Archive for June, 2009

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Carter disagrees with Obama on torture photos

June 4, 2009

Middle East Online

First Published 2009-06-03

‘He’s made a decision with which I really can’t contend’

Former US President says most of Obama’s supporters hoped he would be open in reveling US past actions.
NEW YORK – Former US President Jimmy Carter said that he disagrees with President Obama’s decision to block the release of hundreds of photos of torture committed at US prisons overseas., Democracy Now! reported Tuesday.

“Most of his supporters were hoping that he would be much more open in the revelation of what we’ve done in the past,” Carter told CNN.

“But he’s made a decision with which I really can’t contend, that he doesn’t want to resurrect the past, he doesn’t want to punish those who are guilty of perpetrating what I consider crimes against our own laws and against our own Constitution,” he added.

But Carter said he is not criticising Obama.

“The revelation of those pictures might very well inflame further animosity against our country, causing some harm to our soldiers. So I don’t agree with him, but I certainly don’t criticize him for making that decision,” he said.

Carter also addressed the possible prosecution of Bush administration officials.

“I think prosecuting is too strong a word, what I would like to see is a complete examination of what did happen, the identification of any perpetrators of crimes against our own laws or against international law, and then, after all that’s done, decide whether or not there should be any prosecutions,” he said.

“But the revelation of what did happen, I think, is what I would support,” he added.

General Sanchez calls for truth commission

Meanwhile, the former top coalition commander in Iraq, General Ricardo Sanchez, has called for a truth commission to investigate abusive interrogation practices.

“If we do not find out what happened then we are doomed to repeat it,” Sanchez said.

Sanchez was in command of Iraq when the infamous abuses occurred at Abu Ghraib. In 2006, a German attorney filed a war crimes suit against Sanchez and other high-ranking officials.

Cheney: death or Guantanamo

Former Vice President Dick Cheney defended the military prison at Guantanamo, saying the US needs a place to hold suspected terrorists.

Cheney said the only alternative the Bush administration had to creating Guantanamo was to kill terror suspects.

“If you’re going to be engaged in a world conflict, such as we are, in terms of global war on terrorism, you know, if you don’t have a place where you can hold these people, your only other option is to kill them. And we don’t operate that way,” he said.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, crime, Human rights, imperialism, torture, Uncategorized, US policy, USA | Leave a Comment »

Yemeni Prisoner Muhammad Salih Dies At Guantánamo

June 4, 2009

Andy Worthington, June 2, 2009

It has just been reported that Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih (also known as Mohammed al-Hanashi), a Yemeni prisoner at Guantánamo, has died, apparently by committing suicide.

The news comes just three days after the second anniversary of another death at Guantánamo — that of Abdul Rahman al-Amri, a Saudi prisoner who died on May 30, 2007 — and just eight days before the third anniversary of the deaths of three other prisoners — Ali al-Salami, Mani al-Utaybi and Yasser al-Zahrani — who died on June 10, 2006, and it must surely hasten calls for the urgent repatriation of other prisoners before there are any more deaths at the prison.

The Associated Press, which first reported the story, stated that US military officials had reported that Salih, who was 31 years old, was found “unresponsive and not breathing in his cell Monday night,” and that he had died of an “apparent suicide.”

Like the other prisoners who died of “apparent suicides” at Guantánamo, Salih had been a long-term hunger striker, refusing food as the only method available to protest his long imprisonment without charge or trial. According to weight records issued by the Pentagon in 2007, he weighed 124 pounds on his arrival at Guantánamo, but at one point in December 2005, during the largest hunger strike in the prison’s history, his weight dropped to just 86 pounds.

Salih was one of around 50 prisoners at Guantánamo who had survived a massacre at Qala-i-Janghi, a fort in northern Afghanistan, at the end of November 2001, when, after the surrender of the city of Kunduz, several hundred foreign fighters surrendered to General Rashid Dostum, one of the leaders of the Northern Alliance, in the mistaken belief that they would be allowed to return home. Instead, they were imprisoned in Qala-i-Janghi, a nineteenth century mud fort in Mazar-e-Sharif, and when some of the men started an uprising against their captors, which led to the death of a CIA operative, US Special Forces, working with the Northern Alliance and British Special Forces, called in bombing raids to suppress the uprising, leading to hundreds of deaths. The survivors — who, for the most part, had not taken part in the fighting — took shelter in the basement of the fort, where they endured further bombing, and they emerged only after many more had died when the basement was set on fire and then flooded.

Continued >>

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Human rights, imperialism, Uncategorized, US policy, USA | Leave a Comment »

US admits deadly Afghan ‘mistakes’

June 4, 2009
Al Jazeera, June 4, 2009

The May attack stoked Afghan anger over civilian casualties caused by foreign troops [Reuters]

A US military investigation has revealed significant mistakes in air raids that killed dozens of civilians in western Afghanistan last month, a military official has said.

The unnamed official confirmed a New York Times report on Wednesday that the civilian casualties would have been lower if US air crews and ground troops had adhered to strict rules.

“We do not have an issue with the accuracy of the story,” the official told the Reuters news agency on condition of anonymity.

The attack on Bala Buluk in Farah province was aimed at Taliban fighters but US defence officials say the failure to follow new procedures for aerial strikes probably led to the civilian casualties.

The incident in early May stoked long-standing tensions between Afghans and foreign troops over civilian casualties.

Conflicting figures

Afghan officials have put the civilian death toll as high as 140 while an Afghan human rights watchdog put the total at 97, including at least two Taliban fighters.

But the US military says 20-35 civilians were among the 80-95 people killed, adding that most of them were Taliban fighters who used the civilians as human shields.

The Times report did not say how many civilian casualties may have been avoided if the correct procedures had been followed.

The Pentagon has not officially responded to the report.

General David Petraeus, the head of US Central Command which is the military headquarters overseeing US military operations across the Middle East and into Central and South Asia, ordered the investigation.

Procedural failure

The Times, citing an unnamed senior military official, said the investigation had concluded that one US aircraft was cleared to attack Taliban fighters, but circled back and did not reconfirm the target before dropping bombs.

That, the report said, left open the possibility that the fighters had fled or civilians had entered the target area in the intervening few minutes.

A compound where fighters were massing for a possible counter-attack against US and Afghan troops was struck in violation of rules that required a more imminent threat to justify putting high-density village dwellings at risk, The Times said.

“In several instances where there was a legitimate threat, the choice of how to deal with that threat did not comply with the standing rules of engagement,” the newspaper quoted its source as saying.

A second military official told the Reuters news agency that the mistakes appeared to be linked to the choice of weapons used in the operation rather than any violation of the rules themselves.

The official said the investigation was still being reviewed and it was possible Petraeus could ask for further work to be done before the report was finalised

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Afghanistan, imperialism, US policy, USA, war, War Criminals | Leave a Comment »

A & E for 9-11 Truth: Super-thermite caused the destruction of World Trade Center

June 3, 2009

Christopher Bollyn, May 30, 2009

Richard Gage, a practicing architect for 20 years, founded Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth in 2006. Gage appeared on the FOX TV News affiliate in Fresno, Califonia on May 27 and was allowed to explain the scientific and structural evidence that proves that the World Trade Center collapses were actually controlled demolitions in which super-thermite was used to pulverize the concrete of the towers.

The stone wall of the 9-11 cover-up and deception is finally crumbling. The Gage interview was carried on an affiliate of FOX. Bringing the evidence of the super-thermite in the dust and rubble of the World Trade Center to the public is what citizens need to do via their local media outlets across the United States – and the world. This interview is well worth watching. The truth is finally coming out; we are winning.

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in crime, imperialism, Uncategorized, USA | Leave a Comment »

British newspapers expose cold-blooded killing of LTTE leaders in Sri Lanka

June 3, 2009
By Robert Stevens | wsws.org, 3 June 2009

The British press last week revealed that senior leaders of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were in negotiations with British and American diplomats to surrender, immediately prior to their killing by the Sri Lankan army on May 18. Also involved in the talks was the United Nations secretary general’s chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar.

The Guardian and the Sunday Times both published reports stating that Balasingham Nadesan, the leader of the LTTE’s political wing, and Seevaratnam Puleedevan, the head of its peace secretariat, held talks with Nambiar through a series of intermediaries, including a journalist and a delegation of British diplomats.

The Guardian states that the LTTE leaders also made further contact with Norwegian Environment and Development Cooperation Minister Erik Solheim prior to their deaths. Solheim had been involved as a special envoy in attempts to broker a peace agreement following the 2002 ceasefire in Sri Lanka’s protracted civil war.

The Sunday Times article by journalist Marie Colvin was headlined, “Tigers begged me to broker surrender.” She explained how the initial contact between the LTTE, British and United States officials, and the United Nations had been facilitated through her.

Colvin has covered the civil war in Sri Lanka since being “smuggled into territory eight years ago” in order “to investigate reports that the government was blocking food and medical supplies to half a million Tamils.” She had met and came to know Nadesan and Puleedevan since that time.

The Guardian details how the two leaders of the LTTE attempted to agree to a last minute deal with the Sri Lankan government just hours before they were killed by the army in the early hours of May 18—while in the process of surrendering.

A British official states that UK involvement was “at most indirect”, but the article includes a quote from Nambiar saying that he had had “direct contact” with British diplomats in New York and also with an unnamed British minister. Nambiar added, “There was a ministerial demarche [a formal diplomatic representation] to the secretary general from the UK office in New York.”

Nambiar passed on the information obtained by the Times journalist regarding the proposal of Nadesan and Puleedevan to surrender to the Sri Lankan government. He says that he also spoke to Sri Lankan Foreign Secretary Palitha Kohona about the proposal.

The government had no intention of brokering a ceasefire or allowing any surrender by the LTTE leadership. Nambiar told the Guardian, “The Sri Lankan government did not say that they would accept the surrender. They said it may be too late.”

After being contacted by the LTTE regarding the surrender, Solheim “then contacted the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Sri Lankan government”.

A text message was then sent from Kohona to the Red Cross, which read, “Just walk across to the troops, slowly! With a white flag and comply with instructions carefully. The soldiers are nervous about suicide bombers.”

In Colvin’s Times article she described the harrowing conditions facing the LTTE fighters as they were cornered into a tiny strip of jungle and a beach area during the final army offensive: “Tens of thousands of Tamil civilians were trapped with them, hiding in hand-dug trenches, enduring near constant bombardment.”

“For several days I had been the intermediary between the Tiger leadership and the United Nations as the army pressed in on the last enclave at the end of a successful military campaign to defeat the rebellion,” she writes. “Nadesan had asked me to relay three points to the UN: they would lay down their arms, they wanted a guarantee of safety from the Americans or British, and they wanted an assurance that the Sri Lankan government would agree to a political process that would guarantee the rights of the Tamil minority.

“Through highly placed British and American officials I had established contact with the UN special envoy in Colombo, Vijay Nambiar, chief of staff to Ban Ki-Moon, the secretary-general. I had passed on the Tigers’ conditions for surrender, which he had said he would relay to the Sri Lankan government.”

Colvin corroborates the Guardian’s report. She states that in conversation with Nambiar during the morning of May 18, he told her that he had been told by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse that the two leaders would be able to surrender by hoisting “a white flag high”.

Colvin stated, “Once more, the UN 24-hour control centre in New York patched me through to Nambiar in Colombo, where it was 5.30 a.m. on Monday. I woke him up.

“I told him the Tigers had laid down their arms. He said he had been assured by Mahinda Rajapakse, the Sri Lankan president, that Nadesan and Puleedevan would be safe in surrendering. All they had to do was ‘hoist a white flag high,’ he said.”

Shortly after this Colvin lost contact with Nadesan’s satellite phone and spoke to an LTTE contact in South Africa, to whom she relayed the instructions to hoist the white flag.

Colvin reports, “A Tamil who was in a group that managed to escape the killing zone described what happened. This source, who later spoke to an aid worker, said Nadesan and Puleedevan walked towards Sri Lankan army lines with a white flag in a group of about a dozen men and women. He said the army started firing machineguns at them. Nadesan’s wife, a Sinhalese, yelled in Sinhala at the soldiers, ‘He is trying to surrender and you are shooting him.’ She was also shot down.”

The incident underscores the ruthlessness with which the Sri Lankan government and army slaughtered the LTTE leadership on the morning of May 18. Virtually all of the top LTTE leaders, including LTTE chief V. Prabhakaran, died in circumstances that have not been adequately explained. The Sri Lankan government claimed that Prabhakaran was killed in a gun battle trying to flee, but he may well have met the same fate as Nadesan and Puleedevan.

Certainly the army pursued the destruction of the last pocket of LTTE resistance with criminal indifference to the consequences of nearly a quarter of a million Tamil civilians trapped in the war zone. While Rajapakse’s government denies responsibility for any civilian deaths, the latest reports based on leaked UN estimates put the death toll at more than 20,000 since January.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, crime, Human rights, Sri Lanka, war | Leave a Comment »

Unsatisfactory Answers from General McChrystal

June 3, 2009

Scott Horton | Harper’s Magazine, June 2, 2009

Those who expected to hear Stanley McChrystal come clean on what he knows about mistreatment of prisoners in the custody of JSOC units that reported to him in the Iraq war were disappointed. General Petraeus has recently developed a reputation for telling it straight. But his new subordinate for Afghanistan seems to have a penchant for Pentagon circumlocutions.

The concerns have focused on abuse of prisoners in Iraq, where the Pentagon agreed that the Geneva Conventions were fully applicable. Major Matthew Alexander, the Air Force interrogator who led the successful effort to nail the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, put it this way:

“Gen. McChrystal, he was there in Iraq often, and he may have been separated from these things by couple layers [of subordinates] but it would’ve been his responsibility to know what was going on.”

So how does McChrystal respond to these questions? “We must at all times obligation treat detainees humanely… Military necessity does not permit us” to deviate from those obligations, says Senator Carl Levin, reading form McChrystal’s prepared statement. That’s the classic Bush-era bob-and-weave. In the Bush years we learned that “humanely” meant next to nothing: in Bush-speak, as long as you give the prisoner medical attention, a clean place to sleep, and a bowl of lentils, you can feel free to beat him senseless or perform still more hideous tortures. McChrystal’s words are chosen to appear to put some distance between himself and this legacy, but they don’t.

Here’s Spencer Ackerman’s take on the questioning:

“I do not and have not condone the mistreatment of detainees and I never will.” McChrystal said he investigated every abuse allegation. But the interrogation structure was inadequate for his task forces. “We stayed within all the established and authorized guidelines, they were there when I took command,” McChrystal says. He says “constant improvement” turned something “acceptable and legal” into something “I could be more proud of” as time wore on. Concedes that he initially was informed by Rumsfeld’s memorandum authorizing “stress positions, use of dogs and nudity” and said that “some of [those techniques] were used.” He said he was uncomfortable with those authorized techniques and worked to reduce their usage.

It’s long been reported that in the Rumsfeld Pentagon, Undersecretary Stephen Cambone secured a series of special rules of engagement for JSOC units that authorized much more than the practices discussed in the hearing. Those rules, whatever they were, are the “established and authorized guidelines” McChrystal’s talking about. Of course, all of this is a way of reenforcing the conclusions that Levin’s committee already reached with respect to Washington’s direct control over and responsibility for the introduction of harsh techniques in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hopefully one or more of these senators will now press McChrystal for the particulars on those “established and authorized guidelines” that were provided to his JSOC task forces. And perhaps we can also see some evidence for the claim that McChrystal took action to ameliorate the conditions of prisoners by retreating from the use of some of the harsher (and, incidentally, flagrantly illegal) techniques. Even so, like other generals of the Rumsfeld era, McChrystal seems remarkably unaccepting of his command responsibility for what went on. McChrystal entered the hearing room with serious questions hanging over his head, and he said nothing to dispel them.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Commentary, crime, Human rights, torture, Uncategorized, US policy, USA | Leave a Comment »

Obama’s Great Illusion

June 3, 2009

By Yvonne Ridley | Information Clearing House, June 2, 2009


I wonder how many of you have woken up to the fact that America’s latest leader is really a political Houdini … an illusionist on a presidential scale.

In front of our very eyes he has morphed from a gentle intellectual, and strong defender of human rights into a war-mongering bully who sponsors targetted assassinations and orders pre-emptive strikes with casual ease.

It took George W. Bush years before he dared to unveil his true intentions and invade Iraq, displacing three million people in a war which cost the lives of thousands of US soldiers and the slaughter of countless civilians.

Whereas the smooth-talking Obama has achieved the same in just a few months since he arrived in The White House by launching an illegal war on Pakistan … but he’s using someone else’s army instead of his own.

He is twice as clever as the previous White House incumbent and far, far more deadly. Obama is quite possibly one of the world’s most skillful manipulators and his greatest illusion so far is fooling the public as well as the media.

While blatantly using Pakistan’s army as a cheap source of military labour he holds the country’s leader Asif Ali Zadari in suspended animation, trapped helplessly in an almost hypnotic state, induced by the promise of millions of dollars and the support of the world’s biggest military machine.

Of course we must lay some blame at Zadari’s feet for allowing himself to be used like a magician’s assistant instead of acting with the dignity and honour his office, country and people demand.

Obama is far more lethal than his predecessor – and yet his transformation from Mr Nice Guy to something more sinister seems to have gone largely unnoticed by the world’s watching media which appears to be intoxicated by the powerful charisma emanating from his rich, but smooth seductive tones.

He has already reneged on promises over closing down Guantanamo, ending military tribunals and releasing to the public the entire archive of shame which captured the torture and abuse of the previous administration’s War on Terror in video and film from 2001 onwards.

Moazzam Begg, an ex-Guantanamo detainee remarked recently over one of his u-turns: “President Obama has recently granted immunity to CIA agents … if the desire to get at what went wrong is so blatantly covered up under cover of “national security concerns”, there will be no end to this. And once again, the warmongers will get away with another odious and criminal cover-up”.

He has the power to make Guantanamo’s vile prison disappear and for a few glorious weeks human rights activists across the world waited with baited breath for the cages of Cuba, Bagram and elsewhere to fly open.

Just how difficult is it for the media to dip into their own archives and remind Obama about the pledges he made on the campaign trail and hold him to account? His first promise on the White House website was that his administration would be the most transparent in US history. Sadly these grand statements have not been followed through.

But this journalistic amnesia is all too convenient – what happened to his determination to bring home all combat troops from Iraq within 18 months?

Is there no journalist from the White House lobby prepared to remind him of how he said during televised presidential debates that getting Usama bin Ladin was “our biggest national security priority”? Perhaps the hypnotic Obama Affect has wiped their computer hard-drives and their memories but if you listen to his very first TV interview as the Commander-in-Chief of America he said Usama was more than a symbol.

His actual words were: “He’s also the operational leader of an organization that is planning attacks against U.S. targets,” adding that “capturing or killing bin Ladin is a critical aspect of stamping out al-Qaida.”

Having secured the votes from red neck territory by saying Obama will get Usama, he now says that killing or capturing the al-Qaida chief is no longer necessary to “meet our goal of protecting America.”

However, American Armenians are not so gullible and quite a few were shocked out of their trance following the US President’s recent visit to Turkey when he executed with the greatest of ease yet another presidential flip flop.

“As President, I will recognise the Armenian genocide,” he declared loud and proud during his campaign, but when he arrived in Turkey he sort of muttered, when asked about the hugely sensitive subject: “My views are on the record, and everyone knows my views.” And then he refused to elaborate and state them!

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant” said Obama before he took the keys to the White House – may be that’s why, when I watch the US President perform under the glare of the spotlights on the world stage, I can see something of the night lurking around his presidential shadows.

There are a few of us who are immune to the charms of the new president. Like me, they believe that the sheep’s clothing has vanished and what we now have is a dangerous wolf stalking the corridors of power on Capitol Hill.

Yes, there’s a new act in the White House these days but while Harry Houdini built his reputation performing death-defying escapes and magic tricks his political Doppelganger is certainly the master of dark arts and mass illusion.

This president has gone from charming to harming and few have noticed.

Journalist Yvonne Ridley is a patron of the human rights organisation Cage Prisoners at http://www.cageprisoners.com and a member of the RESPECT political party as well as being a presenter of the weekly political show The Agenda on Press TV

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, imperialism, President Barack Obama, US policy, USA | Leave a Comment »

Robert Fisk: Most Arabs know Obama’s speech will make little difference

June 2, 2009

I suspect that what the Arab world wants to hear is that Obama will take his soldiers out of Muslim lands

Robert Fisk | The Independent/UK, June 2, 2009

More and more, it looks like the same old melody that Bush’s lads used to sing. We’re not against the Muslim world. In fact, we are positively for it. We want you to have democracy, up to a point. We love Arab “moderates” and we want to reach out to you and be your friends. Sorry about Iraq. And sorry – again, up to a point – about Afghanistan and we do hope that you understand why we’ve got to have a little “surge” in Helmand among all those Muslim villages with their paper-thin walls. And yes, we’ve made mistakes.

Everyone in the world, or so it seems, is waiting to see if this is what Barack Obama sings. I’m not sure, though, that the Arabs are waiting with such enthusiasm as the rest of the world.

I haven’t met an Arab in Egypt – or an Arab in Lebanon, for that matter – who really thinks that Obama’s “outreach” lecture in Cairo on Thursday is going to make much difference.

They watched him dictate to Bibi Netanyahu – no more settlements, two-state solution – and they saw Bibi contemptuously announce, on the day that Mahmoud Abbas, the most colourless leader in the Arab world, went to the White House, that Israel’s colonial project in the West Bank would continue unhindered. So that’s that, then.

And please note that Obama has chosen Egypt for his latest address to the Muslims, a country run by an ageing potentate – Hosni Mubarak is 80 – who uses his secret police like a private army to imprison human rights workers, opposition politicians, anyone in fact who challenges the great man’s rule. At this point, we won’t mention torture. Be sure that this little point is unlikely to get much play in the Obama sermon, just as he surely will not be discussing Saudi Arabia’s orgy of head-chopping when he chats to King Abdullah on Wednesday.

So what’s new, folks? Arabs, I find, have a very shrewd conception of what goes on in Washington – the lobbying, the power politics, the dressing up of false friendship in Rooseveltian language – even if ordinary Americans do not. They are aware that the “new” America of Obama looks suspiciously like the old one of Bush and his lads and ladies. First, Obama addresses Muslims on Al-Arabiya television. Then he addresses Muslims in Istanbul. Now he wants to address Muslims all over again in Cairo.

I suppose Obama could say: “I promise I will not make any decision until I first consult with you and the Jewish side” along with more promises about being a friend of the Arabs. Only that’s exactly what Franklin Roosevelt told King Abdul Aziz on the deck of USS Quincy in 1945, so the Arabs have heard that one before. I guess we’ll hear about terrorism being as much a danger to Arabs as to Israel – another dull Bush theme – and, Obama being a new President, we might also have a “we shall not let you down” theme.

But for what? I suspect that what the Arab world wants to hear – not their leaders, of course, all of whom would like to have a spanking new US air base on their property – is that Obama will take all his soldiers out of Muslim lands and leave them alone (American aid, doctors, teachers, etc, excepted). But for obvious reasons, Obama can’t say that.

He can, and will, surely, try his global-Arab line; that every Arab nation will be involved in the new Middle East peace, a resurrection of the remarkably sane Saudi offer of full Arab recognition of Israel in return for an Israeli return to the 1967 borders in accordance with the UN Security Council Resolution 242. Obama will be clearing this with King Abdullah on Wednesday, no doubt. And everyone will nod sagely and the newspapers of the Arab dictatorships will solemnly tip their hats to the guy and the New York Times will clap vigorously.

And the Israeli government will treat it all with the same amused contempt as Netanyahu treated Obama’s demand to stop building Jewish colonies on Arab land and, back home in Washington, Congress will fulminate and maybe Obama will realise, just like the Arab potentates have realised, that beautiful rhetoric and paradise-promises never, ever, win against reality.

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Muslims, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA | Leave a Comment »

The Rape of Gaza

June 2, 2009

by Roane Carey | The Nation, June 2, 2009

How would you feel if you found out that an American school, paid for with your tax dollars, was bombed and completely destroyed by a US ally? This happened in Gaza just a few months ago, during Israel’s now-infamous Operation Cast Lead.

I’ve been touring Gaza for the past three days as part of a Code Pink delegation, and the concrete rubble and twisted rebar of the American International School in Gaza is just one of the many horrifying images we’ve seen on this trip. The school, which taught American progressive values to Palestinian kids in grades K-12, was bombed by US-supplied Israeli F-16s in early January. The Israelis claimed, without supplying evidence, that Hamas fighters had fired rockets from the school. Now several hundred kids have not only lost the school they dearly loved; they have been given a very different lesson in American values, one no doubt unintended by the school’s founders and teachers.

The people of Gaza suffered immensely from the Israeli assault, which not only killed some 1,400 and injured 5,000 but destroyed or heavily damaged mosques, schools, hospitals, universities, and industrial and other business establishments, in addition to thousands of private homes. Dr. Marwan Sultan, who practices at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, told me his hospital was so damaged they had to send all patients to al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City–which was itself damaged. The bombing of one school in Beit Lahiya killed about forty kids and injured a hundred, Sultan told me. He saw scenes of death and mutilation that still give him nightmares. Thousands are living in tent cities all over the Strip, and the entire population of Gaza is being strangled to this day by a blockade that is choking off any possibility of reconstruction or recovery.

Make no mistake about it: the blockade, directly enforced by Israel and Egypt but conspired in by their superpower patron in Washington, is a continuing act of war against an entire civilian population of 1.5 million, a form of collective punishment and a crime against humanity. John Ging, director of operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which officially invited Code Pink to come to Gaza, told our delegation that billions in aid had been promised in the wake of Israel’s massacre, but so far nothing had arrived. Our delegation, he said, is the first concrete action of solidarity with an oppressed, long-suffering population. Four months after a devastating conflict, he added, the siege continues. “The first thing we need to see is the opening up of crossing points and an end to collective punishment because of the political failures and security problems created by a few.” It’s a matter of life and death, he said, “and we’re running out of time…. The people of Gaza are asking for help, justice and the rule of law.”

Code Pink–whose organizers, I might add, have done a fabulous job in arranging this tour–is urging Obama to break the siege himself by visiting Gaza on his Middle East tour. That’s not likely to happen, of course, but the least he could do is demand an end to the blockade. He’s more likely to do so if Americans put on the pressure. Readers: it’s your turn.

© 2009 The Nation

Roane Carey, managing editor at The Nation, was the editor of The New Intifada (Verso) and, with Jonathan Shainin, The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent (New Press).

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, crime, Gaza, Human rights, Palestine, Peace Movement, Uncategorized, war crimes, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

Indian Kashmir shuts down over killings of women

June 2, 2009

m&c.com, May 30, 2009

Srinagar, Kashmir – Thirty demonstrators were injured by security forces and businesses were shut down Monday during a strike called in India-administered Kashmir to protest the rape and killing of two women, allegedly by Indian troops.

The shutdown was called by separatist Hurriyat Conference leaders after the bodies of the two women were found Saturday in Shopian, a town in southern Kashmir.

Locals alleged that the women who went missing Friday evening and were raped and murdered by troopers.

The shutdown affected the state capital Srinagar and many other towns, such as Anantnag, Baramulla, Budgam, Kupwara and Kulgam.

Shops, businesses, educational institutions and banks were closed. Attendance at government offices was thin, and public and private transport stayed off the roads.

Despite heavy security and the presence of police and paramilitary forces, angry youth held protests in Srinagar and other towns, shouting pro-autonomy and anti-India slogans.

The protestors also threw stones at vehicles and security forces, who responded by firing tear gas and caning the mobs.

In all, 30 protestors were injured at various protests, state officials said.

Later on Monday, the Hurriyat said it was extending its call for the shutdown for another two days.

The situation remained tense in Shopian, which has been rocked by violent demonstrations since Sunday. The authorities have imposed an undeclared curfew in the region to stem the protests.

Although the army and authorities have rejected the allegations that government forces were involved in the women’s deaths, saying they had drowned in a stream, the state government has said it would conduct an investigation.

State Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, meanwhile, ordered an inquiry into the incident by a retired judge.

‘If any conspiracy or foul play comes to light with regard to the death of the two women, those involved would be turned over to justice,’ senior administration official Masood Samoon told reporters.

Large numbers of soldiers have been deployed in Kashmir to check militancy and terrorist attacks, and the troops have often been accused of human rights violations by local people and rights groups.

More than 45,000 people have died in the Kashmir region since a separatist movement launched an insurgency in the 1980s. The victims include civilians, police, soldiers and militants.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in crime, Human rights, India, Kashmir, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »