Don’t ignore Constitution during election season

October 23, 2008

by Kathleen Taylor | The Capital Times, Oct 22, 2008

America is in the midst of an election season, nearing an Election Day with what likely will be far-reaching consequences. Public interest is extraordinarily high, and candidates are debating many critical issues. Yet we have heard little or nothing about the Constitution and its Bill of Rights — the touchstone of our individual freedoms.

The most significant words of the U.S. Constitution may be the first three: “We the people.” Not “I the King,” not “I the Grand Religious Leader,” not even “I the elected President.” Our governing structure was created by the people, and ensuring that it works for the people is a continuing legal, moral and political journey.

All through the centuries, arguments about the Constitution’s meaning have persisted: What does it mean that only Congress can declare war (Article I)? What constitutes “high crimes and misdemeanors” (Article II)? Is taking an oath of office with your hand on the Bible a “religious test” (Article VI)? Under which conditions, if any, should explicit sexual language not be considered free speech (Amendment 1)? Is a urine test for drugs an “unreasonable search” (Amendment 4)?

The remarkable characteristic of the Constitution is that it offers bedrock principles — checks and balances, procedures, freedoms, responsibilities, protections — while at the same time responding to the needs of contemporary society. It’s not an accident; the founders wrote it that way on purpose. The Constitution is our civic compass. It points the way for courts, legislatures and executive administrations. It guides us in times of war and of peace, of boom and of bust, and of everything in between. It keeps us on the path of fair play, equal treatment, liberty and security.

Or it does if we’re constantly vigilant.

Over the last two centuries, through activism, dissent and dedication, citizens have expanded the scope and depth of our liberty. And today, more Americans enjoy the “blessings of liberty” than at any time in history.

Yet, in recent years, our federal government has grown more powerful and secretive, assuming powers it does not rightfully have. Our government has: spied on Americans without the approval of Congress or the courts; allowed the CIA to torture and abuse hundreds of people, including Americans, in secret prisons throughout the world; held prisoners indefinitely without charge; placed hundreds of thousands of Americans on terrorist watch lists without an explanation or opportunity to appeal; and restricted the free flow of scientific information and set up barriers to the use of scientific materials.

No matter who wins the election, we must remember that the Constitution applies to everyone. It applies to the least desirable among us and to those with whom we vehemently disagree on matters of politics, religion or ethics. That’s the tough part. We need to be vigilant for all people, not merely the ones whom society favors.

This election season is an opportunity to think about what the Constitution has given us, as well as what we ourselves can do to make sure it survives — not just in letter, but in spirit. We can consider whether what’s been going on is consistent with the Constitution. We shouldn’t fall into the trap of “Well, it’s not me; it’s that awful other person who’s being tortured/spied upon/denied an attorney/discriminated against/harassed.” Any of us could be that person in the future.

Kathleen Taylor is executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington state.

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The world’s greatest democracy?

October 23, 2008

Elizabeth Schulte examines the reality behind the rhetoric about the American two-party system.

Socialist Worker, October 23, 2008♦

U.S. Capitol building

DURING THE last presidential debate, John McCain fired off a desperate last-minute accusation about forces “on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history…maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.”

His claim was that the anti-poverty organization Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was trying to fix the election for Barack Obama by turning in fraudulent registrations. The charge didn’t seem to have any grounding in fact–since ACORN itself pointed out the questionable registrations to election officials.

The Republican complaints about ACORN make a mockery of the very real stories of disenfranchisement in the U.S.–most notoriously, hundreds of thousands of African American voters in Florida, who were struck from the rolls in 2000, assuring George Bush’s theft of the White House.

The fact that ACORN pays workers to go out and sign people up to vote–mostly in poor and minority neighborhoods–raises another problem. Why, if the right to vote is so important to the fabric of U.S. democracy, doesn’t the government make its own effort to register the disenfranchised?

The truth is that even when no one is stealing a vote or intimidating a voter, American elections are far from democratic.

TAKE THE way the president is actually chosen. The president isn’t elected by popular vote, but by the Electoral College. Each state has electors based on their number of senators and representatives in Congress–which means every state gets at least two electors, no matter how many people live there. Because of this, states with small–and usually rural and overwhelmingly white–populations are overrepresented in the presidential election.

There are only two political parties in the U.S. that get a real hearing at election time. There have been times in U.S. histories when third parties threatened to shake up the two-party system–such as the 1930s, when there was sentiment for a labor party to represent workers–but these initiatives were almost always smothered.

Thus, third parties are kept out of most debates by rules and regulations written by the mainstream establishment, they are forced to jump through often insurmountable hoops to even appear on the ballot, and they are shut out of the media.

The Democrats and the Republicans, while they tout their differences during the election season, fundamentally represent the same interests–those few at the top of society who control the wealth.

So while the majority of people are supposed to believe that they are voting for a certain set of ideas or political positions represented by their party’s candidate, the reality is that the job of politicians, first and foremost, is to make sure that the interests of Corporate America are protected.

The U.S. calls itself the “world greatest democracy.” But there’s no real evidence to back up this claim. As Lance Selfa notes in his book The Democrats: A Critical History:

Although the Democratic Party is one of the longest-existing mainstream parties in the world, it doesn’t really compare to many of the world’s political parties on the most basic levels. It has no fixed membership or membership requirements…The party has no stated set of principles or programs…

As party conventions have developed into little more than trade shows rolling out that year’s model (the presidential candidate), the party platform is usually synonymous with the candidate’s talking points. In any event, the Democratic Party candidates–from the presidency to the city council–are free to follow or to ignore the party platform in their election drives…

The standard picture of a political party handed down to us from civics and political science classes is one of a collective body that people organize to get collectively from government what they can’t get as individuals. The political party in a democracy represents the citizens who indicate their preferences about what they want from government when they vote to put the party’s candidates in office. And yet it’s clear that the oversimplified model does not reflect reality.

A case in point, Selfa writes, is the overwhelming Democratic Party victory in 2006 congressional elections–which was mostly the result of voters’ opposition to the Iraq war and their determination to throw out the pro-war Republicans. Despite this, the Democrats didn’t lift a finger to end the war after taking control of Congress; rather, they continued to fund it.

This undemocratic democracy isn’t relegated to the U.S. It exists the world over in different forms. This is because at the heart of bourgeois democracy is the illusion that elected officials make decisions based on the best interests of the people who vote them into office.

It is not simply that politicians are bought and paid for by particular wealthy people or industries–though they are corrupted by the system of campaign contributions. Beyond this, politicians are part of a state machine whose job is to preserve the status quo.

Like the cop and the judge, the elected official ensures that the basic class relationship prevailing in society doesn’t change–that a tiny minority controls all the wealth that is produced by the vast majority, the working class. The state poses as a neutral body, but as Karl Marx and Frederick Engels put it in the Communist Manifesto, “The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”

There are also many crucial decisions about the direction of society that aren’t made through the ballot box. Voters don’t decide what is a fair wage, or whether they have health insurance, or whether their working conditions are too dangerous. The majority of the population sure didn’t have a say about the $700 billion bailout for Wall Street or the future of families hit by foreclosure.

But this doesn’t mean we’re powerless to make change. The actions of ordinary people have achieved extraordinary things–the abolition of slavery, the end of Jim Crow segregation, the eight-hour day–because those people organized themselves and fought for what they wanted and needed.

Continued . . .

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Powell Lies About Iraq War after Endorsing Obama

October 22, 2008

By Matthew Rothschild | RINF.COM, Oct 21, 2008

Save your praise of Colin Powell.

Because while he was endorsing Barack Obama, he was busy rewriting the history of the Iraq War and perpetuating blatant lies about his role and George Bush’s role in the lead-up.

At a press conference after his appearance on Meet the Press Sunday, Powell responded to a question about his involvement in the decisions around the Iraq War.
http://www.cnn.com (starts at about 2:48)

Here was his answer: “My role has been very, very straightforward,” he said. “I wanted to avoid a war. The President agreed with me. We tried to do that and couldn’t get it to the U.N.”

There are at least four falsehoods in that little passage.

First, Powell’s role wasn’t very straightforward. While he did initially oppose the war, his deceitful testimony at the U.N. on February 5, 2003, prepared the battlefield for war.

Second, Bush never agreed with Powell about the need to avoid the war but was always fast peddling toward war.

Third, Bush and Powell did not go to the U.N. to try to avoid war. They went there to get the Security Council to greenlight the war.

And finally, what they couldn’t get through the U.N. Security Council was not an effort to avoid the war. A majority on the Security Council was begging for more time for the weapons inspectors, who had found nothing, to continue to do their work.

It was the U.N. that wanted to avoid war. It was Bush and Powell who were in a hurry to start the war.

Powell may be getting heaps of praise from the liberal punditocracy for breaking with his party on Obama. But he has not broken with his party on the Iraq War. In fact, he’s still trying to cover up Bush’s and his own shameful acts that precipitated the war.

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Empire and White Supremacy

October 22, 2008

The End of American Exceptionalism?

By COREY D.B. WALKER| Counterpunch, October 21, 2008

Now, when I say question the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

So tell me why, can’t you understand
That there ain’t no such thing as a superman

Gil Scott-Heron

What happens to a nation once its most privileged symbols have been thoroughly discredited?  Where does a country turn to begin again?

After eight years of the Bush-Cheney regime, the United States confronts these questions in light of a deep and profound crisis of legitimacy. The current crisis is intimately shaped by the demands of 21st century American imperialism and is reflected in the (un)spoken language of white supremacy.

The financial crisis engulfing the global capitalist system has exposed the hollow core of the American Dream.  As thousands of individuals and families have their homes go into foreclosure, the symbolic center of the American Dream – the home – has turned into an economic nightmare from which no one can awaken.

The reckless financialization of global capitalism which accelerated over the course of the last decade has not only discredited free market fundamentalism, but has also severely compromised the economic and political standing of America’s unique brand of consumer capitalism.  The ideology of an infinite American prosperity is no longer tenable as capitalism unravels and more and more Americans face desperate economic times with equally desperate choices.

The trends that progressives have for years been highlighting – the consolidation of wealth among a coterie of the elite, the record gap between rich and poor, the downward decline of wages, and the ever increasing level of poverty – are now coming to the forefront of public conversation.

And in so doing, calling into question the foundational assumptions of American superiority.

While the veiled and coded language of American foreign policy has been deciphered and well understood by those on the receiving end of America’s imperial promises, the rogue and cynical exploits by the recent administration has taken the mask off of the imperialistic machinations of American power.  Average citizens have been forced to face the wide gulf between the rhetoric of politicians and the military actions pursued in the name of the American people.

As if the crisis of capitalism and the overreach of imperial America were not enough, Americans are now in the midst of a hotly contested presidential election dominated by the age old American pastime of the politics of race.  While racial politics have always been a prized weapon in the arsenal of both political parties, what makes the 2008 incarnation of this political ritual unique is that the appeals to white supremacy – not the amorphous language of “race” to which mainstream media commentators refer – while recognized and justly denounced in its most extreme expression, still resonates within the political landscape precisely because of the crisis of capitalism and the military exploits of the American Empire.

In times of economic crisis and national malaise, the old political standby of subtle and not so subtle appeals to white supremacy becomes logical.  Why?  Because so much of what constitutes the American nationalist imaginary joins all that is felt to be familiar, normal, secure, and safe with the attributes, disposition, and outlook of the quintessential white person.  And in moments of national anxiety and economic insecurity politicians must reassure the American people that all is right (and white) with America.

Thus, it should not come as a surprise that there has been a lack of critical commentary on the white supremacist dimensions lurking just beneath the surface of what is taken to be a legitimate political appeal to the middle class as represented in the language and image of “Joe Six-Pack” and “Joe the Plumber.”  So as the story goes, the dreaded “outsiders” of the White Republic are produced and reproduced – immigrants, terrorists, socialists, muslims, black nationalists, and the list goes on – in an effort to make sure that all that is solid for the United States of America does not melt into air.

On November 5, 2008, Americans will wake up to a new day.  And as with all new days there will be work left over from the previous day to do.  But for the United States of America, the work that is left over is from the beginning and has steadily increased over the course of centuries.

And, once again, we will begin the long arduous process of making a nation.  Perhaps, just perhaps, we will eschew the short sighted vision of power and might and just try to do what is just and right, both in America and throughout the world.

Corey D. B. Walker is an assistant professor of Africana studies at Brown University and the author of A Noble Fight:  African American Freemasons and the Struggle for Democracy in America.

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AFGHANISTAN: Journalist Serving 20 Years for “Blasphemy”

October 22, 2008

By Zainab Mineeia | IPS News

WASHINGTON, Oct 21 – International human rights groups have called on Afghan authorities and President Hamid Karzai to free 24-year-old Afghani journalist Perwiz Kambakhsh, who has been sentenced to 20 years of prison after being convicted of blasphemy.

“There are no legal grounds for either his conviction or this sentence,” said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International’s Asia Pacific director. “While it can only be a positive step that he is no longer on death row, he should be freed immediately.”

Kambakhsh is a journalism student at Balkh University and a reporter for the newspaper Jahan-e-Naw (“New World”). He was arrested on Oct. 27, 2007, and accused of “blasphemy and distribution of texts defamatory of Islam”.

Afghan authorities claimed that Kambakhsh downloaded material from the internet that spoke to women’s roles in Muslim societies and was distributing them on his college campus. Kambakhsh strongly denies the charges, stating that he made such confessions due to severe torture.

On Jan. 20, Kambakhsh was condemned to death — behind closed doors and without a defence lawyer — by a court in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. The sentence was later commuted by an Afghan appeals court. However, Kambakhsh would still have to spend 20 years in prison for a crime which, under article 347 of the country’s Penal Code, carries a maximum sentence of five years of imprisonment.

Mohammad Afzal Nooristani, Kambakhsh’s attorney, told the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that one of the witnesses called by the prosecution, a classmate of Kambakhsh’s identified by CPJ only as Hamid, told the court that National Directorate of Security officials had visited him a few days after Kambakhsh’s initial arrest and threatened to take his family into custody if he did not make a statement about Kambakhsh’s blasphemy.

“He was their prime witness; no other was eligible to give testimony,” Nooristani said, according to CPJ.

Yaqub Ibrahimi, Kambakhsh’s brother, told CPJ Tuesday that he was only able to talk to Kambakhsh for a few seconds after the sentencing.

“He was really shocked. He expected his release today but this was a very strong decision against him,” Ibrahimi said.

“Afghan justice has again failed to protect Afghan law and guarantee free expression,” Reporters Without Borders, a journalist advocacy group, said in a statement. “By sentencing this young journalist to imprisonment, the appeal court has eliminated the possibility of his being executed, but it has also exposed the degree to which some Afghan judges are susceptible to pressure from fundamentalists.”

“Kambakhsh was able this time to be represented by a lawyer,” continued the Reporters Without Borders statement, “but the appeal proceedings were marred by ideological distortion, a glaring lack of evidence and incomprehensible delays that ended up undermining the court’s serenity.”

Afghanistan’s government and warlords may not be notorious for executing journalists, but they do have a reputation for harassing, detaining, abusing and threatening them, advocacy groups say. The country is generally known as a harsh place for journalists, where they are in danger from harassment by U.S. forces, Afghan authorities, and the resurgent Taliban-led insurgency.

In another incident, Afghani journalist Jawed Ahmad, aged 22, was released from Bagram Air Base north of Kabul on September 21 following a year-long captivity in U.S. custody. He was detained as what the U.S. Department of Defense told CPJ was an “Unlawful Enemy Combatant.”

Ahmad was never charged with a crime and military officials have never explained the basis for his prolonged detention. He was working under contract as a field producer with the Canadian broadcaster CTV when he was picked up by Canadian troops at the International Security and Assistance Force’s (ISAF — the U.S. – and NATO-led international coalition that invaded Afghanistan in 2001) Kandahar airbase and soon moved to the U.S. facility at Bagram.

Ahmad said he does not know why he was freed and is unclear about why he was detained in the first place.

According to a statement from Bob Dietz, CPJ’s Asia Programme coordinator, Ahmad had suffered physical abuse during his detention, where he said he was frequently beaten, two of his ribs were broken, and he was deprived of sleep.

Karzai’s government hasn’t shown much openness to freedom of expression, according to the Nai Centre for Open Media, an Afghan NGO supported by foreign funding. The government is responsible for at least 23 of 45 instances of intimidation, violence, or arrest of journalists between May 2007 and May 2008. That is a 130 percent increase over the same period from the year before, the Nai Centre says, according to CPJ.

Kambakhsh described the court’s decision as an “injustice.” His lawyer said he would immediately appeal to the Supreme Court.

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All aboard the atheist bus campaign

October 22, 2008

It’s real, it’s happening: you can sponsor the first atheist advert on a bus – and Richard Dawkins will match your money

Ariane Sherine's atheist bus advert

The godless move in mysterious ways: what the atheist bus campaign’s advert will look like.

The atheist bus campaign launches today thanks to Comment is free readers. Because of your enthusiastic response to the idea of a reassuring God-free advert being used to counter religious advertising, the slogan “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life” could now become an ad campaign on London buses – and leading secularists have jumped on board to help us raise the money.

The British Humanist Association will be administering all donations to the campaign, and Professor Richard Dawkins, bestselling author of The God Delusion, has generously agreed to match all contributions up to a maximum of £5,500, giving us a total of £11,000 if we raise the full amount. This will be enough to fund two sets of atheist adverts on 30 London buses for four weeks.

If the buses hit the road, this will be the UK’s first ever atheist advertising campaign. It’s an exciting development, which I never expected when I first proposed the idea on Cif in June. Back then, I was just keen to counter the religious ads running on public transport, which featured a URL to a website telling non-Christians they would spend “all eternity in torment in hell”, burning in “a lake of fire”. When I suggested the atheist counter-slogan (now shortened for readability), the response was extremely positive, and hundreds of you pledged your support after the follow-up article.

As you read this, a new advertising campaign for Alpha Courses is running on London buses. If you attend an Alpha Course, you will again be told that failing to believe in Jesus will condemn you to hell. There’s no doubt that advertising can be effective, and religious advertising works particularly well on those who are vulnerable, frightening them into believing. Religious organisations’ jobs are made easier because there’s no publicly visible counter-view to refute their threats of eternal damnation.

The atheist bus campaign aims to change this. In addition to the slogan, the adverts will feature the URLs of secular, humanist and atheist websites, so that readers can find out more about atheism as a positive and liberating alternative to religion. We’ve also set up an interactive campaign website and Facebook group, so that questions raised by the adverts can be publicly debated.

CBS Outdoor, the bus advertising company, will run the atheist adverts in January if the funds are raised – but we need your help to make this happen.

Your donations will give atheism a more visible presence in the UK, generate debate, brighten people’s day on the way to work, and hopefully encourage more people to come out as atheists. As Richard Dawkins says: “This campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think – and thinking is anathema to religion.”

To donate to the atheist bus campaign, please visit here.

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Pakistan refugee camps swell after battles

October 21, 2008

Refugees may be forced to spend the winter in tents

BY SAEED SHAH • MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS • October 21, 2008

TIMERGARA, Pakistan — A Pakistani military assault on Taliban and Al Qaeda extremists near the Afghan border has unleashed a flood of at least 190,000 displaced people who may be forced to spend the approaching winter in tents and could be marooned for years.

Pakistani authorities claim to have killed more than 1,000 militants in Bajaur, with 17 more reported killed in the last two days, but what was supposed to be a quick military assault against the Islamic extremists along the border with Afghanistan is now in its third month and could be Pakistan’s biggest offensive since 9/11.

Washington has criticized Pakistan for appeasing the extremists, but on Monday, Richard Boucher, a visiting U.S. assistant secretary of state, said: “I think it is good that Pakistan is taking serious action against terrorists.”

However, if the military extends the action to other areas, the streams of displaced people and the resentment of Pakistan’s cooperation with the United States in the war on terrorism are likely to grow.

Many of the newly displaced people are living in squalid, makeshift camps in the adjoining North West Frontier Province, where they have no running water, no electricity, no toilets and no heat. Aid workers and officials fear that they may be trapped for years. Others have fled to Afghanistan, according to the United Nations.

Bajaur has been virtually emptied of its inhabitants, officials said. At least 10 camps run by the government now house tens of thousands from Bajaur; others have taken shelter with family and friends, and as many as 100,000 have fled hundreds of miles to the southern port city of Karachi.

A grim settlement has taken shape on a hillside outside the town of Timergara, which borders Bajaur. The month-old camp there has just started a rudimentary open-air school for younger children, taught by the older kids, and a clinic has been established.

There now are 880 families at the Timergara camp, or about 6,260 individuals, most of them children, according to the official in charge. Most families are allotted one tent each, which means that eight or more people must share it.

“We don’t have enough water to drink, let alone the chance to bathe,” said Gul Mohammad, 25, who arrived with seven family members. “We brought nothing. We just came here to save our lives.”

Toilet facilities, so far, are a communal ditch or a trip to the nearby river. There’s no electricity, and water is trucked in. Food is distributed by the government and aid agencies, but the refugees said it was inadequate and that they had to scavenge or buy wood to cook it.

“First we thought this would be for a month. It looks like years to me now,” said Abdul Hameed, the Pakistani official who runs the facility. “We have stopped more coming in. There is no space left.”

Winter, now setting in, is bitterly cold in Timergara, but the refugees said they didn’t even have blankets. Their anger is directed mostly at the Pakistani authorities, not at the Taliban, for launching the operation and for the miserable conditions they now endure. They charge that Bajaur is being pounded indiscriminately by jet fighters and helicopter gunships and that most of the casualties are innocent civilians.

“Even when a 2-year-old dies in a strike,” the army says in the media that “he was Taliban or Al Qaeda,” said Rahim Gul, who had come from a village close to Damadola, an alleged hotbed of Islamic militancy.

Tribesmen rarely criticize the Taliban, probably out of fear, but the refugees report large-scale destruction of homes and civilian deaths from the army bombardment. The chief spokesman for the Pakistan army said he had no figures for civilian casualties.

“A missile struck my house.” The army even “hit the village mosque,” said Mohammed Jan. “They are willing to hit mosques, so what chance is there that they will spare poor people?”

“Houses are being used by the militants as bunkers. They’re firing from there. Therefore, all houses from where the firing is coming are being engaged by the security forces,” Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said. “To our knowledge, the civilians of this area have left.”

A man who gave his name only as Sherpao said: “It is the fault of both sides. The army throws bombs on us from above. The Taliban terrorize us on the ground. We just want peace. We don’t care who wins.”

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Pakistani Opposition Figure: 1,500 Civilians Killed in Bajaur Operation

October 21, 2008

Jason Ditz | Antiwar.com, October 19, 2008

Sahibzada Haroonur Rashid, a high ranking official in the Jamaat-e Islami (JI) party from Bajaur Agency, claimed today that 1,500 civilians have been killed since Pakistan’s military offensive in Bajaur began in August. He also condemned the operation for displacing hundreds of thousands of Bajauris, and accused the government of killing people in the tribal areas to ‘appease the United States.’

The military has claimed 1,000 militants killed and another 2,000 wounded in the heavy fighting of the past months, they have not provided any figures on the number of civilians killed. Relief agencies have reported that more than 400,000 people have been displaced in the tiny agency, whose entire population as of the most recent census was less than 600,000.

The Pakistani government has rejected calls by the militants for a ceasefire in the past, and has remained officially silent since last week’s offer by a TTP spokesman to lay down arms in return for an end to the offensives. Confusingly, the government announced a ceasefire of its own at the beginning of Ramadan, but continued to launch attacks throughout the Muslim holy month.

The Jamaat-e Islami is a religious political party in Pakistan. They have no MPs in the current Pakistani legislature, having boycotted the most recent elections over then-President Pervez Musharraf’s declaration of a state of emergency. They have long been outspoken critics of military offensives and supporters of peace talks with the various militant groups in Pakistan’s restive tribal areas. They have also been accused of links with al-Qaeda in the past.

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The Forgotten U.S. War on the Iraqi People

October 21, 2008


By Ghali Hassan | Axis of Logic,  Oct 16, 2008, 19:42

On October 3, 2008, the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon is paying $300 million to U.S. contractors to produce pro-U.S. propaganda for Iraqi audiences “in an effort to ‘engage and inspire’ the local population to support U.S. objectives and the puppet government”. The aim of this psychological warfare is to normalise the murderous Occupation and cover-up the slaughter of innocent Iraqi civilians.

As Iraqis continue to suffer, the war on has receded from mainstream media headlines in order to remove people’s historical memory and to provide the Republican Party with a fictitious victory and improves John McCain’s chances of winning the presidency. In the same way the decade-long genocidal sanctions that killed 2 million innocent Iraqi civilians were normalised, journalists and media outlets in the U.S. and in occupied Iraq are promoted and paid to write “good news” stories about the ongoing Occupation.

As a result, few Americans are against the war, and most of the US population still find it acceptable to perpetuate barbarism against defenceless population. The justification and rationalisations for the application of barbaric violence have been based on U.S. euphemistic doctrines with disregard to international law and civilised norms.  Despite the enormity of the atrocity in Iraq, Americans have re-elected George Bush in 2004 and continue paying $12 billion per month to propel a criminal war which is destroying an entire society.

Indeed, since World War II, the U.S. has committed unimaginable war crimes against defenceless civilian population, more than any other nation on earth. It is astonishing that a large segment of US society is proud of these horrendous war crimes, and violence continues to play an important role in the US psyche. Just take a look at how the bigoted John McCain is portrayed by the media as a “maverick” and a war “hero” (not a war criminal) and even allowed to (deceptively) distance himself from George Bush and his own Republican Party’s ideology. His incompetence in foreign policy, the economy, and his erratic character and criminal record in Vietnam and Iraq have largely been ignored in the media.

It is certain, if the Republicans are re-elected and John McCain become president, the U.S. will declare a police state and will embark on a war agenda reminiscent of Hitler’s war agenda. The Republican ideology is a Nazis’-like ideology seeking to dominate the world through violence, racism and propaganda. With thousands of U.S. troops have been deployed on U.S. streets to control the population, the people of the United States do not need more serious warnings.

The world ignores U.S. war crimes

Why is the world ignoring the U.S.-perpetuated war crimes and crimes against humanity in Iraq? The primary reasons are: Western media complicity in U.S. war crimes through disinformation and distortion of the situation on ground; and most importantly, Islamophobia. The U.S.-Zionist media play an important role in spreading anti-Muslims propaganda throughout the world, demonising Muslims and distorting Islam in order to manipulate public opinion and justify war crimes against Muslims at home and abroad. Additionally, a deep-seated and inherently widespread dehumanisation of Arabs and Muslims by Western media, the Western ruling classes and opportunist politicians encourages silence and moral bankruptcy.

Recall how in 2003 the US people and a large segment of Western population were manipulated and deceived to support an illegal war of aggression against an entirely defenceless Iraqi population. Deep silence prevailed despite it was well-known that Iraq had neither weapons of mass destruction nor any link to “terrorism”, and that the pretexts were outright lies fabricated in Washington and London. The aggression against Iraq was and still is a crime against humanity and those who supported the crimes have blood on their hands.

Pretexts used to justify the illegal war and occupation

Immediately after the pretexts to justify the invasion were exposed, the U.S. began to engineer and used countless pretexts to justify the ongoing Occupation, including the incitement of massive outbreak of violence. For instance, the U.S.-drafted “Iraqi Constitution” defines Iraqis according to their ethnicities and religious sects. It was designed to divide Iraqis and sow the seeds of hatred and division that defined Iraq today. Hence, the Occupation-generated violence is a deliberate strategy to justify the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq. It is the Bush regime’s strategy to “stay the course”. It has achieved what the U.S. regime has planned before the aggression; the destruction of Iraq’s unity and the establishment of a U.S. military foothold in Iraq.

More than five years of murderous Occupation, George Bush and his criminal accomplices remain unindicted. Moreover, the Bush regime is refusing to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and restore the Iraqi freedom and independence. Instead, the Bush regime is bribing and coercing members of the criminal puppet government – whose survival depends on the Occupation – to sign a deal to permanently station U.S. troops in Iraq against the will of the Iraqi people. It is now clear to everyone that the motives for the premeditated aggression and subsequent Occupation are:

  1. to establish a colonial dictatorship in Iraq through an open-ended military presence and use the country as a launching pad to attack other countries;
  2. enhance Israel’s Zionist expansion in Palestine and the Middle East in general; and
  3. guard Western multinational oil corporations seizing control of strategic Iraqi oil reserves.

The “surge” and ethnic cleansing in Iraq

Meanwhile, the propaganda for a new “victory” in Iraq is in full swing. The so-called “reduction” in violence against Iraqi civilians has much to do with the mass killing and widespread ethnic cleansing that have left less people to kill not the “surge” in troops number as the Bush’s regime alleges. According to the Pentagon Quarterly Report, Iraq has become a nation of ethnically cleansed neighbourhoods, separated by concrete walls dividing communities and preventing free movement. This so-called “neighbourhood homogenisation” has been achieved only through a U.S.-controlled reign of terror and mass murder of Iraqi civilians. Today, a large part of Baghdad’s neighbourhoods have been emptied of their original population. At least 5 million Iraqis are either internally displaced or refugees in neighbouring countries.

Other studies have also pointed out to the ethnic cleansing perpetuated by U.S. forces and U.S.-controlled death squads and militias in reducing some of the violence against Iraqi civilians and have rejected the Bush’s regime propaganda that the “surge” is responsible for the “reduction” in violence. One of these studies is the UCLA Study. While the Study found that “the surge has no observable effect”, it is also deliberately misleading. The Study suggestion that the “surge” designed “to improve the materials condition of life and create a breathing space for political compromise between major factions” in Baghdad is a falsehood. The “surge” is part of the Republicans propaganda campaign which is designed to mislead the American public and provides John McCain with something to say about a murderous Occupation. The reality is that the Occupation remains the root causes of violence and destruction in Iraq.

Furthermore, Iraqi sources reveal that conditions are worsening in the Baghdad once again ‘despite the heavy presence of Iraqi security forces and a surge in number of checkpoints’. U.S. officials say the “surge” is “success”, but they also called the situation “fragile” and “reversible”, means the Occupation will continue.

Another factor that has contributed to the “reduction” in violence is that the U.S. began paying militias, including the Kurdish militia and collaborators to collaborate and stop carrying out killings (executions) anti-Occupation civilians. Additionally, Iran role in restraining Iranian criminals and Iranian-controlled militias and encouraged them to collaborate with the Occupation must be acknowledged.

At the timing of this writing, U.S. troops killed 11 people from one family while conducting a dawn raid on a house in the Seventeen Tammuz neighbourhoods, west of Mosul. It is an established fact that the ongoing violence is controlled by U.S. forces and their collaborators. This has been the norm since 2003. Of course, every time U.S. forces perpetuated a massacre of Iraqi civilians, they cover-up their war crimes by alleging that they have killed “al-Qaeda” fighters. The phantom, which the U.S. created to justify terrorism, keeps growing wherever U.S. forces invade a foreign nation.

The unprovoked criminal invasion and subsequent Occupation of Iraq have resulted in deliberate mass killing and physical destruction of Iraq in whole or in part.  Every major population centre has been targeted by a campaign of terror and indiscriminate aerial bombings using all kinds of legally banned weapons of mass destruction. At least 1.3 million innocent Iraqi civilians, mostly women and children, have been killed since 2003. While this figure is a conservative figure, it is still much higher than the Rwandan genocide.

Only the U.S. and Israel (and their allies) could get away with such unimaginable war crimes against innocent civilians and terrorism. In every country the U.S. and its allies have invaded, they brought chaos and insecurity rather than “freedom” and “democracy”, they destroyed rather than build, they brought poverty rather than prosperity, and they sowed the seeds of violence rather than seeds of peace. The ongoing atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan are just the current examples.

According to the UN Convention on Genocide, there is an ongoing genocide in Iraq. Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group such as:

  • killing members of the group;
  • causing serious bodily or mental harm;
  • deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
  • imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and
  • forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Hence, there is overwhelming evidence to charge George Bush and his willing allies and accomplices with war crimes and genocide. An indictment of Western leaders with war crimes and crimes against humanity could pave the way for a peaceful and just world and reduce the eventuality of premeditated and unprovoked war of aggression.

Finally, the Pentagon-funded propaganda campaign is a psychological warfare designed to whitewash a murderous Occupation. The only way to end the colonial Occupation of Iraq and stop the mass slaughter of innocent Iraqi civilians is the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops and mercenaries from Iraq.

© Copyright 2008 by AxisofLogic.com

This material is available for republication as long as reprints include verbatim copy of the article its entirety, respecting its integrity. Reprints must cite the author and Axis of Logic as the original source including a “live link” to the article. Thank you!

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World Peace is More Than Just the Silencing of the Guns

October 21, 2008


By Peter Chamberlin | Information Clearing House, Oct 20, 2008


World peace is more than just the silencing of the guns, it is the elimination of the injustice that has compelled the men to reach for those guns in self-defense against the aggression. In the currently building world war (which is based on lies and deceptions), the mission is to identify all of the men who believe in self-defense and eliminate them. Both sides believe that everyone has the right to self-defense, but the aggressors in this war believe that they have a “divine right” (because of their intellectual superiority) to disarm and rule the rest.

The “war on terror” is the intellectual’s war, the neocon intellectuals. To them, most of the human race is an inferior species, sheep, to be led for their own good. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan, look at the economy, to see how smart they really are and just exactly where they are leading us.

We are standing at the edge of the abyss because we have gone along with all the lies. Without “acceptable” lies, the neocons are nothing but arrogant snobs. Without public acceptance of the “official version” of events, there would never have been a terror war. Without the attack upon our families in New York and Washington in 2001, we would not have been “tickled” into taking-up arms in self-defense against the henchmen and patsies our government offered-up to us to cover its own crimes.

For there to be peace in the midst of a war engineered by a would-be master race the cold penetrating light of reality must emasculate the acceptable lies agreed to in secret back room meetings, which allow sheer gangsterism and extortion from weaker adversaries to masquerade as “diplomacy and negotiations.”

The incessant lies emanating from the Pentagon, the White House and especially from the CIA have to be silenced. If the war of terror, based on lies is to be turned into a world at peace, based on simple truth, then we have to illuminate the secret killings in dark places that show the true face of the war against innocence being waged by Nazi-like regime.

It must be shown that we have been embracing the force of true evil that runs and ruins this Nation today. By exposing the accepted lie that the innocent Muslim people who are merely resisting our aggressions upon their homelands are “terrorists,” we remove the blinders we have accepted from the true authors of terror in the terror war. By accepting US and Pakistani military reports on “collateral” kills, we embrace the popular lie that only “militants and terrorists” were killed by the one-eyed “Terminator” drones. We dishonor ourselves and our ancestors by accepting the lies that babies were “militants!”

We have to get solid evidence out to the world. A good place to start would be to follow the wise example set by the Israeli human rights organization “B’Tselem,” by supplying camcorders to Pakistani families in North and South Waziristan, to document the indiscriminate killing of entire families, the “tickling” operations described so cleverly by CIA Director Michael Hayden. With video evidence (translated into English) of the aftermath of American genocidal attacks it would be much easier to organize resistance to those attacks and serve as evidence in later war crimes trials. It would be beautifully ironic if the American-adopted Israeli tactic of “targeted assassinations” with missiles is exposed by the same video tactic that has revealed Israeli brutality against the helpless in occupied Palestine.

According to Director Hayden, the real value of these attacks with “Hellfire” missiles upon mud-brick family dwellings and religious schools is in the reactions caused by the killings. In other words, the value of the attack is as much in the number of male family members who rise to avenge these terror attacks as it is in the “high value target” occasionally killed. The tactic described by Hayden is the latest manifestation of contemporary American “counter-insurgency” techniques.

The main idea involved in fighting an “insurgency” within a populated area in this manner is to find and co-opt local leaders, like Baitullah Mehsud, around which to create the impression of a growing shadowy “counter-insurgency.” These inept local “contras” get blamed for the ensuing wave of violence committed by US Special Ops, their in addition to the gangster-like attacks they carry-out on their own. These units perform the same task as the Terminator-drones, that of initiating the cycle of retribution. They bomb and murder civilians, in order to motivate their male relatives to take-up arms and avenge their relatives, focusing in particular upon killing of local Shia, to instigate inter-faith conflict.

The concept of fighting a global war by limited means is an evil idea, concocted by the vainest, most self-centered self-worshippers the planet has ever been plagued by. The idea that your intellect is so superior to every other human mind that the best thing that could ever happen to the human race would be for you to rule over them, no matter what it cost in human lives to place you in that position of power, is the idea that drove Adolf Hitler. The men who have brought us the neocon war plan of total world conquest, by limited means, are no less evil, nor less vain than Hitler (the neocon’s favorite bogeyman).

By choosing to fight “the long war,” on a limited basis, they have accepted the idea of killing a major portion of human life, even risking the destruction of the entire planet. The idea of a generational war serves as a sorting mechanism, a gory laboratory for identifying and separating those who will willingly accept the unfair suffering life forced upon them and their families under the new “matrix,” from those persistent independent-minded souls who will resist. The war of terror is to identify potential resisters and to eliminate them, leaving behind only docile malleable slave sheep, to serve as functional “copper-tops.”

The idea that there could ever be world peace as long as the matrix exists is part of the illusion that hinders the formation of a real resistance.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Martti Ahtisaari warned on Friday:

“world peace efforts hampered by credit crunch…The international financial crisis is hampering efforts towards world peace.”

The former Finnish president said a lack of economic development in war-torn countries would make it harder to resolve conflicts:

“It will not help us to solve conflict with no economic development in those countries. It is becoming more and more difficult…We are avoiding taking the tough decisions that are needed.”

This is pure B.S. Contributing to the war of aggression by aiding in reconstruction efforts, while hostilities continue will never bring anything like world peace. The whole idea of “good faith” re-construction by the same monstrous war machine from which the original devastation flowed is an exercise in propaganda and disinformation intended to distract those of us who would form an army of worldwide resistance.

This requires a change of attitude on the part of the aggressor, first, admitting that the US and its allies are the aggressors. The entire terror war has been a manufactured event designed to maintain the US position of global authority. We have to refute the acceptable lie that we have been a victim and that our great war plan simply failed, while we openly admit that the war has been a criminal act of aggression in every conceivable way, from the very beginning. We have committed the most serious crimes in pursuit of our plans to plunder and subjugate the earth, crimes against the human race, crimes against Our Creator, Himself.

We have destroyed entire nations in our mad rush to fend for ourselves and perpetuate our system of inequality that creates immense wealth for true believers by siphoning-off the bread of life from the rest. Until this warfare of greed stops decimating the human race there can never be world peace.

For their ever to be peace, there must be an end to the hostile force that drives men’s aggression and turns simple day-to-day existence into a daily fight for life. The forces that are driving the individual wars that are being merged into one big war, must be stopped. The lands and peoples devastated in their aggression must be rebuilt and compensated for the crimes committed upon them, out of the US Treasury, with money which would formerly have been allotted to further military aggression.

peter.chamberlin@yahoo.com

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