Peace and Justice Post

Counterpunch, Weekend Edition, December 8/9, 2007

By Paul Craig Roberts

The recent disclosure that the latest National Intelligence Estimate concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapon program several years ago, assuming Iran ever had such a program, has caused consternation among neoconservatives, right-wing Israeli government officials, and Bush regime ranks.

Members of the right-wing Israeli government have denounced the NIE finding as contrary to Israel’s interests. Former Bush regime official John Bolton accused America’s intelligence agencies with conspiring to discredit President Bush with politicized intelligence. According to Bolton, it is US intelligence agencies, not the neoconservatives, who have their “own agenda.” President Bush has promised to continue his threats against Iran regardless of the NIE finding.

The NIE finding puts Bush on the spot by bringing US intelligence up to speed with the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose director has repeatedly reported, as he did on December 4, that “the agency has no concrete evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons program or undeclared nuclear facilities in Iran.”

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 The Independent, December 8, 2007

By Leonard Doyle in Washington

Senior US senators and congressmen are pressing for a criminal investigation of the CIA for obstruction of justice after it admitted destroying two videotapes showing apparently abusive interrogations of al-Qa’ida suspects in 2005.

The digital recordings apparently show a team of CIA agents subjecting Abu Zubayadh, the agency’s first detainee, and another suspect to abusive interrogation. The tapes were apparently destroyed because CIA officers feared prosecution for torture, which is a felony under US law.

“We haven’t seen anything like this since the 18-minute gap on the tapes of Richard Nixon,” said Senator Edward Kennedy who accused the CIA of “a cover-up.” He called on the Attorney General Michael Mukasey to investigate.

Congresswoman Jan Harman said that in early 2003, she had warned the CIA not to destroy any videotapes dealing with interrogation practices.

“To my knowledge, the Intelligence Committee was never informed that any videotapes had been destroyed,” Ms Harman, said.

Keep reading . . . 

Source: Index for free expression

As President Musharraf announces that he will end Pakistan’s state of emergency on 16 December, Shirin B Sadeghi looks at how the media has responded to the crackdown

When President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency on 3 November, one of the first casualties was the independent media.

Just over two weeks after emergency rule was announced, Musharraf’s government convinced the Emir of the United Arab Emirates to end transmission of Geo and ARY thus successfully silencing the last two independent news broadcasts in Pakistan. As Geo’s last few minutes on air came to a close, its sensational coverage of the shutdown included phone calls from members of the public, crying as they pleaded for the station – one of the most popular channels in Pakistan – to remain on air.

Continued . . .

 Published on Thursday, December 6, 2007 by The Guardian/UK

by Mark Tran

Congress is set to clash with George Bush on the contentious practice of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques as it prepares legislation on intelligence funding.

Senate and House officials have included the ban on waterboarding – condemned by human rights groups as a form of torture – in their respective bills authorising 2008 spending for intelligence programmes, the Associated Press reported.

The move would set up another veto fight with Bush, who last summer issued an executive order allowing the CIA to use “enhanced interrogation techniques” that go beyond what is allowed in the 2006 army field manual.

The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 prohibited cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment for all detainees in US custody, including CIA prisoners. The CIA director, Michael Hayden, last year prohibited waterboarding, which simulates near-drowning, but has been publicly silent on other interrogation techniques.

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By Robert Parry, Consortium News. Posted December 8, 2007.

The neocons may have lost a lot of clout with Bush, but it’s dangerous to assume they are out of power.

Since the neoconservatives began to emerge as a political force in the mid-to-late 1970s, they have followed a consistent strategy of targeting the information flows inside the United States, paying particular attention to controlling the nation’s intelligence analysts and purging independent thinking from the U.S. news media.

Those were the two key switching points that allowed the neocons to push out favorable information and suppress contrary facts to shape how Americans perceived reality. Thus, the neocons could guide the public on issues such as the severity of the Soviet threat in the late Cold War or the WMD danger from Iraq and Iran this decade.

That neoconservative strategy reached its zenith after the 9/11 attacks as the U.S. intelligence community and the Washington press corps caved under intense political pressure. Essentially, President George W. Bush and the neocons got to manipulate reality itself – and they used that power to scare the heck out of the American people.

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ZNet, December 6, 2007

By Badri Raina

I write this on the fifteenth anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Mosque by fascist hordes of the Sangh Parivar, consequent upon the pogrom set in motion by Advani’s infamous rath yatra.

Few events in the post-independence history of India have outfaced the founding principles of both the Freedom Movement and the Republic as decisively as that wanton and blood-thirsty challenge to the secular state. That was the day on which Mahatma Gandhi was buried ten fathoms deep, and when majoritarian terrorism came to be installed as the new operative version of ‘nationalism.’

It was also the day when the party that led the Freedom Movement lost its raison d¢ etre. Not to be forgotten that the then Congress prime minister twiddled his pout while fascist pickaxe took the mosque apart brick by brick in full glare of television crews in a daylong operation.

The coercive influence of that terror may be gauged from the fact that fifteen years to the good, the major political formations and institutional mechanisms of Indian democracy have failed to this day to bring a single culprit to book, either from a cloaked complicity or fear of consequence.

Nor indeed has the state found its way yet to implement the findings of the Justice Srikrishna Report on the communal terror that was unleashed by Hindutva forces in Mumbai subsequent to the demolition—a Report that has held the highest of the high among the saffronites guilty of marshalling the killings like ‘Generals’ in combat.

All that in stark contrast to the avidity with which judgements have been pronounced against Muslims deemed guilty of involvement in the bomb blasts that took place in Mumbai subsequent to the communal terror mentioned above.

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Electronic Iraq

Dahr Jamail, TomDispatch, Nov 29, 2007

“Sometimes I think it should be a rule of war that you have to see somebody up close and get to know him before you can shoot him.” — Colonel Potter, M*A*S*H

Name them. Maim them. Kill them.

From the beginning of the American occupation in Iraq, air strikes and attacks by the U.S. military have only killed “militants,” “criminals,” “suspected insurgents,” “IED [Improvised Explosive Device] emplacers,” “anti-American fighters,” “terrorists,” “military age males,” “armed men,” “extremists,” or “al-Qaeda.”

The pattern for reporting on such attacks has remained the same from the early years of the occupation to today. Take a helicopter attack on October 23rd of this year near the village of Djila, north of Samarra. The U.S. military claimed it had killed 11 among “a group of men planting a roadside bomb.” Only later did a military spokesperson acknowledge that at least six of the dead were civilians. Local residents claimed that those killed were farmers, that there were children among them, and that the number of dead was greater than 11.

Here is part of the statement released by U.S. military spokeswoman in northern Iraq, Major Peggy Kageleiry:

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Source: Enzine articles

By William Mills

The U.S. chose to respond to the 9/11 terror attack with war, and violence has intensified worldwide ever since. Under 21st century conditions of growing interconnectedness, spreading individual awareness of events, and spreading individual access to technology, is war a rational foreign policy strategy?

[READ FULL ARTICLE]

 The Nation

Jeremy Scahill | comment | posted December 6, 2007 (December 24, 2007 issue)

Gunning down seventeen Iraqi civilians in an incident the military has labeled “criminal.” Multiple Congressional investigations. A federal grand jury. Allegations of illegal arms smuggling. Wrongful death lawsuits brought by families of dead employees and US soldiers. A federal lawsuit alleging war crimes. Charges of steroid use by trigger-happy mercenaries. Allegations of “significant tax evasion.” The US-installed government in Iraq labeling its forces “murderers.” With a new scandal breaking practically every day, one would think Blackwater security would be on the ropes, facing a corporate meltdown or even a total wipeout. But it seems that business for the company has never been better, as it continues to pull in major federal contracts. And its public demeanor grows bolder and cockier by the day.

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It is five years since Gujarat erupted in violence between Hindus and Muslims. But next week’s elections will be dominated by the fallout from the bloody events

By Andrew Buncombe in Ahmedabad | The Independet, December 7, 2007

It is called the Bombay Hotel but there is no service to speak of.

Indeed, the 8,000 or so Muslim families who live in this flyblown shantytown on the edge of the Gujarati city of Amhedabad make do without running water and regular electricity, never mind such luxuries as bathrooms and medical facilities.

With a widely watched election taking place in Gujarat next week, this shantytown is a crucial backdrop to the contest being played out in one of India’s most restive states, between the ruling right-wing nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the centrist Congress Party, the party of Jawaharlal Nehru.

The people living in the Bombay Hotel area rushed there for safety in the aftermath of Gujurat’s 2002 violence during which up to 2,000 people killed and thousands more wounded, most of them Muslims. The attacks were carried out by Hindus, partly in retaliation for an alleged arson attack on a train in which more than 50 Hindu pilgrims were killed. The killings, spread over three months, represent India’s deadliest religious violence since Partition in 1947.

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