There are parallels between Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King, and he is a just example of someone the Mexican-American community should honor, however he was not viewed as perfect by all persons.
For example, he had a policy during a period of time in his early years of reporting to the Immigration and Naturalization Service undocumented aliens who refused to join his union or who broke strikes. The INS is widely regarded as disliked by immigrants, primarily those of latin extraction, for heavy-handed tactics.
Chavez also met with ardently embraced Fiipino President Ferdinand Marcos and endorsed his regime - which drew fire from human rights activists.
Also, produce growers from California had their labor costs skyrocket due to wage increases brought about from unionization and had to deal with other labor rights being asserted via union grievances - although migrant farm workers clearly often suffered from substandard working conditions which were ameliorated by United Farm Workers' union advocacy.
If Obama had gone to Gaza and met with Ismail Haniyeh, this would have made a political statememt as President Clinton did 15 years earlier when he went to Gaza and inaugurated the Gaza International Airport.
Clinton also exhibited genuine concern over the welfare of the Gazans when he phoned condolences to the father of Muhammad Al-Durra while expressing his anger over the incident with the prime minister of Israel.
Both Clinton and Jimmy Carter have made far more inroads in their criticism of Israel over Gaza than Obama ever will.
There is a difference between manipulation and leadership.
When Obama was first elected, he made a riveting speech in which he called Hamas a prospective negotiating partner and urged persons to lay down their prejudices. This was well-received among a large segment of Arabs in the U.S. and worldwide.
I remember being at an executive session of a Republican Party meting and a Jewish-American leader was visbly upset and asked to address the group and severely criticized that speech of Obama just hours after it was given.
Obama, however, has not done much in the four years to promote peace in the region other than his role in the Operation Pillar of Defense peace negotiations in tandem with President Morsi tn order to stop bloodshed. He has reinforced the unacceptable status quo and only lukewarmly opposed the prospective Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
An Israeli consul general a few months back addressed a group of Jewish students at University of Michigan and assured them that, while there will be a significant pullback of Israeli troops in the West Bank as part of a permanent peace agreement, it will be nowhere near the pre-1967 borders and Palestinians will be forced to accept it either through "respect or fear"(The Michigan Daily covered this speech and that is an exact quote).
The Israeli plan described above, closely resembles the plan for Bophutswana in South Africa that was considered by most observers to be a joke - a non-contiguous cluster of Arab population center "islands" with outlying areas and Jewish settlements under unfettered IDF control.
The surprise strength center-left showing in the recent Knesset elections is partially attributable to people like Arab MK Hanan Zoabi who urged Israeli Arabs to go out and vote. The fact Tel Aviv residents were hiding in bomb shelters as missiles from Gaza were fired on the city and Tel Aviv suffered a bus bombing did not help PM Netanyahu.
It is my belief that the center-left leaders of Israeli politics and moderate elements of Palestinian leadership must be successful in changing attitudes among their respetive constituency in order for ny lasting peace agreement to be achieved and ultimmately work.
".....September 16th will be the sixth annniversary of the moment when Blackwater guards fora convoy of State U.S. Department vehicles sprayed Baghdad's Nisour Square with bullets, evidently without provocation, killing 17 Iraqi civilans and wounding many more...."
There are Blackwater afficianados who wax nostalgiac over the contractor's epochal past and wish to relive those fond memories of service in Iraq.
"Blackwater is back!" is the new motto of the company marketing T-shirts, sweaters, electronic equipment with the legendary Blackwater logo.
Like AIPAC, there is a Yemeni equivalent - YAPAC - the Yemeni-American Public Affairs Council, based in Dearborn, Michigan. Their website is http://www.yapac.org.
YAPAC has assisted in getting Yemeni-Americans get elected to public office in Metro Detroit, but is a national organization. Major politicians like U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow have addressed their meetings. They endorsed President Obama in 2012.
While the Hariri Center's effrts are clearly laudable, YAPAC's contributions to the advocacy of Yemeni interests are also substantial.
The "Civil Administration" administers the West Bank; its is a subdivision of the Israeli Defense Ministry that basically orders around Palestinians by regulating their conduct via travel permits, building permits and the like.
Before the Palestinian Authority was created it had much broader powers. However this Civil Administration is completely autocratical and its orders are enforced by IDF soldiers. It goes to Arab residences and notifies occupants that their home will be demolished in 15 minutes while IDF soldiers brandishing rifles stand behind the CA representative.
The Civil Administration is headed by an Israeli general and its geographic subdivisions are led by IDF brigade commanders. Arab civilians have no say in the rules, orders regulations and how they are enforced. Military tribunals are administered by the IDF to prosecute Arabs for serious crimes but Jewish settlers have access to civilan courts within Israel.
The Gazans threw off the yoke of the Civil Administration and martial law by inducing PM Sharon to withdraw in 2005.
Probably less than 1% of all Americans have ever heard of the Civil Administration or understans how it operates, but the Israel Lobby and ourAmerican media surely inundate our airwaves with broadcasts on the "terrorist acts" committed by Palestinians in resistance of the imposition of the Civil Administration.
Dissolve the Civil Administration and violence in the West Bank will drop off dramatically.
According to the relevant Wikipedia pages, the Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewry residing in Israel is about 1.4 million each with widely varying estimates of Ashkenazi Jewish population at between 2.8 and 4 million. Palestinian Israelis number about 1.6 million, or slightly more than 20% of Israel's population of 7.9 million.
About 23% of the exodus of the Jews from the East into Israel in 1948 came from Iraq. The Iraqi persecution of its Jews has been extreme since 1948 and less than 100 reside in Iraq today, although about 11,000 live in Iran, and tiny Jewish communities exist in Lebanon and Syria. The Royal Air Force's Eagle Squadron in 1948 tranported significant numbers of Yemen's Jewish population into Israel. A number of Yemeni-Americans had confirmed to me in the 1990s that there are still substantial numbers of Jews within Yemen - they are known for their thriving involvement in the Yemeni business community.
The salient aspect of Israeli society is its social stratification of Jewry. The Ashkenazi Jews have largely controlled the political, military and commercial aspects of Israeli society since its inception. The Ashkenazi and Sepharadim had social conflicts in the first ten years of Israel's existence, especially in such areas as Haifa.
The massive influx of Jewish immigration into Israel from the former Soviet republics following the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 has bolstered the right-wing political parties within Israel and a large number have settled in the West Bank.
Former Israeli President Moshe Katsav was one of the few Mizrahi Jews to hold high office in Isarel and some blame his sexual asssault conviction and prison sentence on prejudice against Mizrahi Jews. Shaul Mofaz, former defense minister, was a Mizrahi Jew from Iran and Amir Peretz a Sephardic Jew from Morocco - he served as defense minister during the Second Lebanon War. Peretz was a Labor Party liberal with a background in the Histadrut labor union and he spearheaded the appointing of the first Arab cabinet minister.
Less than a half a dozen Knesset members have been American-born since Israel's inception - one being the slain Rabbi Meir Kahane.
"....Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who was blown up in his wheelchair after morning prayers..."
The death of Sheikh Yassin resulted in the Dow Jones Index dropping 137 points the following day. Israel's own anti-terrorism experts opined that the killing would result in Hamas' more moderate political wing losing influence to its military leaders and also leading to greater cohesion and coordination between Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups. All this occurred. Certain Palestinian-Americans felt the Sheikh's killing would galvanize Gazans into mre strident resistance; this happened as well.
Yassin's death created a spike of terrorist and militant activity in Gaza that resulted in increased casualties being sustained by the IDf ans settlers in that area. About a year later Ariel Sharon's historic disengagement from Gaza occurred.
The Council on Foreign Relations journal "Foreign Affairs" had an article in the 1990s that described the unregulated flow of small arms in the black market as a major source of terrorism, insurrection, and other unwanted violence in the world.
The international black market for small arms is lucrative and the most effective way to combat situations such like that which has occurred in southern Libya is implementing a program that makes it worthwhile for those who have these weapons to turn them into the government in exchange for financial incentives.
".....one of the more effective elements in the resistance is Jabhat al-Nusra, and radical fundamental offshoot in some ways of the 'Islamic State of Iraq' terrorist group."
Earlier in 2012 it had been estimated that Jabhat al-Nusra, composed of a significant number of foreign fighters - mostly from Iraq had fighters totalling only several hundred; however David Ignatius, in his November 30,2012 article "Al-Qaeda Affiliate Playing Larger Role in Syrian Rebellion", reported in the Washington Post, estimated the number of men under arms of that group at 5,000-10,000 as of that juncture.
There is also the jihadist fighting organization operating in Syria known as Ghuraba al-Sham, "Strangers of the Levant" which is composed primarily of Turks but also has members from former Soviet bloc countries.
The other significant Salafist group fighting the Baathists in Syria is Harakat Ahrar al-Sham Al Islami ("Islamic Movement of the Free Men of Greater Syria") numbering about 500 men which was founded by former political prisoners within Syria.
By comparison, the general consensus is that the Free Syrian Army now fields about 100,000 fighters.
A key question is where are these jihadist entities getting their funding and arms supplies from? The CIA reportedly is trying to ensure that these groups do not receive weaponry and ammunition, but it is clear that they are getting support from somewhere and their ranks are growing despite the fact the Syrian populace and the Syrian National Coalition has mixed feelings about whether these jihadists' efforts are welcome and also whether they should be included as part of any future post-Assad Syrian interim government.
What is hypocritical behavior by Obama is denouncing the four rockets that struck the Israeli city of Sderot. This attack had nothing to do with Hamas or Fatah but was perpetrated by an al-Qaeda-linked splinter group that enjoys little support among Gazans. No one was killed or wounded in the attacks and the only damage was to the wall of a house and some broken windows. Israel retaliated by limiting the ability of Gazan fisherman to fish offshore.
Mr. Obama, during Operation Pillar of Defense, made no comment, nor did our State Department when 12 persons were killed by an Israel Air Force bombing - 10 from the al-Dalu family. The killings were denounced throughout the world.
Israel initially stated that the head of the Hamas rocket program was killed in the strike; they later admitted that the person in question was likely not wounded in the bombing. They later identified a police officer of the al-Dalu family as a terrorist figure even though neighbors in Gaza dispued this.
Human Rights Watch pressed the Israel Defense Forces for proof that the cited member of the al-Dalu clan was a terrorist - however the IDF ignored the request. Human rights organizations around the globe denounced the incident as a war crime. The New York Times was critical of Israel's role in the episode, citing expressions worldwide condemnation over the deaths.
The al-Dalu family tragedy was largely forgotten in the media after a few weeks. The Obama administration never addressed it and now has more concerns over a damaged wall and some broken windows in Israel than the deaths of twelve innocent Gazans last November.
Is this the proper response of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate? Can we compare him to Martin Luther King or Ralph Bunche?
Operation Rolling Thunder in Vietnam was considered to be largely ineffectual at damaging the military-industrial infrastructure of North Vietnam. The severe limitation was the lack of precision of U.S. Air Force bombing operations -which at that juncture were jet fighters reconfigured as bomberssuch as the F-4 Phantom, F-5 Freedom Fighter and the F-86 Super Sabres. B-52s were used sparingly and well away from North Vietnamese population centers.
The two phases of Operation Linebacker in 1972 gave the Air Force a certain sense of success with its laser-guided "smart bombs" making precision strikes on bridges, buildings, POL storage tanks and other areas throughout the North, including Hanoi and Haiphong. B-52s were unleashed in round-the-clock raids from Guam to strike Hanoi, although Russian SAMs shot down a number of these heavy bombers. The air force of North Vietnam retreated into China and complete air supremacy was achieved by the Air Force before the time a truce was reached. More damage was inflicted by American bombers in two weeks than had been acomplished in the preceding seven years. One North Vietnamese leader later admitted that the intense bombing caused the North to enter a truce to avoid national suicide.
Operation Linebacker set the tone on how aerial warfare should be implemented. The aerial bombardments the Israeli Air Force has used against Lebanon and Gaza had inflicted heavy losses upon those areas with few casualties by the air crews. Same with the U.S. Air Force in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and in both Iraq conflicts. Air power was the centerpiece of those Israeli and American operations.
There is no doubt that air forces of the U.S. and Israel have been highly successful at strategic bombing with comparatively few casualties of their respective personnel. These modes of air operations can usually quickly subjugate hostile states that have little air defense capability - such as in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Gaza, and Lebanon.
President Clinton in 1998 visited Gaza to inaugurate the Gaza International Airport (later blown to smithereens)and later, after Muhammad Al-Durra was killed by the IDF in Gaza, called his father to convey condolemnces.
President Obama's failure to travel to Gaza was disappointing.
Th embargo of Gaza is the key issue that prevents peace in that region. Jimmy Carter recognized this. It violates international law and is intended to inflict hardship upon Gazans for electing Hamas as their government leadership.
The embargo is what has caused rockets to be fired into Israel from Gaza. The rockets caused Israel to embark on Operation Cast Lead. The embargo was also a point of negotiations in the Gilad Shalit affair. One of the reasons that Hamas agreed to a truce with Israel to cease rocket fire in Novemeber of 2012 was due to the promise that the embargo would be lifted to some degree with a gradual lessening of that blockade and fishermen could operate offshore to a greater extent.
After Operation Cast Lead, the world community donated $4.4 billion to rebuild Gaza; $1 billion of that total was from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and $900 million was from the U.S. government. Those needed construction materials have been largely been barred from entering Gaza due to the Israeli blockade.
One IDF soldier who fought in Gaza was interviewed after the operation and said that he was aware that huge amounts of international aid would be directed into Gaza and he was also aware that Hamas militants were well-hidden in miles of tunnels underneath Gaza beyond the reach of the Israel Defense Forces but that the IDF troops did not want to return afterwards for a new conflict. The naval blockade and embargo enforced by Israel effectively is to prevent Gazans from being rewarded from being attacked in Operation Cast Lead.
The writer speaks of George W. Bush in his visit to Dearborn.
Many Iraqi exiles in Michigan joined the efforts of the Iraqi National Congress, which was created and funded by the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency at the behest of Pres. George H.W. Bush to foment the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime.
Iraqi attitudes about U.S. involvement in Iraq are widely varied. Many saw the U.S. as needed to overthrow Hussein. The Shi'ites and Kurds in Iraq virtually begged the U.S. to intervene militarily on their respective behalfs in 1991 to remove Hussein from power. Without the U.S. assistance, brutal retribution was carried out against these groups.
Hussein's sadistic and violent internal security forces supressed any type of possible anti-government conduct. One popular Shi'ite imam was killed by having his forehead pop riveted. Ayatollah Ali Sistani had his home machine-gunned. These acts were by the Iraqi security forces under the Baathists. One former security agent testified that he would torture detainees on behalf of Saddam's regime by using a pair of pliers on the inside of these detainees' mouths. Saddam's regime committed crimes against humanity at Halabja by using nerve gas there against the Kurds and committed many other atrocities. One by-product of this internal repression was sectarian violence was kept to a minimum. Hussein skimmed billions of dollars of oil revenues that could have been used to improve the plight of Iraqis and brought upon sanctions upon Iraq by his imprudent conduct. The Baathists were the worst nightmare of the Iraqi people.
Incidents like the Abu Ghraib abuses and the Abeer Qasim Hamza gang rape and murder are undoubtedly true and painful episodes in Iraqi-U.S. relations. However, most U.S. Armed Forces members serving in Iraq did so with honor and dignity and are proud of their contributions to that nation. Al-Qaeda affiliates in Iraq and other extremists, such as Ansar al-Islam have been largely eradicated within Iraq.
Persecution against Kurds, Jews, and Chaldeans have long historical roots within Iraq and predate American military involvement. There are likely less than 100 Jews in Iraq - many have relocated to Israel since 1948 - and the Chaldean community that has settled in America, almost all, have no intention of returning.
One thing that I have noticed in Metro Detoit thae last few decades has been the closing of many Roman Catholic churches, however at the same time Iraqi Catholic-rite (Chaldean) churches are being constructed.
Much of the problems within Iraq have been a by-product of a freely-elected government and a free society. America has not been perfect, but a geat deal of the violent acts arise inherently from the sectarian nature of Iraqi society.
The Knesset Central Elections Committee has - via its right-wing extremist members - attempted to erase Arab presence in the Knesset.
In 2009, the committee voted to disqualify the Arab List political party ticket from running in the Knesset elections by equating their criticism of Israel with being subversive conduct - however the Israeli Supreme Court reversed that edict by a 9-1 margin.
In the last Knesset election, MK Haneen Zoabi, an Arab from Nazareth, was disqualified by that committee by holding that she encouraged terrorism and refused to acknowledge Israel's existence as a Jewish state. The Israel Supreme Court unanimously overturned the committee ruling and Ms. Zoabi was seated.
Currently, the Knesset is considering a vote that would bar the Israel Supreme Court from judicial review of its decisions - it is being hailed as the future "Zoabi Law". There is no constitution in Israel and hence, no immutable right to judicial review of legislative decisions. The "Basic Law" governs the organization and operation of the Israeli government and is, in a general sense, subject to amendment by the Knesset.
The Israeli far right is clearly overreaching in its attempts to remove Palestinian representation in the Knesset. However, if judicial review of such committee decisions occurs, we may stop seeing Arab representation in the Knesset.
Obama is a second-term president who can embark on whatever agenda he wants without fear of retribution by any segment of voters or the Israel Lobby - although the Democratic Party may be held accountable.
Looks like he will place Israel-Palestine issues on the proverbial back burner. China-U.S. relations - especially trade matters - will be the focus of his foreign policy.
Important thing to note about Israel's ongoing occupation - it is and has been very expensive.
The Second Lebanon War and the Operation Cast Lead incursion cost Israel billions of dollars. The Israeli government has had to scavenge from social programs in order to pay for defense costs associated with occupation as well as administering areas of the West Bank. This does not include property damage and lost productivity from opposing forces rockets and other war materiel.
Noteworthy is the social protests in Israel led by Daphni Leef, who signed a pledge not to serve in the Israeli military and has not served. Hundreds of thousands have appeared at her demonstrations where she has denounced the victimization of the Israeli government of various strata of Israeli society - specifically citing Bedouin Arabs and others. The leftist Hadash and Meretz parties have endorsed her movement. Leef's movement got started over the housing crisis when she pitched a tent across the street from the Prime Minister's office in protest.
The miltary adventurism of Israel has been expensive and has undercut the standard of living for the average Israeli.
Iraqi Christians (Chaldeans) have comprised in recent years about 3% of the Iraqi population. They have been targeted for various types of violence due to their religious affiliation, which has accelerated the departure of many to the United States and Europe.
In Metro Detroit, however, there are about 100,000 persons of Iraqi ancestry who reside in that area. Likely about 90% are Chaldean and the rest Islamic. Before the Persian Gulf War almost all persons of Iraqi descent in Metro Detroit were Christian and that war resulted in a number of Iraqi Shi'ite exiles coming to the area some stayed after the fall of Saddam Hussein and some went back to Iraq.
Metro Detroit's Chaldean community dates back to the early part of the 20th century with a spike in immigration in the 1960s and 70s but a staedy stream still is coming in from Iraq to this day. These Chaldeans have, for the most part, assimilated into American society and a significant number have been elected or appointed to many governmental offices in the state judiciary and legislature in Michigan - many are also small business owners. This Chaldean community is very unlikely to return to Iraq - unlike the Shi'ites who did return in significant numbers and many of those were active in the Iraqi National Congress that had been backed by the State Departemnt and Central Intelligence Agency as a sort of government-in-exile.
"The U.S. permanently lost its chance for a two-state solution."
One of the promises of the Bush administration to Arab countries for supporting the Iraqi invasion in 2003 was American corresponding support for an independent Palestinian state, The "Road Map for Peace" was created and publicized as the State Department centerpiece of this goal and the Bush Administration made 2005 as the year it planned to have the independent State of Palestine declared.
Israeli PM Ariel Sharon disengaged from Gaza in 2005 and released hundreds of Arab prisoners to the West Bank while leaving the Likud Party to form a centrist organizations committed to progress toward peace. These evnts helped defuse the Second Intifada.
By some accounts Ehud Olmert and the Palestinian Authority were on the verge of a comprehensive peace pact but minor points of contention could not be solved - hence nothing was acomplished and the State Department failed to ensure that an opportunity toward peace was diligently sought.
Craig and Cindy Corrie have carried on the work of their daughter by supporting her cause.
They traveled to Ramallah and had met Yasser Arafat in Ramallah. They visited the family in Gaza whose home that Rachel was trying to protect when she was killed.
They were present at the Olympia, Washington courthouse when the Olympia Food Co-op boycott of Israeli goods was validated by Judge Thomas McPhee. The pro-Israel group Stand With Us (who supported the lawsuit against the boycott)later juxtaposed on their website a photo of the Corries standing outside the courthouse with another 1930s-era picture of two Nazi Brownshirts.
When Welsh documentary producer James Miller and Briton Tom Hurndall were killed by the Israel Defense Forces in separate incidents the British government pressed for accountability. An IDF officer was charged with falsifing a report in the Miller shooting and an IDF sergeant convicted of manslaughter in the Hurndall killing. The respecive estates of Miller and Hurndall each received well over $1 million dollars in settlement proceeds from the Israeli government for their wrongful death claims.
In Rachel Corrie's case, U.S. Congressman Brian Baird introduced a bill calling for a thorough investigation - it went nowhere. Jimmy Carter and U.N. official Richard Falk both were critical of the Haifa District Court judgment of Judge Oded Gershon exonerating the IDF in Rachel's death.
The Israeli government obviously thought it had nothing to lose by fighting the Corrie case in their own court system.
Yes, it is interesting to see which defense contractors are supplying drone technology and how much revenue is being realized from the drone program from sales to the U.S. government.
These are interesting interviews. I have felt that gathering a number of interviews of residents of any war zone is likely the best way of divining what really happened as opposed to what the government wants us to hear.
Iraq was involved in three major wars since 1979: The Iran-Iraq war - which caused massive casualties on both sides, the Persian Gulf War in 1990-91, and the U.S. and British invasion of 2003. The gross suffering of the Iraqi citizenry at large from not only these wars, but also Baathist security services oppression, sectarian violence, imposition of international sanctions, and looting of the nation's wealth by the Baathists, has been enormous.
Iraq should on paper be a wealthy nation - it has some of the largest crude oil reserves of any country, but poverty persists among the general population.
American troops - as one of the interviews above attests to - did bring in medics and had other positive interactions with the Iraqi people - this is undeniable. However the U.S. Army also gave us Abu Ghraib, the Abeer Qasim Hamza gang rape and murder, the supply procurement scandals, Blackwater security contractors, and the missing planeload of millions in cash.
There is no doubt that Iraq's location makes it one of the more strategically important nations in the region and I believe this was a paramount consideration for America to invade in 2003. The U.S. set up 500 million dollars worth of intelligence bases within Iraq shortly after completing their invasion of the country.
It was George H.W. Bush that in 1992 gave the go-ahead to the National Securty Council and the CIA to commence covert operations to attempt to dislodge the Baathists from power. The Iraqi National Congress was born and the U.S. dealt with a number of sharp operator exiles who talked a big game but delivered little - despite hundreds of millions of dollars in funding.
I am waiting for the time when the Iraqi people begin seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and begin developing a greater peace and prosperity without interference from unwarranted outside influences.
Bradley Manning simply did a "document dump" to Wikileaks where Dr. Ellsberg, a Harvard-educated scholar and policy expert, carefully redacted material that could compromise national security interests.
Dr. Ellsberg was charged by the Department of Justice in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles but those charges were dismissed due to improper government conduct.
There is a vast difference between what Bradley Manning did contrasted with Dr. Ellsberg. We cannot have U.S. Army privates decide they are going to leak massive amounts of classified information into the public realm for political motives.
I agree with a number of points Manning made in the cited interview, but I do not agree that he had any legal or moral authority to publically disseminate classified information he had control over.
If we look at Bradley Manning's background we have a clearer idea as to his motives - he is no Dr. Daniel Ellsberg.
Manning came from a broken home, dropped out of college, lived outside the U.S. before enlisting in the U.S. Army and being almost on the verge of discharge due to his performance in basic training; he argued with drill instructors, was picked on by fellow recruits due to his size and sexual orientation - and violated secrecy rules once given an important intelligence assignment.
PFC Manning, by all accounts, was highly intelligent but unreliable as a soldier. My personal belief is that his "document dump" was for the primary purpose of embarrassing the U.S. Army that he was in conflict with. He is trying to mitigate his actions by couching himself as some type of patriot.
This young man deserves stern punishment and to be made an example of.
"Cameron appears worried about the rise of the Jabhat al-Nusra radical group in north Syria."
The U.S. State Department designation of the al-Nusra front as a terrorist organization has actually enhanced the group's credibility in the Arab world by the fact that America opposes the organization. The designation has little practical effect as there are no assets the group has in the U.S. which can be frozen pursuant to that designation.
A December 25, 2012 article in Time magazine of a Jabhat al-Nusra official conceded that his organization has a significant percentage of non-Syrian fighters. This would dovetail with Iraqi and U.S. government conclusions that the al-Nusra front has a significant relationship with Al-Qaeda in Iraq, a terrorist group that was formerly led by the terrorist Zarkawi, which has been a key target of American military and Iraqi government forces for eradication within Iraq; most observers also believe the al-Nusra Front deploys many Iraqis to fight the Syrian government troops. While Al-Qaeda in Iraq has been decimated by government forces within that country, the al-Nusra front has enjoyed significant success against the Syrian government's army and now reportedly control a northern province within Syria. It is also gaining some degree of popularity within Syria due to the prowess of its fighters.
The destabilization of Syria internally has provided a unique opportunity for an al-Qaeda affiliate to exercise significant influence within an Arab country - although its numbers amount to a very small fraction of the number of fighters the Free Syrian Army has at its disposal.
Jabhat al-Nusra has conducted numerous terrorist bombings, mass executions, and other conduct that could be regarded as war crimes. Although their ranks appear to be well-trained and have fought with distinction, there is undoubtedly great concern by Western interests if this organization gets control over chemical weapons stockpiles currently held by the Syrian government. Another area of concern is what could happen if the group becomes a "state-within-a-state" in Syria as Hezbollah became within Lebanon. Al-Qaeda has been generally viewed as a "death cult" and has not gained a political toehold even in the most radical Sunni Arab-led areas such as Yemen and Gaza, however a significant percentage of Syrians have expressed gratitude and even overt support for the al-Nusra front.
British PM David Cameron's concerns are well-founded.
Actually, there are large numbers of Christians throughout Asia. The 2.7 million figure is not that surprising when one considers that there are 20 million Christians in India (about 2% of the population) and somewhere between 40 and 130 million Christian adherents in Red China. Even larger percentages of Christians can be found in South Korea and the Philippines.
"Karzai has recently expelled U.S. special forces from Wardak province....on the ground they were deploying Afghan death squads as auxiliaries."
U.S. government support for death squads dates back to California in the 1850s when they were used against American Indians and received federal funding. The "School of the Americas" in Georgia trained Latin American soldiers in the finer aspects of intelligence and covert operations - one of the trainees was Roberto D'Abuisson, an El Salvadoran military intelligence officer who later became a top political leader in that nation after commanding death squad operations that killed thousands - including Archbishop Romero. The "Los Pepes" death squads in Colombia were believed to be trained by U.S. Armed Forces personnel. The CIA-sponsored Phoenix Program in Vietnam resulted in the killing of 26,000 Vietnamese. The CIA provided logistics and training for the Operation Condor intelligence network in the panhandle of South America established in the mid-1970s to combat leftist elements in that region via abduction, torture and murder - it left 60,000 dead. The CIA trained SAVAK, the Shah's secret police in Iran that tortured and killed thousands of Iranian citizens.
Death squads are a lot like drone strikes - they are a form of state-sponsored extrajudicial killing that the U.S. intelligence community and military has seen as a "short cut" to defeating opposition to governments friendly to the U.S. Forget about such things as due process or the Geneva Conventions - death squads conveniently serve American interests.
Kudos to President Karzai for standing up to the formation of death squads in his country.
I suppose the American Indian Movement members who defied the FBI at Wounded Knee in 1973 could have fit as potential targets under the current drone program. So could the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers, the Branch Davidians, the MOVE activists in Philadelphia and various other groups.
The criteria for initiating a drone strike on a target is "imminent threat", however many of the actual targets are far from being imminent threats.
One target in Yemen had served time in a Yemeni prison for complicity in bombing of the Ameriican Embassy and occaisionally recruited for al-Qaeda after his release - no other asserted factual basis for beng an "imminent threat" before a Hellfire missile killed him.
Another target in Somalia was killed based on faulty information supplied by a competing warlord who had every motivation for seeing the other person targeted.
There are hundreds of non-targets who have been killed -many of them children - who were innocent bystanders.
These senators who were engaged in the filibuster correctly see a dangerous precedent in allowing targeted killings of individuals with vague evidentiary criteria and procedures devoid of due process. It could be only a matter of time when other groups are declared an "enemy of the people" and will be open to drone killings. Potential future targets could be Mexican drug traffickers, Marxist rebels in Latin American countries or even militia movement members within the United States.
After the hearings of the Church Committee and the revelations of the CIA's "Executive Action" assasination program, most observers believed that the U.S. government would never publically condone assasinations by the U.S. government. Senators like Rand Raul and Ted Cruz are seeing the abuses inherent in these targeted extrajudicial killings.
In January of this year the leader of the Sunni resistance, General Izzat al-Douri, issued a videotape that was broadcast urging opposition to Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki in several areas, including Anbar province and Nineveh. Al-Douri had been a top military leader under Saddam Hussein (featured in the famous "Deck of Cards")and he often displays a Saddam-era Iraqi flag during his filmed broadcast speeches.
Ten years after the start of the Iraq War, the top Baathist Iraqi miltary leader still has not been captured and is the reputed operational leader of the Sunni resistance forces.
American leaders in the State Department and CIA never understood the Iraqi population was highly fragmented into different cultural and religious groups and the sudden absence of a strong totalitarian regime such as the Baathists would foster anarchy and sectarian violence similar to what has historically been seen in Lebanon.
An excellent film by Brian DePalma, "Redacted", is a fictionalized version of the Abeer Qasim Hamza incident where a 15-year-old Iraqi girl was raped and killed by U.S. Army troops. That incident became a rallying point against the occupation as did Abu Ghraib prison abuses. The U.S. Armed Forces exacerbated anti-American sentiments among Iraqis by these types of incidents. The "Surge" by American forces was lauded as highly successful in stemming terrorist attacks, as evidenced by a lower "body count" of victims; yet substantial numbers of casulaties from insurrection continue within Iraq.
Other highly embarrassing incidents were committed by American forces in Iraq. There was the procurement scandal where Army officers were taking huge kickbacks in exchange for authorizing supply contracts for bottled water and other items - several Army personnel committed suicide during the investigation and a number of others went to prison. There was the planeload of millions of dollars in cash shrink-wrapped for distribution in Iraq that disappeared without a trace. There were the Blackwater abuses. And so on.
Iraq will be the historical equivalent of Vietnam for the scope of its waste and moral failures of the U.S. Armed Forces and policy deficiencies and mismanagement by the U.S. State Department.
"....Hugo Chavez was a mass of contradictions brought on...by a lack of extensive education."
Chavez finished near the top of his military academy class.
If anything could be positively said about his tenure of office, it would have to be his commitment to the poor. The heating oil example is one of many where he espoused genuine concern for those in need.
The U.S. government has welcomed Israeli air strikes into Syria and would like to see Israel do more to oppose the Assad regime.
In fact, most major governments of the world have recognized one way or another the Syrian National Coalition as the legitimate representative of Syria, as opposed to the Assad government.
There is no doubt that Jabhat al-Nusra - which has only several hundred combatants - has been fighting admirably against Assad's troops, however some Free Syrian Army members have stated that Jabhat al-Nusra will be opposed militarily as soon as Assad is removed from power. Sectarian violence similar to what has happened in Iraq could be the unfortunate result as a post-Assad aftermath.
You are largely correct, however Israel has not always got what it has wanted.
Jonathan Pollard has served 27 years in federal prison despite intense and continuous lobbying efforts for his release from the Israeli government and pro-Israel organizations within the U.S.
Israel was halted by the U.S. in its November of 2012 offensive in Gaza. This is in stark contrast to what occurred in Operation Cast Lead.
Full reparations amounting in many millions of dollars were paid by Israel in full compensation for the U.S.S. Liberty incident.
The problem right now may not be with Israel but with AIPAC.
Right now, PM Netanyahu is unable to form a government due to the fact that religious parties are backing away from a coalition due to the fact two of Likud's potential coalition partners, Yesh Atid and Homeland parties, strongly oppose military exemptions for objecting religious Jews. Netanyahu has had to request an extension from President Peres to continue coalition-building negotiations. Yesh Atid has indicated a desire for peace negotiations with the Palestinians and Netanyahu may have to seek a coalition with other centrist parties such as Kadima and Tzipi Livni's newly-minted party in order to form a government. These centrist parties are opposed to the further colonization of the West Bank as proposed by Netanyahu.
AIPAC's goals are strongly aligned with the Likud Party, however the political center of Israel has been shifting left.
When Shaul Mofaz, who is of Iranian descent, was defense minister of Israel during the tenure of PM Ariel Sharon, he went as far to be on a talk show receiving questions and giving answers to Iranian members of the public relative to a strike he maintained Israel was purportedly planning against Iranian nuclear facilities (Mofaz now heads the centrist Kadima Party).
Mofaz left office as defense minister and was replaced by Amir Peretz, who shortly thereafter became embroiled in the Second Lebanon War in 2006. Commnetators in Israel questioned the wisdom in planning an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities of a nation of 60,000,000 when the Israel Defense Forces was having its hands full in Lebanon fighting the Hezbollah 1,500-man militia.
I have a hard time envisioning Israel launching an air assault against Iranian nuclear facilities much as it did in July of 1981 against Iraq. It will not want to risk a potential counter-attack that Iran has previously threatened if such an attack occurs. Israel would more likely deploy cyber-attacks and covert intelligence operations in against Iran's nuclear enrichment program order to avoid a direct military confrontation with Iran.
As long as the United States District Court system continues to decline judicial review of these CIA assassination programs under the "political question" doctrine, there is little deterrent for the Obama administrationto do anything to rein in obvious excesses that offend traditional ideals of fair play and rudimentary due process.
The Central Intelligence Agency has had excellent connections in the American media.
When Richard Helms held leadership roles in the Agency, his point man for public relations was E. Howard Hunt. Helms served as U.S. ambassador to Iran after he left the CIA and had a friendship with the Shah going back decades to when they attended collegetogether in Europe.
Like "Zero Dark Thirty" this film tries to cast the CIA in a most positive light.
The Iranian hostage crisis was repugnant to most moderate Iranians and led to the resignation of Mehdi Bazargan, who held a top role in the the post-Shah revolutionary government. Bazargan had been a confidante of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, whose government had been overthrown by the CIA in Operation Ajax.
The Palestinian who filmed "Five Broken Cameras" was detained at LAX for a period of time by INS officers until Academy Award attorneys could secure his release. Michael Moore was giving Twitter updates on that situation.
"The Gatekeepers" tells the opinions of the six surviving former Shin Bet chiefs of how the Israeli political right wing has sabotaged the peace process for purely selfish political motivations. These opinions are nothing new; several years ago four former Shin Bet directors issued a joint public statement urging a diplomatic solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict and arguing that Israel was losing its character as a free democracy due to the severe nature of security that was being imposed by the Israeli government.
Usually the Best Documentary Oscar nominations garner little public attention however these two nominees have gotten quite a bit of media coverage. There are other lesser-known film critic and movie industry awards that have a best documntary category that these two fine productions are likely to receive nominations.
The president/chairman of the Syrian National Council, the long-time exile group based in Istanbul, is George Sabra, an Orthodox Christian. The Syrian National Coalition, the umbrella organization for Syrian opposition to the Baathists, has a significant number of Christians. A number of Alawites opposed to Assad are supporting of the Syrian National Council.
The Syrian-American community in Michigan numbers about 10,000 (out of 192,000 nationwide) with a significant percentage being Christian. There are a number of Syrian-rite Orthodox Christians living in Metro Detroit who have been politically influential - including former U.S. Senator Spencer Abraham.
A recent Detroit Free Press Sunday edition article on the front page covering the attitudes of the Michigan residents of Syrian descent indicated the vast majority support the opposition to Assad. One member of the Syrian National Council is from Flint, Michigan. The Free Press has reported that 17 million dollars was raised in Michigan to assist those opposing the Baathists.
Arab Christians living in Detroit, in my opinion, overwhelmingly want to see the Baathists leave power as they are viewed (correctly) as a repressive and anti-democratic regime. There is a great deal of concern, however, about who will replace the Baathists once Assad is gone and whether extremist elements, such as Jabhat al-Nusra, will be fighting the FSA afterwards.
"....enduring Leftist myth that the U.S. was behind the 1973 coup."
Wasn't ex-CIA director Richard Helms convicted of lying to Congress in covering up the CIA involvement in the 1973 overthrow of Allende?
Hasn't there been extensive research tying the late David S. Morales, a high-ranking CIA officer, to the 1973 coup in Chile. Morales had been involved in the Jacobo Arbenz coup in Guatemala in 1954 and also was CIA paramiltary operations chief for Operation Mongoose in Miami in the 1960s to subvert Castro. Morales' personal attorney and friend, John Walton, went on the record to confirm Morales' role in the 1973 Chile coup in an interview.
Wasn't the late former CIA director Richard Helms sued in 2001 over the death of Chilean General Rene Schneider?
Didn't Operation Condor result in the death of 60,000 persons? Did it not inspire the Costa-Gavras film "Missing".
Klaus Barbie from the 1960s was on the payroll of German intelligence and had a close relationship with Bolivia's top government leadership. There were reports that he was a consultant to the CIA-linked Bolivian operatives who captured Che Guevara and executed him. Barbie was later extradited back to France in 1983 for war crimes prosecution.
Otto Skorzeny was a top aide to Juan Peron and eventually was a mentor to Muammar Khadafy after his coup in 1969 in organizing the internal security apparatus of Libya - he also trained Fatah leaders in paramilitary operations. Skorzeny had been a commando leader in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany.
The late Dr. Orlando Bosch was president of the University of Havana medical student government when Fidel Castro was president of the law student body. He later played a key paramilitary role in Miami-based anti-Castro exile groups that were supervised by the CIA's JM/WAVE station as part of Operation Mongoose. Bosch was never convicted in the Cubana Air bombing but did receive a pardon from parole violation proceedings arising from his conviction in a 1967 bazooka attack of a Polish freighter off the Florida coast.
Bosch freely admitted that he had been trained in paramilitary operations by the U.S. government. The cluster of anti-Castro groups and their CIA handlers in Operation Mongoose eventually rose to the highest levels of the U.S. intelligence community and many of those associated with the group rose to high public office. These would include Ted Shackley and Yale-educated Porter Goss. Shackley became Associate Deputy Director of Operations at the CIA during the Carter administration and would eventually back George H.W. Bush's presidential run in 1980 and play a key role in the Contra war in Nicaragua after he retired from the Agency. Goss was elected to Congress and later appointed CIA director.
In the NY Times #1 best-seller "By Way of Deception", a former Mossad case officer revealed that the spy agency had conducted scientific analysis of the fibers that composed the material used in passports of every major world country so that those passports could be replicated internally. Why they would have to steal someone's passport in another country is puzzling to say the least.
Mabhouh was regarded as a relatively insignificant target and his death was viewed as amateurishly committed in a manner that Dubai police easily untangled. It has become an embarrassment to the Israeli government. The killing has been denounced by the United Nations, European Union and nations whose ostensible passports were misused in the operation.
One story was that Zygier had been cooperating with the authorities in Dubai regarding the case.
There was the Uri Brodky arrest in Poland as he was a suspect charged in Germany with espionage and passport violations in connection with the Mossad operation. Poland extradited Brodsky on the condition that he face only passport charges. Brodsky was extradited, released on bail, returned to Israel and the matter eventually settled after a fine was paid. No real accountability by Israel despite the fact Brodsky was apparently involved in acquiring passports needed to help the Mossad agents enter into Dubai.
There was also the story that Dubai police in the early stages of the investigation, before the Mabhouh death became public, asked the U.S. for assistance relative to identifying credit card numbers used by the suspects, but that the U.S. refused to cooperate - per Wikileaks disclosures of cables between the two nations.
It would be highly unusual however for the Mossad to try to kill someone who was Jewish - especially one of their own operatives.
A related story was the coincidence of a 150-foot asteroid that missed Earth by only 17,000 miles.
It had been detected initially only about one year ago by ameatur astonomers in Spain. If it had impacted with Earth, the explosion would be the equivalent of 2.5 million tons of TNT.
The Catholic Church withheld diplomatic recognition of Israel until 1993 until Israel negotiated the Oslo accords.
The Catholic Church in Jerusalem has been concerned about the welfare of Christian flock in the Holy Land. The #1 New York Times best seller "By Way of Deception" alluded to this concern and even the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem has made many formal pronouncements regarding the root causes of the Jewish/Arab conflict and the need to resolve it.
In Israel and the Occupied Territories, most Christians are either Eastern Rite Orthodox or Catholic. Politically, they are relatively united in their opposition to Israeli policies and the occupation with Islamic adherents in the region. Pope John Paul II in his visit to Jerusalem emphasized the human rights of the Palestinians and also prayed at the Wailing Wall and requesting forgiveness for the history of Christian persecution of Jews over the centuries.
The Catholic Church enjoys a significant following in many Arab counties - such as Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. These are nations where the roots of Jewish and Christian religions are historically found.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was backed by the Saudis, Israelis, and the U.S. with hundreds of millions of dollars in covert aid as an Afghan warlord during the CIA's Operation Cyclone fighting the Soviet-backed Afghan government.In 1994, he served as Afghanistan's prime minister.
In 2002, a U.S. Predator drone fired a Hellfire missisle at him and missed. He later announced his support for al-Qaeda, placing a bounty on American servicemen.
The failure of targeted killings to achieve anything meaningful has its precedent in Israel's use of them in Lebanon and Gaza. They were met with retaliatory attacks and galvanized the public they targeted against them.
Israel's own anti-terrorism experts opined that the assassinations of Sheikh Yassine and Dr. Rantissi in Gaza would be counter-productive as they would result in a strengthening of the Hamas military wing since Yassine and Rantissi were with the political wing that had been engaged in indirect peace negotiations with Israel. They also felt that the assassinations would result in greater cohesiveness between the various resistance factions in Gaza. All this occurred as predicted.
The recent killing of Hamas military leader Ahmed Jebari caused another round of missile strikes on Israel. Hamas, like Hezbollah, has retained a viable militia wing despite such targeted killings.
U.S. use of these drones are likely to continue to damage America's image in the Third World with little positive results.
Arab socialism under Nasser called for government controlling the means of production - industry as well as banking. The Baathists movements in Syria and Iraq were ideologically similar. Saddam Hussein's Iraq targeted the wealthiest families for property confiscation. Arab socialism called for emancipation of women but also a certain degreee of respect for religion.
As a result, the Islamic fundamentalists of these nations tended to poitically unite with business interests.
Phoenix Television reported that in an online poll of 500,000 residents of the People's Republic of China, 60% were "sad" over the death of Osama Bin Laden because he was anti-American.
Several global government leaders also denounced the killing of Bin Laden, including ex-Cuban President Fidel Castro, a high-ranking official of the Venezuelan government, and Hamas Gazan prime minister Ismail Haniyeh (who openly mourned his death) and a host of others.
It was like Israel trying to kill off the P.L.O all during the 1970s and 80s. Targeted killings in Operation Wrath of God did little to prevent ongoing armed struggle.
By the late 1980s, the Yitzhak Shamir government was actually trying to negotiate with the P.L.O to end the First Intifada. Eventually the Oslo Accords came and the P.L.O was largely absorbed into the Palestinian Authority.
The "war" gainst Al-Qaeda could go on forever. America now sees the Taliban as some group that can be negotiated with. The only way I see Al-Qaeda going away permanently is if some global amnesty offer occurs under which Al-Qaeda disbands in exchange for terminating its terror operations and being absorbed into other Islamic or even secular groups or governments in the region - such as the Syrian National Coalition is attempting to do with Jabhat al-Nusra.
A question is where does the CIA draw the line as to who is covered under the AUMF?
The terror leader Zarkawi in Iraq was independent until he announced his allegiance to Al-Qaeda; he was killed by the U.S. in an air strike and his successor was also killed. The group is now known as "Al-Qaeda in Iraq" and has been closely linked to the extremist Jabhat al-Nusra group operating against Baathist forces in Syria.
It would be a stretch to connect Jabhat al-Nusra with 9/11 despite the fact their fighters do profess an allegiance to Al-Qaeda. Jabhat al-Nusra claims to only want Assad out of office at this time and has no operations against the U.S., but under the current logic advanced by the Obama administration, this group could arguably face drone attacks.
What is clear here is that, like the Vietnam War, there are massive grey areas that need to be presented to the federal judiciary to adjudicate their legality.
Justice William O. Douglas once stated that the legality of the Indochina Conflict was something the Supreme Court needed to review, but it was never done. Only U.S. Congress with its oversight capabilities and authority to enact the War Powers Act in 1973 placed important checks on the powers of the Chief Executive. Same is occurring here.
The Church Committee, empanelled following the publishing of the CIA and the Cult of Intelligence by Victor Marchetti and John Marks and also the involvement of CIA personnel in the Watergate scandal, exposed many of the abuses of U.S. intelligence agencies and strengthened government oversight by Congress. Congressional oversight is beginning to occur slowly to address some of the more egregious practices of our government in conducting the drone program.
U.S. District Judge John Bates, a former army officer serving in the Vietnam War, applied the "political question" doctrine and standing defenses to dismiss an action to remove U.S. citizen from the "kill list". That individual has been killed since that time and more litigation has followed.
One of my key beefs with the drone program are the huge numbers of innocent bystanders that are killed, especially children. In Israel, international outrage over their extrajudicial killing program limited some of the more blatant acts. I recall some Defense Department officials expresing grave reservations about the CIA's drone program in Afghanistan.
The most dangerous aspect I see about the broad scope of AUMF interpretaion is that it could conceivably be interpreted to allow the U.S. intelligence community to point the finger at anyone in the world on flimsy proof supplied by persons with dubious motives and have a bureaucrat within the CIA "sign off" on some sort sort of administrative death warrant - it already has happened in Somalia.
The ACLU and other public service organizations should be lauded for their work in attempting to obtain needed judicial review of highly questionable practices by the U.S. intelligence community.
BDS has taken hold in the State of Washington, the home of Rachel Corrie.
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon all but conceded in a public statement that Israel was behind the lawsuit against the Olympia Food Coop for boycotting Israeli-manufactured products - with the exception of Palestinian "Peace Oil" olive oil. There was evidence an Israeli Consul met with the plaintiffs.
Current and former members of the board of directors were sent letters by a prominent Seattle law firm theatening legal action unless the boycott was lifted - due to alleged irregularities in adopting the boycott resolution. The ensuing lawsuit - in which the public interest law firm attorneys defended the co-op - resulted in a counterclaim against the five member-plaintiffs under the SLAPP Act (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) for damages and attorney fees. Sixteen defendants were named in the lawsuit against the co-op and its directors.
Judge Thomas McPhee, after recommending an offer by the co-op of a member referendum whether or not to continue the boycott (which was rejected by the five plaintiffs), the court dismissed the plaintiffs' suit and awarded the statutory maximum $10,000.00 to each of the sixteen defendants. Judge McPhee requested an itemization of attorney fees be provided to him by the co-op's attorneys - which resulted in a $280,000 claim.
There have also been flash mobs in support of Palestinian rights in Washington and boycotts at other area businesses.
Electronic Intifada and Mondoweiss have both covered these events in detail.
Pro-Israel observers have indicated that Washington events described above are an aberration due to special conditions - one being the sympathy over the Rachel Corrie death - she resided in Olympia.
Scholars For a Middle East Peace, a pro-Isarel organization, have indicated that a goal of theirs is to ensure that the BDS movement is marginalized and does not become mainstream in America. The U.S. population is generally about 3-1 in favor of Israel as opposed to those who support Palestianian issues. The goal is to keep the support in that proportion to ensure a pro-Zionist foreign policy is pursued by the U.S. government.
The BDS movement in Ann Arbor, Michigan has endured similar opposition. The People's Food Co-op had members that wished to place a member referendum on a ballot to boycott the sale of Israeli products at the co-op. Ironically many of the supporters of the boycott were Jewish, although the local Quakers actually spearheded the boycott.
A tremendous counter-movement developed with a sitting Ann Arbor council member carrying a placard in front of the co-op protesting the BDS movement and the referendum lost by a 77%-23% margin.
As hundreds of billions were spent on anti-terrorism efforts there was absolutely horrendous preparation for Hurricane Katrina.
9/11 helped plunge our nation into record-setting annual federal budget deficits. Clinton had achived a budget surplus due to increased tax revenues generated by a booming economy. The national debt was actually being paid down by the Clinton administration.
As to the drone issue, it is telling that only certain ethnic groups are targeted as terrorists for extrajudicial assassination. Yemenis and Pakistanis are often targets as well as Afghans,so are Somalians. If a European group was ever targeted - like the Irish Republican Army, Basque separatists, or Serbians - there would be huge outrage - especially if children were being killed as well. The groups facing drone strikes have little sympathy in America and extrajudicial assassination of these targets is politically popular.
John Dinges, in the book he co-authored "Assassination on Embassy Row", published in 1999, stated that the CIA leadership knew of the plot to kill Letelier at least two months before it occurred. DINA was trained and supplied by the CIA under Operation Condor, directed by Ted Shackley, who would later become Associate Deputy Director of Operations of the CIA before his retirement.
Remember the international ourage in September of 1976 when a young American aide to a former Chilean diplomat was killed in a car bombing in Embassy Row in Washington D.C.?
25-year old Ronni Moffitt and Orlando Letelier, both trying to promote democracy in Chile, died in an attempt by DINA, the Chilean secret police;her boyfriend was wounded but survived. CIA contract agent Michael Townley and anti-Castro Cubans linked to the CIA were involved with the operation. Subsequent research by an investigative reporter has shown that CIA leadership knew of the plot at least two months before it was carried out. As late as September of 2012, the Chilean government was still trying to prosecute those linked to the case and the #1 NY Times Best-Seller "By Way of Deception" claimed that Mossad training of DINA in special operations in exchange for delivery of Exocet missiles from Chile to Israel helped DINA acquire the expertise to successfully carry out the killing.
The relevance of the Moffitt case is that it shows that CIA-linked assassination programs has the potential to lead to innocent Americans being killed. We may have to wait until the day an American or some European is again accidentally killed as "collateral damage" before the public outrage is again ignited over how these "special operations" programs are run.
"The US criminal justice system does not apply here."
Why did the Justice Department obtain a grand jury indictment against Osama Bin Laden arising out of the al-Qaeda embassy bombings in Africa?
Either it applies or it doesn't.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in his Gulag Archipelago trilogy, spoke of the "RevTribunals" a special court in the Soviet Union to address counter-revolutionary conduct. The RevTribunals had a judge but there was no legal standards to apply in the proceeding and the only punishment authorized was death. It was observed that the criminal courts of the Soviet Union had legal strictures and a range of punishments including imprisonment for a number of years; it was much preferred to be charged in a criminal tribunal than a RevTribunal.
The extrajudicial assassination program described here smacks of a similar situation to the RevTribunals - no real protections against arbitrary and capricious impositions of decisions to execute. Likewise, the U.S.criminal justice system is a clearly preferable alternative to this CIA-sponsored program for its constitutional protections.
The 462-page Goldstone Commission Report was well-researched and thoroughly documented with respect to its findings of "credible evidence" of war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Israel Defense Forces.
Almost nothing was done in response.
The omnipresent U.S. veto or abstention to proposed Security Council resolutions always seem to immunize Israel from corrective action.
Interestingly, one of the targets of a CIA Predator drone strike in 2002 was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the former prime minister of Afghanistan who served in 1994. He and his followers had been supplied with armaments and training from Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the CIA to fight the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul.
The Hellfire missile missed and the warlord Hekmatyar later announced a bounty on U.S. soldiers and support for al-Qaeda and the Taliban. He has never been captured and remains at large in Afghanistan.
The U.S. government rarely mentions his name, apparently because the inevitable question or comment from the media and public would be why we supported him in the first place and whether the attempted assasination of a former Afghan prime minister violates international law and President Ford's executive order barring assassination of foriegn leaders.
Israel initiated targeted killings largely because IDF soldiers were often shot at trying to make arrests in Gaza. The key problem is the level of "collateral damage" to innocent civilians as when the Israeli Air Force dropped a 1,000 lb. bomb on via F-16 jet on an apartment building killing 14 persons and injuring 63 to target one Hamas military leader, Salah Shihadeh.
It is strange Britain is conducting drone attacks in that region when thay have freely admitted they cannot legally target the IRA for such assasinations as Israel does to Arabs in Gaza.
Investigation and action by the UN is clearly needed.
Noam Chomsky has said that international borders are a product of violence.
Intrestingly, he once indicated in an interview that a one-state solution could have been possible in Israel before the Six-Day War and had support even in the Israeli intelligence services, however there was an insufficient amount of Palestinian nationalism at that time to make that idea a reality. Now he states that current conditions make such a one-state solution unlikely.
In his 1980 foreward to Livia Rokach's book "Israel's Sacred Terrorism", based upon Israel's former prime minister Moshe Sharrett, Chomsky stated that Sharett's "....defeat in internal Israeli politics reflected the ascendancy of the positions of Ben-Gurion, Dayan and others who were not reluctant to use force to attain their goals." Chomsky also observed therein:
"History, particularly recent history, is characteristcally presented to the general public within the framework of a doctrinal system based upon certain fundamental dogmas. In the case of the totalitarian societies, the point is too obvious to require comment. The situation is more intriguing in societies that lack cruder forms of repression and ideological control. The United States, for example, is surely one of the least repressive societies of past or present history with respect to freedom of inquiry and expression. Yet only rarely will an analysis of crucial historical events reach a wide audience unless it conforms to certain doctrines of the faith."
Dr. Chomsky's basic gist was that the American public views Middle East politics via an intended and benign pro-Israel prism that skews the truth obscuring "...the real world that lies behind 'official history'."
"Right after the assassination of Osama bin Laden, amid all the cheers and applause, there were a few critical comments questioning the legality of the act."
Yes. Firstly Osama Bin Laden was a criminal defendant in a United States District Court over the U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa and was therefore entitled to federal constitutional protections. There was no convincing proof he was a danger to anyone before he was shot - but a lot of conflicting versions appearing in the media.
One of the suspects in the 1985 TWA hijacking in Beirut had to be lured to an offshore ship in international waters and taken directly to the U.S. so the arresting agents would not be obligated to leave him on foreign soil for possible extradition. By simply killing Bin Laden it avoided possible conflicts with the Pakistani government or other nations which may have had jurisdiction over Bin Laden.
The British government conceded there was insufficient proof of Bin Laden's complicity as of 2002 to charge him with the 9/11 attacks. Even after he made a public statement apparently admitting his role on an al-Jazeera tape just before the 2004 U.S. presidential elections, the courts would have to authenticate that videotape and the audio portion of it - which might not have been easy.
One would also question why Bin Laden was not taken into custody and put on trial? This was done with Saddam Hussein and the FBI gained valuable intelligence information through questioning prior to his execution. There were regrets in some quarters that the CIA allowed Che Guevara to be summarily executed in Bolivia after his capture.
The British government has conceded they could never legally engage in extrajudicial assassination of Irish Republican Army leadership and expressed surprise the Israeli government has done so on a regular basis.
The most scary aspect of this is how far will extrajudicial assassination go? It could be an easy way to help resolve the ongoing drug trafficking-related violence in Mexico. It could be used in Syria, Iran, Iraq or Lebanon as it is in Yemen aginst suspected terrorist elements.
The initial indication of the U.S. federal judiciary is that such a decision to kill is constitutionally delegated to the Executive Branch and cannot be subject to judicial review.
It is unclear how important the "Islamists" known as Jabhat al-Nusra are to the Syrian rebels attempt to depose President Assad. Although their fighting prowess has bee lauded by the Free Syrian Army, their numbers are only several hundred.
What is clear is that the Free Syrian Army does not trust Jabhat al-Nusra and vice-versa. The Syrian National Coalition chairman has attempted to get the U.S. State Department to rescind the designation of Jabhat al-Nusraa a terror organization. The CIA has reportedly tried to ensure that the influx of armaments to the rebels do not fall into the hands of Jabhat al-Nusra; this extremist group may be composed largely of foreign fighters linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq - which had been founded and led by the infamous Zarkawi before he was killed by the U.S. Armed Forces.
Jabhat al-Nusra is a "wild card" in the Syria equation. They are anti-Assad, yet also anti-American and are, further, fighting on their own side rather than as part of the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army. What their role, if any, may be in a post-Assad transitional government is purely speculative.
Nice front-page article today in the Detroit Free Press about Syrian-Americans in Michigan and their role in the Syrian conflict.
It identified $17 million dollars in aid was raised by Syrian-American and Islamic groups in Michigan for assistance to Syrians affected by the ongoing civil war.
One member of the Istanbul-based 43-seat Syrian National Council exile organization lives in Flint, Michigan. Another Syrian-American leader in Michigan interviewed indicated that he met with National Security Council staffers about the U.S. role in the conflict. It was indicated that there has been disappoinment in the exile community about the paucity of aid given by the United States government to the rebels, although they are clear they do not want American troops involved in the fighting.
There was a report that the Troy-based office of the Syrian Consul was the target of Syrian-American protesters.
One of the reasons mortgage fraud has been rampant is because the federal, state and local law enforcement, investigative, and prosecutorial authorities have deemed it a low priority and banks are aware that the worst that will likely happen to those who get caught is being a defendant in a civil action where they will have to pay restitution to the victim.
The Office of Comptroller of the Currency is the federal agency which reguates national banks and has a grieveance process which has been some assisatnce to the members of the public who have been victimized. Some states, such as Michigan, have enacted tough legislation against notarys public who may commit misconduct in the notarization of mortgages and other bank documents in the loan process.
Courts are routinely voiding foreclosure attempts by banks and other lending institutions who have been involved in misconduct and other improprieties in the mortgage loan process, but typically mortgagors must have the means to employ legal counsel to raise these claims.
In Metro Detroit, with its large Arab population, there is sgnificant supportby local Congressmen for Palestinian issues in particlular and Arab matters in general.
Former U.S. Representative David Bonior once announced he would not vote for a routine symbolic resolution supporting Israel because it ignored the suffering of the Palestinian people; Congressmen John Conyers of Detroit and John Dingell also voted against that resolution - which easily passed the House. The story of the failure of these three Congressmen to vote for this resolution made the Associated Press wire.
"....a British court issued an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni for her role in launching the attack on Gaza in 2008-9..."
This is an attempt to invoke "universal jurisdiction" under international law.
Nothing new here.
Belgium had at one point charged Ariel Sharon with war crimes arising out of his role as defense minister during the Sabra and Shatila massacre during September of 1982.
A key prosecution witness, Lebanese cabinet minister Elias Hobeika, was murdered after it was revealed he was cooperating with the Belgians in the case.
NATO warned they would pull their headquaters out of Brussels unless the case was dropped.
In the end, the law upon which Sharon was charged was repealed.
There have been other unsuccessful attempts to prosecute Israeli officials in other jurisdictions for various offenses under international law.
Earlier this week, on 1/29/13, the article "Hagee vs. Hagel; Christian Conservatives Mobilizing Against Hagel" detailed Pastor John Hagee's Christians United For Israel(CUFI) organization and its attempts to derail the Hagel confirmation.
"........Cruz's performance underlines the importance of Christian Zionism in reinforcing the crackpot conviction in the US Senate that it is impossible ever to say anything slightly negative about Israeli policy (the only country in the world so exempted)."
Christian Zionism is a very real phenomenon in fundamentalist Christian churches in America. Thomas Friedman, the former New York Times Jerusalem correspondent, in his award-winning book "From Beirut to Jerusalem" correctly observed that these Christians do not identify with or necessarily care about Israel in a poltical sense, but believe that Israel's creation in 1948 was fulfillment of divine prophecy and Israel proceeds toward future eschatological significance. Many Christian Zionists believe that the construction of the Third Temple is nearing and have corresponded and kept abreast of the actions of Rabbi Chaim Richman, the director of the Temple Institute, who is attempting to plan the building of the Third Temple. Friedman rightly points out that most Israeli leaders are not aware that the motivations of these Christians adherents arises not out of affinity to Israel but rather due to religious observance.
Pastor John Hagee of Texas is a prime example of a Christian Zionist who in one of his books implied that Communism in post-war Germany was the punishment of Germans for the Nazi persecution of Jews, citing the fact that the height of fences of the Nazi concentration camps approximated the height of the physical partitions between the former East and West Germany. Hagee has attended pro-Israel fund-rasing functions and was applauded by former PM Yitzhak Rabin. Hagee has predicted that the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple and the necessary demolition of the Al-Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem will trigger catastrophic war between Jews and Muslims. Hagee has a huge following nationwide.
The Christian Zionists are and have been a major political force in the U.S.; they believe that any criticism of Israeli policies is nothing less than anti-Christian and that Israel must be supported fully by America at all costs.
The "Israel Lobby" is very real and powerful, however the Christian Zionists are also influential in America. It is the collective attitudes of these two groups which fuel the lack of accountability of Israel for war crimes and human rights violations and prevent meaningful peace discussions.
Chuck Hagel has advocated direct negotiations with Hamas as well as Iran. There are many leaders within Israel that support peace talks between Israel and Hamas.
There has been criticism that many of the targeted leaders of Hamas that have been killed were those that had been leaning toward or actually a part of peace negotiations. A lawsuit was filed against the Israeli government by several prominent Israeli writers for the IDF assassination of a Hamas diplomat trying to negotiate a truce in 2002 during the Second Intifada. The same could be said for the recent IDF killing of Ahmed Jebari.
The recent Oscar-nominated documentary "The Gatekeepers" bolsters the contention that political opportunism by Israeli leadership led to sabotage of the peace processes toward Palestinians. This was the conclusion of the six living Shin Bet intelligence chiefs interviewed.
Chuck Hagel has gotten beyond the "taboo" of not negotiating with "terrorists". The Labor and Meretz parties in Israel have likewse strongly pushed a meaningful two-state solution pursuant to good-faith negotiations with Paestinian-Arab leaders; some leaders of the new Yesh Atid Party have likewise emphasized serious negotiation is needed. This recent push to common sense practical peace initiatives could bear friut in the near future.
Firstly, I do not believe that Western powers abandoned Russia following the Nazi invasion of Poland -Britain and Canada immediately declared war on Germany in 1939. America set up a supply line to the Soviets via Murmansk - Stalin was a fan of Spam and Solzhenitsyn ate American-supplied pork stew while in his foxhole as a Red Army officer.
However, in my opinion, the Soviets did, despite some U.S. intelligence analysts' contention to the contrary, attempt to encircle via its military and intelligence agencies the Middle East centers of oil production via its conduct during the 1970s thru 1980s. This would include direct involvement in the Yom Kippur war as well internal conflicts within Ethiopia and Yemen, and supplying Egypt, Syria, Libya and Iraq with billions of dollars worth of armaments. The Soviet bloc also maintained a very tight relationship with the P.L.O. via the Romanian government.
Russia's leadership has always maintained a degree of paranoia, however, that the West was going to eventually invade them. The history of Russia is being subject to invasions and heavy civilian and military casualties by Western powers. America sent an expeditionary force into Russia folowing WWI to aid the anti-Bolshevik forces.
After the cessation of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991, the Russians ceased being a world empire and turned to cooperation with the West economically under Yeltsin and later under Putin. This created a political vacuum in the Middle East in which resulted in conflict between the Western powers and an emergent militant Islamic fundamentalism of various shades flourishing in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen amongst other places. The Baathist totalitarian states of the Arab world are currently in a stage of collapse. NATO members offer secular democracy and armed sectarian Muslim factions seek Islamic forms of rule to supplant these failed Baathist states.
In 1981, The United Nations condemned Israel over its bombing of a nuclear reactor facility near Baghdad, Iraq.
Even though this clearly violated international law, Israel shrugged it off and there was no accountability.
The Israel Foreign Ministry has made statements announcing support for the rebels in Syria. It is not unprecedented for Israel to support even Islamic rebels against Russian interests. It did so when Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan - it supplied armamnets and training to his militiamen.
Russia stands to lose influence if Assad is deposed - including its naval installation in Syria. It is wholly understandable for Russia to issue such a pronoucement.
".....[t]he Obama administration's opposition to the coup in Honduras is the polar opposite of our policies in the "good old days".
The deposed Honduran president in an interview accused CIA-backed individuals and organizations that had connections to the Honduran military that inspired the coup; he named names. Wikileaks revelations show that the American Embassy reports from Tegucigalpa differed from what the Obama administration was teling us about the coup.
The Honduran president's politics became too liberal over time for the Cold Warriors in the CIA and State Department. Republicans in Congress welcomed the coup and former pres. Zelaya himself says that his ties to Castro and Chavez angered the U.S.
The Honduran coup is reminiscent of the coup deposing Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 or Allende in Chile in 1973.
Turkey, Israel and the United States are openly backing the Free Syrian Army for their own selfish motives - not for love of spreading democracy - but for advancement of their respective national security interests. If a post-Baathist Syria degenerates intio civil war or a long-term low-grade guerilla conflict as happened in Iraq, the U.S. may wax nostalgiac over the Assad era.
One report blames the carnage on the Islamic extremist al-Nusra faction, however it is correct to note there are insufficent facts at this point that can be confirmed to assign blame.
Many Arabs within Israel proper refuse to join the political processes as it would be an implicit recognition of the State of Israel.
Naftali Bennett's decision to support an annexed West Bank would create huge problems for Israel as those Arabs residing therein would have citizenship and voting rights availed to them and one would see a vast change in the Israeli government landscape if annexation occurred. The only major group supporting annexation within Israel previously has been Jewish settlers themselves.
Every indication I have seen from Yair Lapid would be that he would be no friend of Palestinian Arabs and support apartheid policies as his father did when he served as deputy prime minister under PM Ariel Sharon.
The financial costs of the occupation are immense and slice into social program governmental budgets within Israel. The military cost of Operation Cast Lead was 1 billion dollars exclusive of property damage sustained from Qassam rockets.
Israel is not only being kept afloat with U.S. foreign aid but also Jewish-American donations.
Ironically, Daphne Leef, a Jewish leftist social reformer in her 20s, has received widespread support thoughout the political spectrum in Israel by criticizing the Netanyahu government. Her initial issue was inadequate housing availability, but she has been critical about how many segments of Israeli society - including settlers and Bedouins - have been mistreated by the government. She signed a pledge never to serve in the IDF - and hasn't. Leef has described her movement as social rather than political but has been touring the U.S. giving lectures. She holds real political clout within Israel as a social reformer with a large following. She has had the full endorsement of the leftist Meretz and Hadash political parties within Israel.
My prediction is that the political "pendulum" in Israel will continue its swing away from the extreme right and centrists and leftists will pick up political clout in Israel as time progresses. The Second Lebanon War discredited the Kadima Party and the party sustained more damage after Operation Cast Lead. The huge number of Knesset seats gained by Labor and Meretz are a very good omen.
Operation Cyclone to defeat the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul was the most expensive covert operation carried out in the history of the CIA. Also known as Charlie Wilson's War after the charismatic U.S. Congressman who was its primary backer in Congress.
What is so bizarre is that the Cold War was so effectively won by the CIA and Defense Department that Islamic fundamentalism has replaced Communism as the key foe of American and pro-Western interests.
No more Marxists fighting in Afghanistan - the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are now the major threat.
Saddam Hussein, an ally of Russia, is gone and so is the internal stability his Baathists brought to Iraq.
There are recent reports that operatives the MEK, a Marxist group in Iran opposing the government, is receiving technical communications training by the Defense Department in the U.S.
America has come full circle from McCarthyism, Operation Cyclone and the anathema to Marxist adherents to actually abandon the "Better dead than red" slogan and recognize Marxist movements as a posible ally against the spread of jihadists and fundamental Islam in politics. Will "Better dead than green" be the new motto of American patriots?
What is noteworthy is that the map discloses "islands" of control that mirrors the final status Israel seeks to impose upon the Palestinians and that this political partition is an almost carbon-copy model of the bantustan known as Bophutswana under the South African apartheid system.
The absence of contiguous borders deprives Palestine of one element of statehood, as it did Bohphutswana.
Imprisoning them without charge or trial is "administrative detention". This same legal theory was employed extensively by the Soviet Union to imprison millions of its citizens. Administrative law is different from criminal law in that a suspect has little safeguards normally attendant to what Americans would consider due process.
Gaza was essentially run as a totalitarian occupied colony by the IDF until the Intifada commenced in 1987. The IDF often shot and killed Gazans on the streets without fear of retribution until the Muslim Brotherhood held elaborate public funerals for the victims and aroused outrage for Gazans to fight back.
Frankly, I am surprised there was any prosecution of the IDF border police soldiers for the humiliation of the mentally disabled man.
Border police harassment is something that has been rampant by the IDF against Palestinians.
There had been international outrage over the Arabs that were being forced to sing before the border guards as a pre-condition for passing the checkpoint; guards were uploading videos of these incidents to YouTube. The publicity over these videos led to an IDF investigation; in one case it was held ,incredibly, the subject elected to voluntarily sing to the guards. In another video, a young Arab was forced to sing while simultaneously slapping himself in the face. These videos were particularly repugnant to Israelis recalling the forced singing of Jewish inmates at Auschwitz.
There also have been more serious reports of violent assaults of Arabs at these checkpoints. In one instance guards beat a Palestinian for five minutes until an IDF officer intervened.
An Israeli civil rights group, Machsom Watch, has placed observers with notebooks to document border guard abuses at these checkpoints.
These reports of IDF border guard misconduct have fueled incidents of Arab retaliation against IDF checkpoints, including a history of snipings,slashings and suicide bombiings of guardsmanning these areas.
There had been one report that even though organized Palestinian resistance groups had stopped sniping at IDF guards during a truce, these border units were still being shot at by individual Arabs disappointed over the failure of the "terrorist" orgaanizations to continue the sniping incidents.
I would hardly consider all of 50% that were not Likud bloc allies to be Palestinian-fiendly in orientation.
Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz publicly called for the killing of Hamas secretary-general Khaled Meshaal during his recent visit to Gaza. He served as Ariel Sharon's defense minister during the extrajudicial killings by the Israel Defense Forces of Hamas leaders Sheikh Yassin and Dr. Rantissi.
FDR's unwritten order to Secretary Henry Knox was during a time of a war declared by an Act of Congress and the Japanese admiral was a clear unifomed combantant of the enemy within a war zone with no civilians nearby.
Even then, Robert S. McNamara has opined that the admiral's killing constitutes a war crime.
During WWII, bombing was notoriously inaccurate with about 97% of all missions to bomb legitimate targets failing with explosions eventually often killing innocent civilians.
Many leftist Britons consider the RAF commander during WWII to be a war criminal. General Curtis LeMay was the youngest four-star general in U.S. history and his success during WWII in the Japanese theater of operations can be traced to his use of "area bombing" against Chinese and Japanese cities that arguably constituted war crimes. The incendiary raids over Tokyo destroyed over half the city and ravaged civilians. Both MacArthur and Nimitz felt that dropping the atomic bomb on a Japanese city violated everything they were taught as officers as proper conduct toward civilians in war.
Very few Americans quarrel with the decisions to employ methods arguably consisting war crimes where the net gain in American lives was enormous. Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have been war crimes and so may extrajudicial assassination used by the CIA herein - but the cruel fact is that decades from now, historians may look upon Obama and John Brennan as heroes for saving thousands of American lives at the expense of some Third World natives that most of the American public could care less about.
My feelings exactly, however every American president preceding Obama has steered clear of personlly "signing off" on an extrajudicial assassination of another person.
There was no solid proof that either JFK or LBK ever approved even the general assassination program of "Executive Action" initiated by the CIA let alone approved specific targets.
The Kennedy administration during Operation Mongoose anti-Castro planning made great pains to include a general plan to initiate an anti-Castro exile coup d'etat of the Cuban government with any specific attempt to kill Castro himself and argue that any death of Castro would be by Cubans incident to a change of government - thus creating a fine line between a CIA assassination and an incidental death of Castro during a popular Cuban revolution.
The admission of the Obama administration that the president has personally signed off on CIA targets is unprecedented and opens up the possibility of a war crimes investigation in which Obama could personally be targeted for potential prosecution. I chuckle over the hoopla about the Obama birth certificate controversy when Obama's actions in possible war crimes implicate grey areas of international law in which senior officials of the CIA and Defense Department, in addition to Obama, could have personal exposure to war crimes prosecution.
The sheer number of innocent bystanders and children killed coupled with the flimsy standards for being on the CIA "hit list" warrant serious investigation by a neutral international body.
The key point here however is practicality - America would never allow its leadership to be prosecuted for war crimes by an international tribunal.
To give a stark example of the deleterious effects of global warming is the decimation of the Peary caribou in Nunavut, Canada. These include the chain of islands in between Yukon and the North Pole and constitute some of the coldest and most remote areas of the Earth.
The Peary caribou have survived during the non-summer months by eating plants that exist underneath snow. With te advent of global warming the snow covering the plants melts and then re-freezes as ice, making the plants inaccessible to the caribou. As a result, the caribou are dying from malnutrition and scientists are observing and noting large numbers of caribou carcasses littering the region.
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There are parallels between Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King, and he is a just example of someone the Mexican-American community should honor, however he was not viewed as perfect by all persons.
For example, he had a policy during a period of time in his early years of reporting to the Immigration and Naturalization Service undocumented aliens who refused to join his union or who broke strikes. The INS is widely regarded as disliked by immigrants, primarily those of latin extraction, for heavy-handed tactics.
Chavez also met with ardently embraced Fiipino President Ferdinand Marcos and endorsed his regime - which drew fire from human rights activists.
Also, produce growers from California had their labor costs skyrocket due to wage increases brought about from unionization and had to deal with other labor rights being asserted via union grievances - although migrant farm workers clearly often suffered from substandard working conditions which were ameliorated by United Farm Workers' union advocacy.
If Obama had gone to Gaza and met with Ismail Haniyeh, this would have made a political statememt as President Clinton did 15 years earlier when he went to Gaza and inaugurated the Gaza International Airport.
Clinton also exhibited genuine concern over the welfare of the Gazans when he phoned condolences to the father of Muhammad Al-Durra while expressing his anger over the incident with the prime minister of Israel.
Both Clinton and Jimmy Carter have made far more inroads in their criticism of Israel over Gaza than Obama ever will.
There is a difference between manipulation and leadership.
When Obama was first elected, he made a riveting speech in which he called Hamas a prospective negotiating partner and urged persons to lay down their prejudices. This was well-received among a large segment of Arabs in the U.S. and worldwide.
I remember being at an executive session of a Republican Party meting and a Jewish-American leader was visbly upset and asked to address the group and severely criticized that speech of Obama just hours after it was given.
Obama, however, has not done much in the four years to promote peace in the region other than his role in the Operation Pillar of Defense peace negotiations in tandem with President Morsi tn order to stop bloodshed. He has reinforced the unacceptable status quo and only lukewarmly opposed the prospective Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
An Israeli consul general a few months back addressed a group of Jewish students at University of Michigan and assured them that, while there will be a significant pullback of Israeli troops in the West Bank as part of a permanent peace agreement, it will be nowhere near the pre-1967 borders and Palestinians will be forced to accept it either through "respect or fear"(The Michigan Daily covered this speech and that is an exact quote).
The Israeli plan described above, closely resembles the plan for Bophutswana in South Africa that was considered by most observers to be a joke - a non-contiguous cluster of Arab population center "islands" with outlying areas and Jewish settlements under unfettered IDF control.
The surprise strength center-left showing in the recent Knesset elections is partially attributable to people like Arab MK Hanan Zoabi who urged Israeli Arabs to go out and vote. The fact Tel Aviv residents were hiding in bomb shelters as missiles from Gaza were fired on the city and Tel Aviv suffered a bus bombing did not help PM Netanyahu.
It is my belief that the center-left leaders of Israeli politics and moderate elements of Palestinian leadership must be successful in changing attitudes among their respetive constituency in order for ny lasting peace agreement to be achieved and ultimmately work.
Show me evidence of a link beween North Korea and Iran.
It does not exist.
Mike Rogers is a former FBI agent who is considered to be ultraconservative.
This reminds me of Mother Teresa visiting San Quentin Prison or Pope John Paul II going into the jail cell of Mehmet Ali Agca to forgive him.
Obviously setting an example of remembering the forgotten and despised members of our society.
".....September 16th will be the sixth annniversary of the moment when Blackwater guards fora convoy of State U.S. Department vehicles sprayed Baghdad's Nisour Square with bullets, evidently without provocation, killing 17 Iraqi civilans and wounding many more...."
There are Blackwater afficianados who wax nostalgiac over the contractor's epochal past and wish to relive those fond memories of service in Iraq.
"Blackwater is back!" is the new motto of the company marketing T-shirts, sweaters, electronic equipment with the legendary Blackwater logo.
See http://www.blackwaterusa.com
Like AIPAC, there is a Yemeni equivalent - YAPAC - the Yemeni-American Public Affairs Council, based in Dearborn, Michigan. Their website is http://www.yapac.org.
YAPAC has assisted in getting Yemeni-Americans get elected to public office in Metro Detroit, but is a national organization. Major politicians like U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow have addressed their meetings. They endorsed President Obama in 2012.
While the Hariri Center's effrts are clearly laudable, YAPAC's contributions to the advocacy of Yemeni interests are also substantial.
The "Civil Administration" administers the West Bank; its is a subdivision of the Israeli Defense Ministry that basically orders around Palestinians by regulating their conduct via travel permits, building permits and the like.
Before the Palestinian Authority was created it had much broader powers. However this Civil Administration is completely autocratical and its orders are enforced by IDF soldiers. It goes to Arab residences and notifies occupants that their home will be demolished in 15 minutes while IDF soldiers brandishing rifles stand behind the CA representative.
The Civil Administration is headed by an Israeli general and its geographic subdivisions are led by IDF brigade commanders. Arab civilians have no say in the rules, orders regulations and how they are enforced. Military tribunals are administered by the IDF to prosecute Arabs for serious crimes but Jewish settlers have access to civilan courts within Israel.
The Gazans threw off the yoke of the Civil Administration and martial law by inducing PM Sharon to withdraw in 2005.
Probably less than 1% of all Americans have ever heard of the Civil Administration or understans how it operates, but the Israel Lobby and ourAmerican media surely inundate our airwaves with broadcasts on the "terrorist acts" committed by Palestinians in resistance of the imposition of the Civil Administration.
Dissolve the Civil Administration and violence in the West Bank will drop off dramatically.
According to the relevant Wikipedia pages, the Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewry residing in Israel is about 1.4 million each with widely varying estimates of Ashkenazi Jewish population at between 2.8 and 4 million. Palestinian Israelis number about 1.6 million, or slightly more than 20% of Israel's population of 7.9 million.
About 23% of the exodus of the Jews from the East into Israel in 1948 came from Iraq. The Iraqi persecution of its Jews has been extreme since 1948 and less than 100 reside in Iraq today, although about 11,000 live in Iran, and tiny Jewish communities exist in Lebanon and Syria. The Royal Air Force's Eagle Squadron in 1948 tranported significant numbers of Yemen's Jewish population into Israel. A number of Yemeni-Americans had confirmed to me in the 1990s that there are still substantial numbers of Jews within Yemen - they are known for their thriving involvement in the Yemeni business community.
The salient aspect of Israeli society is its social stratification of Jewry. The Ashkenazi Jews have largely controlled the political, military and commercial aspects of Israeli society since its inception. The Ashkenazi and Sepharadim had social conflicts in the first ten years of Israel's existence, especially in such areas as Haifa.
The massive influx of Jewish immigration into Israel from the former Soviet republics following the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 has bolstered the right-wing political parties within Israel and a large number have settled in the West Bank.
Former Israeli President Moshe Katsav was one of the few Mizrahi Jews to hold high office in Isarel and some blame his sexual asssault conviction and prison sentence on prejudice against Mizrahi Jews. Shaul Mofaz, former defense minister, was a Mizrahi Jew from Iran and Amir Peretz a Sephardic Jew from Morocco - he served as defense minister during the Second Lebanon War. Peretz was a Labor Party liberal with a background in the Histadrut labor union and he spearheaded the appointing of the first Arab cabinet minister.
Less than a half a dozen Knesset members have been American-born since Israel's inception - one being the slain Rabbi Meir Kahane.
"....Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who was blown up in his wheelchair after morning prayers..."
The death of Sheikh Yassin resulted in the Dow Jones Index dropping 137 points the following day. Israel's own anti-terrorism experts opined that the killing would result in Hamas' more moderate political wing losing influence to its military leaders and also leading to greater cohesion and coordination between Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups. All this occurred. Certain Palestinian-Americans felt the Sheikh's killing would galvanize Gazans into mre strident resistance; this happened as well.
Yassin's death created a spike of terrorist and militant activity in Gaza that resulted in increased casualties being sustained by the IDf ans settlers in that area. About a year later Ariel Sharon's historic disengagement from Gaza occurred.
This has always been a problem.
The Council on Foreign Relations journal "Foreign Affairs" had an article in the 1990s that described the unregulated flow of small arms in the black market as a major source of terrorism, insurrection, and other unwanted violence in the world.
The international black market for small arms is lucrative and the most effective way to combat situations such like that which has occurred in southern Libya is implementing a program that makes it worthwhile for those who have these weapons to turn them into the government in exchange for financial incentives.
".....one of the more effective elements in the resistance is Jabhat al-Nusra, and radical fundamental offshoot in some ways of the 'Islamic State of Iraq' terrorist group."
Earlier in 2012 it had been estimated that Jabhat al-Nusra, composed of a significant number of foreign fighters - mostly from Iraq had fighters totalling only several hundred; however David Ignatius, in his November 30,2012 article "Al-Qaeda Affiliate Playing Larger Role in Syrian Rebellion", reported in the Washington Post, estimated the number of men under arms of that group at 5,000-10,000 as of that juncture.
There is also the jihadist fighting organization operating in Syria known as Ghuraba al-Sham, "Strangers of the Levant" which is composed primarily of Turks but also has members from former Soviet bloc countries.
The other significant Salafist group fighting the Baathists in Syria is Harakat Ahrar al-Sham Al Islami ("Islamic Movement of the Free Men of Greater Syria") numbering about 500 men which was founded by former political prisoners within Syria.
By comparison, the general consensus is that the Free Syrian Army now fields about 100,000 fighters.
A key question is where are these jihadist entities getting their funding and arms supplies from? The CIA reportedly is trying to ensure that these groups do not receive weaponry and ammunition, but it is clear that they are getting support from somewhere and their ranks are growing despite the fact the Syrian populace and the Syrian National Coalition has mixed feelings about whether these jihadists' efforts are welcome and also whether they should be included as part of any future post-Assad Syrian interim government.
What is hypocritical behavior by Obama is denouncing the four rockets that struck the Israeli city of Sderot. This attack had nothing to do with Hamas or Fatah but was perpetrated by an al-Qaeda-linked splinter group that enjoys little support among Gazans. No one was killed or wounded in the attacks and the only damage was to the wall of a house and some broken windows. Israel retaliated by limiting the ability of Gazan fisherman to fish offshore.
Mr. Obama, during Operation Pillar of Defense, made no comment, nor did our State Department when 12 persons were killed by an Israel Air Force bombing - 10 from the al-Dalu family. The killings were denounced throughout the world.
Israel initially stated that the head of the Hamas rocket program was killed in the strike; they later admitted that the person in question was likely not wounded in the bombing. They later identified a police officer of the al-Dalu family as a terrorist figure even though neighbors in Gaza dispued this.
Human Rights Watch pressed the Israel Defense Forces for proof that the cited member of the al-Dalu clan was a terrorist - however the IDF ignored the request. Human rights organizations around the globe denounced the incident as a war crime. The New York Times was critical of Israel's role in the episode, citing expressions worldwide condemnation over the deaths.
The al-Dalu family tragedy was largely forgotten in the media after a few weeks. The Obama administration never addressed it and now has more concerns over a damaged wall and some broken windows in Israel than the deaths of twelve innocent Gazans last November.
Is this the proper response of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate? Can we compare him to Martin Luther King or Ralph Bunche?
Operation Rolling Thunder in Vietnam was considered to be largely ineffectual at damaging the military-industrial infrastructure of North Vietnam. The severe limitation was the lack of precision of U.S. Air Force bombing operations -which at that juncture were jet fighters reconfigured as bomberssuch as the F-4 Phantom, F-5 Freedom Fighter and the F-86 Super Sabres. B-52s were used sparingly and well away from North Vietnamese population centers.
The two phases of Operation Linebacker in 1972 gave the Air Force a certain sense of success with its laser-guided "smart bombs" making precision strikes on bridges, buildings, POL storage tanks and other areas throughout the North, including Hanoi and Haiphong. B-52s were unleashed in round-the-clock raids from Guam to strike Hanoi, although Russian SAMs shot down a number of these heavy bombers. The air force of North Vietnam retreated into China and complete air supremacy was achieved by the Air Force before the time a truce was reached. More damage was inflicted by American bombers in two weeks than had been acomplished in the preceding seven years. One North Vietnamese leader later admitted that the intense bombing caused the North to enter a truce to avoid national suicide.
Operation Linebacker set the tone on how aerial warfare should be implemented. The aerial bombardments the Israeli Air Force has used against Lebanon and Gaza had inflicted heavy losses upon those areas with few casualties by the air crews. Same with the U.S. Air Force in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and in both Iraq conflicts. Air power was the centerpiece of those Israeli and American operations.
There is no doubt that air forces of the U.S. and Israel have been highly successful at strategic bombing with comparatively few casualties of their respective personnel. These modes of air operations can usually quickly subjugate hostile states that have little air defense capability - such as in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Gaza, and Lebanon.
Also check out the websites for the folllowing Jewish groups in Israel concerned about human rights abuses:
(1)Israeli Committee Against Housing Demolitions;
(2)Yesh Din;
(3)Machsom Watch;
(4)B'tselem
President Clinton in 1998 visited Gaza to inaugurate the Gaza International Airport (later blown to smithereens)and later, after Muhammad Al-Durra was killed by the IDF in Gaza, called his father to convey condolemnces.
President Obama's failure to travel to Gaza was disappointing.
Th embargo of Gaza is the key issue that prevents peace in that region. Jimmy Carter recognized this. It violates international law and is intended to inflict hardship upon Gazans for electing Hamas as their government leadership.
The embargo is what has caused rockets to be fired into Israel from Gaza. The rockets caused Israel to embark on Operation Cast Lead. The embargo was also a point of negotiations in the Gilad Shalit affair. One of the reasons that Hamas agreed to a truce with Israel to cease rocket fire in Novemeber of 2012 was due to the promise that the embargo would be lifted to some degree with a gradual lessening of that blockade and fishermen could operate offshore to a greater extent.
After Operation Cast Lead, the world community donated $4.4 billion to rebuild Gaza; $1 billion of that total was from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and $900 million was from the U.S. government. Those needed construction materials have been largely been barred from entering Gaza due to the Israeli blockade.
One IDF soldier who fought in Gaza was interviewed after the operation and said that he was aware that huge amounts of international aid would be directed into Gaza and he was also aware that Hamas militants were well-hidden in miles of tunnels underneath Gaza beyond the reach of the Israel Defense Forces but that the IDF troops did not want to return afterwards for a new conflict. The naval blockade and embargo enforced by Israel effectively is to prevent Gazans from being rewarded from being attacked in Operation Cast Lead.
About as "unintentional" as the U.S.S. Liberty incident.
The writer speaks of George W. Bush in his visit to Dearborn.
Many Iraqi exiles in Michigan joined the efforts of the Iraqi National Congress, which was created and funded by the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency at the behest of Pres. George H.W. Bush to foment the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime.
Iraqi attitudes about U.S. involvement in Iraq are widely varied. Many saw the U.S. as needed to overthrow Hussein. The Shi'ites and Kurds in Iraq virtually begged the U.S. to intervene militarily on their respective behalfs in 1991 to remove Hussein from power. Without the U.S. assistance, brutal retribution was carried out against these groups.
Hussein's sadistic and violent internal security forces supressed any type of possible anti-government conduct. One popular Shi'ite imam was killed by having his forehead pop riveted. Ayatollah Ali Sistani had his home machine-gunned. These acts were by the Iraqi security forces under the Baathists. One former security agent testified that he would torture detainees on behalf of Saddam's regime by using a pair of pliers on the inside of these detainees' mouths. Saddam's regime committed crimes against humanity at Halabja by using nerve gas there against the Kurds and committed many other atrocities. One by-product of this internal repression was sectarian violence was kept to a minimum. Hussein skimmed billions of dollars of oil revenues that could have been used to improve the plight of Iraqis and brought upon sanctions upon Iraq by his imprudent conduct. The Baathists were the worst nightmare of the Iraqi people.
Incidents like the Abu Ghraib abuses and the Abeer Qasim Hamza gang rape and murder are undoubtedly true and painful episodes in Iraqi-U.S. relations. However, most U.S. Armed Forces members serving in Iraq did so with honor and dignity and are proud of their contributions to that nation. Al-Qaeda affiliates in Iraq and other extremists, such as Ansar al-Islam have been largely eradicated within Iraq.
Persecution against Kurds, Jews, and Chaldeans have long historical roots within Iraq and predate American military involvement. There are likely less than 100 Jews in Iraq - many have relocated to Israel since 1948 - and the Chaldean community that has settled in America, almost all, have no intention of returning.
One thing that I have noticed in Metro Detoit thae last few decades has been the closing of many Roman Catholic churches, however at the same time Iraqi Catholic-rite (Chaldean) churches are being constructed.
Much of the problems within Iraq have been a by-product of a freely-elected government and a free society. America has not been perfect, but a geat deal of the violent acts arise inherently from the sectarian nature of Iraqi society.
Regarding "stateless" Palestinians:
The Knesset Central Elections Committee has - via its right-wing extremist members - attempted to erase Arab presence in the Knesset.
In 2009, the committee voted to disqualify the Arab List political party ticket from running in the Knesset elections by equating their criticism of Israel with being subversive conduct - however the Israeli Supreme Court reversed that edict by a 9-1 margin.
In the last Knesset election, MK Haneen Zoabi, an Arab from Nazareth, was disqualified by that committee by holding that she encouraged terrorism and refused to acknowledge Israel's existence as a Jewish state. The Israel Supreme Court unanimously overturned the committee ruling and Ms. Zoabi was seated.
Currently, the Knesset is considering a vote that would bar the Israel Supreme Court from judicial review of its decisions - it is being hailed as the future "Zoabi Law". There is no constitution in Israel and hence, no immutable right to judicial review of legislative decisions. The "Basic Law" governs the organization and operation of the Israeli government and is, in a general sense, subject to amendment by the Knesset.
The Israeli far right is clearly overreaching in its attempts to remove Palestinian representation in the Knesset. However, if judicial review of such committee decisions occurs, we may stop seeing Arab representation in the Knesset.
Obama is a second-term president who can embark on whatever agenda he wants without fear of retribution by any segment of voters or the Israel Lobby - although the Democratic Party may be held accountable.
Looks like he will place Israel-Palestine issues on the proverbial back burner. China-U.S. relations - especially trade matters - will be the focus of his foreign policy.
Important thing to note about Israel's ongoing occupation - it is and has been very expensive.
The Second Lebanon War and the Operation Cast Lead incursion cost Israel billions of dollars. The Israeli government has had to scavenge from social programs in order to pay for defense costs associated with occupation as well as administering areas of the West Bank. This does not include property damage and lost productivity from opposing forces rockets and other war materiel.
Noteworthy is the social protests in Israel led by Daphni Leef, who signed a pledge not to serve in the Israeli military and has not served. Hundreds of thousands have appeared at her demonstrations where she has denounced the victimization of the Israeli government of various strata of Israeli society - specifically citing Bedouin Arabs and others. The leftist Hadash and Meretz parties have endorsed her movement. Leef's movement got started over the housing crisis when she pitched a tent across the street from the Prime Minister's office in protest.
The miltary adventurism of Israel has been expensive and has undercut the standard of living for the average Israeli.
".......a dwindling number of Christians."
Iraqi Christians (Chaldeans) have comprised in recent years about 3% of the Iraqi population. They have been targeted for various types of violence due to their religious affiliation, which has accelerated the departure of many to the United States and Europe.
In Metro Detroit, however, there are about 100,000 persons of Iraqi ancestry who reside in that area. Likely about 90% are Chaldean and the rest Islamic. Before the Persian Gulf War almost all persons of Iraqi descent in Metro Detroit were Christian and that war resulted in a number of Iraqi Shi'ite exiles coming to the area some stayed after the fall of Saddam Hussein and some went back to Iraq.
Metro Detroit's Chaldean community dates back to the early part of the 20th century with a spike in immigration in the 1960s and 70s but a staedy stream still is coming in from Iraq to this day. These Chaldeans have, for the most part, assimilated into American society and a significant number have been elected or appointed to many governmental offices in the state judiciary and legislature in Michigan - many are also small business owners. This Chaldean community is very unlikely to return to Iraq - unlike the Shi'ites who did return in significant numbers and many of those were active in the Iraqi National Congress that had been backed by the State Departemnt and Central Intelligence Agency as a sort of government-in-exile.
"The U.S. permanently lost its chance for a two-state solution."
One of the promises of the Bush administration to Arab countries for supporting the Iraqi invasion in 2003 was American corresponding support for an independent Palestinian state, The "Road Map for Peace" was created and publicized as the State Department centerpiece of this goal and the Bush Administration made 2005 as the year it planned to have the independent State of Palestine declared.
Israeli PM Ariel Sharon disengaged from Gaza in 2005 and released hundreds of Arab prisoners to the West Bank while leaving the Likud Party to form a centrist organizations committed to progress toward peace. These evnts helped defuse the Second Intifada.
By some accounts Ehud Olmert and the Palestinian Authority were on the verge of a comprehensive peace pact but minor points of contention could not be solved - hence nothing was acomplished and the State Department failed to ensure that an opportunity toward peace was diligently sought.
"Rachel's work was only beginning........"
Craig and Cindy Corrie have carried on the work of their daughter by supporting her cause.
They traveled to Ramallah and had met Yasser Arafat in Ramallah. They visited the family in Gaza whose home that Rachel was trying to protect when she was killed.
They were present at the Olympia, Washington courthouse when the Olympia Food Co-op boycott of Israeli goods was validated by Judge Thomas McPhee. The pro-Israel group Stand With Us (who supported the lawsuit against the boycott)later juxtaposed on their website a photo of the Corries standing outside the courthouse with another 1930s-era picture of two Nazi Brownshirts.
When Welsh documentary producer James Miller and Briton Tom Hurndall were killed by the Israel Defense Forces in separate incidents the British government pressed for accountability. An IDF officer was charged with falsifing a report in the Miller shooting and an IDF sergeant convicted of manslaughter in the Hurndall killing. The respecive estates of Miller and Hurndall each received well over $1 million dollars in settlement proceeds from the Israeli government for their wrongful death claims.
In Rachel Corrie's case, U.S. Congressman Brian Baird introduced a bill calling for a thorough investigation - it went nowhere. Jimmy Carter and U.N. official Richard Falk both were critical of the Haifa District Court judgment of Judge Oded Gershon exonerating the IDF in Rachel's death.
The Israeli government obviously thought it had nothing to lose by fighting the Corrie case in their own court system.
Yes, it is interesting to see which defense contractors are supplying drone technology and how much revenue is being realized from the drone program from sales to the U.S. government.
These are interesting interviews. I have felt that gathering a number of interviews of residents of any war zone is likely the best way of divining what really happened as opposed to what the government wants us to hear.
Iraq was involved in three major wars since 1979: The Iran-Iraq war - which caused massive casualties on both sides, the Persian Gulf War in 1990-91, and the U.S. and British invasion of 2003. The gross suffering of the Iraqi citizenry at large from not only these wars, but also Baathist security services oppression, sectarian violence, imposition of international sanctions, and looting of the nation's wealth by the Baathists, has been enormous.
Iraq should on paper be a wealthy nation - it has some of the largest crude oil reserves of any country, but poverty persists among the general population.
American troops - as one of the interviews above attests to - did bring in medics and had other positive interactions with the Iraqi people - this is undeniable. However the U.S. Army also gave us Abu Ghraib, the Abeer Qasim Hamza gang rape and murder, the supply procurement scandals, Blackwater security contractors, and the missing planeload of millions in cash.
There is no doubt that Iraq's location makes it one of the more strategically important nations in the region and I believe this was a paramount consideration for America to invade in 2003. The U.S. set up 500 million dollars worth of intelligence bases within Iraq shortly after completing their invasion of the country.
It was George H.W. Bush that in 1992 gave the go-ahead to the National Securty Council and the CIA to commence covert operations to attempt to dislodge the Baathists from power. The Iraqi National Congress was born and the U.S. dealt with a number of sharp operator exiles who talked a big game but delivered little - despite hundreds of millions of dollars in funding.
I am waiting for the time when the Iraqi people begin seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and begin developing a greater peace and prosperity without interference from unwarranted outside influences.
Bradley Manning simply did a "document dump" to Wikileaks where Dr. Ellsberg, a Harvard-educated scholar and policy expert, carefully redacted material that could compromise national security interests.
Dr. Ellsberg was charged by the Department of Justice in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles but those charges were dismissed due to improper government conduct.
There is a vast difference between what Bradley Manning did contrasted with Dr. Ellsberg. We cannot have U.S. Army privates decide they are going to leak massive amounts of classified information into the public realm for political motives.
I agree with a number of points Manning made in the cited interview, but I do not agree that he had any legal or moral authority to publically disseminate classified information he had control over.
If we look at Bradley Manning's background we have a clearer idea as to his motives - he is no Dr. Daniel Ellsberg.
Manning came from a broken home, dropped out of college, lived outside the U.S. before enlisting in the U.S. Army and being almost on the verge of discharge due to his performance in basic training; he argued with drill instructors, was picked on by fellow recruits due to his size and sexual orientation - and violated secrecy rules once given an important intelligence assignment.
PFC Manning, by all accounts, was highly intelligent but unreliable as a soldier. My personal belief is that his "document dump" was for the primary purpose of embarrassing the U.S. Army that he was in conflict with. He is trying to mitigate his actions by couching himself as some type of patriot.
This young man deserves stern punishment and to be made an example of.
"Cameron appears worried about the rise of the Jabhat al-Nusra radical group in north Syria."
The U.S. State Department designation of the al-Nusra front as a terrorist organization has actually enhanced the group's credibility in the Arab world by the fact that America opposes the organization. The designation has little practical effect as there are no assets the group has in the U.S. which can be frozen pursuant to that designation.
A December 25, 2012 article in Time magazine of a Jabhat al-Nusra official conceded that his organization has a significant percentage of non-Syrian fighters. This would dovetail with Iraqi and U.S. government conclusions that the al-Nusra front has a significant relationship with Al-Qaeda in Iraq, a terrorist group that was formerly led by the terrorist Zarkawi, which has been a key target of American military and Iraqi government forces for eradication within Iraq; most observers also believe the al-Nusra Front deploys many Iraqis to fight the Syrian government troops. While Al-Qaeda in Iraq has been decimated by government forces within that country, the al-Nusra front has enjoyed significant success against the Syrian government's army and now reportedly control a northern province within Syria. It is also gaining some degree of popularity within Syria due to the prowess of its fighters.
The destabilization of Syria internally has provided a unique opportunity for an al-Qaeda affiliate to exercise significant influence within an Arab country - although its numbers amount to a very small fraction of the number of fighters the Free Syrian Army has at its disposal.
Jabhat al-Nusra has conducted numerous terrorist bombings, mass executions, and other conduct that could be regarded as war crimes. Although their ranks appear to be well-trained and have fought with distinction, there is undoubtedly great concern by Western interests if this organization gets control over chemical weapons stockpiles currently held by the Syrian government. Another area of concern is what could happen if the group becomes a "state-within-a-state" in Syria as Hezbollah became within Lebanon. Al-Qaeda has been generally viewed as a "death cult" and has not gained a political toehold even in the most radical Sunni Arab-led areas such as Yemen and Gaza, however a significant percentage of Syrians have expressed gratitude and even overt support for the al-Nusra front.
British PM David Cameron's concerns are well-founded.
Actually, there are large numbers of Christians throughout Asia. The 2.7 million figure is not that surprising when one considers that there are 20 million Christians in India (about 2% of the population) and somewhere between 40 and 130 million Christian adherents in Red China. Even larger percentages of Christians can be found in South Korea and the Philippines.
"Karzai has recently expelled U.S. special forces from Wardak province....on the ground they were deploying Afghan death squads as auxiliaries."
U.S. government support for death squads dates back to California in the 1850s when they were used against American Indians and received federal funding. The "School of the Americas" in Georgia trained Latin American soldiers in the finer aspects of intelligence and covert operations - one of the trainees was Roberto D'Abuisson, an El Salvadoran military intelligence officer who later became a top political leader in that nation after commanding death squad operations that killed thousands - including Archbishop Romero. The "Los Pepes" death squads in Colombia were believed to be trained by U.S. Armed Forces personnel. The CIA-sponsored Phoenix Program in Vietnam resulted in the killing of 26,000 Vietnamese. The CIA provided logistics and training for the Operation Condor intelligence network in the panhandle of South America established in the mid-1970s to combat leftist elements in that region via abduction, torture and murder - it left 60,000 dead. The CIA trained SAVAK, the Shah's secret police in Iran that tortured and killed thousands of Iranian citizens.
Death squads are a lot like drone strikes - they are a form of state-sponsored extrajudicial killing that the U.S. intelligence community and military has seen as a "short cut" to defeating opposition to governments friendly to the U.S. Forget about such things as due process or the Geneva Conventions - death squads conveniently serve American interests.
Kudos to President Karzai for standing up to the formation of death squads in his country.
I suppose the American Indian Movement members who defied the FBI at Wounded Knee in 1973 could have fit as potential targets under the current drone program. So could the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers, the Branch Davidians, the MOVE activists in Philadelphia and various other groups.
The criteria for initiating a drone strike on a target is "imminent threat", however many of the actual targets are far from being imminent threats.
One target in Yemen had served time in a Yemeni prison for complicity in bombing of the Ameriican Embassy and occaisionally recruited for al-Qaeda after his release - no other asserted factual basis for beng an "imminent threat" before a Hellfire missile killed him.
Another target in Somalia was killed based on faulty information supplied by a competing warlord who had every motivation for seeing the other person targeted.
There are hundreds of non-targets who have been killed -many of them children - who were innocent bystanders.
These senators who were engaged in the filibuster correctly see a dangerous precedent in allowing targeted killings of individuals with vague evidentiary criteria and procedures devoid of due process. It could be only a matter of time when other groups are declared an "enemy of the people" and will be open to drone killings. Potential future targets could be Mexican drug traffickers, Marxist rebels in Latin American countries or even militia movement members within the United States.
After the hearings of the Church Committee and the revelations of the CIA's "Executive Action" assasination program, most observers believed that the U.S. government would never publically condone assasinations by the U.S. government. Senators like Rand Raul and Ted Cruz are seeing the abuses inherent in these targeted extrajudicial killings.
In January of this year the leader of the Sunni resistance, General Izzat al-Douri, issued a videotape that was broadcast urging opposition to Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki in several areas, including Anbar province and Nineveh. Al-Douri had been a top military leader under Saddam Hussein (featured in the famous "Deck of Cards")and he often displays a Saddam-era Iraqi flag during his filmed broadcast speeches.
Ten years after the start of the Iraq War, the top Baathist Iraqi miltary leader still has not been captured and is the reputed operational leader of the Sunni resistance forces.
American leaders in the State Department and CIA never understood the Iraqi population was highly fragmented into different cultural and religious groups and the sudden absence of a strong totalitarian regime such as the Baathists would foster anarchy and sectarian violence similar to what has historically been seen in Lebanon.
An excellent film by Brian DePalma, "Redacted", is a fictionalized version of the Abeer Qasim Hamza incident where a 15-year-old Iraqi girl was raped and killed by U.S. Army troops. That incident became a rallying point against the occupation as did Abu Ghraib prison abuses. The U.S. Armed Forces exacerbated anti-American sentiments among Iraqis by these types of incidents. The "Surge" by American forces was lauded as highly successful in stemming terrorist attacks, as evidenced by a lower "body count" of victims; yet substantial numbers of casulaties from insurrection continue within Iraq.
Other highly embarrassing incidents were committed by American forces in Iraq. There was the procurement scandal where Army officers were taking huge kickbacks in exchange for authorizing supply contracts for bottled water and other items - several Army personnel committed suicide during the investigation and a number of others went to prison. There was the planeload of millions of dollars in cash shrink-wrapped for distribution in Iraq that disappeared without a trace. There were the Blackwater abuses. And so on.
Iraq will be the historical equivalent of Vietnam for the scope of its waste and moral failures of the U.S. Armed Forces and policy deficiencies and mismanagement by the U.S. State Department.
"....Hugo Chavez was a mass of contradictions brought on...by a lack of extensive education."
Chavez finished near the top of his military academy class.
If anything could be positively said about his tenure of office, it would have to be his commitment to the poor. The heating oil example is one of many where he espoused genuine concern for those in need.
The U.S. government has welcomed Israeli air strikes into Syria and would like to see Israel do more to oppose the Assad regime.
In fact, most major governments of the world have recognized one way or another the Syrian National Coalition as the legitimate representative of Syria, as opposed to the Assad government.
There is no doubt that Jabhat al-Nusra - which has only several hundred combatants - has been fighting admirably against Assad's troops, however some Free Syrian Army members have stated that Jabhat al-Nusra will be opposed militarily as soon as Assad is removed from power. Sectarian violence similar to what has happened in Iraq could be the unfortunate result as a post-Assad aftermath.
You are largely correct, however Israel has not always got what it has wanted.
Jonathan Pollard has served 27 years in federal prison despite intense and continuous lobbying efforts for his release from the Israeli government and pro-Israel organizations within the U.S.
Israel was halted by the U.S. in its November of 2012 offensive in Gaza. This is in stark contrast to what occurred in Operation Cast Lead.
Full reparations amounting in many millions of dollars were paid by Israel in full compensation for the U.S.S. Liberty incident.
The problem right now may not be with Israel but with AIPAC.
Right now, PM Netanyahu is unable to form a government due to the fact that religious parties are backing away from a coalition due to the fact two of Likud's potential coalition partners, Yesh Atid and Homeland parties, strongly oppose military exemptions for objecting religious Jews. Netanyahu has had to request an extension from President Peres to continue coalition-building negotiations. Yesh Atid has indicated a desire for peace negotiations with the Palestinians and Netanyahu may have to seek a coalition with other centrist parties such as Kadima and Tzipi Livni's newly-minted party in order to form a government. These centrist parties are opposed to the further colonization of the West Bank as proposed by Netanyahu.
AIPAC's goals are strongly aligned with the Likud Party, however the political center of Israel has been shifting left.
When Shaul Mofaz, who is of Iranian descent, was defense minister of Israel during the tenure of PM Ariel Sharon, he went as far to be on a talk show receiving questions and giving answers to Iranian members of the public relative to a strike he maintained Israel was purportedly planning against Iranian nuclear facilities (Mofaz now heads the centrist Kadima Party).
Mofaz left office as defense minister and was replaced by Amir Peretz, who shortly thereafter became embroiled in the Second Lebanon War in 2006. Commnetators in Israel questioned the wisdom in planning an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities of a nation of 60,000,000 when the Israel Defense Forces was having its hands full in Lebanon fighting the Hezbollah 1,500-man militia.
I have a hard time envisioning Israel launching an air assault against Iranian nuclear facilities much as it did in July of 1981 against Iraq. It will not want to risk a potential counter-attack that Iran has previously threatened if such an attack occurs. Israel would more likely deploy cyber-attacks and covert intelligence operations in against Iran's nuclear enrichment program order to avoid a direct military confrontation with Iran.
As long as the United States District Court system continues to decline judicial review of these CIA assassination programs under the "political question" doctrine, there is little deterrent for the Obama administrationto do anything to rein in obvious excesses that offend traditional ideals of fair play and rudimentary due process.
The reference to GOP senators in punishing Palestinians for asserting observer state status is well-taken.
In reality, that UN General Assembly resolution had broad- based support among Israeli political leaders - including Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert.
The Central Intelligence Agency has had excellent connections in the American media.
When Richard Helms held leadership roles in the Agency, his point man for public relations was E. Howard Hunt. Helms served as U.S. ambassador to Iran after he left the CIA and had a friendship with the Shah going back decades to when they attended collegetogether in Europe.
Like "Zero Dark Thirty" this film tries to cast the CIA in a most positive light.
The Iranian hostage crisis was repugnant to most moderate Iranians and led to the resignation of Mehdi Bazargan, who held a top role in the the post-Shah revolutionary government. Bazargan had been a confidante of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, whose government had been overthrown by the CIA in Operation Ajax.
The Palestinian who filmed "Five Broken Cameras" was detained at LAX for a period of time by INS officers until Academy Award attorneys could secure his release. Michael Moore was giving Twitter updates on that situation.
"The Gatekeepers" tells the opinions of the six surviving former Shin Bet chiefs of how the Israeli political right wing has sabotaged the peace process for purely selfish political motivations. These opinions are nothing new; several years ago four former Shin Bet directors issued a joint public statement urging a diplomatic solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict and arguing that Israel was losing its character as a free democracy due to the severe nature of security that was being imposed by the Israeli government.
Usually the Best Documentary Oscar nominations garner little public attention however these two nominees have gotten quite a bit of media coverage. There are other lesser-known film critic and movie industry awards that have a best documntary category that these two fine productions are likely to receive nominations.
The president/chairman of the Syrian National Council, the long-time exile group based in Istanbul, is George Sabra, an Orthodox Christian. The Syrian National Coalition, the umbrella organization for Syrian opposition to the Baathists, has a significant number of Christians. A number of Alawites opposed to Assad are supporting of the Syrian National Council.
The Syrian-American community in Michigan numbers about 10,000 (out of 192,000 nationwide) with a significant percentage being Christian. There are a number of Syrian-rite Orthodox Christians living in Metro Detroit who have been politically influential - including former U.S. Senator Spencer Abraham.
A recent Detroit Free Press Sunday edition article on the front page covering the attitudes of the Michigan residents of Syrian descent indicated the vast majority support the opposition to Assad. One member of the Syrian National Council is from Flint, Michigan. The Free Press has reported that 17 million dollars was raised in Michigan to assist those opposing the Baathists.
Arab Christians living in Detroit, in my opinion, overwhelmingly want to see the Baathists leave power as they are viewed (correctly) as a repressive and anti-democratic regime. There is a great deal of concern, however, about who will replace the Baathists once Assad is gone and whether extremist elements, such as Jabhat al-Nusra, will be fighting the FSA afterwards.
"....enduring Leftist myth that the U.S. was behind the 1973 coup."
Wasn't ex-CIA director Richard Helms convicted of lying to Congress in covering up the CIA involvement in the 1973 overthrow of Allende?
Hasn't there been extensive research tying the late David S. Morales, a high-ranking CIA officer, to the 1973 coup in Chile. Morales had been involved in the Jacobo Arbenz coup in Guatemala in 1954 and also was CIA paramiltary operations chief for Operation Mongoose in Miami in the 1960s to subvert Castro. Morales' personal attorney and friend, John Walton, went on the record to confirm Morales' role in the 1973 Chile coup in an interview.
Wasn't the late former CIA director Richard Helms sued in 2001 over the death of Chilean General Rene Schneider?
Didn't Operation Condor result in the death of 60,000 persons? Did it not inspire the Costa-Gavras film "Missing".
Good points.
Klaus Barbie from the 1960s was on the payroll of German intelligence and had a close relationship with Bolivia's top government leadership. There were reports that he was a consultant to the CIA-linked Bolivian operatives who captured Che Guevara and executed him. Barbie was later extradited back to France in 1983 for war crimes prosecution.
Otto Skorzeny was a top aide to Juan Peron and eventually was a mentor to Muammar Khadafy after his coup in 1969 in organizing the internal security apparatus of Libya - he also trained Fatah leaders in paramilitary operations. Skorzeny had been a commando leader in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany.
The late Dr. Orlando Bosch was president of the University of Havana medical student government when Fidel Castro was president of the law student body. He later played a key paramilitary role in Miami-based anti-Castro exile groups that were supervised by the CIA's JM/WAVE station as part of Operation Mongoose. Bosch was never convicted in the Cubana Air bombing but did receive a pardon from parole violation proceedings arising from his conviction in a 1967 bazooka attack of a Polish freighter off the Florida coast.
Bosch freely admitted that he had been trained in paramilitary operations by the U.S. government. The cluster of anti-Castro groups and their CIA handlers in Operation Mongoose eventually rose to the highest levels of the U.S. intelligence community and many of those associated with the group rose to high public office. These would include Ted Shackley and Yale-educated Porter Goss. Shackley became Associate Deputy Director of Operations at the CIA during the Carter administration and would eventually back George H.W. Bush's presidential run in 1980 and play a key role in the Contra war in Nicaragua after he retired from the Agency. Goss was elected to Congress and later appointed CIA director.
In the NY Times #1 best-seller "By Way of Deception", a former Mossad case officer revealed that the spy agency had conducted scientific analysis of the fibers that composed the material used in passports of every major world country so that those passports could be replicated internally. Why they would have to steal someone's passport in another country is puzzling to say the least.
Mabhouh was regarded as a relatively insignificant target and his death was viewed as amateurishly committed in a manner that Dubai police easily untangled. It has become an embarrassment to the Israeli government. The killing has been denounced by the United Nations, European Union and nations whose ostensible passports were misused in the operation.
One story was that Zygier had been cooperating with the authorities in Dubai regarding the case.
There was the Uri Brodky arrest in Poland as he was a suspect charged in Germany with espionage and passport violations in connection with the Mossad operation. Poland extradited Brodsky on the condition that he face only passport charges. Brodsky was extradited, released on bail, returned to Israel and the matter eventually settled after a fine was paid. No real accountability by Israel despite the fact Brodsky was apparently involved in acquiring passports needed to help the Mossad agents enter into Dubai.
There was also the story that Dubai police in the early stages of the investigation, before the Mabhouh death became public, asked the U.S. for assistance relative to identifying credit card numbers used by the suspects, but that the U.S. refused to cooperate - per Wikileaks disclosures of cables between the two nations.
It would be highly unusual however for the Mossad to try to kill someone who was Jewish - especially one of their own operatives.
A related story was the coincidence of a 150-foot asteroid that missed Earth by only 17,000 miles.
It had been detected initially only about one year ago by ameatur astonomers in Spain. If it had impacted with Earth, the explosion would be the equivalent of 2.5 million tons of TNT.
Good question.
Lattakia is a port city and major commercial hub within Syria.
The Catholic Church withheld diplomatic recognition of Israel until 1993 until Israel negotiated the Oslo accords.
The Catholic Church in Jerusalem has been concerned about the welfare of Christian flock in the Holy Land. The #1 New York Times best seller "By Way of Deception" alluded to this concern and even the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem has made many formal pronouncements regarding the root causes of the Jewish/Arab conflict and the need to resolve it.
In Israel and the Occupied Territories, most Christians are either Eastern Rite Orthodox or Catholic. Politically, they are relatively united in their opposition to Israeli policies and the occupation with Islamic adherents in the region. Pope John Paul II in his visit to Jerusalem emphasized the human rights of the Palestinians and also prayed at the Wailing Wall and requesting forgiveness for the history of Christian persecution of Jews over the centuries.
The Catholic Church enjoys a significant following in many Arab counties - such as Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. These are nations where the roots of Jewish and Christian religions are historically found.
Many of those targeted have not been Al-Qaeda.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was backed by the Saudis, Israelis, and the U.S. with hundreds of millions of dollars in covert aid as an Afghan warlord during the CIA's Operation Cyclone fighting the Soviet-backed Afghan government.In 1994, he served as Afghanistan's prime minister.
In 2002, a U.S. Predator drone fired a Hellfire missisle at him and missed. He later announced his support for al-Qaeda, placing a bounty on American servicemen.
The failure of targeted killings to achieve anything meaningful has its precedent in Israel's use of them in Lebanon and Gaza. They were met with retaliatory attacks and galvanized the public they targeted against them.
Israel's own anti-terrorism experts opined that the assassinations of Sheikh Yassine and Dr. Rantissi in Gaza would be counter-productive as they would result in a strengthening of the Hamas military wing since Yassine and Rantissi were with the political wing that had been engaged in indirect peace negotiations with Israel. They also felt that the assassinations would result in greater cohesiveness between the various resistance factions in Gaza. All this occurred as predicted.
The recent killing of Hamas military leader Ahmed Jebari caused another round of missile strikes on Israel. Hamas, like Hezbollah, has retained a viable militia wing despite such targeted killings.
U.S. use of these drones are likely to continue to damage America's image in the Third World with little positive results.
Arab socialism under Nasser called for government controlling the means of production - industry as well as banking. The Baathists movements in Syria and Iraq were ideologically similar. Saddam Hussein's Iraq targeted the wealthiest families for property confiscation. Arab socialism called for emancipation of women but also a certain degreee of respect for religion.
As a result, the Islamic fundamentalists of these nations tended to poitically unite with business interests.
Chokri Belaid's funeral was attended by over one million persons; police clashed with protestors. He was buried yesterday.
Belaid, notably, served as part of the legal defense team for Saddam Hussein.
His killing was was denounced across the globe - even by the Muslim Brotherhood.
"..it also keeps china(sic)in check.
Phoenix Television reported that in an online poll of 500,000 residents of the People's Republic of China, 60% were "sad" over the death of Osama Bin Laden because he was anti-American.
Several global government leaders also denounced the killing of Bin Laden, including ex-Cuban President Fidel Castro, a high-ranking official of the Venezuelan government, and Hamas Gazan prime minister Ismail Haniyeh (who openly mourned his death) and a host of others.
Yeah, that sums it up well in one concise sentence.
It was like Israel trying to kill off the P.L.O all during the 1970s and 80s. Targeted killings in Operation Wrath of God did little to prevent ongoing armed struggle.
By the late 1980s, the Yitzhak Shamir government was actually trying to negotiate with the P.L.O to end the First Intifada. Eventually the Oslo Accords came and the P.L.O was largely absorbed into the Palestinian Authority.
The "war" gainst Al-Qaeda could go on forever. America now sees the Taliban as some group that can be negotiated with. The only way I see Al-Qaeda going away permanently is if some global amnesty offer occurs under which Al-Qaeda disbands in exchange for terminating its terror operations and being absorbed into other Islamic or even secular groups or governments in the region - such as the Syrian National Coalition is attempting to do with Jabhat al-Nusra.
A question is where does the CIA draw the line as to who is covered under the AUMF?
The terror leader Zarkawi in Iraq was independent until he announced his allegiance to Al-Qaeda; he was killed by the U.S. in an air strike and his successor was also killed. The group is now known as "Al-Qaeda in Iraq" and has been closely linked to the extremist Jabhat al-Nusra group operating against Baathist forces in Syria.
It would be a stretch to connect Jabhat al-Nusra with 9/11 despite the fact their fighters do profess an allegiance to Al-Qaeda. Jabhat al-Nusra claims to only want Assad out of office at this time and has no operations against the U.S., but under the current logic advanced by the Obama administration, this group could arguably face drone attacks.
You can say the samething about Chile, Venezuela, and Honduras.
The Cold Warriors at the Department of State and CIA loved those right-wing military juntas.
Costa Rica has no army and has had no revolutions.
What is clear here is that, like the Vietnam War, there are massive grey areas that need to be presented to the federal judiciary to adjudicate their legality.
Justice William O. Douglas once stated that the legality of the Indochina Conflict was something the Supreme Court needed to review, but it was never done. Only U.S. Congress with its oversight capabilities and authority to enact the War Powers Act in 1973 placed important checks on the powers of the Chief Executive. Same is occurring here.
The Church Committee, empanelled following the publishing of the CIA and the Cult of Intelligence by Victor Marchetti and John Marks and also the involvement of CIA personnel in the Watergate scandal, exposed many of the abuses of U.S. intelligence agencies and strengthened government oversight by Congress. Congressional oversight is beginning to occur slowly to address some of the more egregious practices of our government in conducting the drone program.
U.S. District Judge John Bates, a former army officer serving in the Vietnam War, applied the "political question" doctrine and standing defenses to dismiss an action to remove U.S. citizen from the "kill list". That individual has been killed since that time and more litigation has followed.
One of my key beefs with the drone program are the huge numbers of innocent bystanders that are killed, especially children. In Israel, international outrage over their extrajudicial killing program limited some of the more blatant acts. I recall some Defense Department officials expresing grave reservations about the CIA's drone program in Afghanistan.
The most dangerous aspect I see about the broad scope of AUMF interpretaion is that it could conceivably be interpreted to allow the U.S. intelligence community to point the finger at anyone in the world on flimsy proof supplied by persons with dubious motives and have a bureaucrat within the CIA "sign off" on some sort sort of administrative death warrant - it already has happened in Somalia.
The ACLU and other public service organizations should be lauded for their work in attempting to obtain needed judicial review of highly questionable practices by the U.S. intelligence community.
BDS has taken hold in the State of Washington, the home of Rachel Corrie.
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon all but conceded in a public statement that Israel was behind the lawsuit against the Olympia Food Coop for boycotting Israeli-manufactured products - with the exception of Palestinian "Peace Oil" olive oil. There was evidence an Israeli Consul met with the plaintiffs.
Current and former members of the board of directors were sent letters by a prominent Seattle law firm theatening legal action unless the boycott was lifted - due to alleged irregularities in adopting the boycott resolution. The ensuing lawsuit - in which the public interest law firm attorneys defended the co-op - resulted in a counterclaim against the five member-plaintiffs under the SLAPP Act (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) for damages and attorney fees. Sixteen defendants were named in the lawsuit against the co-op and its directors.
Judge Thomas McPhee, after recommending an offer by the co-op of a member referendum whether or not to continue the boycott (which was rejected by the five plaintiffs), the court dismissed the plaintiffs' suit and awarded the statutory maximum $10,000.00 to each of the sixteen defendants. Judge McPhee requested an itemization of attorney fees be provided to him by the co-op's attorneys - which resulted in a $280,000 claim.
There have also been flash mobs in support of Palestinian rights in Washington and boycotts at other area businesses.
Electronic Intifada and Mondoweiss have both covered these events in detail.
Pro-Israel observers have indicated that Washington events described above are an aberration due to special conditions - one being the sympathy over the Rachel Corrie death - she resided in Olympia.
Scholars For a Middle East Peace, a pro-Isarel organization, have indicated that a goal of theirs is to ensure that the BDS movement is marginalized and does not become mainstream in America. The U.S. population is generally about 3-1 in favor of Israel as opposed to those who support Palestianian issues. The goal is to keep the support in that proportion to ensure a pro-Zionist foreign policy is pursued by the U.S. government.
The BDS movement in Ann Arbor, Michigan has endured similar opposition. The People's Food Co-op had members that wished to place a member referendum on a ballot to boycott the sale of Israeli products at the co-op. Ironically many of the supporters of the boycott were Jewish, although the local Quakers actually spearheded the boycott.
A tremendous counter-movement developed with a sitting Ann Arbor council member carrying a placard in front of the co-op protesting the BDS movement and the referendum lost by a 77%-23% margin.
The federal judiciary is appointed for life and cannot be removed except via impeachment by Congress.
Very good article.
As hundreds of billions were spent on anti-terrorism efforts there was absolutely horrendous preparation for Hurricane Katrina.
9/11 helped plunge our nation into record-setting annual federal budget deficits. Clinton had achived a budget surplus due to increased tax revenues generated by a booming economy. The national debt was actually being paid down by the Clinton administration.
As to the drone issue, it is telling that only certain ethnic groups are targeted as terrorists for extrajudicial assassination. Yemenis and Pakistanis are often targets as well as Afghans,so are Somalians. If a European group was ever targeted - like the Irish Republican Army, Basque separatists, or Serbians - there would be huge outrage - especially if children were being killed as well. The groups facing drone strikes have little sympathy in America and extrajudicial assassination of these targets is politically popular.
@Bill:
John Dinges, in the book he co-authored "Assassination on Embassy Row", published in 1999, stated that the CIA leadership knew of the plot to kill Letelier at least two months before it occurred. DINA was trained and supplied by the CIA under Operation Condor, directed by Ted Shackley, who would later become Associate Deputy Director of Operations of the CIA before his retirement.
Remember the international ourage in September of 1976 when a young American aide to a former Chilean diplomat was killed in a car bombing in Embassy Row in Washington D.C.?
25-year old Ronni Moffitt and Orlando Letelier, both trying to promote democracy in Chile, died in an attempt by DINA, the Chilean secret police;her boyfriend was wounded but survived. CIA contract agent Michael Townley and anti-Castro Cubans linked to the CIA were involved with the operation. Subsequent research by an investigative reporter has shown that CIA leadership knew of the plot at least two months before it was carried out. As late as September of 2012, the Chilean government was still trying to prosecute those linked to the case and the #1 NY Times Best-Seller "By Way of Deception" claimed that Mossad training of DINA in special operations in exchange for delivery of Exocet missiles from Chile to Israel helped DINA acquire the expertise to successfully carry out the killing.
The relevance of the Moffitt case is that it shows that CIA-linked assassination programs has the potential to lead to innocent Americans being killed. We may have to wait until the day an American or some European is again accidentally killed as "collateral damage" before the public outrage is again ignited over how these "special operations" programs are run.
"The US criminal justice system does not apply here."
Why did the Justice Department obtain a grand jury indictment against Osama Bin Laden arising out of the al-Qaeda embassy bombings in Africa?
Either it applies or it doesn't.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in his Gulag Archipelago trilogy, spoke of the "RevTribunals" a special court in the Soviet Union to address counter-revolutionary conduct. The RevTribunals had a judge but there was no legal standards to apply in the proceeding and the only punishment authorized was death. It was observed that the criminal courts of the Soviet Union had legal strictures and a range of punishments including imprisonment for a number of years; it was much preferred to be charged in a criminal tribunal than a RevTribunal.
The extrajudicial assassination program described here smacks of a similar situation to the RevTribunals - no real protections against arbitrary and capricious impositions of decisions to execute. Likewise, the U.S.criminal justice system is a clearly preferable alternative to this CIA-sponsored program for its constitutional protections.
Excellent point.
The 462-page Goldstone Commission Report was well-researched and thoroughly documented with respect to its findings of "credible evidence" of war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Israel Defense Forces.
Almost nothing was done in response.
The omnipresent U.S. veto or abstention to proposed Security Council resolutions always seem to immunize Israel from corrective action.
Interestingly, one of the targets of a CIA Predator drone strike in 2002 was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the former prime minister of Afghanistan who served in 1994. He and his followers had been supplied with armaments and training from Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the CIA to fight the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul.
The Hellfire missile missed and the warlord Hekmatyar later announced a bounty on U.S. soldiers and support for al-Qaeda and the Taliban. He has never been captured and remains at large in Afghanistan.
The U.S. government rarely mentions his name, apparently because the inevitable question or comment from the media and public would be why we supported him in the first place and whether the attempted assasination of a former Afghan prime minister violates international law and President Ford's executive order barring assassination of foriegn leaders.
Israel initiated targeted killings largely because IDF soldiers were often shot at trying to make arrests in Gaza. The key problem is the level of "collateral damage" to innocent civilians as when the Israeli Air Force dropped a 1,000 lb. bomb on via F-16 jet on an apartment building killing 14 persons and injuring 63 to target one Hamas military leader, Salah Shihadeh.
It is strange Britain is conducting drone attacks in that region when thay have freely admitted they cannot legally target the IRA for such assasinations as Israel does to Arabs in Gaza.
Investigation and action by the UN is clearly needed.
Noam Chomsky has said that international borders are a product of violence.
Intrestingly, he once indicated in an interview that a one-state solution could have been possible in Israel before the Six-Day War and had support even in the Israeli intelligence services, however there was an insufficient amount of Palestinian nationalism at that time to make that idea a reality. Now he states that current conditions make such a one-state solution unlikely.
In his 1980 foreward to Livia Rokach's book "Israel's Sacred Terrorism", based upon Israel's former prime minister Moshe Sharrett, Chomsky stated that Sharett's "....defeat in internal Israeli politics reflected the ascendancy of the positions of Ben-Gurion, Dayan and others who were not reluctant to use force to attain their goals." Chomsky also observed therein:
"History, particularly recent history, is characteristcally presented to the general public within the framework of a doctrinal system based upon certain fundamental dogmas. In the case of the totalitarian societies, the point is too obvious to require comment. The situation is more intriguing in societies that lack cruder forms of repression and ideological control. The United States, for example, is surely one of the least repressive societies of past or present history with respect to freedom of inquiry and expression. Yet only rarely will an analysis of crucial historical events reach a wide audience unless it conforms to certain doctrines of the faith."
Dr. Chomsky's basic gist was that the American public views Middle East politics via an intended and benign pro-Israel prism that skews the truth obscuring "...the real world that lies behind 'official history'."
"Right after the assassination of Osama bin Laden, amid all the cheers and applause, there were a few critical comments questioning the legality of the act."
Yes. Firstly Osama Bin Laden was a criminal defendant in a United States District Court over the U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa and was therefore entitled to federal constitutional protections. There was no convincing proof he was a danger to anyone before he was shot - but a lot of conflicting versions appearing in the media.
One of the suspects in the 1985 TWA hijacking in Beirut had to be lured to an offshore ship in international waters and taken directly to the U.S. so the arresting agents would not be obligated to leave him on foreign soil for possible extradition. By simply killing Bin Laden it avoided possible conflicts with the Pakistani government or other nations which may have had jurisdiction over Bin Laden.
The British government conceded there was insufficient proof of Bin Laden's complicity as of 2002 to charge him with the 9/11 attacks. Even after he made a public statement apparently admitting his role on an al-Jazeera tape just before the 2004 U.S. presidential elections, the courts would have to authenticate that videotape and the audio portion of it - which might not have been easy.
One would also question why Bin Laden was not taken into custody and put on trial? This was done with Saddam Hussein and the FBI gained valuable intelligence information through questioning prior to his execution. There were regrets in some quarters that the CIA allowed Che Guevara to be summarily executed in Bolivia after his capture.
The British government has conceded they could never legally engage in extrajudicial assassination of Irish Republican Army leadership and expressed surprise the Israeli government has done so on a regular basis.
The most scary aspect of this is how far will extrajudicial assassination go? It could be an easy way to help resolve the ongoing drug trafficking-related violence in Mexico. It could be used in Syria, Iran, Iraq or Lebanon as it is in Yemen aginst suspected terrorist elements.
The initial indication of the U.S. federal judiciary is that such a decision to kill is constitutionally delegated to the Executive Branch and cannot be subject to judicial review.
It is unclear how important the "Islamists" known as Jabhat al-Nusra are to the Syrian rebels attempt to depose President Assad. Although their fighting prowess has bee lauded by the Free Syrian Army, their numbers are only several hundred.
What is clear is that the Free Syrian Army does not trust Jabhat al-Nusra and vice-versa. The Syrian National Coalition chairman has attempted to get the U.S. State Department to rescind the designation of Jabhat al-Nusraa a terror organization. The CIA has reportedly tried to ensure that the influx of armaments to the rebels do not fall into the hands of Jabhat al-Nusra; this extremist group may be composed largely of foreign fighters linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq - which had been founded and led by the infamous Zarkawi before he was killed by the U.S. Armed Forces.
Jabhat al-Nusra is a "wild card" in the Syria equation. They are anti-Assad, yet also anti-American and are, further, fighting on their own side rather than as part of the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army. What their role, if any, may be in a post-Assad transitional government is purely speculative.
Nice front-page article today in the Detroit Free Press about Syrian-Americans in Michigan and their role in the Syrian conflict.
It identified $17 million dollars in aid was raised by Syrian-American and Islamic groups in Michigan for assistance to Syrians affected by the ongoing civil war.
One member of the Istanbul-based 43-seat Syrian National Council exile organization lives in Flint, Michigan. Another Syrian-American leader in Michigan interviewed indicated that he met with National Security Council staffers about the U.S. role in the conflict. It was indicated that there has been disappoinment in the exile community about the paucity of aid given by the United States government to the rebels, although they are clear they do not want American troops involved in the fighting.
There was a report that the Troy-based office of the Syrian Consul was the target of Syrian-American protesters.
Generally, no.
However there are recognized exceptions in some jurisdictions that allow an attorney-client privilege to be inapplicable to "ongoing fraud".
One of the reasons mortgage fraud has been rampant is because the federal, state and local law enforcement, investigative, and prosecutorial authorities have deemed it a low priority and banks are aware that the worst that will likely happen to those who get caught is being a defendant in a civil action where they will have to pay restitution to the victim.
The Office of Comptroller of the Currency is the federal agency which reguates national banks and has a grieveance process which has been some assisatnce to the members of the public who have been victimized. Some states, such as Michigan, have enacted tough legislation against notarys public who may commit misconduct in the notarization of mortgages and other bank documents in the loan process.
Courts are routinely voiding foreclosure attempts by banks and other lending institutions who have been involved in misconduct and other improprieties in the mortgage loan process, but typically mortgagors must have the means to employ legal counsel to raise these claims.
It is all politics.
In Metro Detroit, with its large Arab population, there is sgnificant supportby local Congressmen for Palestinian issues in particlular and Arab matters in general.
Former U.S. Representative David Bonior once announced he would not vote for a routine symbolic resolution supporting Israel because it ignored the suffering of the Palestinian people; Congressmen John Conyers of Detroit and John Dingell also voted against that resolution - which easily passed the House. The story of the failure of these three Congressmen to vote for this resolution made the Associated Press wire.
"....a British court issued an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni for her role in launching the attack on Gaza in 2008-9..."
This is an attempt to invoke "universal jurisdiction" under international law.
Nothing new here.
Belgium had at one point charged Ariel Sharon with war crimes arising out of his role as defense minister during the Sabra and Shatila massacre during September of 1982.
A key prosecution witness, Lebanese cabinet minister Elias Hobeika, was murdered after it was revealed he was cooperating with the Belgians in the case.
NATO warned they would pull their headquaters out of Brussels unless the case was dropped.
In the end, the law upon which Sharon was charged was repealed.
There have been other unsuccessful attempts to prosecute Israeli officials in other jurisdictions for various offenses under international law.
Earlier this week, on 1/29/13, the article "Hagee vs. Hagel; Christian Conservatives Mobilizing Against Hagel" detailed Pastor John Hagee's Christians United For Israel(CUFI) organization and its attempts to derail the Hagel confirmation.
See: link to democraticunderground.com
"........Cruz's performance underlines the importance of Christian Zionism in reinforcing the crackpot conviction in the US Senate that it is impossible ever to say anything slightly negative about Israeli policy (the only country in the world so exempted)."
Christian Zionism is a very real phenomenon in fundamentalist Christian churches in America. Thomas Friedman, the former New York Times Jerusalem correspondent, in his award-winning book "From Beirut to Jerusalem" correctly observed that these Christians do not identify with or necessarily care about Israel in a poltical sense, but believe that Israel's creation in 1948 was fulfillment of divine prophecy and Israel proceeds toward future eschatological significance. Many Christian Zionists believe that the construction of the Third Temple is nearing and have corresponded and kept abreast of the actions of Rabbi Chaim Richman, the director of the Temple Institute, who is attempting to plan the building of the Third Temple. Friedman rightly points out that most Israeli leaders are not aware that the motivations of these Christians adherents arises not out of affinity to Israel but rather due to religious observance.
Pastor John Hagee of Texas is a prime example of a Christian Zionist who in one of his books implied that Communism in post-war Germany was the punishment of Germans for the Nazi persecution of Jews, citing the fact that the height of fences of the Nazi concentration camps approximated the height of the physical partitions between the former East and West Germany. Hagee has attended pro-Israel fund-rasing functions and was applauded by former PM Yitzhak Rabin. Hagee has predicted that the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple and the necessary demolition of the Al-Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem will trigger catastrophic war between Jews and Muslims. Hagee has a huge following nationwide.
The Christian Zionists are and have been a major political force in the U.S.; they believe that any criticism of Israeli policies is nothing less than anti-Christian and that Israel must be supported fully by America at all costs.
The "Israel Lobby" is very real and powerful, however the Christian Zionists are also influential in America. It is the collective attitudes of these two groups which fuel the lack of accountability of Israel for war crimes and human rights violations and prevent meaningful peace discussions.
Chuck Hagel has advocated direct negotiations with Hamas as well as Iran. There are many leaders within Israel that support peace talks between Israel and Hamas.
There has been criticism that many of the targeted leaders of Hamas that have been killed were those that had been leaning toward or actually a part of peace negotiations. A lawsuit was filed against the Israeli government by several prominent Israeli writers for the IDF assassination of a Hamas diplomat trying to negotiate a truce in 2002 during the Second Intifada. The same could be said for the recent IDF killing of Ahmed Jebari.
The recent Oscar-nominated documentary "The Gatekeepers" bolsters the contention that political opportunism by Israeli leadership led to sabotage of the peace processes toward Palestinians. This was the conclusion of the six living Shin Bet intelligence chiefs interviewed.
Chuck Hagel has gotten beyond the "taboo" of not negotiating with "terrorists". The Labor and Meretz parties in Israel have likewse strongly pushed a meaningful two-state solution pursuant to good-faith negotiations with Paestinian-Arab leaders; some leaders of the new Yesh Atid Party have likewise emphasized serious negotiation is needed. This recent push to common sense practical peace initiatives could bear friut in the near future.
Firstly, I do not believe that Western powers abandoned Russia following the Nazi invasion of Poland -Britain and Canada immediately declared war on Germany in 1939. America set up a supply line to the Soviets via Murmansk - Stalin was a fan of Spam and Solzhenitsyn ate American-supplied pork stew while in his foxhole as a Red Army officer.
However, in my opinion, the Soviets did, despite some U.S. intelligence analysts' contention to the contrary, attempt to encircle via its military and intelligence agencies the Middle East centers of oil production via its conduct during the 1970s thru 1980s. This would include direct involvement in the Yom Kippur war as well internal conflicts within Ethiopia and Yemen, and supplying Egypt, Syria, Libya and Iraq with billions of dollars worth of armaments. The Soviet bloc also maintained a very tight relationship with the P.L.O. via the Romanian government.
Russia's leadership has always maintained a degree of paranoia, however, that the West was going to eventually invade them. The history of Russia is being subject to invasions and heavy civilian and military casualties by Western powers. America sent an expeditionary force into Russia folowing WWI to aid the anti-Bolshevik forces.
After the cessation of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991, the Russians ceased being a world empire and turned to cooperation with the West economically under Yeltsin and later under Putin. This created a political vacuum in the Middle East in which resulted in conflict between the Western powers and an emergent militant Islamic fundamentalism of various shades flourishing in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen amongst other places. The Baathist totalitarian states of the Arab world are currently in a stage of collapse. NATO members offer secular democracy and armed sectarian Muslim factions seek Islamic forms of rule to supplant these failed Baathist states.
In 1981, The United Nations condemned Israel over its bombing of a nuclear reactor facility near Baghdad, Iraq.
Even though this clearly violated international law, Israel shrugged it off and there was no accountability.
The Israel Foreign Ministry has made statements announcing support for the rebels in Syria. It is not unprecedented for Israel to support even Islamic rebels against Russian interests. It did so when Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan - it supplied armamnets and training to his militiamen.
Russia stands to lose influence if Assad is deposed - including its naval installation in Syria. It is wholly understandable for Russia to issue such a pronoucement.
".....[t]he Obama administration's opposition to the coup in Honduras is the polar opposite of our policies in the "good old days".
The deposed Honduran president in an interview accused CIA-backed individuals and organizations that had connections to the Honduran military that inspired the coup; he named names. Wikileaks revelations show that the American Embassy reports from Tegucigalpa differed from what the Obama administration was teling us about the coup.
The Honduran president's politics became too liberal over time for the Cold Warriors in the CIA and State Department. Republicans in Congress welcomed the coup and former pres. Zelaya himself says that his ties to Castro and Chavez angered the U.S.
The Honduran coup is reminiscent of the coup deposing Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 or Allende in Chile in 1973.
Turkey, Israel and the United States are openly backing the Free Syrian Army for their own selfish motives - not for love of spreading democracy - but for advancement of their respective national security interests. If a post-Baathist Syria degenerates intio civil war or a long-term low-grade guerilla conflict as happened in Iraq, the U.S. may wax nostalgiac over the Assad era.
One report blames the carnage on the Islamic extremist al-Nusra faction, however it is correct to note there are insufficent facts at this point that can be confirmed to assign blame.
In any event, a very tragic occurrence for Syria.
Two documentaries have received Oscar nominations that deal with the Israel/Palestine conflict:
"Five Broken Cameras" - dealing with life under occupation in the West Bank.
"The Gatekeepers" - interviews of six former Shin Bet intelligence chiefs.
Both are critical of Israel's political leadership.
Yair Lapid has supported a two-state solution with proposing a "very high fence" between Arabs and Jews.
His staements have been clearly apartheid in nature.
Many Arabs within Israel proper refuse to join the political processes as it would be an implicit recognition of the State of Israel.
Naftali Bennett's decision to support an annexed West Bank would create huge problems for Israel as those Arabs residing therein would have citizenship and voting rights availed to them and one would see a vast change in the Israeli government landscape if annexation occurred. The only major group supporting annexation within Israel previously has been Jewish settlers themselves.
Every indication I have seen from Yair Lapid would be that he would be no friend of Palestinian Arabs and support apartheid policies as his father did when he served as deputy prime minister under PM Ariel Sharon.
The financial costs of the occupation are immense and slice into social program governmental budgets within Israel. The military cost of Operation Cast Lead was 1 billion dollars exclusive of property damage sustained from Qassam rockets.
Israel is not only being kept afloat with U.S. foreign aid but also Jewish-American donations.
Ironically, Daphne Leef, a Jewish leftist social reformer in her 20s, has received widespread support thoughout the political spectrum in Israel by criticizing the Netanyahu government. Her initial issue was inadequate housing availability, but she has been critical about how many segments of Israeli society - including settlers and Bedouins - have been mistreated by the government. She signed a pledge never to serve in the IDF - and hasn't. Leef has described her movement as social rather than political but has been touring the U.S. giving lectures. She holds real political clout within Israel as a social reformer with a large following. She has had the full endorsement of the leftist Meretz and Hadash political parties within Israel.
My prediction is that the political "pendulum" in Israel will continue its swing away from the extreme right and centrists and leftists will pick up political clout in Israel as time progresses. The Second Lebanon War discredited the Kadima Party and the party sustained more damage after Operation Cast Lead. The huge number of Knesset seats gained by Labor and Meretz are a very good omen.
Operation Cyclone to defeat the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul was the most expensive covert operation carried out in the history of the CIA. Also known as Charlie Wilson's War after the charismatic U.S. Congressman who was its primary backer in Congress.
What is so bizarre is that the Cold War was so effectively won by the CIA and Defense Department that Islamic fundamentalism has replaced Communism as the key foe of American and pro-Western interests.
No more Marxists fighting in Afghanistan - the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are now the major threat.
Saddam Hussein, an ally of Russia, is gone and so is the internal stability his Baathists brought to Iraq.
There are recent reports that operatives the MEK, a Marxist group in Iran opposing the government, is receiving technical communications training by the Defense Department in the U.S.
America has come full circle from McCarthyism, Operation Cyclone and the anathema to Marxist adherents to actually abandon the "Better dead than red" slogan and recognize Marxist movements as a posible ally against the spread of jihadists and fundamental Islam in politics. Will "Better dead than green" be the new motto of American patriots?
What is noteworthy is that the map discloses "islands" of control that mirrors the final status Israel seeks to impose upon the Palestinians and that this political partition is an almost carbon-copy model of the bantustan known as Bophutswana under the South African apartheid system.
The absence of contiguous borders deprives Palestine of one element of statehood, as it did Bohphutswana.
Thanks for the numbers.
Imprisoning them without charge or trial is "administrative detention". This same legal theory was employed extensively by the Soviet Union to imprison millions of its citizens. Administrative law is different from criminal law in that a suspect has little safeguards normally attendant to what Americans would consider due process.
Gaza was essentially run as a totalitarian occupied colony by the IDF until the Intifada commenced in 1987. The IDF often shot and killed Gazans on the streets without fear of retribution until the Muslim Brotherhood held elaborate public funerals for the victims and aroused outrage for Gazans to fight back.
Frankly, I am surprised there was any prosecution of the IDF border police soldiers for the humiliation of the mentally disabled man.
Border police harassment is something that has been rampant by the IDF against Palestinians.
There had been international outrage over the Arabs that were being forced to sing before the border guards as a pre-condition for passing the checkpoint; guards were uploading videos of these incidents to YouTube. The publicity over these videos led to an IDF investigation; in one case it was held ,incredibly, the subject elected to voluntarily sing to the guards. In another video, a young Arab was forced to sing while simultaneously slapping himself in the face. These videos were particularly repugnant to Israelis recalling the forced singing of Jewish inmates at Auschwitz.
There also have been more serious reports of violent assaults of Arabs at these checkpoints. In one instance guards beat a Palestinian for five minutes until an IDF officer intervened.
An Israeli civil rights group, Machsom Watch, has placed observers with notebooks to document border guard abuses at these checkpoints.
These reports of IDF border guard misconduct have fueled incidents of Arab retaliation against IDF checkpoints, including a history of snipings,slashings and suicide bombiings of guardsmanning these areas.
There had been one report that even though organized Palestinian resistance groups had stopped sniping at IDF guards during a truce, these border units were still being shot at by individual Arabs disappointed over the failure of the "terrorist" orgaanizations to continue the sniping incidents.
I would hardly consider all of 50% that were not Likud bloc allies to be Palestinian-fiendly in orientation.
Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz publicly called for the killing of Hamas secretary-general Khaled Meshaal during his recent visit to Gaza. He served as Ariel Sharon's defense minister during the extrajudicial killings by the Israel Defense Forces of Hamas leaders Sheikh Yassin and Dr. Rantissi.
Thanks for the article.
The Council on Foreign Relations has also urged the Obama administration to exhibit more transparency regarding the drone program.
FDR's unwritten order to Secretary Henry Knox was during a time of a war declared by an Act of Congress and the Japanese admiral was a clear unifomed combantant of the enemy within a war zone with no civilians nearby.
Even then, Robert S. McNamara has opined that the admiral's killing constitutes a war crime.
During WWII, bombing was notoriously inaccurate with about 97% of all missions to bomb legitimate targets failing with explosions eventually often killing innocent civilians.
Many leftist Britons consider the RAF commander during WWII to be a war criminal. General Curtis LeMay was the youngest four-star general in U.S. history and his success during WWII in the Japanese theater of operations can be traced to his use of "area bombing" against Chinese and Japanese cities that arguably constituted war crimes. The incendiary raids over Tokyo destroyed over half the city and ravaged civilians. Both MacArthur and Nimitz felt that dropping the atomic bomb on a Japanese city violated everything they were taught as officers as proper conduct toward civilians in war.
Very few Americans quarrel with the decisions to employ methods arguably consisting war crimes where the net gain in American lives was enormous. Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have been war crimes and so may extrajudicial assassination used by the CIA herein - but the cruel fact is that decades from now, historians may look upon Obama and John Brennan as heroes for saving thousands of American lives at the expense of some Third World natives that most of the American public could care less about.
My feelings exactly, however every American president preceding Obama has steered clear of personlly "signing off" on an extrajudicial assassination of another person.
There was no solid proof that either JFK or LBK ever approved even the general assassination program of "Executive Action" initiated by the CIA let alone approved specific targets.
The Kennedy administration during Operation Mongoose anti-Castro planning made great pains to include a general plan to initiate an anti-Castro exile coup d'etat of the Cuban government with any specific attempt to kill Castro himself and argue that any death of Castro would be by Cubans incident to a change of government - thus creating a fine line between a CIA assassination and an incidental death of Castro during a popular Cuban revolution.
The admission of the Obama administration that the president has personally signed off on CIA targets is unprecedented and opens up the possibility of a war crimes investigation in which Obama could personally be targeted for potential prosecution. I chuckle over the hoopla about the Obama birth certificate controversy when Obama's actions in possible war crimes implicate grey areas of international law in which senior officials of the CIA and Defense Department, in addition to Obama, could have personal exposure to war crimes prosecution.
The sheer number of innocent bystanders and children killed coupled with the flimsy standards for being on the CIA "hit list" warrant serious investigation by a neutral international body.
The key point here however is practicality - America would never allow its leadership to be prosecuted for war crimes by an international tribunal.
To give a stark example of the deleterious effects of global warming is the decimation of the Peary caribou in Nunavut, Canada. These include the chain of islands in between Yukon and the North Pole and constitute some of the coldest and most remote areas of the Earth.
The Peary caribou have survived during the non-summer months by eating plants that exist underneath snow. With te advent of global warming the snow covering the plants melts and then re-freezes as ice, making the plants inaccessible to the caribou. As a result, the caribou are dying from malnutrition and scientists are observing and noting large numbers of caribou carcasses littering the region.