| Al Jazeera, Sep 11, 2008 | ||||||
| By Alex Sehmer | ||||||
More than 50 per cent of people reject the official belief that the attacks on the World Trade Centre on September 9, 2001, were carried out by al-Qaeda, a new survey has revealed. The findings, released late on Wednesday, suggest that the official version of events – that the attacks, which killed more than 2,900 people and sparked the US so-called “war on terror”, were carried out by al-Qaeda – is still a long way from being generally accepted. Only 46 per cent of respondents named al-Qaeda, while 25 per cent said they did not know and 15 per cent said the US government was behind the attacks. Steven Kull, the director of WorldPublicOpinion.org, which carried out the survey, told Al Jazeera: “Broadly what this says is that there is a lack of confidence with the United States and so people mistrust the narrative the US puts forward.” Officially, hijackers took control of four passenger aircraft in the September 11 attacks. Two of the aeroplanes crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York and the “Twin Towers” subsequently collapsed, bringing down two other buildings nearby. The third aircraft hit the Pentagon while the fourth is said to have crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Kull’s organisation asked more than 16,000 people world wide “Who do you think was behind the 9/11 attacks?”, leaving the question open-ended. Blaming Israel While a substantial number of those polled believed the US government was in some way behind the attacks, seven per cent point the finger at Israel.
Of the countries surveyed, Egypt and Jordan had the highest percentages of people who believed Israel was behind the attack, polling 43 and 31 per cent respectively. Nineteen per cent of those polled in the Palestinian territories claimed Israel was in some way responsible.”In Muslim countries – where we’ve carried out a number of focus groups – it’s clear there is a feeling that the US had some kind of motivation, such as invading Iraq,” Kull said. “There are also some difficulties with the idea that Muslims carried out attacks on civilians – which is widely seen as wrong and contrary to Islam… And there are plenty of people in Muslim countries who say it would have been too technically difficult [for al-Qaeda] to pull off.” In Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, a majority 57 per cent said they did not know who was behind the attacks. Only five per cent said that Israel had been involved. ‘Conspiracy theorists’ In 2002, the US government set up the 9/11 commission, chaired by Thomas Kean, a former governor of New Jersey, to investigate the event. It published its report in 2004, concluding that the 19 hijackers were all members of al-Qaeda. It also concluded that there had been intelligence failures on the part of the CIA and the FBI, the US’s spy agencies. But the World Trade Centre attacks quickly proved fertile ground for “conspiracy theorists” and sceptics have a wide range of alternative theories to choose from – including that US military personnel were involved in the attack or that the towers were brought down with the help of a controlled explosion. “There are people who are saying that US soldiers were flying the planes … or people who say simply that the US government turned a blind eye to the threat or that they somehow got them to do it through some means,” said Kull. One of the proponents of an alternative version of the events has been Willis Carto, editor of the American Free Press newspaper, which frequently points the finger of blame at Israel. He told Al Jazeera the attacks were “perpetrated by the Israeli Mossad [secret service] in conjunction with the American government”. “There’s no real evidence whatsoever that the official story of the planes smashing into the building was true. It’s impossible to believe that a few furtive little characters armed with box cutters who had no idea how to fly … could have manouvred the planes like this,” Carto said. “There are so many holes in the story that no one in his right mind can believe it.” Classroom politics Those who expound alternative versions of the events have themselves become the targets for debunking. Loose Change, a popular series of internet videos that counters the official version of events, has itself inspired a blog called Screw Loose Change.
Reports in engineering publications have sought to counter alternative theories that say the towers could not have collapsed as they did simply by being hit by an aircraft.In 2007, research by Keith Seffen, a senior lecturer in Cambridge University’s engineering department, used analysis of an engineering model to show the tower collapse had been “quite ordinary and natural”. The US has also seen the debate enter the university classroom. Both Ward Churchill, of the University of Colorado, and Kevin Barrett, of the University of Wisconsin, provoked a public outcry over the fact they professed to believe alternative versions of the events. Their critics feared the academics might be tempted to bring there beliefs into the classroom. Their supporters said that even if they did, a university classroom was the place for alternative theories. ‘Structural failure’ Michael Newman, from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Nist), which worked for several years on reports about how and why the World Trade Centre towers collapsed, told Al Jazeera the debate was unlikely to ever go away. “Whenever we put out one of our reports, we get phone calls and emails from those with alternative views,” he said. “And you always get a lot of interest around the time of the anniversary – it’s a part of history now. The Nist reports say the towers’ collapse was due to “structural failure” after the aeroplanes hit them. The reports have been welcomed by building code regulators and many of Nist’s recommendations from its investigations have been adopted, but those with alternative viewpoints have continued to dispute the organisation’s findings. “We’ve heard opinions from all sides,” Newman told Al Jazeera. “At the end of the day, people are entitled to their own opinions and we probably won’t be able to convince them otherwise.” |
Posts Tagged ‘United States’
Poll shows many still doubt 9/11
September 11, 2008
Asif Ali Zardari: the godfather as president
September 9, 2008He may be a pliant partner for the west, but with his record of corruption, Zardari is the worst possible choice for Pakistan
Tariq Ali | Guardian, uk, Sunday September 07 2008 09:35 BST
Asif Ali Zardari – singled out by fate to become Benazir Bhutto’s husband and who, subsequently, did everything he could to prevent himself from being returned to obscurity – is about to become the new President of Pakistan. Oily-mouthed hangers-on, never in short supply in Pakistan, will orchestrate a few celebratory shows and the ready tongues of old cronies (some now appointed ambassadors to western capitals) will speak of how democracy has been enhanced. Zardari’s close circle of friends, with whom he shared the spoils of power the last time around and who have remained loyal, refusing all inducements to turn state’s evidence in the corrruption cases against him, will also be delighted. Small wonder then that definitions of democracy in Pakistan differ from person to person.
There will be no expressions of joy on the streets to mark the transference of power from a moth-eaten general to a worm-eaten politician. The affection felt in some quarters for the Bhutto family is non-transferable. If Benazir were still alive, Zardari would not have been given any official post. She had been considering two other senior politicians for the presidency. Had she been more democratically inclined she would never have treated her political party so scornfully, reducing it to the status of a family heirloom, bequeathed to her son, with her husband as the regent till the boy came of age.
This, and this alone, has aided Zardari’s rise to the top. He was disliked by many of his wife’s closest supporters in the People’s Party (or the Bhutto Family Party, as it is referred to by disaffected members) even when she was alive. They blamed his greed and godfatherish behaviour to explain her fall from power on two previous occasions, which I always thought was slightly unfair. She knew. It was a joint enterprise. She was never one to regard politics alone as the consuming passion of her life and always envied the lifestyle and social behaviour of the very rich. And he was shameless in his endeavours to achieve that status.
Today, he is the second richest person in the country, with estates and bank accounts littered on many continents, including a mansion in Surrey worth several million. Many of Benazir’s inner circle, sidelined by the new boss (Zardari did rub their noses in excrement by having his apolitical sister elected from Larkana, hitherto a pocket borough of the Bhutto family) actively hate him. Benazir’s uncle, Mumtaz Bhutto (head of the clan) has sharply denounced him. Some even encourage the grotesque view that he was in some way responsible for her death. This is foolish. He is only trying to fulfill her legacy. He was certainly charged with ordering the murder of his brother-in-law, Murtaza Bhutto, when Benazir was prime minister, but the case was never tried. Characteristically, one of Zardari’s first acts after his party’s victory in the February polls was to appoint Shoaib Suddle, the senior police officer connected to the Murtaza Bhutto ambush and killing, as the boss of the Federal Intelligence Agency. Loyalty is always repaid in full.
In the country at large, his standing, always low, has sunk still further. The majority of Pakistan’s 190 million citizens may be poor, illiterate or semi-literate, but their instincts are usually sound. An opinion poll carried out by the New America Foundation some months ago revealed Zardari’s approval ratings at a low ebb – less than 14%. These figures confirm the view that he is the worst possible slice of Pakistan’s crumbly nationhood. The people has had no say in his election. parliamentary cabals have already determined the result. I do not take too seriously the recent revelation that a psychiatrist had pronounced him suffering from acute dementia, incapable of recognising his children due to a chronic loss of memory. This was, as is known, designed for the courtroom had he been prosecuted in London or Geneva for large-scale money-laundering and corruption. All that is in abeyance now, since he has been elevated into a crucial figure in the “war on terror”.
A small mystery remained. Why did the US suddenly withdraw support from General Musharraf? An answer was provided on August 26 by Helene Cooper and Mark Mazzetti in the New York Times. The State Department, according to this report, was not in favour of an undignified and hasty departure, but unknown to them a hardcore neocon faction led by Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to the Security Council, was busy advising Asif Zardari in secret and helping him plan the campaign to oust the general:
“Mr Khalilzad had spoken by telephone with Mr Zardari, the leader of the Pakistan Peoples party, several times a week for the past month until he was confronted about the unauthorised contacts, a senior United States official said, “Can I ask what sort of ‘advice and help’ you are providing?” … Mr. Boucher wrote in an angry email message to Mr Khalilzad. “What sort of channel is this? Governmental, private, personal?” Copies of the message were sent to others at the highest levels of the State Department; the message was provided to the New York Times by an administration official who had received a copy.”
Khalilzad is an inveterate factionalist and a master of intrigue. Having implanted Hamid Karzai in Kabul (with dire results as many in Washington now admit), he had been livid with Musharraf for refusing to give 100% support to his Afghan protege. Khalilzad now saw an opportunity to punish Musharraf and simultaneously try and create a Pakistani equivalent of Karzai.
Zardari fitted the bill. He is perfectly suited to being a total creature of Washington. The Swiss government helpfully decided to release millions of dollars from Zardari’s bank accounts that had, till now, been frozen due to the pending corruption cases. Like his late wife, Zardari, too, is now being laundered, just like the money he made when last in office as minister for investment. This weakness will make him a pliant president of Pakistan.
The majority of the population is deeply hostile to the US/Nato presence in Afghanistan. Almost 80% favour a negotiated settlement and withdrawal of all foreign troops. Three days ago, a team of US commandos entered Pakistan “in search of terrorists” and 20 innocents were killed. Zardari was being tested. But if he permits US troops to enter the frontier province on “search-and-destroy” missions his career will be short-lived and the military will return in some shape or form. The High Command cannot afford to ignore the growing anger within its junior ranks at being forced to kill their own people.
The president of Pakistan was designed in the 1972 constitution as an ornamental figure. Military dictators subverted and altered the constitution to their advantage. Will Zardari revert to his late father-in-law’s constitution or preserve its existing powers?
The country desperately needs a president capable of exercizing some moral authority and serving as the conscience of the country. The banished chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, automatically comes to mind, as do the figures of Imran Khan and IA Rehman (the chairman of the Human Rights Commission), but the governing elite and its self-serving backers in Washington have always been blind to the real needs of this country. They should be careful. The sparks flying across the Afghan border might ignite a fire that is difficult to control.
Tariq Ali’s latest book, The Duel: Pakistan on the Flightpath of American Power, will be published by Simon and Schuster on September 15
Palin’s Wrongheaded View of God’s Plans
September 9, 2008by Jacob G. Hornberger| Hornberger’s Blog, Sept 8, 2008
In an address to an Assembly of God Church in Alaska, Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin suggested that church members pray “that our national leaders are sending [soldiers to Iraq] on a task that is from God, that’s what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God’s plan.”
It would be interesting to hear Palin explain her understanding of how God’s plans can possibly involve violations of His sacred commandments.
The commandment is simple: Thou shalt not murder. God did not provide exceptions to that prohibition, not even for agents of the CIA and the U.S. military.
Lest we forget: Neither the Iraqi people nor their government ever attacked the United States or threatened to do so. No matter how many contortions that Dick Cheney and George W. Bush have engaged in (e.g., WMDs, the war on terrorism, 9/11, spreading democracy, UN resolutions, and radical Islam), the simple truth remains: The U.S. government attacked Iraq, not the other way around.
Thus, we should never forget: In the Iraq War, the United States is the aggressor nation and Iraq is the defending nation. That means that no agent of the U.S. government had any moral right to kill even one single Iraqi, much less the million or so that have been killed.
Some people calculate the wrongful Iraqi deaths only in terms of civilian deaths. They have it wrong. Since the U.S. government had no right to invade Iraq, U.S. agents, including those in the CIA and the military, had no moral right to kill any Iraqi, including Iraqis who were defending against the wrongful invasion and occupation of their country.
The standard neo-con religious position is that whatever the U.S. government does overseas against foreigners is right and moral as a matter of law because the government is operating as an agent of God and simply fulfilling His plans.
The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children killed by the pre-invasion sanctions? A million Iraqis killed in the invasion? Well, you see, those killings can’t be murder because it was the U.S. government that did the sanctioning and invading. It would only be murder if, say, the Russian government committed those acts. Since it’s the U.S. government that killed all those people, it’s all good and moral because it must be all part of God’s plan.
Moreover, keep in mind that in the neo-con mindset the U.S. government and the American people are one and the same. Since everyone knows that the American people are kind, caring, and charitable, that means that everything the U.S. government does, including kidnapping, renditioning, torturing, and sexually abusing people, is all good and moral. It’s all part of God’s plan, you know.
This attitude, of course, is what distinguishes Christian libertarians from Christian neo-cons. Christian libertarians adhere strictly to God’s commandments, refusing to draw an exception for agents of the U.S. government. Unlike them, we hold that murder is murder, even when committed by agents of the U.S. government. Since the U.S. government had no right to invade Iraq, it had no right to kill any Iraqis, much less a million of them. The same principle holds true with respect to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children killed by the pre-invasion sanctions. The same holds true for the murders, torture, and sex abuse committed by U.S. agents against Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison.
Christian libertarians, unlike Christian neo-cons, do not conflate the American citizenry with the U.S. government. As such, we are capable of recognizing immorality and wrongdoing committed by the U.S. government and we are unafraid to take a stand against it. Unlike the neo-cons, we don’t try to excuse away evil and immorality by claiming that they must be part of God’s plan.
Indeed, unlike the Christian neo-cons we Christian libertarians don’t view the government as an agent of God but instead as simply a bunch of ordinary people who use government force to satisfy their self-interests, including the ever-growing lust for more power and more money.
Suspected US raid in N Pakistan
September 8, 2008| Al Jazeera, Sep 8, 2008 |
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Suspected US drone aircrafts have killed at least three people in a Pakistani village near the Afghan border, witnesses and officials say. A religious school founded by Jalaluddin Haqqani, a Taliban leader, was the apparent target of the attack on Monday in Miranshah, capital of North Waziristan. Witnesses said two unmanned aircraft fired six missiles at the school and nearby houses. Doctors reported thta more than 20 wounded – mostly women and children – were taken to Miranshah’s main hospital. Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder said: “It is not the first time that the madrassa [school] was targeted. In the past, [Pakistani] special forces have gone into the madrassa looking for Haqqani.” Sources have confirmed to Al Jazeera that Haqqani and his son Sirajuddin were not present during the attack, and were most likely in Afghanistan. The attacked school was reported to be mostly empty. Security sources told Al Jazeera that only three foreigners had been inside, confirming they had been killed. Haqqani is a well-known Afghan leader who served as defence minister during the US-led invasion in 2001. He is also a veteran of the Afghan war against the Soviet invasion in the 1970s and 1980s. US-led raids Monday’s raid is the fourth suspected cross-border strike in the rugged tribal region by the US in almost a week. US commandos carried out a brief ground assault in the neighbouring South Waziristan region on Wednesday in what was the first known incursion into Pakistan by US troops since 2001. Pakistani officials said 20 people, including women and children, had been killed in the attack, which drew a furious response from the government. A day later, four suspected Taliban fighers were killed and five wounded in a missile attack in North Waziristan, believed to have been launched by a US drone aircraft. Intelligence officials and witnesses said five people had been killed in another suspected drone attack on Friday but the Pakistan military has denied it. |
INDIA/US: Nuclear Waiver – Blow to Non-Proliferation
September 8, 2008Analysis by Praful Bidwai | Inter-Press Service News, Sep 8, 2008
NEW DELHI, – The special waiver granted to India by the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) from its nuclear trade rules is being seen as a massive setback to the cause of global nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament.
The NSG’s waiver will allow India to resume nuclear commerce with the rest of the world with very few restrictions although India is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has refused to accede to any other agreement for preventing the spread of, reducing the numbers of, or abolishing nuclear weapons.
The 45-nation conglomerate, a private arrangement set up after India’s first nuclear weapons explosion in 1974, turned a full circle at its special meeting in Vienna, on the weekend, the second one in a fortnight, held at the behest of the United States.
The NSG was originally established “to ensure that nuclear trade for peaceful purposes does not contribute to the proliferation of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices”.
But it has now done the very opposite by agreeing to the exceptional waiver for India as part of New Delhi’s controversial nuclear cooperation deal with the U.S. inked three years ago.
Washington hailed the waiver as “historic” and one that would boost nuclear non-proliferation, while New Delhi described the deal as an “important step” towards meeting the challenges of climate change and sustainable development.
Clearly though, the waiver only became possible because of the strong-arm methods used by the U.S. to bludgeon dissenting NSG members into agreeing to the exemption text it had drafted in consultation with India.
Contrary to the claim that the waiver, and more generally, the U.S.-India nuclear deal, will bring India into the global “non-proliferation mainstream” or promote nuclear restraint on India’s part, it will allow India to expand its nuclear weapons arsenal and encourage a nuclear arms race in Asia, particularly in the volatile South Asian subcontinent, where Pakistan emerged as India’s nuclear rival 10 years ago.
The special waiver has been roundly criticised by nuclear disarmament and peace groups throughout the world, including in India.
The waiver, says the U.S.-India Deal Working Group of the disarmament network ‘ABOLITION 2000’, comprising more than 2,000 peace groups worldwide, “creates a dangerous distinction between ‘good’ proliferators and ‘bad’ proliferators and sends out misleading signals to the international community…”
“The exemption” it adds, “will not bring India further into conformity with the non-proliferation behaviour expected of the member-states of the NPT.”
Barring the exceptional situation in which India might conduct another nuclear test, the NSG imposes no significant conditions on nuclear trade with India. Even this condition is not stated up-front, and is mentioned in reference to a general statement by India’s Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Sep. 5, in which he reiterated India’s unilateral and voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing and its non-proliferation commitments.
But a voluntary moratorium can be lifted easily and unilaterally. In any case, it falls short of a legally binding commitment not to test.
India had insisted on a “clean and unconditional” waiver from the NSG, and has very nearly secured it, thanks to the indulgence of the U.S., which proposed the deal in the first place and lobbied hard and furiously for it.
With the waiver under its belt, India can proceed to import uranium fuel, of which it is running short, and a range of other nuclear materials, equipment and technologies for its civilian nuclear programme. But it can divert domestic uranium exclusively for weapons purposes.
“Under the U.S.-India nuclear deal, India signed an agreement to separate its military nuclear facilities from civilian installations and subject some of the latter to safeguards under the International Atomic Energy Agency,” says Achin Vanaik, head of the department of political science at Delhi University, and a national coordination committee member of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (India).
According to Vanaik, India will only put 14 of its 22 operating or planned civilian nuclear reactors under IAEA safeguards, which are meant to ensure that no nuclear material from them is diverted to military purposes. ”But it can use the remaining eight reactors to produce as much plutonium as it likes for its weapons programme.”
According to a report prepared by independent scientists and experts for the International Panel on Fissile Materials two years ago, these eight reactors alone can yield fuel for as many as 40 Nagasaki-type bombs every year.
In addition, India can produce more bomb fuel from its dedicated military nuclear facilities and fast-breeder reactors, which it can maintain and expand.
India accepts no limits or restrictions on the size of its nuclear arsenal and has an ambitious nuclear doctrine under which it continues to stockpile fissile material for weapons use.
The NSG has all but put its imprimatur on India’s nuclear activities which would allow it to expand its arsenal of mass-destruction weapons and thus set a negative example for the rest of the world, in particular, wannabe atomic states.
In the process, says Daryl F. Kimball of the Arms Control Association (U.S.), the NSG has undermined “efforts to contain Iran’s and North Korea’s nuclear programmes, and it will make it nearly impossible to win support for much-needed measures to strengthen the NPT” at its next review conference due in 2010.
The waiver may weaken and harm the NPT itself by aiding the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a country not recognised by it as a nuclear weapons-state, which it explicitly prohibits. Effectively, it expands the Nuclear Club to include a member which has refused to sign the treaty.
Within the NSG, there was a great deal of resistance to the waiver. An earlier meeting of the group, on Aug. 21-22, failed to produce a consensus — necessary for any decision to go through.
The resistance was led by six “like-minded” countries –Austria, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland — which argued that India must accept three conditions in order to resume nuclear trade.
These included a periodic review of compliance with India’s non-proliferation pledges, exclusion from trade of sensitive technologies such as uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing, and cessation of nuclear commerce in case India tests.
In the event, India only accepted the first condition and doggedly refused to go beyond reiterating its unilateral moratorium on testing.
However, on the second day of the NSG meeting, Foreign Minister Mukherjee made a general statement saying that India is opposed to nuclear proliferation, does not subscribe to an arms race, and will behave responsibly as a nuclear weapons-state.
“The statement was inane and dishonest because India initiated and has sustained a nuclear arms race in South Asia,” says M.V. Ramana from the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in the Environment and Development, Banagalore. “It is really a sad commentary on the state of debate at the NSG if such statements actually create what was described by the U.S. delegate as a ‘positive momentum’…”
Eventually, the “positive result” in the form of the waiver was achieved after Mukherjee’s statement effectively split the “like-minded” group and led to the desertion of the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland on the evening of Sep. 5.
Behind the change was crude pressure, blackmail and induced fear of “isolation” on account of antagonising the “emerging power” that is India. The topmost leaders of the U.S., India and their allies worked the telephone lines to mount this pressure.
Kimball said that ‘’it appears as if George Bush and his team engaged in some nasty threats, misinformation about positions, and intimidation, to wear down the core six members … and their allies. You have to assume the conversations among foreign ministers, presidents, and prime ministers didn’t focus on the policy and non-proliferation issues, but raw politics”.
“Another factor,’’ Kimball added, ‘’was the role of Germany, ostensibly the NSG chair. At this meeting, the Germans apparently sat on their thumbs and let the Americans run the show and keep asking for more consultations despite the remaining differences. A more competent and less biased chair would have provided more balance and would have adjourned the meeting Friday night when it was clear there was still disagreement on some fundamental issues…”
China briefly emerged as a supporter of the Group of Six, when it asked that the waiver decision not be rushed. But, say Indian media reports, a critically timed telephone call from Bush to Chinese president Hu Jintao did the trick and China quickly fell in line.
“This was a triumph of crass power politics,” says Vanaik. “It is sad and profoundly disturbing that nobody resisted U.S. or Indian pressure and stood up for elementary principles in a group where even a single member could have blocked the waiver. India’s ‘victory’ is founded on crude muscle power and cynicism, and negates rational, democratic decision-making based on a commitment to making the world a safer place.”
(*IPS correspondent Praful Bidwai is a noted peace activist and co-founder of the Movement in India for Nuclear Disarmament (MIND), based in New Delhi.)
Antiwar March Ends In Tense Standoff, 396 Arrests
September 6, 2008The final night of the convention led to confrontations between police and protesters. At least 396 people were arrested, an official said this morning.
Police arrested scores more people Thursday night after another series of tense showdowns with protesters on the final night of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.
![[Police push people back after a person was arrested during a protest at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., Thursday, Sept. 4, 2008. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)]](https://i0.wp.com/www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/police.jpg "police.jpg")
Police push people back after a person was arrested during a protest at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., Thursday, Sept. 4, 2008. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)Sweeping into the State Capitol grounds in riot gear, police used snowplows, horses and dump trucks to seal off downtown from antiwar demonstrators attempting a march to the Xcel Energy Center.
“They chose not to leave when told to do so and now everyone’s paying the price,” said one officer on the scene.
This morning, the Joint Information Center said 396 people were arrested during Thursday’s demonstrations, and a total of 818 people were arrested during the four-day convention. The numbers are preliminary; an official count will be released later today, said a spokeswoman for the center, which has been providing information about arrests and security during the convention.
Most of those arrested were ticketed and released, the spokeswoman said.
Thursday night, as police blocked off bridges to stop demonstrators from getting downtown, a rolling series of sit-down protests started on the John Ireland Boulevard bridge over Interstate 94. The arrests ended with more than 200 demonstrators, squatting with their hands on their heads, taken into custody on the Marion Street bridge.
Police used tear gas and pepper spray to quell some of the unrest.
A group of more than 700 demonstrators had a permit to rally and march. But they were angry the permit expired at 5 p.m., before delegates began arriving at the Xcel Energy Center for GOP presidential nominee John McCain’s acceptance speech.
Among those arrested were two Associated Press reporters covering the event. They were issued a citation and detained, along with a KARE-11 TV photographer and more than a dozen other members of the media. All were released later in the evening.
“They’re trying to steal our protest — we have to ignore the police intimidation,” Katrina Plotz, an organizer with the Anti-War Committee, hollered from a stage in front of the Capitol steps.
But ignoring the police wasn’t easy during one of the largest shows of force on the fifth straight day of confrontations in St. Paul.
Pakistan anxious as Zardari poised for presidency
September 5, 2008Swissinfo.org, September 4, 2008 – 10:48 AM
By Zeeshan Haider
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistani legislators are set to elect as president the late Benazir Bhutto’s controversial widower Asif Ali Zardari on Saturday, making a choice many Pakistanis see leading to a fresh phase of political instability.
His wife’s assassination last December and the victory of her grieving party in a February election has catapulted Zardari to the top in Pakistan’s switch to civilian-led democracy after nine years under former army chief and president, Pervez Musharraf.
The presidential vote is a three-way contest, but Zardari’s party and its allies have a clear majority among lawmakers in the two-chamber parliament and four provincial legislatures that make up the electoral college.
Desperate for stability in a nuclear-armed Muslim state whose cooperation is key to victory over al Qaeda and the success of the West’s mission in Afghanistan, the United States is counting on Zardari to keep Pakistan committed to the war on terrorism.
“I will work to defeat the domestic Taliban insurgency and to ensure that Pakistan territory is not used to launch terrorist attacks on our neighbours or on NATO forces in Afghanistan,” Zardari said in an article in the Washington Post on Thursday.
The United States doesn’t trust his chief rival Nawaz Sharif, fearing he could pander to Islamists.
The dangers that lie ahead were underscored on Wednesday by an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, a Zardari nominee, that the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for.
IMAGE PROBLEMS
Zardari’s been called a crook, a liar, and held in widespread disdain, and there have even been doubts raised about his mental fitness after the rigours of 11 years spent in jail.
Loyalists say the allegations were politically motivated and powerful media groups were smearing Zardari’s image, while favouring Sharif, the prime minister Musharraf overthrew in 1999.
“No one challenges his democratic credentials as head of an elected party, but the personal credibility of Mr. Zardari has become a serious issue,” wrote Shaheen Sehbai, editor of the Jang Group of Newspapers, Pakistan’s largest newspaper group, in The News daily last week.
Zardari’s hesitancy to bring back judges Musharraf dismissed because of fears they could revive corruption cases against him, has not built confidence.
Zardari, who was investment minister in the second government of his slain wife, was released after an eight-year stretch in 2004, but he has never been convicted.
Charges against him and Bhutto were dropped last year under an amnesty introduced by Musharraf for politicians and civil servants as part of an attempt to cut a deal with Bhutto.
The Bush Administration Is an Ongoing Criminal Conspiracy Under International Law and U.S. Domestic Law
September 4, 2008|
by Prof. Francis A. Boyle
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Justice Robert H. Jackson Conference:
Planning for the Prosecution of High Level American War Criminals
Massachusetts Law School
September 13-14, 2008
Andover, Massachusetts
Since the impeachable installation of George W. Bush as President in January of 2001 by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Gang of Five, the peoples of the world have witnessed a government in the United States that has demonstrated little if any respect for fundamental considerations of international law, human rights, and the United States Constitution.
What the world has watched instead is a comprehensive and malicious assault upon the integrity of the international and domestic legal orders by a group of men and women who are thoroughly Machiavellian and Straussian in their perception of international relations and in their conduct of both foreign policy and domestic affairs. Even more seriously, in many instances specific components of the Bush administration’s foreign policies constitute ongoing criminal activity under well-recognized principles of both international law and U.S. domestic law, and in particular the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles, as well as the Pentagon’s own U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 on The Law of Land Warfare (1956), all of which apply to President Bush himself as Commander-in-Chief of United States Armed Forces under Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution.
Depending upon the substantive issues involved, those international crimes typically include but are not limited to the Nuremberg offenses of crimes against peace: For example, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and perhaps their longstanding threatened wars of aggression against Iran and now Pakistan. Their criminal responsibility also concerns Nuremberg crimes against humanity and war crimes as well as grave breaches of the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and of the 1907 Hague Regulations on land warfare: For example, torture at Guantanamo, Bhagram, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere; enforced disappearances, assassinations, murders, kidnappings, extraordinary renditions, “shock and awe,” depleted uranium, white phosphorous, cluster bombs, Fallujah, and the Gitmo kangaroo courts.
Furthermore, various members of the Bush administration have committed numerous inchoate crimes incidental to these substantive offences that under the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles as well as paragraph 500 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 are international crimes in their own right: planning and preparation—which they are currently doing today against Iran and Pakistan—solicitation, incitement, conspiracy, complicity, attempt, aiding and abetting.
Finally, according to basic principles of international criminal law set forth in paragraph 501 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, all high level civilian officials and military officers in the U.S. government who either knew or should have known that soldiers or civilians under their control (such as the C.I.A. or private contractors), committed or were about to commit international crimes and failed to take the measures necessary to stop them, or to punish them, or both, are likewise personally responsible for the commission of international crimes.
At the very top of America’s criminal chain-of-command are President Bush and Vice-President Cheney; former U.S. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld; Rumsfeld’s Deputy Paul Wolfowitz; Secretary of State Rice; former Director of National Intelligence Negroponte; National Security Advisor Hadley; his Deputy Elliot Abrams; former U.S. Attorneys General Ashcroft and Gonzales, criminally responsible for the torture campaign launched by the Bush Jr. administration; and the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staffs along with the appropriate Regional Commanders-in-Chief, especially for U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).
These U.S. government officials and their immediate subordinates are responsible for the commission of crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes as specified by the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles as well as by U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10. Today in international legal terms, the Bush Jr. administration itself should now be viewed as constituting an ongoing criminal conspiracy under international criminal law and U.S. domestic law because of its formulation and undertaking of serial wars of aggression, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in violation of the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles that are legally akin to those perpetrated by the former Nazi regime in Germany.
Of course the terrible irony of today’s situation is that six decades ago at Nuremberg the U.S. government participated in the prosecution, punishment and execution of Nazi government officials for committing some of the same types of heinous international crimes that the members of the Bush administration currently inflict upon people all over the world. To be sure, I personally oppose the imposition of capital punishment upon any human being for any reason no matter how monstrous their crimes, whether they be Bush Jr., Tony Blair, or Saddam Hussein.
As a consequence, American citizens possess the basic right under international law and United States domestic law, including the U.S. Constitution, to engage in acts of civil resistance designed to prevent, impede, thwart, or terminate ongoing criminal activities perpetrated by Bush administration officials in their conduct of foreign affairs policies and military operations purported to relate to defense and counter-terrorism. Today’s civil resisters are the sheriffs! The Bush administration officials are the outlaws!
We American citizens must reaffirm our commitment to the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles by holding our government officials fully accountable under international law and U.S. domestic law for the commission of such grievous international and domestic crimes. We must not permit any aspect of our foreign affairs and defense policies to be conducted by acknowledged “war criminals” according to the U.S. government’s own official definitions of that term as set forth in the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles, U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, the U.S. War Crimes Act, the Four Geneva Conventions and the Hague Regulations. The American people must insist upon the impeachment, dismissal, resignation, indictment, conviction, and long-term incarceration of all U.S. government officials guilty of such heinous international and domestic crimes. If not so restrained, the Bush administration could very well precipitate a Third World War.
In this regard, during the course of an October 17, 2007 press conference, President Bush Jr. terrorized the entire world with the threat of World War III if he could not work his illegal will upon Iran. It is my opinion that the Bush administration is fully prepared to use tactical nuclear weapons against Muslim and Arab states and peoples in order to break the taboo of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the terrible tragedy of September 11, 2001 the United States of America has vilified and demonized Muslims and Arabs almost to the same extent that America inflicted upon the Japanese and Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor. As the Nazis had previously demonstrated with respect to the Jews, a government must first dehumanize and scapegoat a race of people before its citizens will tolerate if not approve their elimination: witness Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In post -9/11 America we are directly confronted with the prospect of a nuclear war of extermination conducted by our White Racist Judeo-Christian Power Elite against Peoples of Color in the Muslim and Arab worlds in order to steal their oil and gas. The Crusades all over again. But this time nuclear Armageddon stares all of humankind right in the face!
We American lawyers must be inspired by the stunning example set by those heroic Pakistani lawyers who led the successful struggle against the brutal Bush-supported Musharraf military dictatorship in Pakistan. We American lawyers must now lead the fight against the Bush dictatorship and empire! This is our Nuremberg Moment!
Thank you.
Francis A. Boyle is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Francis A. Boyle
Pakistan reacts with fury after up to 20 die in ‘American’ attack on its soil
September 4, 2008· Raid was gross violation, says foreign ministry
- The Guardian, Thursday September 4 2008
Relations have become increasingly fraught between the US and Pakistan, which is struggling to control Islamist militants. Photograph: John Moore/EPA
The war in Afghanistan spilled over on to Pakistani territory for the first time yesterday when heavily armed commandos, believed to be US Special Forces, landed by helicopter and attacked three houses in a village close to a known Taliban and al-Qaida stronghold.
The surprise attack on Jala Khel was launched in early morning darkness and killed between seven and 20 people, according to a range of reports from the remote Angoor Adda region of South Waziristan. The village is situated less than one mile from the Afghan border.
Local residents were quoted as saying that most of the dead were civilians and included women and children. It was not known whether any Taliban or al-Qaida militants or western forces were among the dead.
Furious official Pakistani condemnation of the attack followed swiftly, amid growing concern that the Nato-led war against the Taliban in Afghanistan could spread to Pakistan, sparking a region-wide conflagration.
Owais Ahmed Ghanisaid, the governor of North-West Frontier province, adjoining South Waziristan, said 20 people had died and called for retaliation. “This is a direct assault on the sovereignty of Pakistan and the people of Pakistan expect that the armed forces … would rise to defend the sovereignty of the country and give a befitting reply,” he said.
The foreign ministry in Islamabad termed the incursion “a gross violation of Pakistan’s territory” and a “grave provocation” which, it said, had resulted in “immense” loss of civilian life.
“Such actions are counterproductive and certainly do not help our joint efforts to fight terrorism. On the contrary, they may fuel the fire of hatred and violence we are trying to extinguish.”
“This is a very alarming and very dangerous development,” said a former senior Pakistani official. “We have absolutely been telling them [the US] not to do this but they ignored us.”
US and Nato commanders say Taliban and al-Qaida fighters use the unruly, semi-autonomous tribal areas of Pakistan to stage attacks on coalition forces inside Afghanistan and create “safe havens” where they are immune from attack. Nato and civilian casualties in Afghanistan have reached record levels in the past 12 months in the face of a spreading Taliban offensive.
US forces have used missile-carrying drones – unmanned aerial vehicles – to attack militant targets inside Pakistan in the past. But yesterday’s assault, involving up to three helicopters and infantry commandos, marked the first time the fight has been taken directly to the enemy on Pakistani soil.
Major-General Athar Abbas, a spokesman for the Pakistan army, said Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) had carried out the raid. “Two helicopters of Isaf landed very early in the morning and conducted a raid on a compound there. As per our report, seven civilians were killed in this raid.”
But a Nato spokesman denied involvement. “There has been no Nato or Isaf involvement crossing the border into Pakistan,” a Nato spokesman, James Appathurai, said. There were unconfirmed reports that the incursion was carried out by US Special Forces, which are not under Isaf command and can operate independently. A US military spokesman at the Bagram base near Kabul did not deny an attack had occurred but declined to comment.
Tensions between Pakistan’s new civilian government and the US have been running high following American accusations that rogue elements in Pakistan’s top spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, were feeding classified information on coalition troops to Taliban fighters. Washington has also repeatedly accused Islamabad of failing to do enough to curb militant activity.
The strains have been exacerbated by a political crisis in Pakistan following last month’s forced resignation of President Pervez Musharraf and the collapse of a power-sharing agreement between the ruling Pakistan People’s party (PPP) and Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister. An election to find a replacement for Musharraf is scheduled for Saturday, with the PPP chairman, Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto’s widower, expected to win.
In a further sign of instability, militants opened fire yesterday on prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s car, in an apparent assassination attempt, near Islamabad. The assailants, firing from a roadside embankment, hit the driver’s side window twice. Gilani was not in the car at the time.
Today he was due to meet David Cameron, the Conservative leader, who is visiting Pakistan.
Peace and Justice Post 
BOOKS-US: “A Policy of Deliberate Cruelty”
September 11, 2008By Mark Weisenmiller | Inter-Press Service News
TAMPA, Florida, Sep 10 (IPS) – Perhaps the most thorough and informative book about the George W. Bush administration’s approval of the use of torture and “extraordinary renditions” of alleged terrorists to third countries has continued to stay on bestseller lists.
First published in July, “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals” (Doubleday) by Jane Mayer is still listed among the top 10 nonfiction best-selling books of 2008 by The New York Times.
In the book, Mayer, a reporter for The New Yorker magazine, shows in detail how high-level officials of the Bush administration, particularly in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, took advantage of the fear and paranoia that gripped the country after the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001 to launch “an ideological trench war” and “a policy of deliberate cruelty that would’ve been unthinkable on Sept. 10”.
While Bush supported the overall strategy, he was almost a minor player, Mayer reports. “President Bush is not typically interested in fine details. He left those to others in the formation of the military commissions, and other areas,” she told IPS.
Arguably, the two administration officials whose post-9/11 policy decisions are most responsible for leaving the United States’ “reputation as a lead defender of democracy and human rights…in tatters”, in Mayer’s words, were Cheney and his Chief of Staff David Addington, whom Mayer notes the vice president came to rely on heavily for legal advice in prosecuting the “war on terror”.
In June this year, Addington was subpoenaed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee — along with former Justice Department attorney John Yoo — about detainee treatment, interrogation methods and the limits of executive authority.
Mayer, who was in the room when Addington testified, said “I…was struck by his utter contempt for both the Congressional panel that was quizzing him, and the gathering press.”
“He evidently thought that hauteur was the way to win the day, which was another example of his astoundingly poor political sense…I think at the moment, it’s a stretch to think that there is the necessary political will to prosecute top administration figures like Addington, who could argue that they were simply doing what they thought was necessary to protect the country.”
Regarding Cheney, she writes in “The Dark Side” that the vice president lived in such a state of anxiety after the 9/11 attacks that “…he was chauffeured in an armoured motorcade that varied its route to foil possible attackers. On the back seat behind Cheney rested a duffle bag stocked with a gas mask and a biochemical survival suit.”
Mayer asked repeatedly to interview Addington and Cheney and was refused. A one-paragraph statement by the CIA, regarding the conduct of its agents in the interrogation of alleged terrorists, is on the last page of “The Dark Side”.
However, she did manage to interview hundreds of sources in and around the Bush White House, as well as sources from the Red Cross, compiling a grim picture of interrogation and abuse of prisoners in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.
The book describes the use of alleged forms of torture by members of a little-known U.S. military programme called SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape). It also explores the CIA’s hiring of psychologists of questionable abilities and morals, who proceeded to encourage the use of interrogation methods that were created decades ago, ironically enough by the former Soviet Union’s KGB secret police agency, and points out how essentially no piece of relevant information has ever resulted from such interrogations.
Mayer also looks at renditions, the transfer of suspected terrorists by U.S. authorities, mainly the CIA, to countries known to employ harsh interrogation techniques and torture. Asked if she believed that renditions were still being done by U.S. government agents, even though the practice has now been exposed by the world’s media, Mayer told IPS, “After the bad publicity surrounding them, there is likely a greater effort to ensure that they (U.S. government agencies) are not ‘rendering’ mistaken suspects, or sending them to be tortured, in contravention of the law, but the programme exists in a classified realm where this is hard to determine.”
Among the many disturbing incidents recounted in the book is the last night of Manadel al-Jamadi.
He was an Iraqi suspect who was detained outside of Baghdad at approximately four a.m. local time on Nov. 4, 2003. “An hour later, he was dead. An autopsy performed by military pathologists classified his death as a homicide,” writes Mayer.
She goes on to report that “Jamadi was driven first to an Army base for debriefing, where the (U.S. Navy special forces unit) SEALs punched, kicked, and struck him with their rifle muzzles for some 20 minutes.” Jamadi was later interrogated by CIA operatives at Abu Ghraib prison, where he was hung up by his wrists, and subsequently killed.
Eight members of the SEALs platoon received administrative punishment for abuse of al-Jamadi and other prisoners, but Mark Swanner, the CIA interrogator, has faced no charges.
“I hope readers (of “The Dark Side”) come away with a vivid sense of how far from American traditions the Bush administration strayed in choosing to set aside the rule of law, in it’s approach to the war on terror,” noted Mayer. “There have been other lapses in the past, but as Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the late presidential historian told me ‘Nothing has hurt America more (in the world) ever.’.”
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Tags:Bush administration, Dick Cheney, Jane Mayer, John Yoo, Manadel al-Jamadi, renditions, SERE and torture, The Dark Side, United States, war on terror
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