Peace and Justice Post

By  Barry Grey, wsws.org, 13 February 2013

The most significant point in President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night was a passing and euphemistically worded reference to his program of extra-judicial drone assassinations. “Where necessary, through a range of capabilities, we will continue to take direct action against those terrorists who pose the gravest threat to Americans,” he declared.

Every congressman, senator, cabinet member, Supreme Court justice and general in the House chamber knew that with that statement Obama was defending his asserted power to secretly order the assassination of anyone in any part of the world, including American citizens. The president went on to make clear he was intent on making state murder a permanent and completely institutionalized government function.

His administration, he said, had worked “tirelessly to forge a durable legal and policy framework” to guide such operations. He went on to indicate he might be open to suggestions for giving the assassination program a fig leaf of “transparency” and legality, pledging to “engage with Congress to ensure… our targeting, detention and prosecution of terrorists remains consistent with our laws and system of checks and balances…”

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Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRF7d9ydQf8

Robert Scheer, truthdig.com,  Feb 7, 2013

AP/Jacquelyn Martin

Demonstrators from the groups Code Pink and Witness Against Torture protest last month against President Obama’s choice of John Brennan to head the CIA.

The title, “Globalizing Torture,” says it all. This meticulous accounting of the network of torture chambers that the United States has authorized in more than 54 nations is a damning indictment that should make all of us in this country cringe with shame.

The report is a product of the Open Society Foundations, funded by international financier and philanthropist George Soros, who, as a young Jew, suffered through the Nazi occupation of Hungary and emerged from that experience an uncompromising fighter for human rights. That his lifelong goal to “foster accountability for international crimes,” reflected in his organization’s mission statement, now includes our government is a condemnation as awful as it is deserved.

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‘Without saying so explicitly, the government claims the authority to kill American terrorism suspects in secret.’

A “profoundly disturbing” Justice Department document—with “chilling” parallels to the Bush torture memos—obtained by NBC News outlines when the U.S. can put its own citizens on a “kill list” to be targeted in drone strikes.

“This is a profoundly disturbing document, and it’s hard to believe that it was produced in a democracy built on a system of checks and balances. It summarizes in cold legal terms a stunning overreach of executive authority – the claimed power to declare Americans a threat and kill them far from a recognized battlefield and without any judicial involvement before or after the fact,” Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, said in a statement.

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Report finds at least 54 countries co-operated with global kidnap, detention and torture operation mounted after 9/11 attacks

• Ian Cobain
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 5 February 2013

John Brennan, Barack Obama’s choice to head the CIA. The report’s release appears timed to coincide with his confirmation hearing. Photograph: Yuri Gripas/Reuters

The full extent of the CIA‘s extraordinary rendition programme has been laid bare with the publication of a report showing there is evidence that more than a quarter of the world’s governments covertly offered support.

A 213-page report compiled by the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), a New York-based human rights organisation, says that at least 54 countries co-operated with the global kidnap, detention and torture operation that was mounted after 9/11, many of them in Europe.

So widespread and extensive was the participation of governments across the world that it is now clear the CIA could not have operated its programme without their support, according to the OSJI.

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Morsi established tyranny

by Stephen Lendman, opednews.com, January 30, 2013

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Washington engineered Mubarak’s ouster. He fell from grace. He became more liability than asset.

For years, State Department and Pentagon officials wanted him out. He opposed Bush’s 2003 Iraq war and other US policies. He had to go.

Washington engineered Egyptian uprisings. Spontaneity was created and manipulated. Arab Spring is Western terminology. It’s yet to bloom.

It was first used in March 2005. It suggested a beneficial Iraq war spinoff. Washington deplores emerging democracies. It prioritizes unchallenged control.

Regional uprisings achieved nothing. Daily life reflects poverty, unemployment, and despotism. Tens of oppressed millions suffer.

Conditions now are worse than earlier. People want jobs, decent pay, better services, ending corruption and repression. They want liberating democratic change.

In February 2011, Mubarak was ousted. At the time, an article said hold the celebration. Egypt’s struggle just began. Everything changed, stayed the same, and worsened.

Junta power and Muslim Brotherhood (MB) interests rule. Mohammed Morsi is their public face. Islamofacist rule is policy.

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In direct reaction to Israel provoking the Al Aqsa Intifada, on October 19, 2000, the then United Nations Human Rights Commission (now Council) condemned Israel for inflicting “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” upon the Palestinian people, some of whom are Christians, but most of whom are Muslims.[i]

This Special Session of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights adopted the Resolution set forth in U.N. Document E/CN.4/S-5/L.2/Rev. 1, “Condemning the provocative visit to Al-Haram Al-Shariff on 28 September 2000 by Ariel Sharon, the Likud party leader, which triggered the tragic events that followed in occupied East Jerusalem and the other occupied Palestinian territories, resulting in a high number of deaths and injuries among Palestinian civilians.” The U.N. Human Rights Commission said it was “[g]ravely concerned” about several different types of atrocities inflicted by Israel upon the Palestinian people, which it denominated “war crimes, flagrant violations of international humanitarian law and crimes against humanity.”

In operative paragraph 1 of its 19 October 2000 Resolution, the U.N. Human Rights Commission then:

“Strongly condemns the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force in violation of international humanitarian law by the Israeli occupying Power against innocent and unarmed Palestinian civilians…including many children, in the occupied territories, which constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity;…”

And in paragraph 5 of its 19 October 2000 Resolution, the U.N. Human Rights Commission:

“Also affirms that the deliberate and systematic killing of civilians and children by the Israeli occupying authorities constitutes a flagrant and grave violation of the right to life and also constitutes a crime against humanity;…”

Article 68 of the United Nations Charter had expressly required the U.N.’s Economic and Social Council to “set up” this U.N. Commission (now Council) “for the promotion of human rights.” This was its U.N.-Charter-mandated job.

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By Felicity Arbuthnot, The Palestine Chronicle, Jan 18 2013

Incredibly it is twenty two years to the day since the telephone rang in the early hours and a friend said: “They are bombing Baghdad.”

It was not alone Baghdad, of course, Iraq was being systematically destroyed, from ancient southern Basra to haunting, historic Mosul in the north – in the West destruction was such that it was not even noticed by the outside world that about seventy miles of Iraq had been entirely illegally donated to Jordan, the border was simply “moved.” Kuwait, bordering of Iraq’s southern border benefited similarly illegally.

Then Secretary of State James Baker’s vow to: “reduce Iraq to a pre-industrial age” was being minutely executed over what was to become a forty three day blitz, which morphed in to a thirteen year, vicious, murderous, one sided war of attrition and ultimately illegal invasion and occupation.

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