...think of racial profiling, they seem to think of a straw man. The image is something like an evil officer out of the Jim Crow South, full of 'prejudice' (itself a fairly silly and inaccurate way to describe racism), enacting his hatred by stopping black people or Latinos arbitrarily. Although it is arbitrary and unfair in terms of who gets targeted, racial profiling also fits into a set of structures guiding police behavior. If cops want to stop someone, they'll be able to cite some legitimate-sounding suspicion, whether it is actually legitimate or not. Profiling doesn't need to feel like profiling to the police, and they don't need to be secret Klansmen to enforce racial discrimination. It shows up way before you get to that point, among ordinary officers who probably just think they're doing their duty." -- E-mail reveals Arizona law was designed to maximize harassment by Gabriel Winant (Salon 2010-05-03).
Can you say putz?: "Joe Lieberman's latest exercise in demagoguery -- his plan to strip citizenship rights from Americans allegedly involved in terrorism -- has been quickly and incisively condemned (as "madness" by Andrew Sullivan, among others). But like Arizona's dangerous, unconstitutional immigration law, it seems likely to garner support from a majority or substantial minority of Americans who will assume that they won't be victimized by it -- that it will only target other people, namely presumptively guilty terrorists. In fact, Lieberman's proposal, combined with an obscure network of federal laws enabling the executive branch to designate individuals and groups as terrorists, with no due process, would put millions of innocent Americans at risk of arbitrarily losing their citizenship." -- Joe Lieberman Means You by Wendy Kaminer (The Atlantic 2010-05-05).
Coffee break:
Or go to YouTube.
What, me worry?: "The roots of mass apathy are found in the profound divide between liberals, who are mostly white and well educated, and our disenfranchised working class, whose sons and daughters, because they cannot get decent jobs with benefits, have few options besides the military. Liberals, whose children are more often to be found in elite colleges than the Marine Corps, did not fight the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 and the dismantling of our manufacturing base. They did nothing when the Democrats gutted welfare two years later and stood by as our banks were turned over to Wall Street speculators. They signed on, by supporting the Clinton and Obama Democrats, for the corporate rape carried out in the name of globalization and endless war, and they ignored the plight of the poor. And for this reason the poor have little interest in the moral protestations of liberals. We have lost all credibility. We are justly hated for our tacit complicity in the corporate assault on workers and their families. Our passivity has resulted, however, in much more than imperial adventurism and a permanent underclass. A slow-motion coup by a corporate state has cemented into place a neofeudalism in which there are only masters and serfs. And the process is one that cannot be reversed through the traditional mechanisms of electoral politics." -- No One Cares by Chris Hedges (truthdig 2010-06-03).
Our fragile polity: The decline in Congressional oversight stems from a complete break from the historical perception within Congress itself that first and foremost it is a separate branch of government. Once upon a time, very powerful Democratic chairmen would have no trouble going after Democratic or Republican administration wrongdoing. And, at least as importantly, they were aggressive at preserving their power in the Congress to access information from the Executive branch. But now they've become so deferential -- both Democrats and Republicans -- to the executive branch, especially when it comes to national security, that it's appalling. The fundamental problem is that Congress doesn't have the same sense of itself that it used to -- certainly not when brash leaders like Lyndon Baines Johnson were in charge. They took their power really seriously and they were not afraid to use it. -- Congressional Oversight Crippled By Institutional Anemia, Reformer Says by Dan Froomkin (Huffington Post 2010-05-05).
What Jed Bartlet would do: How Hollywood Presidents Would Solve America’s Problems by Peter Baker (New York Times 2010-04-30).
"Britain needs change" was the refrain of the hotly contested election in the U.K. this week. But did that mean changing the name of the Isle of Man to "the Isle of Men, Women, Children and Some Animals?" That is just one of the questions posed by the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, a lampoon of the British political scene that has been running for nearly three decades. While the big parties cross swords over deficits and immigration, Loony proposals include knighthood for Ozzy Osbourne, adding the Loch Ness Monster to the endangered-species list and creating a 99-pence coin (to end the nuisance of carrying pennies). -- In the Longest-Running Joke In Politics, Life Imitates Farce -- Britain's Loony Party Feuds Over Bookies And Term Limits; Glue and Chocolate by Paul Sonne and Alistair MacDonald (Wall Street Journal 2010-05-06).
And speaking of jokes, lets hope Paul Campos is right that, if she is nominated to be one of the Supremes, Elena Kagan will be laughed out of town: The Next Harriet Miers? by Paul Campos (DailyBeast 2010-05-01).
Freedom of the press has declined for the eighth year in a row, according to Freedom House’s annual report. And while the media has focused on the lack of media freedoms in such suspect locales as China and Venezuela, they’ve virtually ignored the U.S. position – No. 24 (PDF).
Foxhole humor: Here is a swell video by some U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan doing an affectionate send-up of Lady Gaga:
Or watch it on YouTube.
Time to pack in AfPak: The pilots waging America’s undeclared drone war in Pakistan could be liable to criminal prosecution for “war crimes,” a prominent law professor told a Congressional panel Wednesday. Well, no wonder. The CIA has been allowed to use drones to attack a broader range of targets, according to the L.A.Times. Previously, drones were only able to fire on enemies on an approved list a few dozen times a year, but now they are able to attack several times a week. Danger Room reminds us that once upon a time, the CIA had to know a militant’s name before putting him up for a robotic targeted killing. Now, if the guy acts like a guerrilla, it’s enough to call in a drone strike; it’s another sign of that a once-limited, once-covert program to off senior terrorist leaders has morphed into a full-scale -- if undeclared -- war in Pakistan. And finally, less well known, but perhaps equally dubious, is the State Department’s counter-narcotics air force, staffed by mercenaries.-- Drone Pilots Could Be Tried for ‘War Crimes,’ Law Prof Says by Nathan Hodge (Danger Room 2010-04-28)
At least "Pakistan is not an ungovernable Somalia. The numbers tell the story. At least 55% of Pakistan's 170 million-strong population are Punjabis. There's no evidence they are about to embrace Talibanistan; they are essentially Shi'ites, Sufis or a mix of both. Around 50 million are Sindhis - faithful followers of the late Benazir Bhutto and her husband, now President Asif Ali Zardari's centrist and overwhelmingly secular Pakistan People's Party. Talibanistan fanatics in these two provinces -- amounting to 85% of Pakistan's population, with a heavy concentration of the urban middle class -- are an infinitesimal minority. The Pakistan-based Taliban -- subdivided in roughly three major groups, amounting to less than 10,000 fighters with no air force, no Predator drones, no tanks and no heavily weaponized vehicles -- are concentrated in the Pashtun tribal areas, in some districts of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), and some very localized, small parts of Punjab." Although, wait until we're done with it. -- The myth of Talibanistan by Pepe Escobar (Asia Times 2010-05-01).
Activism: The New York Times reported on a lesser-known Big Apple tradition –- one that has nothing to do with hot dogs, Broadway or spitting obscenities at strangers. For the last 330 Wednesdays, a group of elderly women (and a couple of elderly men) have met on 5th Avenue to protest the American presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. The demonstrations began Jan. 14, 2004 and are still going strong. -- Badass Anti-War Grannies Still At It, After 330 Straight Weeks by Byard Duncan (AlterNet 2010-05-07).
This has been around a while, but despite the poor quality of the picture it's still fun to watch Marty Robbins' reaction to Merle Haggard's impersonation of him:
Or go to YouTube.
Serpico Redux: Two years ago, a police officer in a Brooklyn precinct became gravely concerned about how the public was being served. To document his concerns, he began carrying around a digital sound recorder, secretly recording his colleagues and superiors. He recorded precinct roll calls; his precinct commander and other supervisors; street encounters; small talk and stationhouse banter; in all, he surreptitiously recorded hundreds of hours of cops talking about their jobs. Made without the knowledge or approval of the NYPD, the tapes provide an unprecedented portrait of what it's like to work as a cop in New York City. They reveal that precinct bosses threaten street cops if they don't make their quotas of arrests and stop-and-frisks, but also tell them not to take certain robbery reports in order to manipulate crime statistics. The tapes also refer to command officers calling crime victims directly to intimidate them about their complaints. -- The NYPD Tapes: Inside Bed-Stuy's 81st Precinct by Graham Rayman (Village Voice 2010-05-04)
It's reassuring that even in the noughts a mainstream band could still upset the fuzz. Rock and roll!:
Or go to YouTube.
Saturday Catchup: Some stuff you may have missed
The 'Obama doctrine': Don't detain; kill! by Asim Qureshi (Guardian UK 2010-04-11). George Bush left a big problem in the shape of Guantánamo. The solution? Don't capture bad guys; use drones to assassinate them.
As David Swanson put it, murder is the new torture.
Prompt Global Strike: World Military Superiority Without Nuclear Weapons by Rick Rozoff (StopNATO 2010-04-10). Only one country has the military and scientific capacity and has openly proclaimed its intention to be the world’s sole military superpower. One that aspires to remain the only state in history to wield full spectrum military dominance on land, in the air, on the seas and in space. To maintain and extend military bases and troops, aircraft carrier battle groups, jet fighters and strategic bombers on and to most every latitude and longitude. To do so with a post-World War II record war budget of $708 billion for next year.
“Looting Main Street” – Matt Taibbi on How the Nation’s Biggest Banks Are Ripping Off American Cities with Predatory Deals. (Democracy Now! 2010-04-12). The Rolling Stone writer looks at the experience of one small Alabama town and its disastrous dealings with Wall Street: “The destruction of Jefferson County reveals the basic battle plan of these modern barbarians, the way that banks like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs have systematically set out to pillage towns and cities from Pittsburgh to Athens.”Matt Taibbi is political reporter for Rolling Stone magazine. His latest article is Looting Main Street.
“Job Creation” – Stupid Is as Stupid Does by Richard C. Cook (RichardCCook.com 2010-04-06). Many commentators have said, as a joke, that it would have been cheaper if the government had just printed the money and given it away. But such an approach would not be a joke at all. Compared to what actually happened, it would be enlightened public policy.
Brief musical interlude:
A Banana Republic With No Bananas by George Washington (Washington's Blog 2010-04-12). Experts on third world banana republics from the IMF and the Federal Reserve have said the U.S. has become a third world banana republic. Are they right?
How Financial Reporters Create Illusion to Cover Up Wall Street's Scams by Scott Thill (AlterNet 2010-04-13). The corporate media's job is to sell confidence on Wall Street's numbers, rather than tempered or even depressed expectations, no matter how realistic they may be.
The financial crisis: Story Pirates explain it all for you
In Defense of Public School Teachers in a Time of Crisis by Henry A. Giroux (truthout 2010-04-14) | Crucial to a functioning democracy, though "seldom accorded the status of intellectuals that they deserved, they remain the most important component in the learning process for students, while serving as a moral compass to gauge how seriously a society invests in its youth and in the future. Yet, teachers are being deskilled, unceremoniously removed from the process of school governance, largely reduced to technicians or subordinated to the authority of security guards."
How the FCC Can Protect the Internet from Pro-Corporate Judges and Greedy Telecoms (AlterNet 2010-04-15). Net neutrality ensures a fair Internet. The telecom industry has the money and power to make sure that doesn't happen -- but the people (and the FCC) can fight back.
"While the rest of the world spirals into economic degradation, environmental pestilence and complete systems failure of all of the old world models, Lady Gaga reigns above the flames. Pay attention to the lesson. Lady Gaga is the only person prospering in this cultural climate. Therefore she has done something right. She is the necessary evolutionary adaptation to our times and this is why she disturbs people: This is what we must all become. Indestructibly vacant." -- Jason Louv, Lady Gaga & the Dead Planet Grotesque (H+ 2010-03-16).
Here's a story about a remarkable farmer's market in Norfolk, Virginia that offers a blueprint for creating jobs and boosting a local economy:
Cow Tunnels and Manhattan by Nicola (Edible Geography 2010-04-12): Lost infrastructure or urban myth? Plus, I love this graphic:
Image: Subterranean New York City, as diagrammed by National Geographic (where a scale version and bibliography are also available).
Reclaiming Our Hope by Paul Rogat Loeb (The Nation 2010-04-06). "It's been a frustrating time since November 2008, but our challenge is to spend less time bemoaning our disappointments and more energy engaging with ordinary citizens the way so many of us did a year and a half ago. If we give people enough ways to act on our present crises, we never know how history might turn."
I know I keep saying we have to reach out to the Tea Partiers because some of them, at least, are right about the problems we face if completely at a loss about solutions. Any thoughts of a possible alliance between rational people and the TPs goes out the window, however, when you witness what actually goes on at the parties:
Btw, fake teabaggers (sane/normal people) have begun infiltrating tea parties with their own signs. Here are the best signs from a rally on Boston Common.
To clear your head, here's Type O Negative doing Black No 1, their only hit, offered as an antidote to the loony Williams and, also, sadly, a farewell to Type O Neg's frontman Peter Steele who died of heart failure this week at 48.
As David Swanson put it, murder is the new torture.Prompt Global Strike: World Military Superiority Without Nuclear Weapons by Rick Rozoff (StopNATO 2010-04-10). Only one country has the military and scientific capacity and has openly proclaimed its intention to be the world’s sole military superpower. One that aspires to remain the only state in history to wield full spectrum military dominance on land, in the air, on the seas and in space. To maintain and extend military bases and troops, aircraft carrier battle groups, jet fighters and strategic bombers on and to most every latitude and longitude. To do so with a post-World War II record war budget of $708 billion for next year.
“Looting Main Street” – Matt Taibbi on How the Nation’s Biggest Banks Are Ripping Off American Cities with Predatory Deals. (Democracy Now! 2010-04-12). The Rolling Stone writer looks at the experience of one small Alabama town and its disastrous dealings with Wall Street: “The destruction of Jefferson County reveals the basic battle plan of these modern barbarians, the way that banks like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs have systematically set out to pillage towns and cities from Pittsburgh to Athens.”Matt Taibbi is political reporter for Rolling Stone magazine. His latest article is Looting Main Street.
“Job Creation” – Stupid Is as Stupid Does by Richard C. Cook (RichardCCook.com 2010-04-06). Many commentators have said, as a joke, that it would have been cheaper if the government had just printed the money and given it away. But such an approach would not be a joke at all. Compared to what actually happened, it would be enlightened public policy.
Brief musical interlude:
A Banana Republic With No Bananas by George Washington (Washington's Blog 2010-04-12). Experts on third world banana republics from the IMF and the Federal Reserve have said the U.S. has become a third world banana republic. Are they right?
How Financial Reporters Create Illusion to Cover Up Wall Street's Scams by Scott Thill (AlterNet 2010-04-13). The corporate media's job is to sell confidence on Wall Street's numbers, rather than tempered or even depressed expectations, no matter how realistic they may be.
The financial crisis: Story Pirates explain it all for you
In Defense of Public School Teachers in a Time of Crisis by Henry A. Giroux (truthout 2010-04-14) | Crucial to a functioning democracy, though "seldom accorded the status of intellectuals that they deserved, they remain the most important component in the learning process for students, while serving as a moral compass to gauge how seriously a society invests in its youth and in the future. Yet, teachers are being deskilled, unceremoniously removed from the process of school governance, largely reduced to technicians or subordinated to the authority of security guards."
How the FCC Can Protect the Internet from Pro-Corporate Judges and Greedy Telecoms (AlterNet 2010-04-15). Net neutrality ensures a fair Internet. The telecom industry has the money and power to make sure that doesn't happen -- but the people (and the FCC) can fight back.
"While the rest of the world spirals into economic degradation, environmental pestilence and complete systems failure of all of the old world models, Lady Gaga reigns above the flames. Pay attention to the lesson. Lady Gaga is the only person prospering in this cultural climate. Therefore she has done something right. She is the necessary evolutionary adaptation to our times and this is why she disturbs people: This is what we must all become. Indestructibly vacant." -- Jason Louv, Lady Gaga & the Dead Planet Grotesque (H+ 2010-03-16).Here's a story about a remarkable farmer's market in Norfolk, Virginia that offers a blueprint for creating jobs and boosting a local economy:
Cow Tunnels and Manhattan by Nicola (Edible Geography 2010-04-12): Lost infrastructure or urban myth? Plus, I love this graphic:
Image: Subterranean New York City, as diagrammed by National Geographic (where a scale version and bibliography are also available).
Reclaiming Our Hope by Paul Rogat Loeb (The Nation 2010-04-06). "It's been a frustrating time since November 2008, but our challenge is to spend less time bemoaning our disappointments and more energy engaging with ordinary citizens the way so many of us did a year and a half ago. If we give people enough ways to act on our present crises, we never know how history might turn."
I know I keep saying we have to reach out to the Tea Partiers because some of them, at least, are right about the problems we face if completely at a loss about solutions. Any thoughts of a possible alliance between rational people and the TPs goes out the window, however, when you witness what actually goes on at the parties:
Btw, fake teabaggers (sane/normal people) have begun infiltrating tea parties with their own signs. Here are the best signs from a rally on Boston Common.
To clear your head, here's Type O Negative doing Black No 1, their only hit, offered as an antidote to the loony Williams and, also, sadly, a farewell to Type O Neg's frontman Peter Steele who died of heart failure this week at 48.
The Long War: A murderous action by U.S. forces -- caught on tape
In the longer piece on Peace Action West that this is cut from, Rebecca Griffin argues that we must face the "truly horrifying" costs of the American military adventure in Afghanistan.
"Light 'em all up."
In the years since the "incident," as Reuters has tried to uncover what happened, U.S. military authorities have stonewalled, whitewashing the horrific actions of our gunners as within the rules of engagement. Watch the video: if these fighters are acting within officially sanctioned parameters, then the rules need to be changed. You can't win the hearts and minds of people by murdering them.
In the video, there are two separate attacks on civilians on the ground: at the first, the gunships fire on an unthreatening group whose main offense seems to be that they are men of fighting age; then they unload on a van of people attempting to tend to the wounded and dying from the first attack. The pilots and gunners sound both bloodthirsty and oddly detached, like teenage boys yelling "Kill! Kill! Kill!" in a video arcade.
Although from the air, the helicopter crews couldn't have known that children were in the cab of the Good Samaritans' van -- "Oh yeah, look at that. Right through the windshield! Haha," American reliance on massive preemptive force makes the killing of civilians certain -- premeditated -- and therefore criminal. Firing on a van of medical workers doesn't spawn political martyrs, it makes real ones. If soldiers who commit acts like these are not held accountable, more such tragedies will be impossible to avoid. Of course, if we weren't there at all, such tragedies would be impossible to occur.
The Afghan war itself is counter-productive and stupid as policy and needs to be brought swiftly to a conclusion. In any war, it is a certainty that some innocent people will be harmed. But Obama's expansion of this war -- essentially an intervention in a civil war -- is especially tragic, because the certainty of the outcome -- the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces from the country -- and the willingness of the other side to negotiate create the conditions for a swift settlement.
The Obama administration, which claims to prefer diplomacy to force, could use the threat of immediate withdrawal to make Karzai negotiate a deal with the Taliban (an outcome made all the easier now that the Afghan president has threatened to join the Taliban as his way of punishing the Americans for criticizing his gangsterish regime). The sooner an agreement is reached the more the Taliban will be deterred from expanding its influence beyond its sanctuaries in the south and east, the more U.S. gains in the recent fighting can be consolidated, and the more reduced will be the opportunities for corruption and fraud in the areas controlled from Kabul.
Even assuming that the entry into Afghanistan was unavoidable in the aftermath of 9/11, there is little question that the project has soured and cannot be won militarily. Comparisons to the Vietnam war are inexact, but there is one eerie echo from that conflict: we appear to be destroying Afghanistan in the effort to save it. Dialogue and serious compromise are far more likely to produce a peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan than blasting villagers from helicopters and pilotless drones.
Obama will not be able to go into the next presidential campaign without progress toward peace in the region, which means that there will be a sit-down with the Taliban sooner or later. Sooner is infinitely preferable. If the corrupt, inept Karzai is an obstruction to peace, he can easily be bargained away as part of the final deal (someone should slip Karzai a copy of the biography of Vietnam's President Diem -- it's possible he takes American rhetoric seriously; it's probably better for all concerned if he finds out now with whom he's in bed).
A negotiated settlement soon would not only save American and Afghan lives, but would avoid a precipitate withdrawal just before 2012 that would embarrass the American president and leave Afghanistan in ruins. Surely we'd rather spend our billions rebuilding the country than destroying it. Better to negotiate a compromise that takes into account the aspirations of both sides in the conflict (by which I mean Kabul and the Taliban) for the future of the country than to continue a policy that is to the advantage of no one. One thing all sides can probably agree on: Afghanistan's future must not, will not, can not include occupation by American troops.
The rest of the story: Debate war as it is, not as you want it to be by Rebecca Griffin (Peace Action West Groundswell Blog 2010-04-06)
Transcript of the audio from the WikiLeaks video
Like Abu Graib, defenders of American militarism will claim the actions on this video are aberrant. But graphic combat porn is pretty easy to find:
Special Forces Firefight with Insurgents in Iraq (night time); Night Attack on Al Qaeda; Mosul Firefight as music video; Iraq - AH-64 Apache; Asaeb Ahul Haqq RPG attack; etc. ad infinitum.
“This Is How These Soldiers Were Trained to Act”–Veteran of Military Unit Involved in 2007 Baghdad Helicopter Shooting Says Incident Is Part of Much Larger Problem (Democracy Now 2010-04-12).
Veterans of Wikileaks video write "Letter of Reconciliation" to Iraqis Injured in Attack (Civilian-Soldier Alliance): Josh Stieber and Ethan McCord, members of Bravo Company 2-16, are making a stand against the war and are rallying supporters. Go to LetterToIraq.com to read the letter they are sending to the Iraqis who survived the Apache attack
.
Actions: Donate to Peace Action West. Help provide information and support to those in the military on ways of standing up for their beliefs through work being done with the GI Rights Hotline. If you are a veteran or service-member, see Iraq Veterans Against the War or Courage to Resist's websites to get involved in anti-war work. Support and spread the word about the Civilian-Soldier Alliance, embracing those within the military or veteran communities who want to talk about their experiences and work towards other options. Question the training that our government and our tax money puts our impressionable young people through: if we object to this video, we need to look at what training led to it. Check out books like On Killing and pressure political and military leaders to reconsider the psychological methods that teach soldiers to dehumanize. Look at what we teach our children, work towards starting peace studies programs in your schools. Question where our tax money is really going and why so much is spent on warfare. Inform yourself on the deeper priorities of our society by watching for example, The Story of Stuff and ask yourself if your lifestyle is contributing to those mistaken priorities.
by Rebecca Griffin
The US military admitted earlier this week that US special operations forces killed five innocent civilians in Gardez, including two pregnant women. The two women leave behind sixteen motherless children. While the military has denied any kind of cover-up of the raid, there were signs of evidence tampering at the scene:
And in what would be a scandalous turn to the investigation, The Times of London reported Sunday night that Afghan investigators also determined that American forces not only killed the women but had also “dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath” and then “washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened.”Civilian casualties have been a continued source of outrage in Afghanistan, and General McChrystal has received praise for his attempts to lower the number of civilian casualties. While the intent is admirable, it is unrealistic in practice. McChrystal recently commented on their inability to decrease the number of shootings of innocent people at military checkpoints with the startling admission that, “We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.”
A spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, Zemary Bashary, said that he did not have any information about the Afghan investigation, which he said remained unfinished.
In an interview, a NATO official said the Afghan-led investigation team alerted American and NATO commanders that the inquiry had found signs of evidence tampering. A briefing was given by investigators to General McChrystal and other military officials in late March.
“There was evidence of tampering at the scene, walls being washed, bullets dug out of holes in the wall,” the NATO official said, adding that investigators “couldn’t find bullets from the wounds in the body.”
Following this tragic story comes the release of a video of US soldiers in a helicopter firing on civilians in Iraq as though they were in a video game. The soldiers killed over a dozen people in the suburb of New Baghdad, including two journalists working for Reuters. (Warning: the video is disturbing and contains some explicit language.)
Wikileaks received the video and supporting documents from military whistleblowers and the Pentagon has confirmed that the video is authentic. It paints a disturbing picture of soldiers shooting into a group of mostly unarmed civilians, and at times laughing about it, with authorization from their superiors. When a van arrives to pick up the wounded and dead, they open fire, wounding two children. One of the pilots can be heard saying, “Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.”
Julian Assange of Wikileaks made an important point about the nature of the video on Democracy Now this morning:
What’s important to remember is that every step that the Apache takes in opening fire is authorized. It does pause before shooting. It explains the situation, sometimes exaggerating a little to its commanders, and gets authorized permission.The Pentagon has stated that an investigation was already held into the incident and no one is being charged with wrongdoing.
These are not bad apples. This is standard practice. You can hear it from the tones of the voices of the pilots that this is in fact another day at the office. These pilots have evidently and gunners have evidently become so corrupted, morally corrupted, by the war that they are looking for excuses to kill. That is why you hear this segment, “Come on, buddy! Just pick up a weapon,” when Saeed, one of the Reuters employees, is crawling on the curb. They don’t want him for intelligence value to understand the situation. The man is clearly of no threat whatsoever. He’s prostate on the ground. Everyone else has been killed. They just want an excuse to kill. And it’s some kind of—appears to me to be some kind of video game mentality where they just want to get a high score, get their kill count up. And later on you’ll hear them proudly proclaiming how they killed twelve to fifteen people.
There have been a lot of euphemisms and opaque language used in the debate about the merits of the current strategy in Afghanistan. Many proponents of the war build support around benign-sounding efforts like “population-centric counterinsurgency strategy.” They portray this effort as a more friendly form of war, with the vision of the US troops sweeping into Marja, scaring the bad guys out of town, dropping in a new government and bringing peace and stability to the people. These two incidents are surely just two of many in the hellacious reality of war. Michael Cohen at Democracy Arsenal makes an important point about civilian casualties:
Perhaps right on cue there is this horrifying story that not only did US Special Operations forces kill three Afghan women, they covered up the crime – even going to far as to dig bullets out of the bodies of the victims. It is yet another reminder that for all the talk of protecting civilians – and all of General McChrystal’s noble efforts to prevent civilian deaths — they are still happening, and they are still undermining our population centric goals in Afghanistan (again when you put 100,000 US troops, who are trained to kill and protect themselves, in a foreign country none of this should be even slightly surprising).That’s not to even mention the nearly more than 1,000 US and ISAF soldiers who have died. That trend will only continue with the impending increase in troop levels. The first three months of 2010 already saw double the American casualties of the same period in 2009. Thousands of soldiers have been wounded, and their stories are seldom told to the American public.
And as much as I hate to write it, this is likely only going to continue – and we wonder why we can’t convince local Afghans to side with us?
When we debate this war, let’s be real about what we are debating. Let’s not debate a sanitized version of military efforts in Afghanistan. Those who think that the war in Afghanistan is essential to our security must weigh our gains against the dirty, messy reality of US and Afghan casualties, not an unrealistic vision of soldiers sitting safely in rooms piloting unmanned drones and Afghans embracing the military presence despite the occasional accidental air strike.
"Light 'em all up."
In the years since the "incident," as Reuters has tried to uncover what happened, U.S. military authorities have stonewalled, whitewashing the horrific actions of our gunners as within the rules of engagement. Watch the video: if these fighters are acting within officially sanctioned parameters, then the rules need to be changed. You can't win the hearts and minds of people by murdering them.
In the video, there are two separate attacks on civilians on the ground: at the first, the gunships fire on an unthreatening group whose main offense seems to be that they are men of fighting age; then they unload on a van of people attempting to tend to the wounded and dying from the first attack. The pilots and gunners sound both bloodthirsty and oddly detached, like teenage boys yelling "Kill! Kill! Kill!" in a video arcade.
Although from the air, the helicopter crews couldn't have known that children were in the cab of the Good Samaritans' van -- "Oh yeah, look at that. Right through the windshield! Haha," American reliance on massive preemptive force makes the killing of civilians certain -- premeditated -- and therefore criminal. Firing on a van of medical workers doesn't spawn political martyrs, it makes real ones. If soldiers who commit acts like these are not held accountable, more such tragedies will be impossible to avoid. Of course, if we weren't there at all, such tragedies would be impossible to occur.
The Afghan war itself is counter-productive and stupid as policy and needs to be brought swiftly to a conclusion. In any war, it is a certainty that some innocent people will be harmed. But Obama's expansion of this war -- essentially an intervention in a civil war -- is especially tragic, because the certainty of the outcome -- the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces from the country -- and the willingness of the other side to negotiate create the conditions for a swift settlement.
The Obama administration, which claims to prefer diplomacy to force, could use the threat of immediate withdrawal to make Karzai negotiate a deal with the Taliban (an outcome made all the easier now that the Afghan president has threatened to join the Taliban as his way of punishing the Americans for criticizing his gangsterish regime). The sooner an agreement is reached the more the Taliban will be deterred from expanding its influence beyond its sanctuaries in the south and east, the more U.S. gains in the recent fighting can be consolidated, and the more reduced will be the opportunities for corruption and fraud in the areas controlled from Kabul.
Even assuming that the entry into Afghanistan was unavoidable in the aftermath of 9/11, there is little question that the project has soured and cannot be won militarily. Comparisons to the Vietnam war are inexact, but there is one eerie echo from that conflict: we appear to be destroying Afghanistan in the effort to save it. Dialogue and serious compromise are far more likely to produce a peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan than blasting villagers from helicopters and pilotless drones.
Obama will not be able to go into the next presidential campaign without progress toward peace in the region, which means that there will be a sit-down with the Taliban sooner or later. Sooner is infinitely preferable. If the corrupt, inept Karzai is an obstruction to peace, he can easily be bargained away as part of the final deal (someone should slip Karzai a copy of the biography of Vietnam's President Diem -- it's possible he takes American rhetoric seriously; it's probably better for all concerned if he finds out now with whom he's in bed).
A negotiated settlement soon would not only save American and Afghan lives, but would avoid a precipitate withdrawal just before 2012 that would embarrass the American president and leave Afghanistan in ruins. Surely we'd rather spend our billions rebuilding the country than destroying it. Better to negotiate a compromise that takes into account the aspirations of both sides in the conflict (by which I mean Kabul and the Taliban) for the future of the country than to continue a policy that is to the advantage of no one. One thing all sides can probably agree on: Afghanistan's future must not, will not, can not include occupation by American troops.
The rest of the story: Debate war as it is, not as you want it to be by Rebecca Griffin (Peace Action West Groundswell Blog 2010-04-06)
Transcript of the audio from the WikiLeaks video
Like Abu Graib, defenders of American militarism will claim the actions on this video are aberrant. But graphic combat porn is pretty easy to find:
Special Forces Firefight with Insurgents in Iraq (night time); Night Attack on Al Qaeda; Mosul Firefight as music video; Iraq - AH-64 Apache; Asaeb Ahul Haqq RPG attack; etc. ad infinitum.
“This Is How These Soldiers Were Trained to Act”–Veteran of Military Unit Involved in 2007 Baghdad Helicopter Shooting Says Incident Is Part of Much Larger Problem (Democracy Now 2010-04-12).
Veterans of Wikileaks video write "Letter of Reconciliation" to Iraqis Injured in Attack (Civilian-Soldier Alliance): Josh Stieber and Ethan McCord, members of Bravo Company 2-16, are making a stand against the war and are rallying supporters. Go to LetterToIraq.com to read the letter they are sending to the Iraqis who survived the Apache attack
.
Actions: Donate to Peace Action West. Help provide information and support to those in the military on ways of standing up for their beliefs through work being done with the GI Rights Hotline. If you are a veteran or service-member, see Iraq Veterans Against the War or Courage to Resist's websites to get involved in anti-war work. Support and spread the word about the Civilian-Soldier Alliance, embracing those within the military or veteran communities who want to talk about their experiences and work towards other options. Question the training that our government and our tax money puts our impressionable young people through: if we object to this video, we need to look at what training led to it. Check out books like On Killing and pressure political and military leaders to reconsider the psychological methods that teach soldiers to dehumanize. Look at what we teach our children, work towards starting peace studies programs in your schools. Question where our tax money is really going and why so much is spent on warfare. Inform yourself on the deeper priorities of our society by watching for example, The Story of Stuff and ask yourself if your lifestyle is contributing to those mistaken priorities.
War Crimes: Civilian deaths in AfPak adventure
“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.” -- Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, Commander, International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces Afghanistan
The rest of the story: McChrystal admits Afghan atrocities, press yawns by Allison Kilkenny (True/Slant 2010-03-28)
See, also: Tighter Rules Fail to Stem Deaths of Innocent Afghans at Checkpoints by Richard A. Oppel Jr. (New York Times 2010-03-26)
The rest of the story: McChrystal admits Afghan atrocities, press yawns by Allison Kilkenny (True/Slant 2010-03-28)
See, also: Tighter Rules Fail to Stem Deaths of Innocent Afghans at Checkpoints by Richard A. Oppel Jr. (New York Times 2010-03-26)
Saturday Catchup: Must reads (and sees) from the past week
Taxing Cannabis: This Time, Pot Really Might Become Legal by Kevin Drum (Mother Jones 2010-03-26) -- The only thing that can stop legalization in California is massive spending by the prison guards union.
War Crimes: State Department Declares Illegal Drone Attacks to Be Legal as Part of Eternal Global War by David Swanson (AfterDowningStreet 2010-03-26) -- Because they say so, that's why.
Change Watch: The horrible prospect of Supreme Court Justice Cass Sunstein by Glenn Greenwald (Salon 2010-03-26) -- or Elena Kagan, for that matter. Will Obama move SCOTUS to the right?'
The influence of the Israel Lobby on America's Iran policy (Obama continues Bush's Iran policy 3) by Daan de Wit, translated by Ben Kearney (Deep Journal 2010-03-23) -- Why Washington lives in fear the lobby's long reach. Also, see Obama continues Bush's Iran policy 1 and 2.
Jon Stewart does (in) Glenn Beck:
Is this the Birth of a Nation? by Melissa Harris-Lacewell (The Nation 2010-03-22) -- The return of Jim Crow.
Health Reform Bill Summary: The Top 18 Immediate Effects by Jeremy Binckes and Nick Wing (Huntington Post 2010-03-23) | It's not affordable or universal, but it's a damn sight better than what was there before.
The real hero of health care reform: Nancy Pelosi by Mark Greenbaum (Christian Science Monitor 2010-03-22) -- Whatever you think of the outcome, leadership came from the House not the White House.
If you want to see why Carly Fiorina will never be US Senator you have only to watch this wacko ad for Carly Fiorina:
Secrets of the Tea Party: The troubling history of Tea Party leader Dick Armey by Beau Hodai (In These Times 2010-03-21)
Two Right-Wing Billionaire Brothers Are Remaking America for Their Own Benefit by Jim Hightower (AlterNet 2010-03-19) -- The Moneybags behind the corporate coup d'état.
War Crimes: State Department Declares Illegal Drone Attacks to Be Legal as Part of Eternal Global War by David Swanson (AfterDowningStreet 2010-03-26) -- Because they say so, that's why.
Change Watch: The horrible prospect of Supreme Court Justice Cass Sunstein by Glenn Greenwald (Salon 2010-03-26) -- or Elena Kagan, for that matter. Will Obama move SCOTUS to the right?'
The influence of the Israel Lobby on America's Iran policy (Obama continues Bush's Iran policy 3) by Daan de Wit, translated by Ben Kearney (Deep Journal 2010-03-23) -- Why Washington lives in fear the lobby's long reach. Also, see Obama continues Bush's Iran policy 1 and 2.
Jon Stewart does (in) Glenn Beck:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Conservative Libertarian | ||||
| ||||
Health Reform Bill Summary: The Top 18 Immediate Effects by Jeremy Binckes and Nick Wing (Huntington Post 2010-03-23) | It's not affordable or universal, but it's a damn sight better than what was there before.
The real hero of health care reform: Nancy Pelosi by Mark Greenbaum (Christian Science Monitor 2010-03-22) -- Whatever you think of the outcome, leadership came from the House not the White House.
If you want to see why Carly Fiorina will never be US Senator you have only to watch this wacko ad for Carly Fiorina:
Secrets of the Tea Party: The troubling history of Tea Party leader Dick Armey by Beau Hodai (In These Times 2010-03-21)
Two Right-Wing Billionaire Brothers Are Remaking America for Their Own Benefit by Jim Hightower (AlterNet 2010-03-19) -- The Moneybags behind the corporate coup d'état.
War Crimes: Spanish criminals get our criminals off the hook
The big news while I was in Spain last month was the investigation by a local judge of the policy of systematic, institutionalized torture by Bush administration officials as part of the "war on terror." When I got home, I wasn't surprised to find the story hadn't gotten similar play in American papers, even though the six former 
Bush officials in the judge's sights include former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, torture memoist John Yoo, and David Addington, Cheney's chief of staff.
The judge in question, Baltazar Garzon, one of six investigating magistrates of the Criminal Court of Spain, acts on the legal theory that there is no statue of limitations on war crimes or crimes against humanity. He has pursued investigations of massacres of political opponents by Spanish fascists, murderous regimes in Chile and Argentina, and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's involvement in Operation Condor.
Now it looks like the Bush co-conspirators can rest easier in their beds, if not their souls. Judge Garzon is being targeted by the Spanish Right for investigating "disappearances" during the Spanish Civil War and Franscisco Franco era in contradiction to the granting of an official amnesty by the Spanish state. Since it seems clear the United States will not clean its own house with regard to criminal activity by past leaders, all we can hope for is now is that an international tribunal like the World Court will be moved to hold responsible for their crimes the torture perps of the Bush era.
Further reading:
Spain considers prosecuting U.S. officials for torture by Marjorie Miller (Los Angeles Times 2009-05-06)
Spain rejects US 'torture' probe (BBC News 2009-04-16)
Spanish judge opens probe into Guantanamo torture (Agence France-Presse 2009-04-16)
Spain Allows Case Against Noted Judge by Andrés Cala (New York Times 2010-03-25)
Also, although it is only tangently related, the drily titled Secondary Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century is worth filing for future reference.
Bush officials in the judge's sights include former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, torture memoist John Yoo, and David Addington, Cheney's chief of staff.The judge in question, Baltazar Garzon, one of six investigating magistrates of the Criminal Court of Spain, acts on the legal theory that there is no statue of limitations on war crimes or crimes against humanity. He has pursued investigations of massacres of political opponents by Spanish fascists, murderous regimes in Chile and Argentina, and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's involvement in Operation Condor.
Now it looks like the Bush co-conspirators can rest easier in their beds, if not their souls. Judge Garzon is being targeted by the Spanish Right for investigating "disappearances" during the Spanish Civil War and Franscisco Franco era in contradiction to the granting of an official amnesty by the Spanish state. Since it seems clear the United States will not clean its own house with regard to criminal activity by past leaders, all we can hope for is now is that an international tribunal like the World Court will be moved to hold responsible for their crimes the torture perps of the Bush era.
Further reading:
Spain considers prosecuting U.S. officials for torture by Marjorie Miller (Los Angeles Times 2009-05-06)
Spain rejects US 'torture' probe (BBC News 2009-04-16)
Spanish judge opens probe into Guantanamo torture (Agence France-Presse 2009-04-16)
Spain Allows Case Against Noted Judge by Andrés Cala (New York Times 2010-03-25)
Also, although it is only tangently related, the drily titled Secondary Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century is worth filing for future reference.
Press Release O' the Day: ACLU Seeks Information On Predator Drone Program
Group Files Lawsuit For Data On Targeted Killings Of Suspected Terrorists And Civilian Casualties
Are there legal, ethical or policy justifications for a program that by all outward appearances violates common sense, common decency, and the rules of civilized behavior?
Link to the ACLU's complaint
Link to the ACLU's FOIA request
NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit today demanding that the government disclose the legal basis for its use of unmanned drones to conduct targeted killings overseas. In particular, the lawsuit asks for information on when, where and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, the number and rate of civilian casualties and other basic information essentialfor assessing the wisdom and legality of using armed drones to conduct targeted killings.
"The public has a right to know whether the targeted killings being carried out in its name are consistent with international law and with the country's interests and values," said Jonathan Manes, a legal fellow with the ACLU National Security Project. "The Obama administration should disclose basic information about the program, including its legal basis and limits, and the civilian casualty toll thus far."
The CIA and the military have used unmanned drones to target and kill individuals not only in Afghanistan and Iraq but also in Pakistan and, in at least one case in 2002, Yemen. The technology allows U.S. personnel to observe targeted individuals in real time and launch missiles intended to kill them from control centers located thousands of miles away. Recent reports, including public statements from the director of national intelligence, indicate that U.S. citizens have been placed on the list of targets who can be hunted and killed with drones.
The ACLU made an initial FOIA request for information on the drone program in January. Today's lawsuit against the Defense Department, the State Department and the Justice Department seeks to enforce that request. None of the three agencies have provided any documents in response to the request, nor have they given any reason for withholding documents. The CIA answered the ACLU's request by refusing to confirm or deny the existence of any relevant documents. The CIA is not a defendant in today's lawsuit because the ACLU will first appeal the CIA's non-response to the Agency Release Panel.
"The government's use of drones to conduct targeted killings raises complicated questions – not only legal questions, but policy and moral questions as well," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. "These kinds of questions ought to be discussed and debated publicly, not resolved secretly behind closed doors. While the Obama administration may legitimately withhold intelligence information as well as sensitive information about military strategy, it should disclose basic information about the scope of the drone program, the legal basis for the program and the civilian casualties that have resulted from the program."
The ACLU's lawsuit seeks, in addition to information about the legal basis for the drone program, information about how the program is overseen and data regarding the number of civilians and non-civilians killed in the strikes. Estimates of civilian casualties provided by anonymous government officials quoted in the press and by various non-governmental analysts differ dramatically, from the dozens to the hundreds, giving an incomplete and inconsistent picture of the human cost of the program.
Are there legal, ethical or policy justifications for a program that by all outward appearances violates common sense, common decency, and the rules of civilized behavior?
Link to the ACLU's complaint
Link to the ACLU's FOIA request
Standards: Bush’s Torture Memos Author OK with Nuking Civilians, Draws the Line at Crushing Children’s Testicles
George Bush's senior Justice Department legal adviser John Yoo defended comments that the president could unilaterally "massacre" civilians in wartime in a newly released interview.
The rest of the story:
Top Bush adviser defends using nuclear weapons on civilians by John Byrne (RawStory).
The rest of the story:
Top Bush adviser defends using nuclear weapons on civilians by John Byrne (RawStory).
The Long War: Obama's war in Afghanistan is unwinnable
Amy Goodman: "In Afghanistan, the number of civilian casualties continues to rise. On Tuesday, at least eight people died after a bomb exploded in the southern provincial capital of Lashkar Gah amid a major US-led offensive in the area. Local authorities said all those killed in the attack were civilians. Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s government has condemned a NATO air strike on a convoy on Sunday that killed twenty-seven civilians, including four women and a child. NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal went on Afghan television to apologize for the attack....Last year was the deadliest of the war for civilians and foreign troops. And while there is no reliable count of the number of Afghans killed, the number of US soldiers killed in the war has reached 1,000."
According to Phyllis Bennis, the only way to put an end to civilian casualties is to end the war. (Democracy Now! 2010-02-23):
Read: Ending the Us War in Afghanistan: A Primer by David Wildman and Phyllis Bennis (2010)
See, also: Kucinich Challenges Sec. Gates on Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan (AfterDowningStreet 2010-02-23)
According to Phyllis Bennis, the only way to put an end to civilian casualties is to end the war. (Democracy Now! 2010-02-23):
Read: Ending the Us War in Afghanistan: A Primer by David Wildman and Phyllis Bennis (2010)
See, also: Kucinich Challenges Sec. Gates on Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan (AfterDowningStreet 2010-02-23)
Action: “No You Can’t!”
Rally at White House December 12 - Unity Among Peace Movement Groups against Obama War Escalation - Warning of Reprisals to Troop Surge (adapted from press release)
Over 100 leading peace activists have called an 'Emergency Anti-Escalation Rally' at the White House on December 12, from 11a.m. to 4 p.m., to reject Pres. Barack Obama’s planned military escalation in Afghanistan. The rally is organized by End US Wars, a newly formed coalition of national and grass-roots antiwar organizations, with endorsements from leading peace leaders.
Rally organizers are calling for the left wing to end its support for Obama if he declares a surge in troops, and for condemnation of Obama’s war policy by his own party faithful. In addition, efforts will begin to cut short his term in office, along with Congress; and protests will intensify against U.S. war involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq and any other countries.
Speakers include: Cynthia McKinney, Sen. Mike Gravel, Kathy Kelly, Chris Hedges, David Swanson, Phyllis Bennis, Rev. Graylan Hagler, Coy McKinney, Debra Sweet, Brian Becker, Mathis Chiroux, Lynne Williams, Hon. Betty Hall, Elaine Brower, Marian Douglas, Michael Knox, Ralph Lopez, Ron Fisher, and statements from Col. Ann Wright, Stephen Zunes and Granny D (turning 100).
The coalition End US Wars follows a letter, written by Laurie Dobson of Maine, demanding that Obama end the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars; importantly, adding a specific call for a ceasefire on Predator drone attacks over Pakistan; and requesting that immediate reconstruction and recovery in war torn regions begin. Along with the rally on Saturday, December 12 at 11 a.m. in Lafayette Park, the film Rethink Afghanistan will be shown Friday December 11, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., at Busboys & Poets, 14th and V Streets, NW, Washington, DC. For information, email: contact@enduswars.org or visit www.enduswars.org. For press inquiries, phone: 207-604-8988.
Over 100 leading peace activists have called an 'Emergency Anti-Escalation Rally' at the White House on December 12, from 11a.m. to 4 p.m., to reject Pres. Barack Obama’s planned military escalation in Afghanistan. The rally is organized by End US Wars, a newly formed coalition of national and grass-roots antiwar organizations, with endorsements from leading peace leaders.
Rally organizers are calling for the left wing to end its support for Obama if he declares a surge in troops, and for condemnation of Obama’s war policy by his own party faithful. In addition, efforts will begin to cut short his term in office, along with Congress; and protests will intensify against U.S. war involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq and any other countries.
Speakers include: Cynthia McKinney, Sen. Mike Gravel, Kathy Kelly, Chris Hedges, David Swanson, Phyllis Bennis, Rev. Graylan Hagler, Coy McKinney, Debra Sweet, Brian Becker, Mathis Chiroux, Lynne Williams, Hon. Betty Hall, Elaine Brower, Marian Douglas, Michael Knox, Ralph Lopez, Ron Fisher, and statements from Col. Ann Wright, Stephen Zunes and Granny D (turning 100).
The coalition End US Wars follows a letter, written by Laurie Dobson of Maine, demanding that Obama end the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars; importantly, adding a specific call for a ceasefire on Predator drone attacks over Pakistan; and requesting that immediate reconstruction and recovery in war torn regions begin. Along with the rally on Saturday, December 12 at 11 a.m. in Lafayette Park, the film Rethink Afghanistan will be shown Friday December 11, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., at Busboys & Poets, 14th and V Streets, NW, Washington, DC. For information, email: contact@enduswars.org or visit www.enduswars.org. For press inquiries, phone: 207-604-8988.
Change Watch: New American cluster bomb may blow up anti-weapon treaty
Once again, the U.S. appears to ready oppose an international treaty designed to limit the use of inhumane weapons.
The rest of the story: Made in Mass., bomb stirs global debate - Textron seeks to quash cluster munitions pact by Bryan Bender (Boston.com 2009-09-29)
See, also: Landmine Ban Treaty Turns 10: Past Time for U.S. to Join
World Marks Ten Years Of Landmine Ban Treaty
The Sensor Fuzed Weapon is a marvel of military technology, says its maker, Textron Defense Systems. An advanced "cluster bomb," it is designed to spray 40 individual projectiles of molten copper, destroying enemy tanks across a 30-acre swath of battlefield.
But the bomb ... violates terms of a landmark international treaty limiting cluster bombs to 10 bomblets or less. The pending treaty, signed by 98 nations last year in Oslo, has been sought for decades by human rights groups, which say that cluster bombs kill indiscriminately and leave behind duds that kill or maim unsuspecting civilians.
Now Textron, with the support of the Pentagon and the State Department, is mounting a campaign to derail the cluster-bomb treaty and write a new set of rules under the United Nations that would make it easier to sell its weapon around the world.
The rest of the story: Made in Mass., bomb stirs global debate - Textron seeks to quash cluster munitions pact by Bryan Bender (Boston.com 2009-09-29)
See, also: Landmine Ban Treaty Turns 10: Past Time for U.S. to Join
World Marks Ten Years Of Landmine Ban Treaty
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