Archive for April, 2010
April 29, 2010
Middle East Online, April 29, 2010
‘Reforms have been slow, incremental, and hard-fought’
HRW: reforms undertaken by governments fall far short of minimum protections needed.
KUALA LUMPUR – Middle East and Asian nations, which draw millions of foreign domestic workers, have failed to take action to tackle widespread abuse of the vulnerable women despite recent improvements. Human Rights Watch said.
“The reforms undertaken by Middle Eastern and Asian governments fall far short of the minimum protections needed to tackle abuses against migrant domestic workers,” the US-based group said in a report launched ahead of International Labour Day on May 1.
Continues >>
Tags:Asian nations, foreign domestic workers, Middle East, protection needed, widespread abuse of women
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
April 29, 2010
By Joanne Mariner, Counterpunch, April 28, 2010
Congress is holding hearings this week on the legality of the US government’s drone warfare program. Conducted by the National Security and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the hearings will examine the CIA’s use of unmanned aerial vehicles – commonly known as drones – to fire missiles at suspected militants in Pakistan and elsewhere.
While the Bush administration had an active drone warfare program, US reliance on drones increased greatly after President Obama took office. According to Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann of the New America Foundation, who have carried out a study of the drone program, the Bush administration carried out a total of 45 drone strikes in eight years, whereas the Obama administration carried out 53 strikes in 2009 alone. The pace of such attacks quickened even further in 2010.
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Tags:Joanne Mariner, legality of drone attacks, Obama and drones, Pakistan, US government's drone warfare
Posted in Human rights, imperialism, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA | Leave a Comment »
April 29, 2010
In Washington-Speak, “Palestinian State” Means “Fried Chicken”
By Noam Chomsky, TomDispatch.com, April 27, 2010
The fact that the Israel-Palestine conflict grinds on without resolution might appear to be rather strange. For many of the world’s conflicts, it is difficult even to conjure up a feasible settlement. In this case, it is not only possible, but there is near universal agreement on its basic contours: a two-state settlement along the internationally recognized (pre-June 1967) borders — with “minor and mutual modifications,” to adopt official U.S. terminology before Washington departed from the international community in the mid-1970s.
Continues >>
Tags:attack on Gaza, Israel-Palestine conflict, Noam Chomsky, Obama and dictator Mubarak, Palestinians, settlements, U.S.-Israeli rejectionism, United States and Israel
Posted in Commentary, imperialism, Palestine, Uncategorized, US policy, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »
April 27, 2010
by William A. Cook, Dissident Voice, April 27, 2010
As Israel attempts today to gloss over the reality of its birth 62 years ago with a sweeping public relations campaign extolling the miraculous “resurrection” of ancient Zion in contemporary times, a new nation seeking only peace with its neighbors, it might be enlightening and valuable to examine the truth.
On May 14, 1948 President Harry S. Truman received a letter from the Jewish Agency for Palestine announcing the impending proclamation of the independent republic of Israel.1 That date marks not only the beginning of the State of Israel but, sub missa voce, the assumption by the State of Israel of the calculated, systematic and determined ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population of the land of Palestine that had been the business of “The Consultancy” and its agents before May 14, as identified by Dr. Ilan Pappe in his monumental The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.2
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Tags:destruction of Palestinian villages, Israel/Palestine, State of Israel and ethnic cleansing, the Nakba, William A. Cook, Zionists and President Truman
Posted in Palestine, Uncategorized, USA, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »
April 27, 2010
Intelligence officer says officers did not know rules on treatment of prisoners and one tried to mount ‘arse-covering exercise’ after Baha Mousa’s death
Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian/UK, April 27, 2010
Baha Mousa, a Basra hotel worker, was beaten to death in 2003 while in the custody of 1 Battalion Queen’s Lancashire Regiment. Photograph: Liberty/PA
An officer of the regiment detaining Baha Mousa, a Basra hotel worker, when he was beaten to death said his soldiers held the view that “all Iraqis were scum”, it was disclosed today.
One officer tried to mount an “arse covering” exercise after Mousa’s death, while others expressed ignorance of basic rules covering the treatment of prisoners, the public inquiry into the incident heard.
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Tags:British soldiers, Iraq, killing of Baha Mousa, Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas Mercer and Iraqi detainees
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, Iraq, torture, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
April 27, 2010
By Ray McGovern, Consortiumnews.com, April 26, 2010
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said publicly that Iran “doesn’t directly threaten the United States.” Her momentary lapse came while answering a question at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar, on Feb. 14.
Fortunately for her, most of her Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) fellow travelers must have been either jet-lagged or sunning themselves poolside when she made her unusual admission.
And those who were present did Clinton the favor of disappearing her gaffe and ignoring its significance. (All one happy traveling family, you know.)
But she said it: it’s on the State Department Web site. Those who had been poolside could even have read the text after showering. They might have recognized a real story there — but, granted, it was one so off-message that it would probably not we welcomed by editors back home.
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Tags:Chirac on Israeli stockpile of nuclear bombs, Hillary Clinton and Iran, Iran no threat to the US, Israel and Iran, Ray McGovern
Posted in Commentary, Iran, Uncategorized, USA, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »
April 27, 2010
Truthout, Monday 26 April 2010
by: Mikey Weinstein | Newsweek
Franklin Graham. (Photo: roberthuffstutter)
Let’s just face it: Franklin Graham is an Islamophobe, an anti-Muslim bigot and an international representative of the scourge of fundamentalist Christian supremacy and exceptionalism. As a result, he fails in the worst way as a role model for Constitutional American citizenship. How can Graham or anyone prejudge/brand all members of a specific culture, religion and/or ethnicity? Such prejudice and racist cretinism is nothing new. It’s as old as our species and has been the direct cause of the brutal end of untold multitudes of our species.
Continues >>
Tags:Franklin Graham as an anti-Muslim bigot, Mikey Weinstein, undamentalist Christian supremacy, United States
Posted in Commentary, Uncategorized, USA | Leave a Comment »
April 27, 2010
By James Cogan, wsws.org, 27 April 2010
The New York Times reported Sunday that American special forces units are operating in and around the Afghan city of Kandahar, assassinating or capturing alleged leaders and militants of the Taliban resistance ahead of the major US-NATO offensive scheduled for June.
Suggestive of the sinister and murderous character of such operations, the Times noted that the “opening salvos of the offensive are being carried out in the shadows”. It reported that “elite” units had been “picking up or picking off insurgent leaders” for the past several weeks.
Continues >>
Tags:Afghanistan, Bagram and torture of detainees, escalation of troops and war in Afghanistan, James Cogan, Kandahar offensive, objective of Afghan occupation
Posted in Afghanistan, Commentary, Human rights, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war | Leave a Comment »
April 26, 2010
Why We Won’t Leave Afghanistan or Iraq
By Tom Engelhardt, ZNet, April 26, 2010
Source: TomDispatch
Tom Engelhardt’s ZSpace Page
Yes, we could. No kidding. We really could withdraw our massive armies, now close to 200,000 troops combined, from Afghanistan and Iraq (and that’s not even counting our similarly large stealth army of private contractors, which helps keep the true size of our double occupations in the shadows). We could undoubtedly withdraw them all reasonably quickly and reasonably painlessly.
Not that you would know it from listening to the debates in Washington or catching the mainstream news. There, withdrawal, when discussed at all, seems like an undertaking beyond the waking imagination. In Iraq alone, all those bases to dismantle and millions of pieces of equipment to send home in a draw-down operation worthy of years of intensive effort, the sort of thing that makes the desperate British evacuation from Dunkirk in World War II look like a Sunday stroll in the park. And that’s only the technical side of the matter.
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Tags:American occupation of Iraq, Iraq and Afghanistan, South Vietnam, Tom Engelhardt, US armies, US withdrawal
Posted in Afghanistan, imperialism, Iraq, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war | Leave a Comment »
April 26, 2010
Few Notable Militants Reported Killed
After killing a record 700 civilians last year in at least 44 distinct drone strikes against Pakistan in 2009, the Obama Administration looks to be escalating the rate even further in 2010, to the point that drone strikes have become a decidedly ordinary occurrence.
Less than four months into the new year, the US has already launched 40 attacks and killed at least 268 people. The most recent strike yesteray in North Waziristan killed at least nine people.
The identities of the victims are never particularly easy to ascertain, but the number of named militants killed so far this year is trivial, as it was last year, when most of the “suspects” turned out to have no discernible relation to any militant faction.
Since taking office, President Obama has repeatedly escalated the drone strikes against the tribal areas, to the point where multiple attacks a week are a matter of course. With the normal winter lull seeing such a large number of strikes, a new record for killings seems all but assured again in 2010.
Tags:Civialins killed in Pakistan, civilians killed in Pakistan, escalation under President Obama, Jason Ditz, North Waziristan, US drone attacks
Posted in Human rights, Pakistan, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war | Leave a Comment »
Peace and Justice Post 
MidEast, Asia failing to protect domestic workers
April 29, 2010Middle East Online, April 29, 2010
‘Reforms have been slow, incremental, and hard-fought’
HRW: reforms undertaken by governments fall far short of minimum protections needed.
KUALA LUMPUR – Middle East and Asian nations, which draw millions of foreign domestic workers, have failed to take action to tackle widespread abuse of the vulnerable women despite recent improvements. Human Rights Watch said.
“The reforms undertaken by Middle Eastern and Asian governments fall far short of the minimum protections needed to tackle abuses against migrant domestic workers,” the US-based group said in a report launched ahead of International Labour Day on May 1.
Continues >>
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Tags:Asian nations, foreign domestic workers, Middle East, protection needed, widespread abuse of women
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »