U.S., Iraqi Officials Question Terms of Draft Security Deal

October 18, 2008

At Issue: Legal Authority Over Troops

By Mary Beth Sheridan and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writers, Saturday, October 18, 2008

BAGHDAD, Oct. 17 — A number of senior Iraqi and U.S. politicians expressed strong reservations Friday about the terms of a draft agreement that gives Iraq the “primary right” — subject to U.S. acquiescence — to try American soldiers accused of serious crimes committed during off-duty hours outside U.S. military bases here.

Some political leaders in Baghdad, who got their first look at the controversial agreement to extend the U.S. military presence in Iraq beyond 2008, said it did not go far enough in guaranteeing Iraqi sovereignty. The bilateral accord was presented Friday to the Political Council for National Security, an advisory body including political, legislative and judicial leaders, whose support is necessary before it can be submitted to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki‘s cabinet and then to parliament for final approval. After an initial review, the council said it would continue discussions next week.

In Washington, congressional Democrats questioned ceding any authority over U.S. troops to Iraq. “I am very concerned about reports that U.S. service personnel may not have full immunity under Iraqi law,” said Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), the House Armed Services Committee chairman. The Bush administration allowed a small group of senior congressional aides to read the document at a White House briefing this morning but did not allow copies to be made.

A provision in the draft would give the United States “primary” jurisdiction over military personnel and Defense Department employees who are on bases or engaged in authorized military operations.

Iraq, it says, would have the “primary right to exercise judicial jurisdiction” over “premeditated and gross felonies . . . committed outside the agreed facilities and areas and when not on a mission.” Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Friday that any disagreement would be resolved by a joint committee. “If the crime is very grave or serious, the U.S. may waive its jurisdiction,” he said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told reporters at a Pentagon briefing that “there is not a reason to be concerned.” He said top U.S. military officials “are all satisfied that our men and women in uniform serving in Iraq are well protected.” U.S. officials have emphasized that off-duty American troops in Iraq rarely, if ever, venture outside their bases, and said that they consider language in the document vague enough to ensure absolute U.S. control in all circumstances.

Administration officials also said they are confident that withdrawal dates in the document — June 30, 2009, for U.S. forces in Iraqi cities and Dec. 31, 2011, from all of Iraq — contain sufficient caveats to address any future downturn in the security situation. Before the final deadline, the draft says, “on the basis of Iraq’s assessment of conditions on the ground,” the Iraqi government could ask for U.S. troops to remain for “training purposes” or to “support Iraqi security forces.”

The accord also would prohibit U.S. forces from detaining any Iraqi citizen without an Iraqi warrant, and says any detainee would have to be handed over to government custody within 24 hours. All Iraqis in U.S. custody as of Jan. 1 — when the agreement would go into effect upon expiration of the current U.N. mandate authorizing foreign troops here — would have to be turned over to the Iraqi government. Home and property searches also would require an Iraqi warrant, except during certain combat situations.

U.S. and Iraqi officials confirmed the wording of the document, portions of which were widely circulated in both capitals Friday.

The sensitivity of the draft agreement, which has been under negotiation since March, was illustrated when Maliki lashed out at the top American commander here for saying that U.S. intelligence indicated Iran was trying to bribe Iraqi lawmakers to reject the pact.

“The American commander has risked his position when he spoke in this tone and has complicated relations in a deplorable way,” Maliki told a group of Kuwaiti journalists in an interview broadcast by Iraqi state television Friday. Maliki expressed astonishment at the remarks from U.S. Gen. Ray Odierno, whom he described as a “kind and good man.” Iraqi members of parliament, he said, had not accepted any bribes.

Maliki was reacting to a Monday article in The Washington Post in which Odierno said Iran was conducting a “full-court press” with its Iraqi contacts to sabotage the pact, including “coming in to pay off people to vote against it.” A U.S. military spokesman later said there was no confirmation that bribes had been accepted by lawmakers.

A number of Iraq’s leading political leaders spent years in exile in Iran during the presidency of Saddam Hussein and maintain warm relations with the Tehran government. Several expressed sharp offense at Odierno’s comments.

Jalal al-Deen al-Saghir, a top lawmaker from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, Maliki’s main political partner, said in an interview that he saw “serious problems” in the proposed accord, “especially after Odierno’s statements.”

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Friday that there was a misunderstanding about Odierno’s comments. “I don’t think General Odierno was implying that there are crooked Iraqi politicians, but rather that there are Iranian agents who, in their attempt to derail the [agreement], are trying to bribe Iraqi politicians,” he said.

In Najaf, the religious capital of Iraq’s Shiite majority, a leading cleric blasted the idea of giving U.S. forces any immunity from Iraqi law. “We consider this a basic point because it represents sovereignty,” Sadir Addin al-Qobanchi said in a sermon at the city’s grand mosque. “If someone commits a hostile act against your house and family, and you say it is fine and don’t hold him responsible, it means that you don’t have dignity or sovereignty.”

U.S. military and political officials have expressed concern that the agreement may not make it through Iraq’s slow-moving political process by year’s end. An extension of the U.N. mandate, the most likely option if a final agreement is not reached, poses political and legal complications for both sides.

Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish lawmaker, said the agreement could gain the approval of the political council and the cabinet. But in parliament, supporters of the agreement “will face opposition,” he said. The accord, which must win a majority in the 275-seat parliament, is strongly supported by the Kurdish bloc, the second-biggest with 54 seats. Various Sunni and independent parties representing scores of seats have also indicated their approval.

But Othman said the backing of some politicians was not solid.

“They tell the Americans, ‘We are okay, we’ll sign it.’ Then they tell their people in parliament not to vote for it,” he said.

The U.S. Congress does not have similar veto power over the agreement, which requires only a presidential signature. But senior Democrats, and a number of Republicans, have questioned its terms. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said in a statement Friday that complete American jurisdiction over U.S. service members was “critical” and that they could not be “subject to criminal prosecution in an Iraqi judicial system that does not meet due process standards.” Levin said he would “reserve judgment” on the draft until he was given an opportunity for a “complete review” of its terms.

DeYoung reported from Washington. Staff writer Ann Scott Tyson in Washington and special correspondent Qais Mizher in Baghdad contributed to this report.

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Government of Thieves

October 18, 2008

When Greed is Rewarded

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS | Counterpunch, Oct 17 / 20, 2008

Just as the Bush regime’s wars have been used to pour billions of dollars into the pockets of its military-security donor base, the Paulson bailout looks like a Bush regime scheme to incur $700 billion in new public debt in order to transfer the money into the coffers of its financial donor base. The US taxpayers will be left with the interest payments in perpetuity (or inflation if the Fed monetizes the debt), and the number of Wall Street billionaires will grow. As for the US and European governments’ purchases of bank shares, that is just a cover for funneling public money into private hands.

The explanations that have been given for the crisis and its bailout are opaque. The US Treasury estimates that as few as 7% of the mortgages are bad. Why then do the US, UK, Germany, and France need to pour more than $2.1 trillion of public money into private financial institutions?

If, as the government tells us, the crisis stems from subprime mortgage defaults reducing the interest payments to the holders of mortgage backed securities, thus driving down their values and threatening the solvency of the institutions that hold them, why isn’t the bailout money used to address the problem at its source? If the bailout money was used to refinance troubled mortgages and to pay off foreclosed mortgages, the mortgage backed securities would be made whole, and it would be unnecessary to pour huge sums of public money into banks. Instead, the bailout money is being used to inject capital into financial institutions and to purchase from them troubled financial instruments.

It is a strange solution that does not address the problem. As the US economy sinks deeper into recession, the mortgage defaults will rise. Thus, the problem will intensify, necessitating the purchase of yet more troubled instruments.

If credit card debt has also been securitized and sold as investments, as the economy worsens defaults on credit card debt will be a replay of the mortgage defaults. How much debt can the Treasury bail out before its own credit rating sinks?

The contribution of credit default swaps to the financial crisis has not been made clear. These swaps are bets that a designated financial instrument will fail. In exchange for “premium” payments, the seller of a swap protects the buyer of the swap from default by, for example, a company’s bond that the swap buyer might not even own. If these swaps are also securitized and sold as investments, more nebulous assets appear on balance sheets.

Normally, if you and I make a bet, and I welsh on the bet, it doesn’t threaten your solvency. If we place bets with a bookie and the odds go against the bookie, the bookie will fail, as apparently happened to AIG, necessitating an $85 billion bailout of the insurance company, and to Bear Stearns resulting in the demise of the investment bank.

Credit default swaps are a form of unregulated insurance. One danger of the swaps is that they allow speculators to purchase protection against a company defaulting on its bonds, without the speculators having to own the company’s bonds. Speculators can then short the company’s stock, driving down its price and raising questions about the viability of the company’s bonds. This raises the value of the speculators’ swaps which can be sold to holders of the company’s bonds. By ruining a company’s prospects, the speculators make money.

Another danger is that swaps encourage investors to purchase riskier, higher-yielding instruments in the belief that the instruments are insured, but the sellers of swaps have not reserved against them.

Double-counting of assets is also possible if a bank purchases a company’s bonds, for example, then purchases credit default swaps on the bonds, and lists both as assets on its balance sheet.

The $85 billion Treasury bailout of AIG is small compared to the $700 billion for the banks, and the emphasis has been on banks, not insurance companies. According to news reports, the sums associated with credit default swaps are far larger than the subprime mortgage derivatives. Have the swaps yet to become major players in the crisis?

The behavior of the stock market does not necessarily tell us anything about the bailout. The financial crisis disrupted lending and thus comprised a threat to non-financial firms. This threat would reflect in the stock market. However, the stock market is also predicting a recession and declining earnings. Thus, people sell stocks hoping to get out before share prices adjust to the new lower earnings.

The bailout package is a result of panic and threats, not of analysis and understanding. Neither Congress nor the public knows the full story. If the problem is the mortgages, why does the bailout leave the mortgages unaddressed and focus instead on pouring vast amount of public money into private financial institutions?

The purpose of regulation is to restrain greed and to prevent leveraged speculation from threatening the wider society. Congress needs to restore financial regulation, not reward those who caused the crisis.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

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Tony Benn: What went wrong in the capitalist casino?

October 18, 2008

By Tony Benn | rinf.com, Oct 17, 2008

These words are from the 1945 Labour manifesto Let Us Face The Future which brilliantly identified the very same crisis which is now described as a “credit crunch” as if it were a mere hiccup in an otherwise wonderful neo-liberal globalised world which could be corrected with a vast subsidy from the taxpayers to put the Wall Street casino and its partners worldwide back into profit. It reminded me of the fact that when slavery was abolished it was the slave owners, and not the slaves, who received compensation from the government of the day.

Perhaps more important – and never mentioned in the media – is that all the news we get every day and every hour is all about the bankers while presidents, prime ministers and other elected leaders of the world have been reduced to the role of mere commentators who are expected to supply taxpayers’ money whenever it is needed to bail out the wealthy.

Indeed, what we are watching is nothing less than the steady transfer of real political power from the polling station to the market and from the ballot to the wallet – reversing the democratic gains we have made over the last century when we were able, increasingly, to use our votes to shape our economic future.

Our 1945 manifesto made that clear in the very next passage following the quote above. This is what it said: “The nation wants food, work and homes. It wants more than that. It wants good food in plenty, useful work for all and comfortable labour-saving homes that take full advantage of the resources of modern science and productive industry.”

That was the policy that swept Labour MPs into power in 1945 and gave this country the National Health Service, the welfare state and a massive house building programme, made possible by elected local authorities who had the resources made available to them by the Treasury.

Now, 63 years later, we are back facing a similar situation and we need to understand why it has happened if we are to see our way forward.

We have been told every day by the media that we should put our faith in the market and that elected governments are the problem and not the answer and, for that reason, should not interfere.

These ideas began to emerge in the political mainstream when Margaret Thatcher came to power and in 1994 “new” Labour adopted them as the basis of its own approach which explains why she once described “new” Labour as her “greatest achievement”.

Trade union rights are now more restricted than they were in 1906, wages have been held down and people have been advised to borrow and spend as an alternative – which explains why the stock market has fallen and locked more and more people into debt, which is a subtle form of slavery itself.

This is why so many people are frightened and frightened people can sometimes be persuaded to seek an answer by identifying an enemy who can be made a scapegoat for failure – as Hitler did when he blamed the Jews, the Communists and the trade unions for the mass unemployment in Germany and set up a fascist dictatorship which led to the Holocaust and war.

Hitler dealt with the unemployed by giving them jobs in the arms factories and the armed forces which led to the Second World War and the massive human cost it caused.

Whatever the left does it must never respond by splintering into a mass of tiny ideological sects forever fighting each other – for that way leads to failure, frustration and defeat.

This is the time for co-operation across the left to tackle the problems that face us on a non-sectarian basis as we have seen in the Stop the War Coalition, the campaigns for trade union rights, civil liberties, pensions, nuclear disarmament, council house building and a fair tax system – all of which require full trade union backing if they are to succeed.

If the economic situation gets worse, as it very well may, we have also to be on the look out for the “coalition” solution which could well be presented to us as the only way that these problems can be tackled, an argument that is being put forward now in America when George Bush, John McCain and Barack Obama rallied round to back the $700 billion bail-out that Wall Street demanded.

That same argument was used by Ramsay MacDonald in 1931 when he formed a National Government which nearly destroyed the Labour Party in the general election when only 51 Labour MPs survived and, without the courage of Ernie Bevin and the TUC, it might never have recovered, as it did in 1945.

I hope that the re-appointment of Peter Mandelson to the Cabinet in the latest reshuffle does not lead to that idea being re-floated as the best way to see us through the crisis for that could be the end of democracy – allowing the European Commission to prevent the re-emergence of public ownership and control of the banks which many will now see as the best way forward.

For the first time in my life, the public are to the left of a Labour government and common sense points us in a direction quite different from the one we have been following since 1979 when Thatcher set out to destroy the trade unions, cripple local authorities and privatise our public assets which we need now more than ever.

In 1945, the nation realised that the problems of peace required the same intensity of commitment as the problems of war.

And with the disastrous experience of Iraq and Afghanistan that argument, too, is beginning to register again and people are asking why we waste so much money on those illegal, brutal and unwinnable wars and on new nuclear weapons when people are losing their jobs and facing repossession of their homes.

The case for peace and socialism is intensely practical and, put like that, will command wide public and electoral support as it did then, in 1945, and could again do now.

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The torture time bomb

October 18, 2008

The Bush administration’s approval of the abuse of detainees is a toxic legacy for the next US president

As the US presidential election reaches a climax against the background of the financial crisis, another silent, dark, time bomb of an issue hangs over the two candidates: torture. For now, there seems to be a shared desire not to delve too deeply into the circumstances in which the Bush administration allowed the US military and the CIA to embrace abusive techniques of interrogation – including waterboarding, in the case of the CIA – which violate the Geneva conventions and the 1984 UN torture convention.

The torture issue’s cancerous consequences go deep, and will cause headaches for the next president. New evidence has emerged in Congressional inquiries that throw more light on the extent to which early knowledge and approval of the abuse went to the highest levels. What does a country do when compelling evidence shows its leaders have authorised international crimes?

For three years I have followed a trail which leads unambiguously to the conclusion that the real bad eggs were not Lyndie England or others on the ground in Abu Ghraib, but the most senior officials in the White House, the Pentagon and the department of justice. Over recent months, Congress has been looking into the role of senior officials involved in the development of interrogation rules. These have attracted relatively scant attention; little by little, however, senators and congressmen have uncovered the outlines of a potentially far-reaching criminal conspiracy.

The first hearings were convened before the judiciary committee of the House of Representatives, at the instance of its chairman, Congressman John Conyers, apparently off the back of my book Torture Team. Parallel hearings have been held before the Senate armed services committee.

The evidence that has emerged is potentially devastating. It confirms, for instance, that the search for new interrogation techniques for use at Guantánamo began not with the local military but in the offices of Donald Rumsfeld and his chief lawyer, Jim Haynes. It shows that when the career military expressed objections on legal grounds, Haynes intervened to stop the normal process of review. And it shows a previously unknown interplay between the department of defence and the CIA: a visit to Guantánamo in September 2002 by the administration’s most senior lawyers was followed days later by a senior CIA lawyer, to brief on the new techniques. “If someone dies while aggressive techniques are being used,” he explained, “the backlash of attention would be severely detrimental.”

Last month the Senate armed services committee received new material from Condoleezza Rice, the first cabinet-level official to confirm high-level involvement in discussions on interrogation techniques. “I participated in a number of meetings in 2002 and 2003 … at which issues relating to detainees in US custody, including interrogation issues, were discussed,” she said. Those present at such meetings included Rumsfeld, attorney general John Ashcroft, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz and CIA director George Tenet. The meetings, which concerned the CIA programme, “occurred inside the White House”. Rice confirmed she was aware of the existence of, but did not read, the justice department legal advice of August 1 2002 that abandoned the international definition of torture and replaced it with a definition drawn from a US Medicare statute.

Buried away in this testimony lies the most dangerous material of all: evidence which may establish that abuses on detainees in Iraq in September 2003, in the period perhaps including the events at Abu Ghraib, were the result of decisions taken at the highest levels of the administration. The administration has long proclaimed it did not allow aggressive interrogations in Iraq, since the Geneva conventions applied. Last month we learned this was false: not everyone had protection under Geneva. If you were considered to be a terrorist, you had no protection at all. A senior US intelligence officer visited Iraq in September 2003. He witnessed abusive interrogation techniques that violated Geneva and complained. The response? He was told the techniques “were pre-approved by DoD GC or higher”. DoD GC is the general counsel at the department of defence, Jim Haynes. Who could be higher? His boss: Rumsfeld.

I have testified before Congress on these issues, and have been asked if there should be criminal investigations and prosecutions. At the very least, the next US president must ensure the full facts are established. It will then be for others to decide what follows. But if the US doesn’t get its own house in order and restore its reputation for the rule of law, others will surely step in.

• Philippe Sands QC is professor of law at UCL, a barrister at Matrix Chambers and author of Torture Team p.sands@ucl.ac.uk

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War Hero or War Criminal?

October 17, 2008


McCain and Rolling Thunder

By Robert Richter | Information Clearing House, Oct 16, 2008

As character assassination attacks on Sen. Barack Obama have now taken over Sen. John McCain’s campaign, and because McCain cites his military experience as of prime importance, now is the time to focus closer attention on a facet of the Arizona Senator’s own character. This is related to his 23 combat missions for Operation Rolling Thunder – the Pentagon’s name for U.S. bombing of North Vietnam.

I will never forget how stunned I was when Gen. Telford Taylor, a chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials after World War Two, told me that he strongly supported the idea of trying the U.S. pilots captured in North Vietnam as war criminals – and that he would be proud to lead in their prosecution.

An ardent opponent of the Vietnam conflict, Taylor spoke with me in the fall of 1966 when I was looking into producing a documentary on this controversy for CBS News, where I was their National Political Editor. While he did not mention any pilot’s name, then U.S. Navy Lieut. Commander John McCain who was captured a year later, would have been among the group Taylor wanted to prosecute.

Why would anyone have wanted to prosecute McCain and the other captured pilots? Taylor’s argument was that their actions were in violation of the Geneva conventions that specifically forbid indiscriminate bombing that could cause incidental loss of civilian life or damage to civilian objects. Adding to the Geneva code, he noted, was the decision at the Nuremberg trials after World War Two: military personnel cannot defend themselves against such a charge with a claim that they were simply following orders.

There were questions raised about whether the Geneva conventions applied to the pilots, since there had been no formal declaration of war by the U.S. against the Hanoi regime – and the Geneva rules presumably are only in force in a “declared” war.

Anti-war critics at the time claimed that despite the Pentagon’s assertion that only military targets were bombed, U.S. pilots also had bombed hospitals and other civilian targets, a charge that turned out to be correct and was confirmed by the New York Times’ chief foreign correspondent, Harrison Salisbury.

In late 1966 Salisbury described the widespread devastation of civilian neighborhoods around Hanoi by American bombs: “Bomb damage…extends over an area of probably a mile or so on both sides of the highway…small villages and hamlets along the route [were] almost obliterated.” U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara conceded some years later that more than a million deaths and injuries occurred in northern Vietnam each year from 1965 to 1968, as a result of the 800 tons of bombs a day dropped by our pilots.

In one of his autobiographies McCain wrote that he was going to bomb a power station in “a heavily populated part of Hanoi” when he was shot down.

If Gen. Taylor tried McCain, would he have defended himself as “just following orders” despite the Geneva conventions barring that kind of bombing and the Nuremberg principles negating “just following orders?“

The targets McCain and his fellow pilots actually bombed in Vietnam and his justification then or now for the actions that led to his capture, are no longer simply old news. They are part of what must be taken into account today, as voters weigh support for him or Obama to be the next President of the United States.

This is not about the hugely unpopular war in Vietnam. It is about the character of a man who seeks to be U.S. President, who perhaps was not simply a brave warrior, but a warrior who by his own admission, bombed and was ready to bomb targets in violation of the Geneva conventions and Nuremberg principles.
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When I passed along Gen. Taylor’s comments to my network superiors the program was scrapped: too hot to handle. Instead Air War Over the North was telecast, about “precision bombing” North Vietnam military targets by U.S. pilots. A few years after that broadcast, a Pentagon public information executive gleefully told Roger Mudd in The Selling of the Pentagon that he, the Pentagon official, not only had persuaded CBS to produce Air War Over the North, he even chose those to be interviewed and coached them about what they should say. This unethical collaboration and intercession by the Pentagon in the news media is sadly all too familiar a tactic repeated in the Bush-Cheney years.

Robert Richter was political director for CBS News from 1965 to 1968.

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Antiwar vets attacked by police outside debate

October 17, 2008

Lucy Herschel and Hannah Wolfe report on how police met antiwar dissent with batons and horses at the last presidential debate in New York.

Socialist Worker, October 17, 2008

Nassau County police injured several people in their assault on antiwar protests outside the presidential debate

Nassau County police injured several people in their assault on antiwar protests outside the presidential debate

WHILE BARACK Obama and John McCain were getting makeup touchups for their Wednesday night debate at Hofstra University, in Hempstead, N.Y., police outside made sure that the voices of antiwar veterans wouldn’t be heard.

Officers of the Nassau County Police Department reacted with reckless violence to a protest organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) outside the debate site. Among several people injured in the assault, former Army Sgt. Nick Morgan was knocked unconscious and his cheekbone broken when he was trampled by a police horse.

“We were there to force the issue that the leaders of this nation are not listening to or are not caring about veterans,” said IVAW member Matthis Chiroux, who was among several veterans and activists arrested. “And they couldn’t have done a better job of proving us right. They stomped my friend Nick’s face into Jell-o. I put this on both candidates, on the major press and on the Nassau County police.”

The IVAW had sent a request to the debate moderator that they be allowed to ask their own questions of the candidates at the Hofstra event, but this was ignored–and so the third and final presidential debate passed without an antiwar voice being represented.

That night, IVAW organized a nonviolent demonstration to request entry into the debate. Marching in uniform and in formation, IVAW members led several hundred activists to an intersection in front of the Hofstra campus gates–where they were confronted by an army of mounted police and riot cops.

Ten IVAW members were arrested, apparently for no more than insisting on their right to be heard. Mounted police then pushed the crowd back onto the sidewalk, recklessly pulling their horses around and at times backing them into the crowd. The police continued to drive protesters back, pinning the crowd up against a fence.

Riot cops reached past the IVAW members at the front of the crowd, grabbing protesters behind them and dragging them into the street. A mounted cop leapt with his horse onto the sidewalk and trampled protesters, including Morgan.

Chiroux said the police took Morgan aside and bandaged him, but then placed him in a truck with other arrestees to go to processing and detention.

“He was incoherent, he couldn’t even say his name,” Chiroux said. “He had blood running down his face. We kept telling the police he needed immediate medical attention. One officer said, with a smirk, ‘Get him to say it. He has to say it.’ I said, ‘He can’t even talk!’ The officer said, ‘Tough luck.’ Finally, we said, ‘Nick, you have to say I need to go to the hospital.’ We got him to say it, and they took him in.”

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

CHIROUX SAID that while they were detained, he and his fellow IVAW members were verbally harassed by police. “They called us traitors, cowards, idiots,” he said.

Three women IVAW members who had been arrested were handcuffed to a bench, and “the male officers kept coming closer to them, verbally sexually harassing them,” Chiroux said. “One kept holding up Marlisa’s ID to her face and saying, ‘Wow, you look like you came out of a Barbie magazine.'”

Morgan was brought back from the hospital, still incoherent and in great pain. He was left chained to a bench for five hours without further medical attention, Chiroux said. IVAW members repeatedly asked officers for their names (they weren’t wearing badges) or to contact lawyers–they were refused on all counts.

When most of the IVAW members were finally released at 2:30 a.m. (according to reports, one vet remained in custody as this report was written), they went, still in uniform, to a nearby diner–where the same group of cops who had detained them were eating.

Chiroux went up to them and asked again for their names. One officer “got up in my face,” he said, “screaming and waving his finger at me and saying, ‘I’m gonna kick your ass if you keep asking that.'”

The IVAW members say they wanted to ask Barak Obama if he would support soldiers who refuse to serve in Iraq, since in the past, he had called the Iraq war illegal. They also wanted to question John McCain about his votes to cut veterans benefits.

“Neither of the candidates have shown real support for soldiers and veterans,” said Jason Lemieux, a former sergeant in the Marine Corps and a member of IVAW who served three tours in Iraq.

“We came here to try and get serious questions answered–questions that we, as veterans of the Iraq war, have a right to ask–but instead we were arrested. We believe that the time has come to end this war and bring our troops home, and we will be pushing for that no matter what happens in this election.”

IVAW members thanked activists for coming to support the march and for enduring the police violence.

“For many of our members, this was their first protest,” said Hannah Fleury of the Campus Antiwar Network, which mobilized chapters from as far away as Boston for this protest. “Now that we see what we’re up against, we’re going to fight even harder on our campuses to end the war, and to support the veterans.”

The New York Civil Liberties Union is asking for an immediate investigation into the use of horses at the demonstration. “It is shocking that someone who served his country would be treated so disgracefully by the Nassau County Police Department,” Tara Keenan-Thomson, director of the group’s Nassau County chapter, said in a press release.

As Chiroux said, “Both candidates claim they support veterans. And this is how we got supported last night: by being pushed back, trampled and arrested.

“We demonstrated to the country and the world that democracy is not dead in the United States–that the people in the U.S. still ultimately hold the power. They can try to force our voices to be silent, to block us out of the media, but we won’t let these people shut us down.”

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Activists Celebrate Iran’s Ban on Juvenile Executions

October 17, 2008

By Zainab Mineeia and Jim Lobe | Inter-Press Service

WASHINGTON, Oct 16 – International human rights groups have welcomed the reports out of Tehran Thursday that Iranian courts may no longer order the death penalty against juvenile offenders.

Of the five countries that still permit the execution of juveniles, Iran has been responsible for the most executions in recent years.

“I’m delighted,” Jo Becker, director of the Children’s Rights Project of New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) told IPS. “If this directive is implemented, it will be a huge step forward and will move the world very close to a real ban on the execution of juvenile offenders.”

“[We] welcome the announcement and hope that it will pave the way to a complete abolition of the death penalty in Iran,” said a statement issued late Thursday by Amnesty International in London.

The group also called on Iran’s parliament, the Majlis, to ensure that the ban, which was reportedly issued by the office of Iran’s prosecutor general, is made into law and that the Islamic Republic’s Council of Guardians endorses it.

Both Amnesty and HRW, as well as a number of other international and Iranian rights groups, have made the abolition of the execution of juvenile offenders a major priority in their international lobbying efforts.

Earlier this week, they published a statement signed by more than 300 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from 82 countries around the world calling on the U.N. General Assembly to put pressure on the five hold-out countries, which include Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Pakistan, and Yemen, as well as Iran, to ban the practice.

Together, the five countries had executed 32 individuals who were juveniles at the time they allegedly committed the capital offence of which they were accused between January 2005 and last month. Of the total, however, Iran executed by far the most — 26.

“We, as local , national, regional and international non-governmental organisations from every part of the world, call on each U.N. member state to fully implement the absolute ban on the juvenile death penalty, as required by customary law, the Convention on the Rights of the child, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and as highlighted by the (U.N.) Secretary-General’s recent study on violence against children,” said the petition, which was organised by the Children’s Rights International Network (CRIN).

Until 2005, when its Supreme Court declared the execution of juvenile offenders unconstitutional, the United States also executed juvenile offenders. From 1976 until the Court’s ruling, 22 individuals who were younger than 18 at the time they committed their crimes were executed in U.S. states, 13 of them in Texas.

According to an interview with the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) Wednesday, the judicial deputy of the Prosecutor General said courts have been ordered to commute death sentences of juvenile offenders to prison terms.

“According to this directive, punishments for offenders under the age of 18 [in capital offence cases], will be reduced to life in prison in the first stage and in the second stage [of parole] will be reduced to 15 years,” the deputy, Hussein Zebhi, stated, according to a translation provided by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

“In addition, in cases of good behaviour and signs of rehabilitation, juvenile offenders may qualify for conditional release under Islamic compassions guidelines,” he told IRNA, the state news agency.

The Campaign’s coordinator, Hadi Ghaemi, explained that Iranian officials had previously made a distinction between execution for capital offences and executions for under the law of “qisas” (“an eye for an eye”), claiming qisas sentences cannot be reduced by judges.

But while Zebhi did not explicitly address that issue, he told IRNA that “offenders under the age of 18, no matter what their offence is, will not be subject to executions but will receive other punishments according to the law.” Ghaemi called on the Iranian Judiciary to publicly release the entire text of the directive and clearly state that there will be no exceptions for cases of qisas.

“This decision is long overdue given that Iran leads the world in executing juvenile offenders, and it is a significant step towards honouring international law,” Ghaemi said, noting that Iran has ratified the relevant treaties, including the Convention on the Rights of the child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which bans the death penalty for offenders under the age of 18.

“We are extremely for the families of nearly 130 juveniles on death row and hope that this directive will put an immediate end to any more executions of juvenile offenders,” he said.

Like Amnesty, however, Ghaemi stressed that the directive still fell short of a legally binding commitment and called for it to be approved into law by the parliament. “The next and urgently needed step is for the parliament to act on this issue and abolish the death penalty for children through legislation,” he said.

One of those apparently spared by the new directive may be Mohammed Feda’i, who allegedly killed another boy in a fight when he was 17. Earlier this summer, he was given a stay of execution to allow his family more time to reach an agreement over financial compensation with the victim’s family, according to Amnesty, which noted that Iran’s Supreme Court had upheld the sentence despite evidence that he had received inadequate representation at his trial.

The directive comes too late for Seeyed Reza Hejazi who was executed Aug. 19 for his role in a murder committed in 2003, when he was 15. Hejazi, who admitted that he stabbed an assailant while trying to break up a fight involving several others, insisted repeatedly that he did not intend to kill him.

Iran executed eight juvenile offenders last year and another six so far in 2008. According to a HRW report released last month, judges in Iran have had the power to impose the death penalty in capital cases if the defendant has attained “majority”, which is defined in Iranian law “as nine years for girls and 15 years for boys”.

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The trail of torture

October 17, 2008

That the White House authorised ‘waterboarding’ is disturbing. But that no one in mainstream US politics seems to care is worse


The revelation, in yesterday’s Washington Post, that the Bush administration “issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency’s use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaida suspects” will increase calls for the administration to be held to account for its actions.

It is unlikely, though, that this revelation will lead to significant activity, beyond adding more voices to grassroots impeachment campaigns in the United States – although it may lead to a strengthening of plans in various European countries to indict senior officials for war crimes. As law professor Scott Horton explained in June, the best that opponents of the regime can hope for is that the “Bush administration officials who pushed torture will need to be careful about their travel plans.”

The problem for all parties concerned is that the administration itself still refuses to concede that it has engaged in torture, and is being allowed to get away with it in the two places where opposition could really count: the Senate and the House of Representatives. Rather than pursuing senior officials, house Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi declared that impeachment was “off the table” after the Democrats gained a majority in the House of Representatives two years ago. A month earlier, politicians had endorsed the executive’s attempts to shield itself and its employees from any liability for their actions by passing the Military Commissions Act, parts of which were clearly intended to exempt US officials from being prosecuted for war crimes.

Freed from direct challenges, the administration has, instead, attempted to stifle all mention of torture in its dealings with prisoners seized in the “war on terror”.

A case in point is the British resident Binyam Mohamed. According to his lawyers at the legal action charity Reprieve, Mr Mohamed, who was seized in Pakistan in April 2002, was sent to Morocco by the CIA (before the agency brought torture “in-house”), where proxy torturers extracted a number of false confessions from him. As a result, he was accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb” in a US city, and was put forward for trial by military commission at Guantánamo.

However, just last week, when a judge in Washington, DC finally had the opportunity to review his case, the US justice department chose to drop the charges relating to the “bomb plot” rather than pursue them, presumably because senior officials were aware that the entire trail of decision-making as to why Mr Mohamed was rendered to Morocco led to the highest levels of government, and to the kinds of discussions between the CIA and senior officials – including Vice President Dick Cheney and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld – that were discussed in yesterday’s article in the Washington Post.

Even so, Mr Mohamed may still face the same charges in a trial by military commission, because the defence department, safe from judicial scrutiny, still believes that it can pursue prosecutions in a system that is so rigged that, when one of the prosecutors, Lt Col Darrel Vandeveld, resigned two weeks ago, he expressed his profound doubts that the system was “capable of delivering justice”.

The fact that some of these cases – like that of Mr Mohamed – involve the alleged use of extraordinary rendition and torture by or on behalf of the CIA only serves to confirm that even confirmed critics and opponents of the administration’s detention and interrogation policies in the “war on terror” are a long way from holding senior officials to account. Perhaps the greatest shame, however, is that out on the campaign trail, where these issues ought to count for something, they are not being mentioned at all.

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Fidel Castro: The unheard of

October 16, 2008

Reflections of Fidel | Granma, Oct 16, 2008

ON Sunday, October 12, the Eurozone countries agreed an anti-crisis plan at the initiative of French President Sarkozy.

On Monday 13th came the announcement of multimillion funds that the European countries are to inject into the financial market to avoid a collapse. Shares rose with the surprising news.

In virtue of the aforementioned agreement, Germany had committed – in the rescue survey – 480 billion euros; France, 360 billion; Holland, 200 billion; Austria and Spain, 100 billion each; and so on until the total reached, with the British contribution of 1.7 trillion euros which, that day – given that the exchange rate between one and another currency is constantly varying – was equivalent to U.S.$2.2 billion, on top of the $700 billion of the United States.

The shares of the major corporations that had not gone bankrupt saw a sudden rise in their value which, while far from compensating the losses suffered in nine tragic days, allowed the politicians and bankers of the developed capitalist system to enjoy a breathing space.

In the evening of that same day, Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister of Italy, at a banquet given in his honor at the White House, made a speech rendering tribute to Bush; “We trust in the president who had the courage to put into practice what he considered right, what he must do for himself, his people and the world.”

He really went over the top there!

Also on the 13th, the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for 2008 was awarded to U.S. citizen Paul Krugman. An undoubted defender of the capitalist system, he is also a very strong critic of President Bush.

Under the headline Gordon’s done a good job, published on the 14th in El País, various ideas are expressed, some of which merit being quoted textually:

“The natural thing to do is to face the problem of the lack of financial capital by having the state supply the financial institutions with more capital in exchange for part ownership…

“This kind of temporary partial nationalization was also the preferred solution, in private, of Ben Bernanke, president of the Federal Reserve.

“On announcing his financial aid plan of 500 billion euros, Henry Paulson, U.S. Treasury secretary, rejected this obvious way, alleging, “that is what is done in the case of bankruptcy.”

“The UK government has gone straight to the root of the problem and has acted with astonishing speed to solve it.”

“Paulson – having supposedly misspent a number of very valuable weeks – has also backpedaled and is now attempting to buy up bank shares instead of toxic mortgage assets.

“As I have said, we still don’t know if these measures will work… That clearsightedness has had to come from London and not from Washington.

“It is hard to ignore the feeling that Paulson’s initial response was distorted by ideology. Remember, he works for a government whose philosophy can be summed up by ‘private is good; public, bad.’”

“Throughout the executive, professional experts have been dismissed; quite possibly there is nobody left in the Treasury with the stature and experience necessary to tell Paulson that what he was doing made no sense.

“Luckily for the world economy, what Gordon Brown and his ministers are doing does make sense. And perhaps they have showed us the way to get over this crisis.”

As he confesses, not even the winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences is convinced that those measures will work.

These things are unheard of.

On Tuesday 14th, shares on the Stock Exchange fell a few points. The smiles have become more stereotypic.

The European capitalist countries, their productive and mercantile capacity saturated, desperately in need of markets to avoid strikes by workers and those specialized in services, depositors who are losing their money and ruined campesinos, are in no position to impose conditions and solutions on the rest of the world. That is being proclaimed by leaders of important emerging countries and of those poor and economically plundered nations who are the victims of unequal terms of trade.

Today, Wednesday, the value of stock market shares crashed again.

McCain and Obama are to laboriously debate the economic issue tonight.

In the great democracy of the United States, half of those with the right to vote are not registered; of those registered, half do not vote and only 25% elect those who govern them. Many of those who might now wish to vote for the Black candidate, cannot do so.

According to the polls, that candidate has an overwhelming majority. However, nobody dares to say what the result will be.

November 4 is a day of great interest to world public opinion, given the economic crisis in which U.S. society is enmeshed.

In the electoral context, there is just one thing that we can be sure of: in the next UK elections, Gordon Brown will not be elected prime minister.

Fidel Castro Ruz
October 15, 2008
7:05 p.m.

– Reflections oF Fidel

Translated by Granma International

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Saudi Arabia: Free Political Prisoners

October 16, 2008

Many Criminals Granted Amnesty, but Activists Remain in Prison

Source: Human Rights Watch

New York, October 3, 2008) – The Saudi government should free unlawfully detained political activists, including Professor Matrook al-Faleh, one of Saudi Arabia’s leading advocates of reform, Human Rights Watch said today. Although Saudi prison officials said that they had amnestied 1,000 convicted criminals during Ramadan in September, dozens of political activists remain behind bars or are subject to arbitrary travel bans.

" Peaceful dissidents continue to be locked up for speaking out, while convicted criminals get amnesty. Apparently the government considers reform advocates a greater danger to their authority. "
Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch
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“Peaceful dissidents continue to be locked up for speaking out, while convicted criminals get amnesty,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Apparently the government considers reform advocates a greater danger to their authority.”

Saudi secret police arrested al-Faleh, a professor of political science at King Saud University in Riyadh, on May 19, 2008 at the university. The arrest came two days after he publicly criticized conditions in Buraida prison following a visit to two fellow human rights activists being held there.

For six days, the secret police denied holding him, and even after they acknowledged that he was in detention, officials allowed his family just one visit during the first 60 days.

Saudi officials have not charged al-Faleh with a crime, though the criminal procedure code adopted in 2002 requires the authorities to charge detained suspects and take their statement within 48 hours. Officials have not interrogated him during his five months in prison, and al-Faleh has not been allowed to see the evidence, if any exists, on which the Investigation and Public Prosecutions Bureau is holding him. He is being held in solitary confinement next to suspected militants at the secret police’s al-Ha’ir prison.

Al-Faleh, denied the right to see his lawyers, started a hunger strike. During that time, prison guards taunted him with food and also shined a bright light in his cell around the clock. He has since broken off his hunger strike. His lawyers, Ibrahim Mubaraki and Khalid al-Mutairi, still have not been allowed to visit him.

Officials said they released at least 1,000 prisoners during the holy month of Ramadan, Saudi newspapers Al-Riyadh, Okaz, and Al-Sharq al-Awsat reported between September 14 and 29. In November 2007, 1,500 suspected militants held in separate prisons run by the secret police were released after undergoing a reeducation program in prison. These detainees had never faced charge or trial.

In February 2007, Saudi secret police arrested nine dissidents in Jeddah, who remain in prison without charge or trial. In December 2007, the secret police detained for almost five months without charge or trial Fu’ad Farhan, a blogger who had written in support of the release of the Jeddah group. Mansur al-‘Awdha, a reform activist from Jawf, has been in al-Ha’ir prison without charge since December 2007.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights spells out the rights to free expression and freedom from arbitrary arrest. Closely mirroring the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), articles 14 and 32 of the Arab Charter of Human Rights, which the Saudi Shura Council (an appointed parliament) ratified in March 2008, guarantee freedom from arbitrary arrest and freedom of expression. Saudi Arabia has not signed the ICCPR.

The kingdom has no penal code, and there are only a few statutory offenses, such as drug smuggling and embezzlement. Saudi Arabia implemented a Criminal Procedure Code safeguarding due process rights in 2002; articles 34 and 116 oblige the authorities to charge detained suspects within 48 hours.

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