The Largest Minority

July 9th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

The motivation behind the resistance in Iraq is the same now as it was when the war started, and the only way to end it is to end the military and corporate occupation. It really is that simple. We have no right as aggressors to determine our future role in a foreign country when the government of Iraq has clearly stated that we’re not welcome. Haven’t we killed enough innocent people? Haven’t we destroyed enough nations? Haven’t we been robbed enough ourselves by Washington?

Barack has failed to deliver. Those of us who actually listened to the debates from the beginning knew he was a Clintonian clone. Fuck him. He never was and never will be an agent for change. If you actually do desire change, and you’re pissed enough to finally do something about it, then show a little backbone and hold your vote as leverage above the Democrats.

July 2nd, 2008 by evmonk

I was reading this profile of Rush Limbaugh from the upcoming NYTimes mag and came across something odd. Not only does Limbaugh follow Olbermann’s lead in referring to his counterpart Bill O’Reilly as a real-life Ted Baxter, he also has good things to say about the rhetorical powers of Christopher Hitchens. This struck me as somewhat odd, considering Hitchens is a Marxist/Atheist who is famous for, among countless other controversial remarks, his convincing assessment of Henry Kissinger as a war criminal.

Anyway, this led me to an article and video Hitchens produced for the August ‘08 issue of Vanity Fair where he gets waterboarded. It’s an interesting enough video, which I threw on YouTube when I realized VF doesn’t allowed embedding.

Kudos to Hitchens for putting his aging, booze-saturated body under such duress. Although he taps out kind of quickly, don’t you think? (Not that I’d last any longer.) And what’s up with that music? Is that Enya?

Kaj Larson of Current TV, a former Navy Seal, submitted himself to a far more extensive and violent waterboarding session 2 summers ago. Plus Kaj’s video has more diverse, interesting commentary. Check it out by clicking below.

June 29th, 2008 by Sam

Here is Seymour Hersh on CNN’s Late Edition discussing covert US operations conducted inside Iranian territory.

It’s worth noting the utter illegality and brashness of such actions on the US’s part.  Scott Ritter, who has also written extensively on these issues, reminds us that the “violation of a sovereign nation’s airspace is an act of war in and of itself.” One can only imagine the response our government would unleash were Iran to even contemplate conducting similar operations in our sovereign territory, much less actually carry them out.

June 21st, 2008 by Sam

Working for the VA, as with any job I suppose, has its benefits as well as its drawbacks. On the one hand, helping combat veterans recover from the mental wounds of war, as we do at the facility I work at, is genuinely gratifying. It certainly beats the alienated labor of your run-of-the-mill corporate service sector job. On the other hand, I’m often reminded and confronted with the full barrage of myths surrounding the US’s violent and aggressive involvement with the rest of the world, both contemporary and historical.

Just the other week I was treated to a loud waiting room conversation between two Vietnam vets, both of whom have been receiving counseling for PTSD from my facility for several years. Their scars are lifelong, and so too it seems, are the myths they learned and were told to fight for four decades ago. The conversation, as it often does, veered from a discussion of the value the gook places on life (none, in case you were wondering), to the victory stolen from the Army and its corresponding State by the treasonous media and those damned anti-war activists, to the need to teach those red bastards a lesson by “taking no prisoners of war,” just razing villages and exterminating defenseless peasants, because after all, “that’s how they treated us,” as a walk through Topeka, KS or Billings, MT in 1968 would amply demonstrate. The conversation, as it usually does among the more reactionary sectors of our population, naturally shifted to a quaint conversation on the “invasion from the south” of illegal brown people. It seems where ever we turn, whether it be Vietnam, Iraq, or Mexico, brown people are ruining it for everyone. I was reminded of Noam Chomsky’s quote of whether “what is needed in the United States is dissent–or denazification.”

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June 16th, 2008 by D.C.

Fadel Shana, a photographic journalist for Reuters, was killed by an Israeli tank shell on April 16th, 2008. He died while reporting in the Gaza Strip, and Israeli forces have stated that they could not discern whether he was a journalist or not. In a recent Reuters article, Shana was said to be:

filming from a tripod in full view of two tanks for several minutes when one of the tanks fired a shell that exploded above them, showering them with metal darts known as flechettes.

Both wore body armor that carried “Press” markings, as did the car which they had been driving in the area for about half an hour. They were about 1.5 km (a mile) from the tanks. Shana’s camera captured the fatal shell being fired.

Not only was Shana killed, but eight adolescents aged 12 to 20 were killed. It is a blaring attrocity, but doesn’t seem to be the only case where Israel has fired first and asked questions later. In a botched airstirke, Israeli forces killed 6 people. It just seems to be a recurring theme in Palestinian territory: Israel forces respond to Palestinian activity with a quick military response, and sometimes that response is fatal.

What is peculiar about this incident is the fact that the tank fired into a group of people, where two men were journalists (and might I add, clearly journalists and not hostiles). The Israeli military forces have been known to discourage press coverage inside the Gaza Strip, so could this be their way of sending a warning to other journalists who want to cover the conflict? Or is this just a simple case of a trigger-finger-happy officer? Either way, it is an attrocity and should be investigated to the fullest extent. Will the investigation (if one actually takes place) actually give us an answer into the brutal death of Shana and eight others? Probably not, but I am hoping for the best result.

A spokesperson for Ehud Olmert, Mark Regev, commented on the deadly firing of the shell by stating:

“We have expressed regret and the army is conducting an investigation. It’s a tragedy,”
“There was no identification that he was a journalist. Had it been clear he was a journalist, the shell would not have been fired.”

This is a rather interesting comment. Apparently, by the statement he makes above, if a person is not recognized as a journalist in the Gaza Strip the military is free to fire on them. Does that make any sense to you? It sure doesn’t strike me as very humane. Regev’s statement leads me to believe that Israel does not regard the lives of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as being worth very much. If they are willing to fire tank shells into a group of people that, according to the Reuter’s article, weren’t doing anything suspicious, I wonder what else they are ‘willing’ to do?

I am very sorry for the loss of the Shana family, and condolences to the families of those Palestinian adolescents killed that day as well. What I hope comes from these tragic deaths is a change in the way Israel treats people in the Gaza Strip, and hopefully they will actually stop and think before they act. When it comes to people’s lives, I think that is at least due.

Source

June 12th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

Facts?! Sorry, we’ve got no time to talk about those crazy partisan details.

June 12th, 2008 by D.C.

The right of habeas corpus has returned to the detainees of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center. The high court of the United States, by a vote of 5-4, overthrew a law that George W. Bush forced through Congress in 2006.

The 2006 law allowed for a limited review by a U.S. appeals court in Washington of the military’s designation of the prisoners as “enemy combatants.” It took away their right to a hearing before a U.S. district court judge to challenge their confinement.

This is a great step towards detainees gaining the rights that they deserve. Some have been imprisoned without trials and there is even rumor of abuse within the prisons. These terrorism suspects are people just like anyone else. They deserve to have the same rights as all other people, because they are people, just like you and me. Daila Hashad, Amnesty International’s human rights program director, comments on the court decision:

“The Supreme Court did the right thing. Everyone has the right to challenge why they’re being thrown in prison, to hear the charges against them and to answer to that,”

“It’s a real shame that in the 21st Century, we’ve taken such a step backward in the Bush Administration, to say we have the right to throw someone in jail and throw away the key — but no longer.”

I fully agree with Hashad. President Bush had no right to take away the rights of terrorist suspects. It almost seems like Bush wanted to bring the United States back to the time of the Cold War (McCarthyism anyone?). You can’t deny specific people commonly held rights. That is the sign of a tyrannical mind at work. The whole point of a free society is so that everyone is represented equally under the law. With Bush that seems to have ‘gone out the window.’

The high court decision was dissented by four judges. Of these four judges two were conservatives appointed by Bush ( Justices John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito) and the other two were conservatives Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Justice Scalia’s dissent showed his extreme conservatism on the matter when he stated:

“Today, for the first time in our nation’s history, the court confers a constitutional right to habeas corpus on alien enemies detained abroad by our military forces in the course of an ongoing war,”

First of all, the label of ‘alien enemies,’ denotes they are guilty before having a trial. Since there has been more than one detainee released from Guantanamo Bay, this is a huge oversight. Secondly, even if there is an ‘ongoing war,’ (which I personally would not call a war) doesn’t a prisoner of war retain rights? Doesn’t the U.S. government have to abide by rules when imprisoning people during war? Even members of the Nazi party after World War II were given a trial.  

All people have the right to a fair trial, and everyone is supposed to be equal underneath the law. When the equality is broken and the scales of power are tipped in favor of a person, or an agenda (such as the ‘war on terror’), the whole basis of the law crumbles. In the decision passed down by the high court, the framework to restore the law to it’s rightful position in society, which was on the brink of destruction by the hands of Bush, was reborn.

Source  

June 11th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

Colin Powell’s former Chief of Staff Larry Wilkerson speaks on how Cheney blocked talks with Iran. The letter Wilkerson is referring to was discussed in this post awhile back.

Iran was willing to be completely open about its nuclear program, help stabilize Iraq, end its support for Palestinian groups the US considered terrorists, and to help disarm Hezbollah. All Iran asked in return was for the US to halt further hostile actions in the region, and to be removed from the “axis of evil”.

The Bush administration refused that offer.

h/t Steve from COANews