[Peace] News notes 2006-08-20

Tue Aug 22 20:41:29 CDT 2006

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	Notes on last week's "global war on terrorism" (GWOT)
	prepared for the Sunday 20 August 2006 meeting of AWARE,
	the "Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort" of Champaign-Urbana.
	Sources and citations will be provided on request;
	paragraphs followed by a bracketed source abbreviation
	are substantially verbatim. --CGE
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[1] The contest for the Most Disgusting USG Lie of the week (the
competition was stiff, as usual) was won once again by SOS Rice, who's
close to retiring the trophy.  In a WP op-ed piece over her name, her
flack wrote, "For the past month the United States has worked urgently to
end the violence that Hezbollah and its sponsors have imposed on the
people of Lebanon and Israel."  These people have no shame.  (Think of
parallels:  e.g., Germany announces at the end of September 1939, "For the
past month Germany has worked urgently to end the violence that the Polish
cavalry and its sponsors have imposed on the people of Germany and the
Wehrmacht...")

[2] The US/Israeli invasion of Lebanon -- launched under the propaganda
line "Israel has a right to defend itself," after the purported kidnapping of
two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah -- continued despite UNSC Resolution
1701, as Israel kidnapped one Arab opponent on Saturday and attempted to
kidnap another.
	Israel seized Palestinian Deputy Prime Minister Naser al-Shaer at
his home in the occupied West Bank on Saturday.  The Israeli military
seized and imprisoned 30 PA MPs and a third of the PA cabinet in late
June, as it launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip.  An Israeli army
spokesman confirmed troops had taken al-Shaer into custody, saying it was
"due to his membership in a terrorist organization"  -- i.e., the elected
government of the PA.  These people have no shame, either.
	Also on Saturday Israeli commandos flew by helicopter to an area
near Baalbek in eastern Lebanon, about 17 miles from the Syrian borders
... Lebanese media speculated that Sheik Mohammed Yazbeck, a senior
Hezbollah official in the Bekaa Valley and a member of the group's
executive council, was the target ... Overflights by Israeli jet fighters
drowned out the clatter of helicopters that flew the commandos into the
foothills of the central Lebanese mountains ... Using two vehicles also
delivered by helicopter, the commandos drove into the village of Boudai
and were intercepted by Hezbollah fighters ... the Israelis were dressed
as Lebanese soldiers [atmpting to produce a rift bwtween the Lebnaese
militaryand the Resistance, i.e., Hezbollah?], but the guerrillas grew
suspicious and gunfire erupted. Israeli helicopters fired missiles as the
commandos withdrew and flew them out of the area an hour later, [without
their target].  At least one Israeli officer and perhaps three Hezbollah
fighter were killed.
	U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that the Israeli raid
violated the U.N. ceasefire ... "The secretary-general is deeply concerned
about a violation by the Israeli side of the cessation of hostilities as
laid out in Security Council resolution 1701," said a spokesman for Annan.
"There have also been several air violations by Israeli military
aircraft."

[3] Despite the ceasefire, Israel intends to do its best to kill Hassan
Nasrallah, the General Secretary of the Hezbollah party, according to a
senior Israeli commander quoted in today's NYT.
	Nasrallah became head of Hezbollah when the Rabin government [of
Israel] escalated its crimes in Lebanon and murdered Sheikh Abbas Mussawi
and his wife and child with missiles fired from a US helicopter. Nasrallah
was chosen as his successor.  [There is]  a good reason why last February,
70% of Lebanese called for the capture of Israeli soldiers for prisoner
exchange. [Chomsky]
	Long-time Beirut correspondent Robert Fisk writes that the real
war begins and does not end with Monday's ceasefire.

[4] The Nation makes the same pro-Israel mistake as one frequently finds
in the corporate media when it writes ["Crisis in Lebanon," Aug. 28/Sept 4
issue] "Hezbollah has fired several thousand rockets into northern Israel,
killing about 100" ... While Hezbollah did kill 158 Israelis, only 41 of
those were killed by rockets fired into northern Israel; three-quarters of
them were Israeli soldiers ... By way of contrast, of the 1300+ Lebanese
killed by Israel using primarily precision weaponry, the vast majority
were civilians, with a significant fraction of those being children under
the age of twelve. The Nation attributes this "in large part [to] Israel's
greater power," but it actually has a lot more to do with Israel's
indiscriminate (and criminal) choice of targets than it does their power
per se. [lefti]
	One key point that should be mentioned ... is that no serving
Israeli official, intelligence officer, or other military officer felt
that the Hezbollah acted under the direction of Iran or Syria. [A.
Codes,man]
	The coverage of the Lebanon fiasco in the Israeli media is
alternately narcissistic and hysterical. The details of the massive
destruction to Lebanons civil infrastructure and environment are brushed
aside as inconsequential; the 1,300 civilian deaths, irrelevant.
	The BBC provides pictures of Lebanese returning to the rubble of
their homes in the south, as a result of massive Israeli bombing of the
civilian infrastructure. The stench of dead family members, women and
children often greets the returnees as they sift through the ruins of
their homes.  Returning families and children face severe danger from
unexploded ordnance, including cluster bombs. It is estimated that 10
percent of the tens of thousands of bombs dropped on Lebanon by Israel did
not explode immediately.
	An internal Lebanese army statement has called for troops to stand
"alongside your resistance and your people who astonished the world with
its steadfastness and destroyed the prestige of the so-called invincible
army after it was defeated".
	One in Ten Israeli Tanks Destroyed By Hezbollah : The high toll of
the war on Israels Armored Corps was a shock to top military brass,
especially given the fact that Hezbollah has no tanks.

[5] The war in Lebanon is separated from the war in the Gaza Strip, which
has been conducted simultaneously, and which is going on unabated after
the cease-fire in the North. Do these two wars have a common denominator?
Are they, perhaps, one and the same war?  The answer is: certainly, yes.
And the proper name is: the War for the Settlements. The war against the
Palestinian people is being waged in order to keep the "settlement blocs"
and annex large parts of the West Bank. The war in the North was waged, in
fact, to keep the settlements on the Golan Heights. [Uri Avnery]

[6] A majority of Americans wanted the US to be neutral in the
Israeli-Lebanon War. Only a third wanted to support Israel to the hilt.
But the US Congress and executive ... ignored the majority.
	Bush believes conflict is a US-Iran proxy war.  Washingtons
foreign policy elite is engaged in a bitter tussle between
neoconservatives and realists seeking to influence George W. Bushs stance
on the Israel-Lebanon crisis. The neocons increasingly have the upper hand
... Over the past four weeks, Mr Bushs language has toughened from talking
about the war on terror to stronger terminology in which he refers to the
war against Islamic fascists and Islamofascism  terms long in currency
among neoconservatives ... Bushs belief [is] that the fighting between
Israel and Hizbollah is a proxy war between the US and Iran. [FT]
	A decade ago the Neocons groups set out an agenda  control of
Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. That was quite in concert with
perennial American insistences on controlling ME energy resources.  They
see the task to be completed before the end of the Bush administration in
2 years to be control of Iran, and it's hard to see how that will mean
anything other than war.  Curiously, Seymour Hersh reports in the recent
New Yorker, some traditional hesitation in the State Department is now
joined by some opposition among civilians in the Pentagon, who see the US
expeditionary force in Iraq as hostages in an attack on Iran.

[7] In Afghanistan, US-led troops clashed with insurgents in two battles
Saturday that left four U.S. and two Afghan soldiers dead and six other
Americans wounded ... thousands gathered to mark Afghanistan's
independence from British rule in 1919, following the third Anglo-Afghan
war.

[8] A federal judge on Thursday struck down President Bush's warrantless
surveillance program, saying it violated the rights to free speech and
privacy, as well as the separation of powers ... U.S. District Judge Anna
Diggs Taylor in Detroit is the first judge to rule on the legality of the
National Security Agency's program ... Taylor ordered an immediate halt to
the program, but the government said it would ask for a stay of that order
pending appeal. The American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the
suit, said it would oppose a stay but agreed to delay enforcement of the
injunction until Taylor hears arguments Sept. 7.  The ACLU filed the
lawsuit in January on behalf of journalists, scholars and lawyers who say
the program has made it difficult for them to do their jobs. They believe
many of their overseas contacts are likely targets of the program, which
monitors international phone calls and e-mails to or from the U.S.
involving people the government suspects have terrorist links. The ACLU
says the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which set up a secret
court to grant warrants for such surveillance, gave the government enough
tools to monitor suspected terrorists. The government argued that the NSA
program is well within the president's authority but said proving that
would require revealing state secrets ... Taylor, a Carter appointee, said
the government appeared to argue that the program is beyond judicial
scrutiny. "It was never the intent of the framers to give the president
such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly
disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights," she
wrote. "The three separate branches of government were developed as a
check and balance for one another" ... Taylor suggests in her ruling that
the program "would violate the Constitution even if Congress authorized
it," Pildes said. "Until Congress actually addresses these questions, I
would expect most appellate courts to be extremely reluctant to address
many of the questions this judge was willing to weigh in on."  While
siding with the ACLU on the surveillance issue, Taylor dismissed a
separate claim by the group over NSA data-mining of phone records. She
said not enough had been publicly revealed about that program to support
the claim and further litigation would jeopardize state secrets.
	The  judge ordered the Bush administration to stop the
five-year-old "Terrorist Surveillance Program." "There are no hereditary
kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution," Taylor
said in a 44-page ruling.
	When questioned about the legality of President Bush's
eavesdropping program on May 8, the widely respected Admiral Bobby Ray
Inman, who was director of the National Security Agency (NSA) when the
FISA law was passed (and later deputy director of the CIA), said: "There
clearly was a line in the FISA statutes which says you couldn't do this
... There was even an extra sentence put in the bill that said, 'You can't
do anything that is not authorized by this bill.'"

[9] It is likely that the individuals arrested in the UK August 10 are
guilty of what George Orwell, in 1984, called "thoughtcrimes". That is to
say, they haven't actually DONE anything. At most, they've THOUGHT about
doing something the government would label "terrorism." [W. Blum]

[10] The Marine officer who commanded the battalion involved in the
Haditha killings last November did not consider the deaths of 24 Iraqis,
many of them women and children, unusual and did not initiate an inquiry,
according to a sworn statement he gave to military investigators in March.
	The U.S.-led coalition is ignoring innocent children being held
and sometimes abused in Iraqi juvenile prisons, a State Department
official says.

[11] Demands for Tony Blair to quit over his support for US President
George W Bush in the Middle East are to be taken to Labour's annual
conference next month in a direct challenge to his leadership by left-wing
Labour campaigners.

[12] Federal Treasurer Peter Costello has said Australians must steel
themselves for the fact the "war on terror" could continue for longer than
the Cold War.

[13] Chavez says that Lebanon was destroyed by the genocidal hand of
Israel.  Venezuelan president announces nationwide fundraising drive to
raise money for rebuilding Lebanon and for Palestinians; calls Lebanese
heroic people
	US names spy operations 'manager' for Cuba, Venezuela. The United
States has named a special "manager" for its intelligence operations
against Cuba and Venezuela, in effect putting the two Latin American
nations on a par with "axis of evil" states confronted on multiple levels
by the administration of President George W Bush.

[14] BTW, don't wait for the elections to save us.  According to today's
NYT, the Federal Election Commission reports that, out of 435 seats in the
House of Representatives, because of the way districts are drawn, only 27
are actually contested.  But that's up from 2004, where there were only 9
out of 435 were in doubt before the election.  The Soviet Union probably
usually had more contested seats in its legislature...

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	C. G. Estabrook, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
	109 Observatory, 901 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801
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