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by Patrick Martin
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Global Research, June 13, 2008
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Democratic members of the US House of Representatives voted unanimously to kill an impeachment resolution against President Bush introduced by Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio.
Kucinich himself participated fully in the farce. He introduced the resolution Monday and read out the 35 articles of impeachment for crimes ranging from the lying pretexts given to the American people for the war in Iraq to torture at the US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and illegal domestic spying. Then he moved to send the resolution to the House Judiciary Committee, whose chairman John Conyers has long rejected any effort to hold Bush constitutionally accountable. This move will have the effect of burying the bill indefinitely. The 251-166 margin of the vote, held on a roll call Wednesday, saw all 227 Democrats—including Kucinich and his lone co-sponsor, Robert Wexler of Florida—joined by 24 Republicans move to dispose of the resolution. Voting against were 166 Republicans, who sought to force a debate on impeachment for the purpose of embarrassing the Democratic Party leadership. After Kucinich introduced the measure Monday and spent more than four hours reading the entire text into the Congressional Record, House Republicans utilized a parliamentary provision to force the clerk of the House to read the text out loud all over again on Tuesday, consuming another four hours and keeping the House in session until after midnight. The purpose was to rub the Democrats’ noses in their own refusal to take action to back up their occasional bursts of anti-Bush demagogy. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ruled out any impeachment of Bush as soon as the Democrats won control of Congress in November 2006. Impeachment resolutions against Cheney were introduced in May and November of 2007 and killed each time by the Democrats, in the same fashion as the Bush impeachment resolution Wednesday. There is no question that, unlike Bill Clinton, who was impeached for lying about a private sexual encounter, George W. Bush is guilty of offenses that meet the “high crimes and misdemeanors” standard set by the US Constitution. The adamant opposition to impeachment proceedings on the part of Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and the rest of the Democratic leadership does not stem from a belief that such proceedings would be unpopular. According to public opinion polls, a majority of the American people and an overwhelming majority of Democratic voters favor Bush’s impeachment and removal from office. A public vote in the House of Representatives would, however, find a clear majority of the Democrats in Congress siding with Bush against the sentiments of their own constituents. The Democratic leadership seeks to block any vote to conceal as much as possible their role as the last line of defense for the Bush administration. The Democratic leadership opposes impeachment not on legal, but on political and class grounds. They are well aware that the adoption of an impeachment resolution against Bush and Cheney, regardless of the outcome of a Senate trial, would deal a major blow against the White House as an institution and undermine the legitimacy of all Bush’s actions as “commander-in-chief,” especially in the war in Iraq. |
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House Democrats kill resolution to impeach Bush
June 13, 2008
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Print this articleAmerica’s neo-colonial designs
June 13, 2008
Illustration: Ramachandra Babu/Gulf News
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By Patrick Seale, Special to Gulf News |
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In the teeth of much local and regional opposition, Washington is pressuring Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki to conclude a “strategic alliance” with the United States, which would allow it to keep substantial military forces in Iraq for the foreseeable future. Even at the cost of 4,100 of its soldiers killed, another 30,000 or more seriously wounded, its reputation sorely tarnished, and a trillion dollar hole in its public accounts, the United States has clearly not yet learned the lesson that occupation breeds insurrection. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 – the smashing and near-dismemberment of the country, the killing and displacement of millions of its people – must surely be judged one of the great crimes of our time. To seek to stay on after this unmitigated catastrophe – making nonsense of Iraq’s independence and sovereignty – not only perpetuates the crime, but is a grave strategic mistake for which both the US and its Iraqi vassals are likely to pay dearly. As had long been suspected, it looks as if the Bush administration is seeking to tie its successor to its own failed policies, and make it difficult, if not impossible, for a candidate such as Barack Obama, if he is ever elected president, to withdraw US forces from Iraq, as he has pledged. The US wants Iraq to sign a so-called “Status of Forces Agreement” (SOFA) by July 31, to replace the United Nations mandate, which expires on December 31, and which has so far provided the legal cover for the presence of “coalition forces” in Iraq. The obvious and far better alternative would be for the US to seek a new and brief UN mandate – say of six months – to allow the next American president to assess the situation next year and make his own decisions. |
India: US imperialism’s new cop on the South Asian beat
June 13, 2008By Kavita Krishnan
The Indian ruling class is striving to forge what it calls a “strategic partnership’’ with the United States, and in this aim the major ruling-class political parties are united. The previous government — a coalition termed the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) headed by the Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — which was in power from 1999-2004, had in the wake of 9/11 strived to prove to the US rulers that India was a more stable and suitable ally on the subcontinent for the US “war on terror’’ than Pakistan.
The BJP-led NDA government even proposed a grandiose “Triad Against Terrorism’’ comprising India, Israel and the US, thereby overturning decades of Indian foreign policy that had favoured the Palestinian cause. The BJP is known for its viciously anti-Muslim agenda, is notorious for the state-sponsored pogrom which killed thousands of Muslims in the Indian state of Gujarat in 2002, and its goal is to turn secular India into a “Hindu’’ nation. The BJP, drawing on the “clash of civilisations’’ notion of Christians, Jews and Hindus against Muslims, spoke of a supposed “natural affinity’’ between India – the “Hindu homeland’’ – besieged by the terrorism of its Islamic neighbour Pakistan, and Israel – the “Jewish homeland’’ – besieged by “Muslim’’ Palestine’s “terrorism’’. In May 2003, India’s national security advisor Brajesh Mishra, addressing a meeting of the American Jewish Committee – a Zionist outfit – in Washington, called for a “core, consisting of democratic societies … which can take on international terrorism’’ – and the Indo-US-Israel axis was to constitute this “core’’. The NDA government had even been willing to send Indian troops to assist the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq, but nationwide protests resulted in a unanimous vote in parliament against such a move.
International community and Afghan government fail Afghan people
June 13, 2008The organisation made the accusation in a briefing paper issued on Wednesday ahead of the International Conference in Support of Afghanistan being held on Thursday in Paris.
The Paris conference will bring together representatives of 80 donors and organizations operating in Afghanistan to review the implementation of the 2006 Afghanistan Compact Agreement. Amnesty International said that many of the benchmarks established for the Afghan government and its international supporters remain unmet.
“The biggest advance in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taleban is that many Afghans now dare to hope for a better future,” said Amnesty International.
“But, six years after the international community helped bring President Hamid Karzai to power, Afghans face increasing insecurity, a burgeoning drug trade, lack of respect for rule of law and human rights, a weak and inept justice system, poor governance and endemic corruption.”
The Afghanistan Compact, agreed at an international conference held in London 31 January – 1 February 2006, identified three major areas of development for Afghanistan’s future – security, governance (including rule of law and human rights) and economic development. It established benchmarks for performance in each area, to be met by the Afghan government as well as international donors.
Guantanamo trials fall short, says Arbour
June 13, 2008RINF.com
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008
By UN HIGH Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said yesterday that planned Guantanamo war crimes trials fell short of international standards and handing down death penalties would be “just not acceptable”.
In an interview with Reuters before leaving office on June 30, the former UN war crimes chief prosecutor chided the administration of US President George W Bush for last week’s decision to distance itself from the UN Human Rights Council.
It was much too soon to write off the Geneva forum set up two years ago, in which Washington could play an important role in defusing a perceived confrontation between members of the European Union (EU) and Islamic countries, according to Arbour.
The former Canadian Supreme Court judge, 61, is going home after deciding not to seek a second four-year term.
Arbour has long denounced the system created by the Bush administration to try suspected Al Qaeda operatives outside regular civilian and military courts, and alleged torture and secret renditions conducted in the US-led “war on terrorism”.
“In a process where the definition of a crime is somewhat more ambiguous, the standard of proof is lowered, the capacity to make a full answer of defence is lowered, the chances of wrongful conviction necessarily increases,” Arbour said.
“So to add the death penalty to that, it seems to me, is just not acceptable,” she said of the Guantanamo trials.
Arbour said international human rights law permitted the death penalty for the most serious crimes if trials are fair.
A Failed Project for the New American Century?
June 13, 2008The Palestine Chronicle, June 12, 2008
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| By Tim Buchholz It was early morning (for me) when my roommate got a call from his mother in Wisconsin telling him to turn on the TV. That’s when we saw the first building on fire. We ran to our roof in Brooklyn that overlooked Manhattan and saw the plumes of smoke filling the air, and that’s when we saw the second plane hit. We were in shock; we couldn’t believe what we just saw. We thought the world was ending. As soon as the trains were running again, my friend and I went in to the city and got off at Union Square/14th Street, where anything below 14th was blocked off. Makeshift hospitals lined the streets as gurney’s rushed past us with bleeding bodies through the smoke clouded air. “How could this have happened?” we asked ourselves as a soldier motioned with his machine gun that we could not go any further. I’m sure we all have stories of where we were on 9/11; even those numbers will never be the same to us again. And there are just as many theories as to why it happened, and who is to blame. I’m not going to try to answer those questions, but 9/11 did set into motion a military plan that seemed to have been waiting for it to happen. In 1997, many of the names we have seen so often since the War in Iraq began were listed as members of a neoconservative think tank called “Project for a New American Century,” or PNAC. Founded by William Kristol (not the comedian) and Robert Kagan, its stated goal according to Wikipedia was “to promote American global leadership. Fundamental to the PNAC are the views that American leadership is both good for America and good for the world and support for a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity.” And their Statement of Principle ends with, “While such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today, it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next.” They felt that America was the most powerful country in the world and it was their duty to keep it that way, protecting the world while serving the interests of the United States. PNAC called for an increase in military spending, and a redeployment of our troops oversees to meet modern needs. In January 1998, in a letter to Bill Clinton, written in part by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, PNAC called for the US Military to remove Saddam Hussein from power, and later criticized the December 1998 bombing attempts the Clinton Administration had made in Iraq, calling them ineffective. |
Supreme Court condemns Guantanamo
June 13, 2008The Independent, June 13, 2008
By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor
GETTY IMAGES
Detainees at Guantanamo are able to challenge their detention in civilian courts
America’s highest court has delivered a catastrophic blow to George Bush’s policy of locking up terror suspects without charge in Guantanamo Bay.
The US Supreme Court dismissed the legal basis upon which the Bush administration has interned nearly 300 inmates at the American naval base in Cuba and granted the prisoners the right to challenge their detention on the US mainland.
Lawyers for the inmates, including the British resident Binyam Mohamed, are now expected to file fresh claims for release in the US federal courts.
Britain is among a growing number of US allies who supported George Bush’s war on terror after the attacks on America in 2001 but now want to see the prison camp closed. Gordon Brown is expected to discuss the subject during the President’s state visit to Britain next week.
Yesterday’s majority 5-4 ruling was the Bush administration’s third setback since 2004 at the highest US court over its treatment of prisoners who are being held indefinitely and without charge or fair trial.
The court has ruled twice previously that Guantanamo inmates could go into civilian courts to challenge their continued detention. But each time, the Bush administration and Congress, then controlled by Republicans, changed the law to keep the detainees out of civilian courts.
The US War in Afghanistan: Goals, Future, and Alternatives
June 12, 2008International Afghanistan Congress
Hanover, Germany
June 7-8, 2008
I want to begin by thanking Reiner Braun and the other organizers of this conference for the opportunity to be a part of this important conference, and to be learning from my European and Afghan friends. I have been asked to give a brief and sober report about perspectives from the U.S. peace movement, and I will do my best to fulfill this expectation.
Recent Developments
First, let me review some recent developments, some of which you may not have heard or read about.
This past November, the U.S. National Security Council concluded that U.S. goals for the Afghanistan War were not being met, and that despite battlefield victories, the overall situation in Afghanistan was deteriorating. That report highlighted the “Taliban’s unchallenged expansion into new territory”, the increasing cultivation of opium poppies, and President Karzai’s weakness.” More recently, Director of. National Intelligence McConnell described the situation as “deteriorating,” and he warned that “Taliban forces expanded their operations into previously peaceful areas of the west and around Kabul.”[1]
Three thousand more U.S. Marines have been deployed to southern Afghanistan.
The U.S. Marine Corps decided last week not to bring criminal charges against the commanding officers of a unit responsible for the shooting deaths of up to nineteen civilians in northeastern Afghanistan
NATO Sec. Gen. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, warned that Afghanistan is a test of NATO’s resolve, saying that “It is Europe’s Iraq.” Friends, I don’t think any of you want to be fighting a European Iraq war.
Since the new government came to power in Afghanistan, the number of Taliban raids launched from Pakistan has doubled. As the New York Times reported, “Pakistani officials are making it increasingly clear that they have no interest in stopping cross-border attacks…into Afghanistan, prompting a new level of frustration from Americans who see the infiltration as a crucial strategic priority in the war in Afghanistan.” Worse, from Barack Obama to the Washington Post and the right-wing Heritage Foundation, there are calls to “Try Pakistan First,” meaning to go to war in and against Pakistan.[2]
It turns out that the prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, where U.S. forces have tortured prisoners, is no longer large enough to accommodate the growing number of Afghan prisoners. Sixty million dollars has been allocated to build additional U.S. military prison in Pakistan.
The Danish Disease: The Political Culture of Islamophobia
June 12, 2008Monthly Review, June 2008
Ellen Brun and Jacques Hersh
Notes from the Editors:
Ellen Brun has been an activist on the Danish left for many years. She is a researcher on development issues and international relations. Jacques Hersh is professor emeritus of Aalborg University, Denmark and former head of the Research Center on Development and International Relations there. They have worked together for many years and have coauthored many books and articles including in English: Socialist Korea: A Case Study in the Strategy of Economic Development (Monthly Review Press, 1976) and Soviet-Third World Relations in a Capitalist World: The Political Economy of Broken Promises (St. Martin’s Press, 1990).
In trying to comprehend the virus of Islamophobia now infecting Europe, the small country of Denmark offers powerful insights. Shakespeare’s phrase that “something is rotten in the state of Denmark” seems appropriate to describe the transformation taking place in this former bastion of tolerance and conviviality.
In the course of one generation, beginning in the 1980s, a process has altered the ideal picture that many informed people throughout the world had of Danish society. The transition has been dramatic and the end point of the process difficult to fathom. Even politically aware Danes are somewhat at a loss to explain what exactly has been happening to the Danish political culture.
The Danish body politic has of course never been an undifferentiated monolith. The Second World War was an ambivalent chapter in the country’s history. Although there were substantial pro-Nazi sentiments among the upper sections of the population and the Danish government collaborated with the German occupation forces, there was an armed resistance movement and ordinary Danes helped a considerable number of Danish Jews escape to neutral Sweden.
In the postwar era, the Social Democratic Party benefited from the general progressive mood of the population. In the context of the defeat of Nazi-Germany and its Danish sympathizers on the one hand, and the existence of strong pro-Socialist sentiments within the working class on the other, Social Democracy aimed at humanizing capitalism through the construction of a “welfare state.” The project of “capitalism with a human face” served a variety of political purposes. It neutralized the anticapitalism of the working class while preserving the interests of the capitalist class. It also offered a counterpoint to the Soviet model of state socialism with regard to the post-colonial world. Especially in Africa, comparatively generous and effective Danish development assistance, implemented by Social Democratic governments, promoted an alternative to strategies of self-reliance or dependency on the socialist bloc. The vision of “capitalism with a human face” was thought accomplished, until the liberalization of capital controls in the 1980s and the onslaught of neoliberalism began to dismantle the “welfare state.” Paradoxically, what had been considered a Social Democratic project was not defended by the Danish Social Democratic party.
Anti-War Protesters Banned From Demonstrating Against Bush
June 12, 2008London police have announced a ban on anti-war campaigners hoping to protest against President George Bush’s visit to Downing Street this Sunday. The Whitehall ban has been immediately condemned as a “totalitarian act” by the playwright Harold Pinter, while Stop the War organisers are urging people to defy it and to demonstrate nearby in Parliament Square.
“In what is supposed to be a free country the Stop the War Coalition has every right to express its views peacefully and openly. This ban is outrageous and makes the term ‘democracy’ laughable,” Pinter said today.
Lindsey German, a leader of the Stop the War Coalition, said: “It seems that when George W Bush visits this country traditional rights of assembly are to be removed from the people. We are calling on those who care for our democratic rights to come to Parliament Square at 5pm on Sunday 15 June. Some of those who signed statements accusing Bush of war crimes will be leading this protest.
“George Bush has been dictating British foreign policy for many years. Now it appears his security services are determining our rights of protest. This is a disgrace and we will challenge the ban.”
The anti-nuclear campaign CND said it believed the British government was allowing security operations to be directed by White House officials. Previous demonstrations have been allowed along Whitehall, but Bush’s presence in Downing Street – he is due to have dinner with Gordon Brown – means protesters are to be banned from a police ‘exclusion zone’.
Kate Hudson, CND chair, warned that protesters might ignore the police. She said: “Previous attempts to deprive us of our rights to protest have come to nothing. In February 2003 we were told we couldn’t go on the grass in Hyde Park and what happened? Two million people joined us in Hyde Park to oppose the war on Iraq.
“Last October we were told we couldn’t protest in Parliament Square to demand the withdrawal of British troops. What happened then? The morning of the protest we were given the go-ahead. We have a proud record of peaceful democratic protest and we mean to continue – lift the ban now.”
© 2008 First Post/UK
