One state with equal rights

August 8, 2008

Socialist Worker, August 8, 2008 | Issue 677

Analysis: Snehal Shingavi

The Oslo Accords of August 1993 were supposed to lead to the creation of an independent Palestinian state, in exchange for Palestinian recognition of Israel. Fifteen years later, after a vast increase in Israeli settlements on the West Bank, the ongoing erection of an apartheid wall and the barbaric siege of Gaza, increasing numbers of Palestinians and their supporters regard a two-state solution as unworkable. Snehal Shingavi looks at the debate.

Demonstration for Palestinian rights in ChicagoDemonstration for Palestinian rights in Chicago

IN THE 1970s, the dominant Fatah group within the Palestine Liberation Organization dropped its demand for a unified state governing all of Palestine with equal rights for all citizens and began the process of promoting a “two-state solution.”

In the aftermath, a consensus grew among the Palestinian left that a Palestinian mini-state was the only viable solution for Palestinians. According to this argument, the best Palestinians could achieve was a state established on the territories occupied by Israel after the 1967 Six Day War–land that amounted to less than 30 percent of historic Palestine.

The conclusion that a two-state solution was the only viable alternative reflected several political realities. The first was the belief that Israel had become a dominant power in the region, with the backing of the United States and Europe. Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six Day War–and the unwillingness and inability of any other states to deliver a decisive military blow against it–confirmed this conclusion.

The second factor was a shift in the thinking of the mainstream Palestinian liberation movement, toward trilateral negotiations (between the PLO, Israel and the U.S.) and away from armed struggle and a broader engagement of regional issues related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

While armed struggle, in itself, held no hope of winning Palestinian statehood, the trilateral negotiations among unequal powers meant that the PLO had little with which to bargain and much to lose. Once the PLO accepted peace talks and the nebulous “two-state” framework that came with them, a series of political debacles took place under the auspices of the Oslo Accords. Yet the “peace process” reinforced the idea that Palestinian statehood would happen only at Israel’s behest.

The other factor in the debate was a decline in the Palestinian secular left, the long-time proponent of the idea of a single, democratic, secular state in Palestine.

The political weaknesses of the Palestinian left–its traditions of Stalinism and its unwillingness to oppose the Arab ruling classes of other countries in the region–left it unable to meet the challenges it faced. Thus, when the armed struggle posed the possibility of regional revolutions in the 1970s and Arab governments, particularly in Jordan and Lebanon, cracked down savagely on the Palestinian resistance, the left was paralyzed.

With the demise of the secular left, the possibility of a one-state solution seemed to die as well. As a further consequence, Palestinians lost a single banner for a unified movement that represented their concerns as an oppressed nation. Since the 1948 creation of Israel on much of the land of historic Palestine, Palestinians have always been divided between those who live within Israel’s borders, those in the Occupied Territories and those in the diaspora. Abandoning a one-state solution meant accepting those divisions as permanent.

The result was that the Palestinian nationalist struggle gave rise to rival movements and rival local leaders. Israel has been able to play on those divisions and the relative weakness of the Palestinian resistance to tighten the screws on the Palestinian population to unbearable levels.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

BUT ISRAELI policies over the past 15 years, under the auspices of the Oslo Accords, have convinced increasing numbers of Palestinians that the idea of a mini-state, or a two-state solution, isn’t viable.

Rather, it leaves unresolved all the decisive issues that resulted from the creation of the state of Israel in the first place–not the least of which are the rights of the large refugee population.

Continued . . .

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INDIGENOUS PEOPLE: U.S. and Canada Found Guilty of Racism

August 8, 2008

By Haider Rizvi | Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 7 – The international community now fully recognises the native peoples’ right to protect their lands and live distinct lifestyles. Yet, most of the world’s 370 million indigenous peoples continue to face abuse and injustices at the hands of state authorities and commercial concerns.

“We must look at the substantial successes we have been able to achieve, but also reflect on how far we have to go,” Ben Powless of the Indigenous Environment Network told IPS on the eve of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples.

Though pleased with the U.N. General Assembly’s decision last year to approve the Declaration on the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples, Powless and other activists say they have no reason to believe that those who have occupied their native lands are willing to change their behaviour.

“Governments in the past have been complicit in genocides, land seizures, massive environmental degradation, and many other human rights abuses because [indigenous peoples] were denied their fundamental rights and freedoms,” said Powless, a Mohawk whose nation’s territory is now divided between modern-day Canada and the United States.

Last year when the 193-member U.N. General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples, both the U.S. and Canada were among a handful of countries that voted against it.

“This shows how far we still have to go to make sure that states acknowledge and protect indigenous peoples’ rights, for if they continue not to, we have many examples of the grave results,” said Powless.

Recently, both the U.S. and Canada were found guilty by a Geneva-based U.N. rights watchdog, which keeps track of violations of the 1968 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) told Canada to take “appropriate legislative or administrative measures to prevent the acts of transnational corporations on indigenous territories.”

CERD took the Canadian government to task in response to a petition filed by indigenous organisations that charged private businesses from Canada were unlawfully involved in the exploitation of their lands located in the U.S.

The petition particularly focused on the situation facing the Western Shoshone — a Native American tribe whom some non-natives refer to as “Snake Indians,” although in their own language they are called Newe people.

Continued . . .

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Human Rights in the Age of Counter-Terrorism

August 8, 2008
Published on Thursday, August 7, 2008 by Inter Press Service

by Shiraz Deen

UNITED NATIONS – Member states of the U.N. have frequently disregarded international human rights laws and principles in the name of counter-terrorism, an expert panel here found. 0807 07

The panel entitled “Fortress or Sand-Castle? Human Rights in the Age of Counter-Terrorism“, was the seventh instalment of the New Human Rights Dialogue Series, a 12 part monthly series in commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ‘read today very much like a catalogue of abuses, and quite often abuses carried out in the name of something called counter-terrorism,’ said Craig Mokhiber, of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, who moderated the panel.

Some areas of concern with regards to counter-terrorism stressed by the panellists are the expansion of police powers, use of secret courts and evidence, use of preventative detention, and the application of the death penalty for non-lethal crimes.

‘Counter-terrorism laws passed worldwide have represented a broad expansion of government power to investigate detain, prosecute, and imprison individuals with minimal judicial oversight, public transparency, and due process,’ said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counter-terrorism programme director at Human Rights Watch.

These laws restrict the rights of terrorists, political dissidents, social activists, and common criminals, according to Mariner.

The legislation is partly the result of the lack of an international definition for terrorism, without which countries are allowed to create their own broad definitions of what constitutes a terrorist organisation or act. Human rights violations resulting from laws based on these broad definitions are exacerbated by international pressure from the Security Council for member states to show that they are combating terrorism domestically.

The U.S. among other nations has attempted to justify the derogation of certain international human rights laws by claiming that the ‘war on terror’ is a new kind of armed conflict that lies outside of international human rights law and warrants the creation of a new structure of humanitarian law.

Margaret Satterthwaite, co-director of the international human rights clinic at the centre of human rights and global justice at New York University School of Law, noted that, ‘this argument has been rejected by a number of key high courts of various member states of the U.N. and even if one were to accept such an argument, one would still be under the rule of international humanitarian principles of customary international law when forging those new rules.’

The panellists explained that the Security Council has been slow to incorporate human rights into its global counter-terrorism strategy.

Joanna Weschler, director of research of the Security Council Report — a non-profit organisation affiliated with Columbia University — described the Council’s progress on integrating human rights into the counter-terrorism strategy as a, ‘process of slow and partial overcoming of a very deep reluctance.’

Weschler recalled that, ‘Council members were initially quite adamant that the Council would not make safeguarding human rights part of its anti-terror agenda and I remember very vividly in that period when a P5 ambassador said to me, ‘Joanna don’t expect to see the two words human and rights together in any council documents on terrorism any time soon’, and I must say they kept their word for a while.’

Weschler referenced Security Council resolution 1390, which expanded the Council’s sanctions on Afghanistan to be applicable worldwide. One result of this resolution was the creation of a list of individuals and entities that could be subjected to asset freezes, travel bans, and other sanctions — but there were no clear rules governing how parties were placed or removed from the list, and once listed, parties could not find out the reason for their listing or challenge it. Numerous cases of mistaken identity, post-mortem listing of individuals, and other human rights violations stemmed from the creation of the list, Weschler said.

The original sanctions were imposed on the Taliban in part because of their violation of human rights and were supported by human rights groups because they targeted governing bodies as opposed to citizens. To date the Security Council members have raised strong opposition to the creation of an independent review panel for the list.

Although there are many areas in which human rights continue to be neglected, the Security Council and other U.N. bodies have recently begun to take significant steps towards integrating human rights into counter-terrorist activities. The 2006 U.N. Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy lists human rights as one of its 4 pillars and states that, ‘the promotion and protection of human rights for all and the rule of law is essential to all components of the Strategy, recognising that effective counter-terrorism measures and the protection of human rights are not conflicting goals, but complementary and mutually reinforcing.’

The final document of the International Process on Global Counter-Terrorism Cooperation has recently been released and lists numerous recommendations for the General Assembly to consider in advance of the first formal review of the of the U.N. Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy in September. Among the recommendations the document lists are numerous enhancements of U.N. efforts to promote human rights within the context of counter-terrorism including further inclusion of human rights experts within the counter- terrorist bodies of the U.N. and greater support for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Emi MacLean of the Centre for Constitutional Rights concluded, ‘There seem to be varying options as we move forward. We could see international rights and humanitarian obligations as inapplicable to the current paradigm and forcing a paradigm shift… or we can reaffirm that [human rights] laws continue to have resonance and import and indeed continue to carry obligations even, or perhaps, especially within this context when we are tempted to derogate from them.’

© 2008 Inter Press Service

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Musharraf to fight impeachment

August 8, 2008
Al Jazeera, Aug 8. 2008

There are fears that further violence could result from the current impasse [AFP]

Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, will defend himself against impeachment, his aides have said.

The announcement came a day after the ruling coalition vowed to launch proceeding to oust him.

Musharraf is set to meet his legal and political advisers on Friday to discuss his options.

“He is considering the options that are available. He will respond to the government’s allegations and defend himself,” a presidential aide told the AFP news agency on condition of anonymity.

Speculation is rife that he may dissolve parliament or declare another state of emergency, moves set to further deepen the current political turmoil in the strife-torn country.

Meanwhile, Yousuf Raza Gilani, the Pakistan prime minister, is heading to China to attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

Musharraf was scheduled to attend the event, but cancelled due to his possible removal from office.

‘Few options’

Tariq Pirzada, a political and strategic affairs anaylst in Islamabad, told Al Jazeera that Musharraf has very few options.

“What we have is a situation where he is isloated, he has no political backing, even the US is not backing him, and labelled the situation as an ‘internal matter’,” he said.

“He is in dire straits, and its either he steps down or faces impeachment.”

The coalition still needs the support of other MPs to oust Musharraf [AFP]

Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of slain former premier Benazir Bhutto, and Nawaz Sharif, also a former prime minister, announced on Thursday that they would seek Musharraf’s impeachment for allegedly mismanaging the country.

Officials said parliament could begin the impeachment process by filing a charge sheet against Musharraf as early as Monday – which is also Musharraf’s 65th birthday.

The aide who spoke for him said Musharraf would “not wait for the numbers game” – meaning that he would not indulge in political horsetrading to stop the coalition getting the votes it needs.

Under Pakistan’s constitution, impeachment requires a two-thirds majority in the upper and lower houses of parliament.

It would be the first time in Pakistan’s 61-year history that a president has been impeached.

The coalition is currently several seats short of the 295 votes it requires out of the 439 in the senate and national assembly to remove Musharraf.

Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), together with smaller coalition partners, have 266 seats and need a further 29 MPs, mainly from the troubled tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

Military support

But the key factor in Musharraf’s decision is likely to be the support he gets from the country’s 500,000-strong army, the leadership of which he gave up last November.

General Ashfaq Kayani, the army chief and Musharraf’s successor, has shown no signs of disloyalty and the military has historically acted to defend the honour of its current and former chiefs.

But Kayani has also appeared keen to keep the army out of politics after six decades in which the military has been in power for more than half the time, damaging its image domestically.

Imposing a state of emergency would require Musharraf to have military support, while dissolving parliament could also cause unrest in a country already suffering from widespread economic problems.

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President Obama Up Against the Middle East “Berlin Wall”

August 7, 2008

Robert Weitzel, August 6, 2008

“People of the world — look at Berlin, where a wall came down . . . and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one” -Barak Obama–

On July 24, Barak Obama stood where a 96-mile-long wall of barbed wire and concrete once separated the ideologies and lives of East and West Berlin. He told a crowd of 200,000 that “history reminds us that walls can be torn down” and that the “greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us one from another.”

He reminded the crowd that sixty years ago this summer, the Soviet Union “cut off food and supplies to more than two million Germans in an effort to extinguish the last flame of freedom in Berlin. That [was] when . . . the largest and most unlikely rescue in history brought food and hope to the people of this city.”

American pilots nicknamed the rescue “Operation Vittles.” History knows it as the Berlin Airlift.

For the fifteen months of Operation Vittles, American C-47 and British Avro York cargo planes flew over the wall separating East and West Berlin 278,228 times, flying 92 million miles and delivering over 2,325,000 tons of food and vital supplies.

The Allies literally “flew to the sun” to save two million people.

The day before his Berlin speech, Obama stood at the 187-foot-long Western Wall that flanks the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. This wall is the closest anyone can get to the “Even ha-shetiya” (Foundation Stone), the holiest spot in Judaism and the biblical justification for the Zionist colonization of Palestine.

His presence at the wall so soon after his genuflection at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in Washington D.C. in June assured the Israelis that their “security” would remain the number one priority of U.S. Middle East Policy.

As a C-47 flies, Obama was standing less than two miles from the 400-mile-long wall of concrete and fear and hate that divides a land and imprisons hope and makes a mockery of the democratic pretensions of Israel. On the Israeli side it is a landscaped separation barrier. On the Palestinian side it is a bleak apartheid wall. Neither barrier nor wall was mentioned by Obama . . .either day.

The walls surrounding the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have turned these areas into open-air prisons. At the whim of the Israeli government or commanding officer or private soldier, entry/exit points are closed for hours, days, weeks or months.

Palestinians seeking life-saving medical attention are denied passage to hospitals on the landscaped side. Children are born just to die in the scorched dust while their mothers wait for permission to pass—mothers die as well. Workers are denied access to jobs, farmers to fields and students to school. A season’s worth of harvest rots in trucks broiling in the hot sun. Food, medical supplies, replacement parts for a deteriorating infrastructure and the stuff of daily commerce are permitted through in a trickle much too small to sustain the nearly four million people held beyond the reach of humanity’s conscience.

Fully eighty percent of people in Gaza live on less than two dollars a day and depend on food aid for their day-to-day survival. Many parents can provide only one meal a day for themselves and their children.

Dov Weisglas, a senior Israeli government advisor, was candid, if not boastful, regarding Israel’s unconscionable policy of cutting off food and supplies to the walled areas, “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.” Anyone with an unblinkered view of the Zionist vision will understand Weisglas to mean, “The idea is to make their lives so intolerable that they lose hope and “choose” to go somewhere . . . anywhere . . . else.”

If ever there was a need for an airlift to breech a wall and succor a desperate people it is now. It is Palestine. Should Barak Obama become the next president of the world’s only superpower he will have an opportunity and the wherewithal to put his well-articulated Berlin vision into action. He will have an opportunity to walk his talk.

Forming a humanitarian “coalition of the willing,” President Obama can order American C-130 Hercules cargo planes, with a payload of 18 tons, to transport supplies the 360 miles from Incirlik Air Force Base in Turkey to Israel. Sustaining the West Bank and Gaza Strip for fifteen months will require ferrying five million tons of food and supplies 93 million miles in 258,333 flights.

‘Amaliet Ta’am (Operation Vittles), like the Berlin Airlift, will required a “trip to the sun.” But the “trip” will send a message to Israel that the world is standing as one to demand that they tear down the walls and create a legitimate secular democracy that guarantees the civil and human rights of all its inhabitants regardless of religion or ideology.

Barak Obama is not a disinterested or ill informed or uncaring man. He knows the reality of the Palestinians’ brutally suffocating existence. But he, like all national politicians in America, has had his knees weakened by the realpolitik of Israel’s shadow government on K Street.

Hopefully, if Obama is the man he claims to be, he will change the realpolitik in America and will one day walk with strengthened knees across the sands of a true democracy in Palestine-Israel or Israel-Palestine . . . or whatever they elect to call it.

_______

Robert Weitzel is a contributing editor to Media With a Conscience. His essays regularly appear in The Capital Times in Madison, WI. He can be contacted at: robertweitzel@mac.com

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Zionism versus democracy

August 7, 2008

By Frank Scott
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Online Journal, Aug 7, 2008

“The Zionist power configuration’s primary loyalty is to the state of Israel and its policy is designed to colonize the US congress on behalf and to the benefit of the ‘mother country,’ Israel” –James Petras

James Petras speaks to a reality rarely discussed in circles accustomed to whispered criticism, at best, of the U.S. performance in support of Israel. He mentions Congress, but the executive branch has been equally “colonized.” The scripted performances by major party presidential candidates, whether bowing before the Israel — American lobby in Washington or praying before the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, are evidence enough. The dominance exercised by what he calls the Zionist Power Configuration is a very critical problem for a public that remains generally oblivious to its existence, let alone the control it has over our political system.

With a crippled economy and over extended armed forces, America’s global position has old establishment groups trying to retake control before mindless dedication to the Jewish state brings about total ruin. A revival of the old WASP (white Anglo Saxon Protestant) power cabal finds it in a struggle with the newer Jewish power bloc. This clash of establishment gangs will hardly bring social justice and peace to America, but it could give the public a chance to come to its senses. Support for a racist state that brutalizes its native population in a way that shocks veterans of apartheid South Africa can only continue with a public kept in the dark.

Under the dominance of propaganda that tells us innocent Israeli Jews are being persecuted by evil Palestinian Arabs, the U.S. continues to prop up the Jewish state with money, and wage nation destroying wars on its behalf. Constantly retelling the story of past dreadful persecution makes it seem that because German Nazis brutalized European Jews, Israeli Ashkenazis are morally justified to brutalize Palestinian Arabs. Settlers in a land which they believe, with no evidence save religious faith, is where they originated, are seen as natives, while the people who’ve lived there for centuries are expelled, treated as terrorists, and despite their Semitic origins, called anti-Semites by those whose only connection to Semitism is their belief system.

This situation would be the ultimate black comedy, if it were not so dangerous to all humanity. Israel is run by some seriously disturbed people who are not waving an ax, but are armed with nuclear weapons. These, of course are respectfully never mentioned by what is called the international community, which means America, Israel and a handful of their lackey states.

How can the U.S.A. continue its multi-trillion dollar funding of Israel, the waging of endless war, and the maintenance of military bases in hundreds of foreign countries, while its people suffer a seriously declining economic status? Only with the help of a media that tells us our problems originate in faraway places rather than at home, and that our most important ally in the world is Israel. Both are in complete denial of material reality. An individual acting on such presumptions would be judged clinically insane and institutionalized. Our society behaves as though delusions were reality, lies were the truth, and a psychotic condition was a sign of excellent mental health.

The U.S.A. is in hock for trillions of dollars and hated not only in the Middle East, but increasingly in other parts of the world. This has led to calls for change which have seen the WASPs reasserting, to regain control from the power bloc that has played a major role in creating the present crisis, though not the unacknowledged longer standing one which is capitalism itself. That major threat to the future of humanity hardly depends on whether the ruling group is gentile or Jewish, but on whether we allow that system to destroy the entire planet, and not just the Middle East.

The relation of policy and its reportage is clear in the preparing of Americans for a war with Iran, and then priming them into a maybe we will maybe we won’t indecision. Each time heated talk about Iran cools slightly, the price of gasoline declines. Until the next surge of fanatic babble that claims Iran will nuke Israel and exterminate all Jews, at which point the price goes up again.

These fluctuations in maniacal rhetoric and petroleum prices are part of the struggle to exercise control over U.S. policy in the Middle East. The fact that Americans are not using as much gasoline has not escaped the awareness of petro-capital and it surely plays a role in the recent price decrease, which is still much higher than it was a year ago. The notion that oil powers provoked us into the war in Iraq is still widely believed, despite the fact that this would mean Big Oil decided to endanger its foreign relations and watch Americans consume less of its product. That ridiculous story is a measure of the extent of Jewish-Israeli power over not only the government, but the media which controls the consciousness of the American public.

Continued fables of an alleged Iranian threat, based on the same fictional evidence, supernatural fears and psychotic tendencies that transform Israel from a national nightmare for Palestinian Arabs into a Paradise Disneyland for Israeli Jews, make it more vital than ever to put a stop to this madness. Electing a new member of the colonized population to the presidency, whether in the USA or Palestine, will not make a substantial difference. Rather than a simple change at the top, which is part of the problem, we need a profound awakening to action by the mass population at the bottom, which could bring about the real solution: A 50-state democracy in the U.S.A., and a one state democracy in Palestine.

Copyright © 2008 Frank Scott. All rights reserved.

Frank Scott writes political commentary which appears in the Coastal Post, a monthly publication from Marin County, California, and on numerous web sites, and on his shared blog at legalienate.blogspot.com. Contact him at frankscott@comcast.net.

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Israel mulls military option for Iran nukes

August 7, 2008

Israel beefs up strike capability, confident it could deal setback to Iran nuclear program

STEVEN GUTKIN
AP News

Aug 06, 2008 17:21 EST

Israel is building up its strike capabilities amid growing anxiety over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and appears confident that a military attack would cripple Tehran’s atomic program, even if it can’t destroy it.

Such talk could be more threat than reality. However, Iran’s refusal to accept Western conditions is worrying Israel as is the perception that Washington now prefers diplomacy over confrontation with Tehran.

The Jewish state has purchased 90 F-16I fighter planes that can carry enough fuel to reach Iran, and will receive 11 more by the end of next year. It has bought two new Dolphin submarines from Germany reportedly capable of firing nuclear-armed warheads — in addition to the three it already has.

And this summer it carried out air maneuvers in the Mediterranean that touched off an international debate over whether they were a “dress rehearsal” for an imminent attack, a stern warning to Iran or a just a way to get allies to step up the pressure on Tehran to stop building nukes.

According to foreign media reports, Israeli intelligence is active inside Iranian territory. Israel’s military censor, who can impose a range of legal sanctions against journalists operating in the country, does not permit publication of details of such information in news reports written from Israel.

The issue of Iran’s nuclear program took on new urgency this week after U.S. officials rejected Tehran’s response to an incentives package aimed at getting it to stop sensitive nuclear activity — setting the stage for a fourth round of international sanctions against the country.

Israel, itself an undeclared nuclear power, sees an atomic bomb in Iranian hands as a direct threat to its existence.

Israel believes Tehran will have enriched enough uranium for a nuclear bomb by next year or 2010 at the latest. The United States has trimmed its estimate that Iran is several years or as much as a decade away from being able to field a bomb, but has not been precise about a timetable. In general U.S. officials think Iran isn’t as close to a bomb as Israel claims, but are concerned that Iran is working faster than anticipated to add centrifuges, the workhorses of uranium enrichment.

“If Israeli, U.S., or European intelligence gets proof that Iran has succeeded in developing nuclear weapons technology, then Israel will respond in a manner reflecting the existential threat posed by such a weapon,” said Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz, speaking at a policy forum in Washington last week.

Continued . . .

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Gitmo Detainees Subject to Detention Even If Acquitted: Pentagon

August 7, 2008

By AFP, August 6, 2008

Some detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba will likely never be released because of the danger they pose, and those tried and acquitted will still be subject to continued detention as enemy combatants, a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday.

Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, made the remarks as Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni, awaited a verdict in the first war crimes trial to be held under a special regime created for “war on terror” suspects.

Morrell said Hamdan, a former driver of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, could appeal the verdict in US courts.

“But in the near term, at least, we would consider him an enemy combatant and still a danger and would likely still be detained for some period of time thereafter,” he said.

Morrell said there were plans for at least 20 more such trials at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba but he said a significant portion of the detainees being held there would neither be tried nor released.

He said efforts were being made to reduce the size of the population through transfers of prisoners to their home countries for incarceration or release.

“But I think, you know, there are still a significant population within Guantanamo who will likely never be released because of the threat they pose to the world, for that matter,” he said.

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President Musharraf of Pakistan to be impeached

August 7, 2008

Times Online, August 7, 2008

Zahid Hussain in Islamabad

Political tension heightened in Pakistan today as it was confirmed that President Musharraf is to be impeached.

The leaders of the two main parties in the coalition, the Pakistan Peoples’ Party and the Pakistan Muslim League (N) reached an agreement to force him to stand down in the early hours of this morning.

Asif Ali Zardari, the head of the Pakistan Peoples’ Party and Nawaz Sharif, the leader of the Pakistan Muslim League( N) faction, will formally request that he steps down, and impeach him through parliamentary measures if he refuses to do so.

A senior member of the ruling coalition said a joint charge sheet against the president is being drawn up. It will leave Mr. Musharraf with options to defend himself before parliament or quit before the vote.

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Ahsan Iqbal, a spokesman for the Pakistan Muslim League said today: “Musharraf cannot stay in power anymore.”

The President is expected to fight off moves to oust him, saying he would take up the challenge and would not quit. “I will defeat those who try to push me to the wall,“ a defiant president told his supporters. “If they use their right to oust me, I have the right to defend myself.”

The twin issues of President Musharraf’s removal and the restoration of Supreme Court judges who were dismissed by the president last November during a brief period of emergency rule have over-shadowed the four-month-old coalition government.

President Musharraf still plans to leave for China today to attend opening ceremony of Beijing Olympics and meet Chinese leaders, despite the impeachment threat. A Pakistani foreign ministry said the visit could not be put off because of special relations with China. An earlier statement had said the trip was cancelled.

The ruling coalition claimed they have the two thirds majority required to remove the president. But the president’s supporters dismiss the claim. Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, leader of the opposition said the impeachment move would fail.

Observers said the impeachment move could further destabilise the country, which is facing severe economic problem and rising Islamic insurgency.

A former General and a close U.S. ally in the global war on terror, Mr. Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999. He stepped down as army chief in December 2007 after he was elected as president for another five years in a controversial election.

He became hugely unpopular after he imposed a temporary emergency rule in the country in November 2007 and sacked the independent minded chief justice.

His allies were defeated in an election in February that resulted in a civilian coalition government led by the party of the late Benazir Bhutto, a two-time prime minister who was assassinated while campaigning last December.

Despite the loss of parliamentary support, Mr. Musharraf has resisted pressure to quit, and has insisted that he was willing to work with the new civilian government.

He has repeatedly said he would not use presidential powers to dismiss the parliament, but Pakistani political circles are rife with speculation that he is manouevring towards this scenario on grounds that the civilian government has proved inept.

Analysts said the impeachment move could increase political disarray the country and force the army to act, although the army leadership has so far kept itself out of the fray.

Political uncertainty has badly affected the economy with inflation reaching a record high. Investors have harboured doubts over whether the civilian coalition government has the ability to arrest the decline. Rising Islamic militancy which has gripped northern areas also threaten to tear apart the country.

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White House ‘buried British intelligence on Iraq WMDs’

August 6, 2008

The Times, August 6, 2008

George W Bush and Tony Blair

(Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Tony Blair and George Bush both saw intelligence contradicting the rationale for invading Iraq, a new book claims

Tim Reid in Washington and Sam Coates in London

MI6 told Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq that a high-placed Iraqi source said that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. The intelligence was passed to the US but was buried by the White House, according to a new book.

The book claimed that the former Prime Minister sent a top British spy to the Middle East in 2003 — three months before the invasion — to dig up enough intelligence to avoid war but that President Bush and Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, dismissed any claims or possible evidence that would stop military action.

In The Way of the World, the Pulitzer prize-winning author Ron Suskind also claimed that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a backdated, handwritten letter purportedly from the head of Iraqi Intelligence to Saddam. The letter, which came to light nine months after the invasion, was meant to demonstrate a link between the Baathist regime and al-Qaeda.

The forgery, adamantly denied by the White House, was passed to a British journalist in Baghdad and written about as if genuine by The Sunday Telegraph on December 14, 2003. The article received significant attention in the US and provided the White House with a new rationale for the invasion, Suskind claimed. The White House called the allegation absurd.

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Suskind said that at the beginning of 2003 MI6 sent one of its top agents, Michael Shipster, to the region. Mr Shipster held secret meetings in Jordan with Tahir Jalil Habbush, the head of Iraqi Intelligence. The meetings were confirmed by Nigel Inkster, former assistant director of MI6.

Mr Inkster also confirmed that Mr Shipster was told by Mr Habbush that there were no illicit weapons in Iraq. Mr Inkster refused to comment last night.

Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of British Intelligence, was also interviewed by Suskind. The author said that Sir Richard confirmed the Shipster meetings and report. He added that he asked why Mr Blair had not acted on the intelligence.

Sir Richard was quoted as saying that the mission was an eleventh-hour “attempt to try, as it were, I’d say, to diffuse \ the whole situation”. He added: “The problem was the Cheney crowd was in too much of a hurry, really. Bush never resisted them quite strongly enough.”

Suskind wrote that Sir Richard flew to Washington in February 2003 to present the Habbush report to George Tenet, then the Director of the CIA. The report stated that according to Mr Habbush, Saddam had ended his nuclear programme in 1991 — the same year that he destroyed his chemical weapons programme — and ended his biological weapons programme in 1996. These assertions turned out to be true.

Mr Tenet briefed Mr Bush and Condoleezza Rice, at the time his National Security Adviser.

Suskind wrote: “The White House then buried the Habbush report. They instructed the British that they were no longer interested in keeping the channel open.”

Rob Richer, a former CIA officer in the Near East division, told Suskind: “The Brits wanted to avoid war — which was what was driving them. Bush wanted to go to war in Iraq from the very first days he was in office.”

Mr Habbush was put on the White House’s list of most-wanted Iraqis but according to Suskind he was paid by the CIA in October 2003 to write the forged letter to Saddam, dated July 1, 2001, saying that the putative September 11 ringleader Mohammed Atta had trained for his mission in Iraq. This was the letter publicised in The Sunday Telegraph.

Of the forgery allegation, Mr Tenet said: “There was no such order from the White House to me or, to the best of my knowledge, was anyone from the CIA ever involved in any such effort.” Of Mr Habbush, Mr Tenet said that the claims in the book were a complete fabrication. He said that Mr Habbush had “failed to persuade” the British that he had “anything new to offer by way of intelligence”.

Delving deep

— Ron Suskind was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal from 1993 to 2000

— His serialised stories, following a religious student from a blighted inner-city school to the Ivy League Brown University, won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 1995

— His 2004 book The Price of Loyalty penetrated the inner sanctum of the Bush Administration

— Excepts of his last book, The One Percent Doctrine, were published last month in Time magazine

Source: www.ronsuskind.com

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