[Peace] News notes, 2008-04-06

[C. G. Estabrook]

SUNDAY 6 APRIL 2008

[1] TORTURE. Again this week some of the most important political news in the US 
appeared not in the thoroughly compromised American media but in what are more 
or less fashion magazines.  VANITY FAIR runs another important article in the 
current issue, entitled “The Green Light.” In it British attorney Philippe Sands 
uncovers the Bush Administration's torture policy.  Sands, an international 
lawyer in London, had earlier exposed the massive illegality of the Bush-Blair 
invasion of Iraq.  In the VF article, he describes how high-ranking 
administration lawyers helped design and implement the interrogation policies 
for Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and secret CIA prisons. The “few bad apples” that the 
administration said were responsible for torture are shown to be the highest 
officials of our corrupted republic.
     Also this week a suit by the ACLU has led to the release of a March 2003 
memorandum by administration lawyer John Yoo, justifying torture on the basis of 
the President's inherent authority. John Yoo's 2003 "torture memo" is described 
as "a green light for military interrogators to use just about any technique the 
Pentagon deemed useful," and one observer is struck by Yoo's “utter glib 
certainty.” Esquire magazine asked Yoo, now a law professor at Berkeley, to 
justify this nazi-like document, and he tries to weasel out a bit.  What should 
have been one of the biggest stories of the week appears in a journal that 
smells of men's cologne.

[2] SPYING. Also published this week is a book by New York Times reporter Eric 
Lichtblau: “Bush’s Law: The Remaking of American Justice.” Lichtblau won a 
Pulitzer Prize for exposing the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping 
program in December 2005. In the book he describes the New York Times’ decision 
to delay publication of the story for more than a year – until after the 
election – at the request of the White House.  All the news that fits their 
political agenda...
     If government torture and spying on Americans aren't “high crimes and 
misdemeanors” under the constitutional requirement for impeachment, then nothing 
is.  But the liberal Democrats who control the House of Representatives refuse 
to consider impeachment, because they in fact generally support the 
administration's policies -– as do the Democratic presidential candidates.  And 
the corruption of the republic continues.

[3] MEDIA. In the past two weeks, the following events transpired:
     [a] A Department of Justice memo, authored by John Yoo, was released which 
authorized torture and presidential lawbreaking.
     [b] It was revealed that the Bush administration declared the Fourth 
Amendment of the Bill of Rights to be inapplicable to "domestic military 
operations" within the U.S.
     [c] The U.S. Attorney General appears to have fabricated a key event 
leading to the 9/11 attacks and made patently false statements about 
surveillance laws and related lawsuits.
     [d] Barack Obama went bowling in Pennsylvania and had a low score.
Here are the number of times, according to NEXIS, that various topics have been 
mentioned in the media over the past thirty days:
     "Yoo and torture" - 102
     "Mukasey and 9/11" -- 73
     "Yoo and Fourth Amendment" -- 16
     "Obama and bowling" -- 1,043
     "Obama and Wright" -- More than 3,000 (too many to be counted)
     "Obama and patriotism" - 1,607
     "Clinton and Lewinsky" -- 1,079
...even Iraq -- that little five-year U.S. occupation with no end in sight -- 
has been virtually written out of the media narrative in favor of mindless, 
stupid, vapid chatter of the type referenced above. [Glenn Greenwald]

[4] WAR. In a generally pro-war column today, the NYT's Frank Rich points out 
that “the war is out of sight and mind in a way Vietnam never was. Only 28 
percent of Americans knew American casualties in Iraq were nearing 4,000 last 
month...” that's in part because “by March 2008 the percentage of prominent news 
stories that were about Iraq had fallen to about one-fifth of what it was in 
January 2007 ... That’s why it’s no surprise that so few stopped to absorb the 
disastrous six-day battle of Basra that ended last week — a mini-Tet that belied 
the “success” of the surge,” writes Rich, comparing the fight amongst Shiite 
factions that revealed Muqtada al-Sadr  to lead the only real mass movement in 
Iraq, to the massive uprising in Vietnam 40 years ago.

[5] AFPAK. In fact the US ME war has several fronts, and in the eastern front -- 
where Clinton and Obama want to increase the killing – the week saw the new top 
official in Pakistan’s northwest frontier demanding that the US end missile 
strikes in the country and calling for negotiations with militants – Al Qaeda 
and Taleban.  And Afghanistan’s political opposition (i.e., within  the US 
puppet government) announced they have been engaging in peace talks with the 
Taliban.  the untrustworthiness of US clients led SOD Gates to say Friday that 
deployments of US troops to Afghanistan are to increase significantly by the end 
of 2009 (as the Democratic presidential candidates wish).

[6] NATO. The Taleban have accused French President Nicolas Sarkozy of reneging 
on an election promise with his new pledge to send more troops to Afghanistan. 
The Afghan militant movement said they had freed two French aid workers last 
year because Mr Sarkozy had pledged to pull French forces out of Afghanistan ... 
Earlier this week, France offered 700 more troops for Nato's Afghan mission ... 
The extra troops raised at this week's Nato summit in the Romanian capital, 
Bucharest, would not defeat the insurgents, the spokesman said. "With the 
blessing of God, the occupiers will be defeated as others have been defeated in 
the past," he said ... Nato currently has about 47,000 troops stationed in 
Afghanistan. Meanwhile, in a bit of historical irony, Russia and Nato have 
signed a deal allowing Nato to transport non-lethal freight to Afghanistan 
through Russian territory.

[7] IRAQ. In the western front of the US ME war, the US shows the Iraqi 
government just what it thinks of them by renewing  Blackwater's multi-million 
dollar contract to guard the massive US embassy and personnel, altho' nothing 
has been done about the fact that Blackwater guards shot and killed 17 people, 
including women and children, last September.
     The administration's proconsul in Iraq, Gen. Petraeus, our occupation 
specialist, is coming to Washington this week to explain it all to Congress and 
us, with his trusty diplomatic sidekick, Amb. Ryan Crocker.  It's the 
administration's spring offensive against the only enemy it really fears, the US 
public – which it's shown can be distracted, given the indispensable help of the 
Democrats.
     But in Iraq Moqtada al-Sadr called on Thursday for a million Iraqis to 
march against the U.S. occupation.  Sadr called on Iraqis of all sects to come 
to the Shi'ite city of Najaf.  His statement said, “The time has come to express 
your rejections and raise your voices loud against the unjust occupier and enemy 
of nations and humanity, and against the horrible massacres committed by the 
occupier against our people.” The demonstration, called for the fifth 
anniversary of the fall of Baghdad on Wednesday, coincides with Petraeus' 
dog-and-pony show in Washington.

[8] ISRAEL. And in the far west front, Israel said it would build hundreds of 
new homes on occupied land. Israel has justified the expansions by citing a 2004 
letter Bush sent to Prime Minister Sharon in which he acknowledged “already 
existing major Israeli population centers” that would prevent a return to the 
pre-1967 boundaries. But the exiled leader of Hamas has announced again that 
Hamas would agree to a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders with Israel. 
Last week, the Arab League renewed a six-year-old peace proposal based on 
similar terms. Successive Israeli governments have either ignored or rejected 
the offer, which would require the dismantling of Israeli settlements in the 
occupied West Bank.

[9] IRAN. And in the central front of that war – Iran – the US has amazingly 
demanded to see the contract which the Swiss have signed with Iran for the 
delivery of gas and oil over a ten year period.  The Swiss, who handle US 
diplomatic interests in Cuba and Iran, have so far refused, but the incident 
shows what the US ME war is really about.

[10] ECONOMY. American business reduced the number of jobs by 80,000 jobs in 
March, the biggest monthly job decline in five years, making it all but certain 
that the US is in a recession.  Americans are more dissatisfied with the 
country’s direction than at any time since the New York Times/CBS News poll 
began asking about the subject in the early 1990s: 81% Say Nation Is Headed on 
the Wrong Track.  But Sen. Clinton Proposes Plan to Keep Jobs in US – give tax 
breaks to employers and hope they'll fire fewer people.

[11] FOOD. Meanwhile rising food and fuel prices, poor harvests and the demand 
for biofuels are endangering the hungry around the world. The grain it takes to 
fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year, and corn prices 
jumped to a record $6 a bushel Thursday.  The number of Americans receiving food 
stamps will reach a record twenty-eight million later this year. In West 
Virginia, one-in-six residents now receive food stamps.

[12] MLK. On the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin King, remember 
that US Army spies secretly recorded black radical Stokely Carmichael warning 
King, "The Man don't care you call ghettos concentration camps, but when you 
tell him his war machine is nothing but hired killers, you got trouble" ... That 
same year, watching the great antiwar march on Washington in October 1967 from 
the roof of the Pentagon Major General William Yarborough, assistant chief of 
staff for Army intelligence, concluded that "the empire was coming apart at the 
seams". He thought there were too few reliable troops to fight the war in 
Vietnam and hold the line at home.
     As the radical journalist Andrew Kopkind wrote shortly after King's 
assassination, "That he failed to change the system that brutalizes his race is 
a profound relief to the white majority. As a reward they have now elevated his 
minor successes into major triumphs." [Alexander Cockburn]

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