31, October 2007 Nominee for AG
Once again, the Democratic-led Senate Judiciary Committee failed to fully challenge the nominee for Attorney General (AG), Michael Mukasey. Incredibly, Mukasey defended many of President Bush’s most egregious post-9/11 policies, including holding American citizens indefinitely without charge and denying them Habeas Corpus. Although he was harshly critical of the White House memo on torture, Mukasey failed to take a strong position on the grotesque ‘enhanced’ interrogation techniques now being employed, such as water-boarding, stripping prisoners, hooding and exposing them to frigid temperatures, subjecting them to savage beatings, sexual humiliation, and shattering ear drums by exposure to loud music.
The confirmation hearings are largely a charade to appease the public into believing that a change of policy will ensue after the new AG is confirmed. Guantanamo detainees will continue to be horribly abused and black rendition sites will be retained to outsource brutal torture activities out of sight of the US media which has largely remained deafeningly silent on such un-American practices. Mukasey even slithered unchallenged by the issue of warrantless, illegal wiretapping and surveillance which clearly violates US law. Unless the public responds with outrage and demands an apolitical AG, there is little doubt that Mukasey will be confirmed.
22, October 2007 Response to local letter writer re: ISRAEL
Lisa Cohen (letter, October 21) is right to condemn religious extremism. Sadly, she is very selective in directing her outrage against Islamic extremism but conveniently ignores radical Zionism which is the root cause of much of the violence in the Middle East. Cohen portrays Israel as the innocent victim of Muslim extremism. Nothing could be further from the truth. Israel has used terror and violence to seize Palestinian land and subjugate its people. Cohen reiterates Giuliani’s preposterous claim that Palestinians do not deserve their own state. Palestinians lands have been expropriated and replaced by Jewish only settlements reminiscent of South Africa’s repugnant apartheid government.
Contrary to Cohen’s assertions, Giuliani is a self-serving politician who is merely making public statements to appease and placate the large and well-connected Jewish constituency to gain their political and financial support. Hillary Clinton is adopting a similar strategy. Giuliani has angered many Americans for his gross exploitation of the 9/11 tragedy and his complete failure to protect 9/11 responders who are now suffering from life threatening health problems. Fortunately, more and more Americans are voicing their strong opposition to our unconditional support to Israel which is fueling mounting rage and undermining the security of our nation. Perhaps, many Americans are unaware that Israel is now insisting that it receive its US foreign aid in Euros because of the declining value of the dollar.
20 October, 2007 Diego Garcia
Earlier this month, Avenidas (Palo Alto Senior Center) hosted a documentary, ‘Stealing a Nation’, made by the renowned film maker, John Pilger. This is one of the most shocking tales of the British and the US government’s connivance to expel the most vulnerable islanders of Diego Garcia from their homeland.
Diego Garcia was an idyllic paradise situated in the Indian Ocean inhabited by 2000 people whose roots date back many generations. In the late 1960s, the government of British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, entered into a secret agreement with the United States to purge all the inhabitants and hand over the island to the United States – in complete violation of the United Nations Charter. What followed, according to Pilger (drawing from official documents), was a brutal effort to terrorize the population into submission.
First they were starved of essential food supplies, then threatened with being bombed and finally witnessed their beloved pets being gassed to death. Many committed suicide and the remaining population were herded at gunpoint onto boats like cattle and dumped in the slums of Mauritius where many died of utter depression. Currently, Diego Garcia is the largest US military base in the world and is suspected of being a rendition site for ‘enhanced interrogation’ of detainees. In 2000, the highest British Court issued a judgment declaring a grave injustice had been done to Chagossians but this was overturned by a decree of the British Crown.
17, October 2007 Crime pays big time
In a startling new expose, Vanity Fair’s contributing editors Donald Barlett and James Steele, followed the money trail of $12 billion of US currency earmarked for the Coalition Provisional Authority for reconstruction between April 2003 and June 2004. To date, $9 billion have vanished. The US Federal Reserve Bank were the custodians of the funds which were Iraqi assets impounded during Gulf War 1 by the United Nations.
The money was in the form of $100 bills packed into large pallets and loaded onto cargo planes bound for the Iraqi capital. Once the money arrived in Baghdad it seems to have been given away to American contractors on a basis of carry-as-much-as-like in the largest giveaway that the world has ever known with the total absence of any auditing efforts. The Coalition Provisional Authority initials, CPA, did not retain the services of a single certified public accountant. What is infinitely worse is the CPA was in fact a rogue agency created at the behest of the Pentagon and is therefore not accountable for its gross malfeasance. All efforts to recover the money have failed because the US government claims the CPA was not an entity of the US government. The Pentagon awarded the auditing contract to NorthStar Consultants, a shady corporation run out of a million-dollar home in La Jolla, California, with a post office box in Nassau, Bahamas. Who said crime doesn’t pay?
9, October 2007 IRAN
Once again, the war drums are beating loudly as a war obsessed president launches his media propaganda blitz on a war weary nation. Buoyed by his ‘successful war in Iraq’ which has resulted in one million fatalities and over 4 million refugees, the Bush war machine has asked the Pentagon to draw plans for an attack on Iran. Bereft of ground troops, a massive aerial attack is planned to rain death and terror on the hapless Iranian people. According to investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh’s, latest article in the New Yorker magazine, the war rational has shifted from WMD’s (largely rejected by an increasingly skeptical public) to Iran’s alleged role in Iraq. Thus, the WMD threat has been repackaged as a counterterrorism threat.
The pro-life president is now planning to dispatch more innocent civilians to an early grave. It is time for all Americans to speak out on the war crimes this administration is committing in our name. We must oppose plans to launch an air-strike on Iran and return our country to one which has respect for international law and human rights.
