Peace and Justice Post

On 5 November, Israel closed the crossings into the Gaza Strip and blocked the entry of goods and supplies, including basic foodstuffs. Since 18 November, Israel has allowed the entry of goods, though much less than in October. According to government officials, the crossings were closed in response to the firing of more than 100 rockets and mortar shells from the Gaza Strip into Israel. Prior to the closing of the crossings, on 4 and 5 November, Israeli forces killed six Palestinians who were taking part in the hostilities.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that, from 5-18 November, the Gaza power station received 24 percent of the industrial fuel needed to operate the station at full capacity. As a result, power supply to Gaza City and the central Gaza Strip was interrupted for 16 hours a day, leaving some 650,000 residents without electricity at any given time. The power breaks also affected water supply: 20 percent of all Gazans received running water once every five days, and then only for six hours; 40 percent received water once every four days; and the remaining residents received water once every three days.

Continuation of the fuel shortage is also liable to bring the sewage pumps to a halt, resulting in an uncontrolled flow of unpurified sewage into residential neighborhoods. In recent weeks, the hospitals have relied on generators to maintain normal operations. However, continued reduction of fuel supply or breakdowns in the generators are liable to affect the ability of hospitals to function properly.

Medicines and essential medical equipment intended for Gaza remain stuck at Ben Gurion Airport because the crossings are closed. Also, bread is being rationed, due to the lack of cooking gas and the reduction in supply of wheat. As a result, 28 of the 47 bakeries in Gaza City and all bakeries in Rafah have been forced to stop work.

According to media reports, goods are being brought into Gaza from Egypt via tunnels in Rafah, but in insufficient amounts to match the normal extent of trade, which is controlled almost exclusively by Israel.

The rocket fire at Israeli communities is a grave breach of the laws of war and constitutes a war crime. Israel is allowed, and is even obligated, to defend its citizens from these attacks. In doing so, however, it must use only legal means. Not allowing the entry of goods into Gaza in response to the rocket fire constitutes unlawful collective punishment imposed on one and a half million civilians.

Since the disengagement in 2005, Israel has increased the restrictions placed on residents of the Gaza Strip, preventing entry of goods that are not considered “humanitarian,” including raw materials for construction and manufacturing needs, and preventing almost completely exports from the Strip. As a result of this policy, most Gazan households live in deep poverty, and approximately half of them depend on humanitarian aid to survive.

Israel’s control of the crossings and of so many aspects of life in the Gaza Strip requires it, inter alia, to enable the passage of medicines, foodstuffs, and necessary goods. Israel must immediately and completely reopen the crossings for the entry of supplies and goods into the Gaza Strip and refrain from collective punishment of the residents there.

http://www.btselem.org/English/Gaza_Strip/20081127_More_Sanctions_on_Gaza.asp

Antiwar.com, Dec 8, 2008

NATO spokesman James Appathurai condemned a report by the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) as not credible today, after it concluded that the Taliban has a “permanent presence” in 72 percent of Afghanistan. The Afghan government likewise criticized the report for a “questionable methodology.”

The ICOS defines a permanent presence as an average of at least one insurgent attack per week over the entire year. The Afghan government feels this unfairly includes “sporadic, terrorizing activities” by the Taliban. NATO insists “the Taliban are only present in the south and east which is already less than 50 percent of the country.”

Exactly how NATO reached this determination is unclear, but the US air strike in Herat Province was ostensibly targeted at the Taliban, and Herat Province is in the northwestern corner of the nation. Likewise, reports of police defections to the Taliban also place Taliban forces in the area along the Iranian border of Herat.

The ICOS report also says that the Taliban are “closing a noose” around the Afghan capital of Kabul. The report says that Kabul was virtually Taliban-free a year ago, but the well-documented growth of Taliban influence in the area is leading to an increase in attacks. The US is reportedly planning to deploy much of a combat brigade into the region in an attempt to regain control of the area.

Related Stories

• December 8, 2008 — Growing Fears in Peshawar as Over 50 More Trucks Destroyed
• December 7, 2008 — Militants Torch Over 160 Vehicles Bound for Afghanistan
• November 26, 2008 — Karzai Wishes He Could Shoot Down US Planes

compiled by Jason Ditz [email the author]

By Jon Ronnquist | Information Clearing House, Dec 8, 2008

Many have quite rightly argued that the forces which drive the sink-or-swim free market economy are beyond any conventional means of containment. Like a cancer which fights for its own survival at all costs, including eventually the host itself, so does the free market economy feed without consideration for the clear boundaries of sustainability, tolerance and fairness.

This is exacerbated by the universal debt based system of finance, which narrows considerations of profit into ever shorter time spans, thus creating antipathy towards long term visions and factors beyond profit, such as negative impact and future repercussions. For those who have understood this all along, the current economic implosion is not only understandable, but inevitable. Any parasite which draws more from its host than the host can sustain, will eventually kill it, and so we have what we have today. In this case the host is the working man, upon whom the burden of debt has been allowed to grow beyond his ability to manage, thus forcing a collapse at the very base of the pyramid.

Continuing this analogy of disease, we can see something of considerable interest with regard to our current situation. Any disease could be said to be parasitic, in so far as it can only live and grow within the infected host. And all disease is ultimately terminated in one of two ways. Either the host, through its own agents or with the help of medicine or surgery, is expelled or killed. Or when such efforts fail, the host dies and the disease with it. Looking at the economy this way, we can quite easily compare it to a life threatening illness, a cancer of the nation so to speak. And here we are at the end of the cycle. Prudence, oversight, consideration and even public solidarity, could all be said to have failed. And now we find ourselves at a cross roads, which I for one, do not believe is anywhere near as clear cut as our trusted men of office might have us believe. Looking at the current course being taken by governments across the world, we seem to be racing to rebuild the very thing which brought about this disaster. And they are right in a limited sense. If we want to start the process all over again, credit must be made available again at all costs.

But is that what we really need? Even if a large majority of existing debt were simply wiped out, which it theoretically could be when you consider that the money borrowed never existed in the first place, it would not guarantee against a repetition of the cycle now coming to an end. If we start borrowing again, we will simply buy ourselves a little more time. Borrowing is as short sighted a solution as the desperate profit frenzy it predisposes us to. The fact that borrowing has been institutionalised among working people in the last few decades, does not mean it is either wise or prudent. Very few of the millions whose lives have been ruined by the burden of debt will insist they are better of for it. And as that number begins to increase dramatically, the true nature, and perhaps even intent, of large scale money lending is revealed. Debt is a trap, and like any trap, it was set in place by those who would profit to see it walked into. It is no coincidence that there isn’t anywhere near enough money, or even arbitrary value, in the world to pay all existing debts. And with the collapse of Wall Street and the billions in false value they have created over the years now disappearing like the smoke and mirrors it has always been, there is even less. A vast majority of those who owe, are stuck with their debt as a mathematical fact. And many more must rely on the continued borrowing of their debtors and clientèle to pay their own debts.

The idea that an object or institution can sky rocket in value without fundamentally changing, is a fallacy, albeit one which has made many people rich in the years of false optimism leading up to the current crisis. And the proof of that fallacy is the equally illogical way in which that value has now disappeared. How can the worth of a single stake in GM go from over $90 in 2000, to just under $4 in 2008, while the quantity, quality, usefulness, dependability and economy of its product remains effectively the same? The answer is that it can’t. At least not in reality. But as has been proven, cut throat capitalism and reality have very little in common. I myself have never bought stock for this simple reason, I find the gloating optimism of those who see their shares increase in value just as annoying as their mind numbing whimpering when it crashes. People who bought their house in the eighties love to brag about the difference between what it cost them and what it’s now worth, and seem oblivious to the fact that the house is no better or worse than it was and people who were unlucky enough to be born in the twenty first century have to sell their souls to get a home of their own. What we do see is home owners gambling with their new magically created “wealth” by borrowing against it while their incomes remain the same.

Continued >>

Paul Craig Roberts | RINF.COM, Dec 8, 2008

The US government does not have a monopoly on hypocrisy, but no other government can match the hypocrisy of the US government.

It is now well documented and known all over the world that the US government tortured detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and that the US government has had people kidnaped and “rendentioned,” that is, transported to third world countries, such as Egypt, to be tortured.

Also documented and well known is the fact that the US Department of Justice provided written memos justifying the torture of detainees. One torture advocate who wrote the DOJ memos that gave the green light to the Bush regime’s use of torture is John Yoo, a Vietnamese immigrant who somehow secured a US Justice Department appointment and a tenured professorship at the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law. John Yoo is the best case against immigration that I know.

Members of Berkeley’s city council believe that Yoo should be charged with war crimes. The US government has charged lesser offenders than Yoo with war crimes. Yoo helped the DOJ achieve the Bush regime’s goal of finding a way around the torture prohibitions of both US statutory law and the Geneva Conventions.

The way around the law that Yoo provided for the sadistic Bush regime was closed down by the US Supreme Court, which voided Yoo’s arguments, and Yoo’s torture memo was rescinded by the Department of Justice. Nevertheless, Yoo’s obvious constitutional incompetence, which in Yoo’s case is total, has not affected his position as professor of constitutional law at Berkeley. Can you imagine the harm Yoo is doing by teaching future cadres of lawyers and government officials that torture is consistent with the Constitution and the law of the land? How many of us will suffer from this ignorant man’s teachings?

But I digress. Even as the US government was torturing people, the US government was prosecuting the son of Charles Taylor, the former ruler of Liberia, for torturing political opponents of his father’s government. The US government did not employ the Yoo torture memo to justify Liberia’s use of torture against those who wished to overthrow the Liberian government or commit terror against it. The US government’s position is that Liberia’s government had no right to use torture to defend itself. Only an “indispensable nation” such as the US has the right to torture people who are imagined to threaten it.

I use the word “imagined” because approximately 99 percent of the detainees tortured by America were totally innocent people picked up at random or sold to the stupid Americans by warlords as “terrorists.” (The US government offered rewards for terrorists, like the bounty offered for outlaws in the “wild west.” The result was that warlords in Afghanistan and Pakistan grabbed whoever was not one of them and sold their captives to Americans as “terrorists.”)

According to Carrie Johnson, a Washington Post staff writer, on October 30, 2008, a federal jury in Miami convicted Charles Taylor’s son, Chuckie, of torture. Chuckie will be sentenced by the indispensable Americans in January for torture, conspiracy and firearms violations. He may spend the rest of his life in an American prison.

While Chuckie’s trial was underway, the Bush regime was torturing people.

The Washington Post writes that Chuckie’s conviction is “the first test of an American law that gives prosecutors the power to bring charges for acts of torture committed in foreign lands.” In other words, US law against torture applies to the entire world, to every other country except the United States. The hubris is unimaginable–no country can torture except the US.

Anyone else who tortures gets life, or in the case of Saddam Hussein gets hung by the neck until dead.

Isn’t it great to be an American. Our laws don’t apply to us, only to every other nation. This is what it means to be the moral light of the world, the unipower, the salt of the earth.

Neither poor Carrie Johnson nor her editors at the Washington post see the irony or the paradox. Johnson writes in the Washington Post that the US prosecutors “accused Taylor of taking part in atrocities and directing subordinates to torture victims using . . . electrical devices from 1999 to 2002.” That charge practically overlaps in time with Bush’s, or Cheney’s, or Yoo’s, or the DOJ’s, or Rumfeld’s, or whoever’s direction to subordinates to torture people detained by Americans at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and in various CIA rendition sites. By now everyone in the world has seen the photograph of the hooded Iraqi with electrical wires attached standing on that box in Abu Ghraib.

If only American laws applied to the American government. Then the criminals who have been in charge for 8 years could be prosecuted for their extreme violation of United States laws. But, of course, the great moral American government is far above the law. American law only applies to dispensable nations. America is not answerable to law, not to its own law and not to international law. US attorney general Michael Mukasey affirmed that the US government is above all law when he told the Senate Judiciary Committee that there would be no investigation or prosecution of those Bush regime officials who authorized torture and those who carried out the sadistic acts.

The American government, the government of the great indispensable nation, has a free pass. The strong do what they will. The weak suffer what they must.

Aswad’s Story

By JOHNNY BARBER | Counterpunch, Dec 5 / 7, 2008

Today, recognizing the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights, is a day to share a story I was able to document in Syria this past month. It is a difficult story, one many Americans would like to deny, and unable to do that, many will simply chose to turn their backs. There is ample opportunity for this. One could point at the outgoing administration, brand them as criminals, say their actions are a thing of the past, and leave it at that. Others could point to the new administration only weeks away, thinking our problems are solved, that change is on the way. But this also would be a mistake. Our complicity in these matters runs deeper then these simplistic deflections of responsibility. If we are to address the fundamental, systemic issues facing our nation and the world, reflection followed by action is necessary. As you read the story of Aswad and his family, recognize his story is one of thousands and his perception of America as purveyors of terrorism is based solely on his personal experience.

Aswad was fast asleep in the early morning hours of November 6th, 2003 when a commotion in the house woke him up. He looked up to see a room full of American soldiers pointing automatic weapons at his head.

He had arrived in the village of Al-Yarmouk on the outskirts of Mosul just the evening before, breaking the Ramadan fast with his friends and going to bed early. He had been following the same routine since early 2000, every couple of months purchasing about $300 worth of galibayas and other articles of clothing to sell on the streets of Mosul. This was to supplement his meager income as a farmer. Farming was backbreaking work and at 48 years old, he was hoping to find another way to support his wife and 9 children.

Now, people were shouting at him in a language he didn’t understand, binding his hands behind his back and blindfolding his eyes. Someone speaking Arabic asked him his name, and demanded, “From where?” He told them he was from Syria. They emptied his pockets, taking his passport and $400 in cash. Then they dragged him to his feet and took him out into the night. He knew that at least two of his friends were taken with him; he could feel one in front and one behind him as they were dragged across the courtyard.

The prisoners were taken by helicopter to an unknown destination and isolated. When he arrived he was placed between an idling steamroller and a barrier. As the ground shook from the heavy equipment he was certain he was going to die. He was told he would never see his family again. He recalls, “I thought they were just going to make me a part of the road.” At times over the next 8 days, Aswad thought that would have been a preferable outcome. His clothes were taken and he was forced to stand naked, except for the blindfold covering his eyes. His arms were shackled behind his back and legs shackled at the ankles. He was beaten with a club. He was hit so hard across the abdomen that he fell unconscious 3 times. Each time he was doused with freezing water until he regained consciousness, he was stood up, and beaten again. They shackled his wrists in front of him and made him hold two heavy cartons. Each time he dropped a carton, the beatings resumed. He was not permitted to sleep. Aswad recalled the only warmth he felt was the hot blood flowing from his forehead and broken nose down over his face and chest.

Near the end of his beatings he was confronted by a man dressed in civilian clothes who claimed to be Egyptian officer, but Aswad is certain he was not who he pretended to be. His Arabic accent was not Egyptian, nor was he American. Aswad thinks he may have been an Israeli, but he is not certain. He was questioned at length about attacks on Americans, each time he denied any knowledge about the attacks. Prior to his arrest he had been sleeping. He didn’t hear any shooting. No weapons were kept in his friend’s house. After each denial he was tasered. His body had been so severely battered by the beatings he endured that he didn’t feel the pain as he fell to the floor.

Throughout his ordeal, Aswad thought about death and hoped it would come quickly. He recognized his captors were merciless. When he asked for water, his tormentors poured it over his head while they laughed. At one point, he felt two naked bodies pressed up against him. His captors shouted at him, but he didn’t understand their taunts as they were shouting in English.  He tells me that he was blindfolded and couldn’t see anything. Looking away, embarrassed and ashamed, Aswad repeats this to me four times.

On the eighth day of his detention, Aswad was transferred to Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Once the site of some of Saddam’s most heinous interrogations, it was now run by the Americans and they followed suit with their own brand of sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses of detainees. It was November 14th, 2003, months before any hint of wrongdoing would seep from under the cages of Abu Ghraib. Aswad arrived at the prison disfigured from his beatings. Doctors examined him, asking him where he felt pain, but never questioning what had happened to him. As he was recuperating from his beatings he was a witness to some of the abuses that would later be reported by mainstream news media in the United States. In the hallway outside his cell he saw a naked prisoner terrorized by an attack dog. He witnessed the “naked pyramid” later to become an infamous photograph with American guards gloating in the background. And he witnessed 4 soldiers strip an Iraqi woman in the cellblock, but he turned his back to her because he felt ashamed for her. Eventually, the commotion died down. He does not know what became of her.

Continued >>

Socialist Worker, December 8, 2008

Duane Linton speaks at a Winter Soldier event in Champaign, Ill. (Eric Ruder | SW)

IT’S 3 a.m., and in our Humvee, Sgt. 1st Class Smith is shouting to the gunner to fire: “Get his ass, gunner! Get his ass!” Hot steel linkages and spent brass cartridges from the belt-fed weapon are cascading down into the truck. Many of them fall on me. For some reason, I find myself oddly preoccupied, in the middle of a firefight, with sweeping them into a neat little pile as angry bullets bounce off the Humvee’s armor.

We’ve stopped a convoy of pickup trucks, farmers moving their food to market, and they have fired on us because they think we’re stealing their food. Naturally, we do what Americans do best–shoot back with superior firepower.

The noise is deafening. All four of our Humvees are opening fire on the pickup trucks, targeting the tires and engines. Sgt. 1st Class Smith is the platoon sergeant, known among his men as “Gunny,” second-in-charge of this convoy, and when he says to move, there is no question about it. He and I dismount, along with Pfc. Devon Listerman, and together, we creep up on one of the damaged vehicles, under cover of the Humvee, and I tell Sgt. 1st Class Smith that the driver is no longer in the vehicle.

There’s a strange smell, something sour and metallic that sits on the nose and the tongue. We come around the other side and realize the driver is lying bleeding on the ground. I get Sgt. Joseph Bautista to cover me, and I head in. I am the only medic within 20 miles. The smell I noticed before is now overpowering, and I realize it’s blood. For the rest of my life, I will never forget that smell.

I do a quick visual assessment as I get ready. This man has been hit by three U.S. 7.62-mm machine gun rounds, one of which went through his driver-side window, and two of which hit the chassis of the truck and expanded to football-sized clouds of murderous shrapnel.

His right leg is opened up at the femur, and the space between his hip and his knee is just so much hamburger. From the size of the pool of blood he’s lying in, he’s already well on his way to stage-three shock. I drop a knee into his high femoral, cutting off blood flow to his leg while I get out my gloves and a tourniquet.

The gloves don’t work, and after a few moments of struggling, they rip and fall apart. I work on him anyway.

I throw a tourniquet on his leg and clamp it down, and then move up to his head. He’s talking, a vague guttural utterance of Arabic that I can tell is hard for him. I try to converse with him, asking him where he’s from, and who he thinks will make the playoffs this year, if for no other reason than to assess his level of consciousness and to keep my head in the game, but he doesn’t understand me at all.

All he’ll tell me is that he is tired, and that he thinks he’s dying. I notice he’s holding a hand over his chest, which is covered with blood. I try to move it, but he won’t let me until I tell him I’m a doctor, having no better word for “medic.”

Underneath, his hand is a fist-sized hole, leaking bright red blood and making a loud gurgling noise. A sucking chest wound. I log roll him and check for an exit wound, but don’t find one. I apply pressure with my hand, clean off the surrounding area and seal the wound.

I send Spc. Nathan Maston to tell the platoon leader that this patient will die without immediate medical evacuation, and to call for a helicopter and advise me of any further casualties. Word comes back to me that there are two dead and one that ran away wounded.

I recheck his pulses, and I don’t get a radial one. That means his systolic blood pressure has dropped to a level so low, his body can no longer circulate blood. With Sgt. Bautista assisting me, I prepare to give him a Hextend IV, which will spike his blood pressure and allow his blood to circulate to his limbs at the risk of blowing any clots that have formed.

Continued >>