United Nations secretary general Ban Ki Moon has declared the Pakistan floods one of the world’s worst-ever disasters.
Mr Ban was addressing a UN general assembly meeting aimed at reaching the organisation’s $460 million (£296m) target for immediate aid.
“This disaster is like few the world has ever seen,” Mr Ban told representatives of the world’s governments.
“It requires a response to match.”
As Obama Administration officials and a willing mainstream media report that yesterday was the end of the Iraq War it would likely surprise many that 56,000 US troops remain on the ground engaging in combat operations.
But it seems like the spin is even more surprising to the Pentagon leadership, as Gen. David Petraeus was pressed today on whether this was the right time to have left Iraq, and he said what he most likely wasn’t supposed to say.
“First of all we are not leaving,” Petraues insisted, adding that “there are 50,000 US troops that are remaining in Iraq” and that they retain an “enormous capability.” It is a capability that is tough to reconcile with the official story that these are all just trainers.
By Bill Noxid, Information Clearing House, August 20, 2010
Watching MSNBC’s coverage of ‘the last combat troops leaving Iraq’ for 3 hours reminded of a few brutal realities that still plague this country and this planet. The first being just how far this country remains from any semblance of reality. It’s the kind of delusional denial that truly can only be believed when witnessed from within. As Keith Olbermann was describing the cinematic quality of the “Strykers driving into your living room,” I could really think of only one thing – The aftermath of a 7.5 year all out United States operation to decimate a people and their society.
There’s no way to comprehend the scope and facets of this operation, because you would need a Pentagon for that. From the first day after initial conquest when the money disappeared from the banks and their record of civilization was decimated by the looting of their museums, it was like any other colonial conquest in history, except every excruciating moment of this one was on television. The following 7.5 years of the assimilation of a country went as diagrammed.
AP
Some of the last US combat soldiers to leave Iraq race for the Kuwaiti border. Around 50,000 troops will stay in the country to train the Iraqi army
When you invade someone else’s country, there has to be a first soldier – just as there has to be a last.
The first man in front of the first unit of the first column of the invading American army to reach Fardous Square in the centre of Baghdad in 2003 was Corporal David Breeze of the 3rd Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment. For that reason, of course, he pointed out to me that he wasn’t a soldier at all. Marines are not soldiers. They are Marines. But he hadn’t talked to his mom for two months and so – equally inevitably – I offered him my satellite phone to call his home in Michigan. Every journalist knows you’ll get a good story if you lend your phone to a soldier in a war.
“Hi, you guys,” Corporal Breeze bellowed. “I’m in Baghdad. I’m ringing to say ‘Hi! I love you. I’m doing fine. I love you guys.’ The war will be over in a few days. I’ll see you soon.” Yes, they all said the war would be over soon. They didn’t consult the Iraqis about this pleasant notion. The first suicide bombers – a policeman in a car and then two women in a car – had already hit the Americans on the long highway up to Baghdad. There would be hundreds more. There will be hundreds more in Iraq in the future.
Ethan Bronner reports in the New York Times that a report on the situation in the Gaza Strip from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA)
says that anti-Israeli militants operate from the border areas in question, planting explosive devices, firing at Israeli military vehicles and shooting rockets and mortar rounds at civilians. But it argues that Israel has an obligation under international law to protect civilians and civilian structures.
Bronner devotes the first part of his article to noting the impact on a Palestinian family, whose “trees and wells were bulldozed”, noting “destroyed houses” surrounding the family’s “desolate fields”. He notes that, according to the report, 12 percent of the population “have lost livelihoods or have otherwise been severely affected by Israeli security policies along the border, both land and sea, in recent years”, and that “the restricted land comprises 17 percent of Gaza’s total land mass and 35 percent of its agricultural land”, but this is about the extent of his discussion with regard to the content of the report. Most of the rest of the article is dedicated to offering the Israeli point of view and response to the release of the report:
MANILA, Philippines (1st UPDATE) – ABS-CBN News has obtained exclusive video of a robbery suspect being tortured by an alleged police officer inside a precinct in Tondo, Manila. (Click on abs-cbnNEWS.com for the video.)
“Emil” (not his real name) said he got the cellphone video from a friend who witnessed the torture of the victim. He said his friend has gone into hiding for fear of suffering the same fate as the man in the video.
The video showed a naked man in a fetal position on the floor of an alleged police precinct, his genitals supposedly bound with a rope.
Another man wearing a white shirt and shorts is then seen whipping the victim’s face and torso with a rope while heaping curses on him. “Dito bawal ang snatcher ha,” the man said.
The man is also seen ordering the victim to remove his hands from his genitals while pulling the rope, making the victim cry out in pain.
The video also shows a police officer seemingly using his cellphone to text someone.
Emil said the victim was a notorious criminal who was being tortured to own up to a hold-up incident. He said the torturer is allegedly the chief of a police community precinct in Asuncion, Tondo, Manila.
He claimed police usually torture suspected criminals, and sometimes even kill them.
“Madalas daw talaga nangyayari lalo na tuwing maraming napapansing holdaper. Sasabihin nila nanlaban tapos papatayin (It happens a lot when they notice a lot of hold-up suspects. They say the suspects tried to fight back and then kill them),” he said.
Asked what happened to the victim in the video, Emil claimed the victim has also died “after making it appear that he tried to fight.”
By Patrick Martin, wsws.org, Aug 19, 2010
As the toll of death and destruction in Pakistan from unprecedented flooding continues to mount, US government officials and the American media are raising concerns not over the colossal human tragedy, but over the potential threat to political stability and US security interests in the region, the focus of American military action for nearly nine years.
Flood victims on Monday and Tuesday blocked highways to demand state help and show their opposition to the government of President Asif Ali Zardari. Tens of thousands of villages have been inundated and there is little sign of aid, either from the government or from the huge and heavily armed Pakistani military apparatus.
According to a report by Reuters, “Dozens of stick-wielding men and a few women tried to block five lanes of traffic outside Sukkur, a major town in the southern province of Sindh. Villagers set fire to straw and threatened to hit approaching cars with sticks.”
Commander says camp will take months to shut – and he’s still waiting for the order
By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor
The Independent/UK, August 19, 2010
The US Vice-President Joseph Biden, left, and retired military officers watch President Barack Obama sign orders to close down the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in January 2009
Barack Obama’s pledge to shut down Guantanamo Bay will not be honoured until at least a year after the President’s self-imposed deadline – and may not be completed in his first administration.
The man in charge of the seven prison camps at the US naval base in Cuba is yet to receive direct orders to begin the transfer of prisoners so he can close the detention facilities.
In his first media interview since taking up the post three months ago, Admiral Jeffrey Harbeson said that even if President Obama implemented his order today it would take him six months to complete the job, a year after the January 2010 deadline imposed by the President when he signed the executive order in 2009.
Iran Labour Report, August 18, 2010
The massive crackdown on the independent labor activists continues in Iran. Several leaders and activists in the union movement remain in jails while others have been subject to summons and terminations from their jobs. A sketch of the repression of the independent union activism in today’s Iran follows.
Mansour Osaloo, the legendary leader of the Tehran and Suburbs Vahed Bus Workers Syndicate, was taken to court on August 1 and tried under the pretext of having connections with the illegal opposition groups. The trial lasting an hour and ten minutes commenced at 9:00 a.m. at the branch one revolutionaly court in the city of Karaj. At the trial, Osaloo did not have his lawyers present and they were also uninformed about the court session.
While the Iranian Labor Minister had given a promise of release of Osaloo to ILO, the Vahed Union leader remains in jail and new cases filed against him. At the said court session, Osaloo was sentenced to a new one year term. He is currently serving a five year term in Karaj Gohardasht prison. His attorneys will file a petition against the ruling within the twenty day period allowed.
Fidel Castro, Periodico, Aug ust 19, 2010
Resolution 1929 of the United Nations Security Council on June 9, 2010 sealed the fate of imperialism.
I’m not sure how many noticed that among other absurdities, the Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon, fulfilling orders from above, committed the blunder of appointing Alvaro Uribe (when he was about to complete his mandate) as vice president of the commission to investigate the Israeli attack on the humanitarian fleet carrying essential food to the besieged population in the Gaza Strip. The attack occurred in international waters and at a considerable distance from the coast.
That decision gave Uribe, accused of war crimes, total impunity: as if a country full of mass graves of the bodies of murdered people, some with as many as 2,000 victims; and seven US military bases, plus the rest of the Colombian military bases at its service, had nothing to do with terrorism and genocide.
