Peace and Justice Post

Doha Time, July 3, 2007

Vanunu sentenced to six-month jail term

JERUSALEM: An Israeli court yesterday sentenced Mordechai Vanunu, who in 2004 completed an 18-year prison term for spilling nuclear secrets, to six more months behind bars after he violated a ban on speaking to foreigners.

Israel has barred Vanunu from travelling abroad and monitored his movements since he left jail, alleging that he has more details on the Dimona atomic reactor to divulge. Vanunu denies that but says he will pursue anti-nuclear activities.

“I don’t want to live here. I have the right to be free,” Vanunu, 52, said after the sentencing at Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court. “I want to be free and I want to leave.”
The court, which also handed Vanunu a six-month suspended sentence, held off on jailing him to allow for appeals. Vanunu’s lawyer, Michael Sfard, said he had until September 9 to decide on a course of action but hinted he might not fight the prison time.

“This is a cruel sentence in a case that has nothing to do with national security or social values. It’s a measure of the vindictiveness of the state of Israel,” Sfard said.
“While Vanunu has perfect grounds for an appeal, we will have to give thought to whether that is what is wanted.”

Vanunu was jailed on treason charges in 1986 after giving an unauthorised interview to a British newspaper about his work as a mid-level Dimona technician. The disclosures all but blew away the secrecy around an assumed Israeli atomic arsenal.
Since his release Vanunu has campaigned for the Jewish state to be disarmed. He openly defied an order, issued by Israel’s military top brass and upheld by the Supreme Court, that sought to curb his contacts with foreigners and international media.

“While returning a man to prison after he served 18 years there does not bring joy to anyone, there was no other choice but to take this step to make clear that the nation will defend its secrets and protect its security,” prosecutor Dan Eldad said in a statement issued by the justice ministry.

Vanunu’s April conviction centred on comments to US, British, Australian and French media in which he said Israel assembled hydrogen and neutron bombs at the Dimona reactor and was annually producing 40kg of plutonium, enough to make 10 atom bombs.

Those statements appeared largely to be a retread of Vanunu’s 1986 interview with Britain’s Sunday Times. – Reuters

Source: RINF.com

Sunday, July 1st, 2007

By Tim Shipman

Vice-President Dick Cheney was personally responsible for American policies that subjected terrorist suspects to cruelty and denied them the right to a fair trial, according to revelations from senior US government officials.

	Dick Cheney now looks like a ‘comic book villain’

The details have laid bare more than ever before the remarkable influence of Mr Cheney in shaping the prosecution of the war on terror which led to the scandals at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

The claims that Mr Cheney manoeuvred to circumvent both American and international law came as the vice-president last week faced three new congressional demands that he release information on his activities.

Even his supporters admitted that the disclosures have left Mr Cheney looking like a “comic-book villain” whose contempt for process, including within the White House, has undermined public support for President Bush.

A year-long investigation by The Washington Post uncovered details of how in November 2001 – two months after the September 11 atrocities – Vice-President Cheney went behind the backs of the secretary of state, Colin Powell, and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to deny foreign terrorist suspects access to a court.

In a private dinner with President Bush, Mr Cheney presented him with an order written by his own lawyer, David Addington, denying suspects a civilian trial or a court martial and ordering that they could be confined indefinitely without charge.

Within an hour of the meal, the document had been signed by the president, having been whisked straight to his desk on Vice-President Cheney’s orders, without being seen by senior White House staff. Miss Rice was described as “incensed” and when Mr Powell learnt of the decision from television news he snapped: “What the hell just happened?”

Mr Cheney then ordered his legal team secretly to draw up orders for intelligence agencies to intercept letters, telephone calls and electronic communications to and from America, without a warrant – something forbidden by federal law since 1978.

Last week, the powerful Senate judiciary committee issued subpoenas to Mr Cheney and the White House, demanding access to documents relating to that decision.

Then, in January 2002, Mr Cheney decided that America must abandon the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of enemy prisoners, which outlawed torture.

He personally commissioned legal opinions that would maintain a ban on torture but permit “cruel, inhuman or degrading” interrogation methods. A document drawn up by Mr Addington was adopted, verbatim, by President Bush.

In August that year, the vice-president’s lawyer inserted a paragraph into a memo of instructions for the CIA on torture which claimed that laws forbidding any person to “commit torture do not apply” to the president because that would be a restriction of his right to wage war.

The US Supreme Court has since given three rulings contradicting Vice-President Cheney’s view of the president’s powers, culminating in June with a demand for the Guantánamo inmates to face trial.

But Mr Cheney is accused of continuing to try to bypass international law. When the Senate voted in 2005 to support the Geneva Conventions, Vice-President Cheney – defying opposition from the CIA, the Pentagon, and state and justice departments had a clause inserted into the bill, which meant that the US military is bound by it but not the CIA.

The revelations paint a picture of a man obsessed by secrecy and the accumulation of power. The vice-president keeps even routine papers in a safe in his office, refuses to disclose the names or the size of his staff and has ordered the Secret Service to destroy his visitor logs.

He has even created his own security designation, stamping “Treated As: Top Secret/SCI” (special compartmented intelligence) on mundane papers, in an attempt to protect what are in fact unclassified documents. The classification suggests that their disclosure could cause “exceptionally grave damage to national security”. He even put the Top Secret stamp on a paper detailing talking points for officials to use with the press – information he actually wanted to be made public.

Mr Cheney also ordered that images of his official residence be pixelated on the Google Earth website, which features satellite photographs, while the White House and Capitol remain fully visible.

He is now under investigation by the House of Representatives committee on government oversight for refusing to follow a long-standing directive ordering his office, among other government agencies, to hand over to the National Archives details of how he uses classified information. When challenged, he recommended abolition of the archive office.

Last week Mr Cheney and Mr Addington tried to argue that he was not bound by the rules, claiming that he is not part of the executive branch of government because he also acts as president of the Senate. They abandoned that position when congressional Democrats threatened to strip him of his executive funding. “He’s saying he’s above the law,” said Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the oversight committee.

Vice-President Cheney has previously claimed executive privilege – the opposite excuse – in refusing to hand over details of which oil companies he consulted when drawing up American energy policy.

The Washington Post series also detailed how he ordered the diversion of a river to irrigate farms in Oregon, in pursuit of farmers’ votes, despite scientific evidence that this would endanger two protected species of fish. The move killed 80,000 salmon. Last week that issue became the subject of an inquiry by another House committee.

Allies say Mr Cheney is unrepentant. “The only person in Washington who cares less about his public image than David Addington is Dick Cheney,” said a former White House ally.

“What both of them miss is that in times of war, a prerequisite for success is people having confidence in their leadership. This is the great failure of the administration – a complete and total indifference to public opinion.”

Published on Sunday, July 1, 2007 by Reuters

HAVANA – Convalescing Cuban President Fidel Castro charged on Sunday the release of classified CIA documents detailing past abuses was a smoke screen behind which the Bush administration hoped to hide even worse methods.

“I think that this action could be an attempt … to make people believe that these methods belong to another era and are no longer used,” Castro wrote in an editorial published by the communist country’s official media.

“Everything described in the documents is still being done, only in a more brutal manner around the entire planet, including an increasing number of illegal actions in the very United States.”

The CIA declassified on Tuesday hundreds of pages of long-secret records that detailed some of the agency’s worst illegal abuses during about 25 years of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying and kidnapping.

The documents are known in the CIA as the “Family Jewels” and some describe the agency’s efforts to persuade Johnny Roselli, believed to be a mobster, to help plot the assassination of Castro.

“Sunday is a good day to read what appears to be science fiction,” Castro began his three-page editorial, titled “The Killing Machine.”

He went on to quote extensively from material covering the attempt on his life, as well as a New York Times analysis of all the documents.

Cuba charges that Castro has been the target of hundreds of assassination attempts. The Cuban leader has said numerous times that President George W. Bush has ordered him killed.

Castro also reiterated in detail his long-held belief that U.S. President John F. Kennedy, assassinated in 1963, was the victim of a plot involving elements of the CIA and militant anti-Castro Cuban exiles.

Castro, a master sharp-shooter with a telescopic rifle, insists Lee Harvey Oswald could not have been the only shooter in Dallas.

“You loose the target after every shot even if it is not moving and have to find it again in fractions of a second,” he said.

Castro has not been seen in public since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July last year, when he handed over power temporarily to his younger brother, Raul.

But the 80-year-old revolutionary has returned to public life since March by writing occasional articles, called “Reflections of the Commander in Chief.” He has been writing more frequently in recent weeks, fueling speculation that his health is improving.

The New York Times,

By BARRY BEARAK and ABDUL WAHEED WAFA

Published: June 30, 2007

KABUL, Afghanistan, June 29 — Four civilians were killed early Friday by American and Afghan forces in eastern Afghanistan, according to the leader of a small human rights group who gave an account of the deaths entirely at odds with that of the United States-led coalition.

Enlarge This Image

Rahmat Gul/Associated Press

A boy wept after two of his uncles were killed and his father was detained in an American raid on several family compounds in eastern Afghanistan.

“The soldiers claimed they were looking for three Taliban suspects, and they blew out the door of the house that belongs to Haji Muhammada Jan, who was about 80 years old, killing him and two of his sons and a grandson,” said Lal Gul, chairman of the Afghanistan Human Rights Organization and a resident of the area in Nangarhar Province where the killings took place. “There were no Taliban here.”

The American-led coalition offered a markedly different version, saying its forces had been fired upon after “credible intelligence” led them to three separate compounds suspected of harboring Taliban fighters. It said that three militants were killed in the ensuing combat. A search of the compounds yielded rocket-propelled grenade launchers and grenades, Maj. Christopher Belcher said. Sixteen militants were taken prisoner, the coalition said.

Such competing versions of reality have become an almost daily part of the war in Afghanistan, where the nation’s president and many of its people vehemently complain that American and NATO military forces are causing needless civilian casualties.

On Friday, the NATO secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, addressed the matter in remarks made in Macedonia, promising, “We will do our utmost to reduce the loss of civilian life.” He continued, “Let me make one point unmistakably: NATO has never and will never intentionally kill innocent civilians.”

But the issue is not one of intent. Last week, President Hamid Karzai rebuked the United States military and NATO for “careless operations.” He spoke after a week in which more than 100 civilian deaths were reported from airstrikes and artillery fire against the Taliban. Among his specific criticisms were what he called “the disproportionate use of force to a situation and the lack of coordination with the Afghan government.”

If Mr. Gul, the human rights advocate, is correct, the events in Nangarhar on Friday may have been a result of another in a series of tragic mistakes. “The people who were taken away are not members of the Taliban,” he said in a telephone interview. “They are mostly farmers. The version being given by the coalition is baseless and a lie.”

Two weeks ago, seven Afghan policemen were killed by Americans in the same region when the two forces mistook each other for insurgents.

Also on Friday, Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, visited Afghanistan for the first time in his present job, meeting with Mr. Karzai and the commander of NATO forces here, The Associated Press reported.

A spokesman for the United Nations, Adrian Edwards, said the visit was aimed at “ensuring solid coordination between the U.N. and Afghan government in their joint efforts here,” The A.P. reported.

Global Research, June 30, 2007

Tony Blair: Orwellian Nightmare. War Criminal becomes Envoy of Peace

By Mohammad Kamaali

As Tony Blair left Downing Street, leaving Britain’s Prime Ministership to his long time rival and co-leader of the Labour Party, Gordon Brown, the protesters outside Blair’s office were greeted with the news that Blair had just been appointed as the new “Middle East Envoy” for the Quartet. (US/EU/UN/Russia)

Looking at the realities of the Middle East today and reviewing Blair’s contribution to the current mayhem, one is left wondering whether this decision is born out of delusional thinking, sheer cynicism, or is there any possible constructive utility in this appointment?

During his ten years in office, Tony Blair was, by all accounts, the most media-obsessed Prime Minister Britain has ever seen. Perhaps his decision to put himself forward for this job must also be viewed in that light, as a last attempt by an increasingly unpopular politician to save his face at home rather than a genuine attempt to work towards any real prospect of a safer world.

Perhaps the one major highlight of Blair’s negotiation skills was the Good Friday Agreement that he helped bring about in Northern Ireland in 1998. But not only was the groundwork for this laid down by his predecessor, what is also often forgotten, is that this was an isolated problem, in his own backyard; while the Middle East is an entirely different situation with a complicated web of stake holders where problems cannot be viewed in isolation from each other.

The very fact that Blair seems to see himself as ‘fit for purpose’ shows a lack of understanding of the political situation in the Middle East and the root causes of the ongoing problems.

His conduct and miscalculations in his shameless refusal to call for a ceasefire during Israel’s attack on Lebanon last summer, which led to the destruction of southern Lebanon , cost him the little credibility he had previously earned by projecting an image of himself as a restraining force in preventing George W. Bush from attacking Iraq without a second UNSC resolution. Of course that resolution was never passed and they both went ahead with their long time planned invasion.

In any conflict, it is reasonable to expect the mediator to be respected by both parties to the conflict as unbiased and one who will act in competence and honesty to bring about a fair and appropriate resolution. Blair’s appointment as an envoy was immediately welcomed by Israel and the US . But is this a view that is shared beyond the ‘allied’ countries? It is inconceivable to think that Blair and his advisors are not aware of his image in the Middle East . As such one is led to believe that he is quite simply “not bothered” about it. This is what I refer to as “sheer cynicism”.

More

RINF News, 27.06.2007

The US armed forces have been using torture indiscriminately, a human rights group charged Monday.

“Moreover, more than 100,000 pages of government documents released in response to [an] American Civil Liberties Union [ACLU] Freedom of Information Act request reveal that a pervasive and systemic pattern of harsh interrogation techniques have been used by military personnel indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay,” the ACLU said in a statement Monday.

“The documents include evidence that detainees have been beaten; forced into painful stress positions; threatened with death; sexually and religiously humiliated; stripped naked; hooded and blindfolded; exposed to extreme heat and cold; denied food and water; isolated for prolonged periods; subjected to mock drownings; and intimated by dogs,” the group said.

The ACLU and other human rights groups hope that the Democratic-controlled 110th Congress will act on their reports to rein in the Bush administration and force it to change its interrogation policies. Congress has already stepped up its efforts to monitor such secret activities in the war on terror.