NOT GOOD ENOUGH
Malcom Lagauche
… The current administrations of the U.S. and Great Britain are stonewalling the issue of lying to the public of both nations about the reasons for going to war against Iraq in 2003. On both sides of the Atlantic, despite previous statements of an open discussion, Obama and Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown, are holding under wraps information that could implicate many people in blatant war crimes activities. Obama’s excuse is a great sham. He has stopped the publication of pictures of U.S. military personnel torturing Iraqis. In addition, he has blocked the issuing of memos that would implicate many in the bogus buildup to the March 2003 invasion. In Obama’s case, he is sheltering those who have been the most outspoken critics of his administration: neocon Republicans. All the time he has been keeping Dick Cheney from public scrutiny, Cheney has made public statements condemning Obama’s security measures. If Obama ever possessed a backbone, it has surely been a victim of atrophy since he took the oath of office in January 2009. Gordon Brown is also keeping locked a public and open inquiry into British lies that led to the U.S.-Britain alliance in destroying Iraq…
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‘No US charges’ over Afghan raid
Aljazeera.net
The US military is unlikely to discipline troops involved in an air strike in Afghanistan which killed up to 140 civilians, the top US commander has said. Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he had seen nothing in a forthcoming report on the strike that might lead to disciplinary action over the incident…
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‘Free Gaza: Brick by Brick’
Free Gaza Movement
On June 25th, the Free Gaza movement will set sail on its eighth mission to break Israel’s horrific siege and collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza strip. “The Israelis violated international law by ramming the boat I was on which was carrying medical supplies to Gaza. Therefore, I never got to Gaza. Especially after Operation Cast Lead, I want to go to Gaza, and if I’m lucky, one day, I’ll also get to visit a free Palestine,” said former Representativ e Cynthia McKinney, one of the passengers coming back. Along with McKinney, 36 others will board the FREE GAZA , a fishing boat, and the SPIRIT OF HUMANITY, a small ferry loaded with building supplies such as cement, only a token of what is needed in Gaza, but a prelude to larger shipments the Free Gaza movement expects to take throughout the summer…
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Another US Soldier given clemency for murder of Iraqis
MyStateline.com
A former Army sergeant convicted in the brutal execution-style murders of bound Iraqi prisoners has been granted clemency. Michael Leahy Junior of Downers Grove, Illinois was sentenced to life in prison earlier this year for the deaths of four Iraqi POWs. But friends and family members fought for clemency and a brigadier general in Germany has now granted that request. Leahy’s sentence was reduced to 20 years with the possibility of parole after less t han seven years…
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Pentagon Rebrands Protest as “Low-Level Terrorism”
Tom Burghardt
You have to hand it to Pentagon securocrats and their corporate cronies, they never miss an opportunity to demonize, vilify or otherwise slander domestic political dissent as “terrorism.” The American Civil Liberties Union reported June 10 that “Anti-terrorism training materials currently being used by the Department of Defense (DoD) teach its personnel that free expression in the form of public protests should be regarded as ‘low level terrorism’.”…
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Iran election: protests and the ‘West’
Filasteen
… One more thing which isn’t being said: I would also question whether what’s happening now is really being seen by Western governments as being in their interests. For one thing, Ahmedinejad has been a gift from God to the more beligerant elements of Western elites, espeically Israel and the neo-cons. Some have explicitly said as much. For another thing, do autocratic pro-Western governments across the Arab world – in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the Gulf states… even in Iraq – really want to see one of their neighbouring autocratic regimes get swept away by a popular revolutionary tide? In reality I imagine it will terrify them as much as 1789 terrified the old monarchies of Europe, or indeed as much as 1979 Iran terrified those same Arab despots. The notion that Iran now has its authentically chosen and legitimate government, and that any challenge to this is solely from pro-Western stooges, seems to me to be more reflexive than well-considered…
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Freed prisoner: Medical neglect endangers life of Palestinian female prisoner
Palestinian Information Center
Somoud al-Kan, who was recently released from an Israeli jail, appealed to anyone concerned with the well being of prisoners to try and help Amal Juma’a who is serving an 11-year sentence, suffers cancer of the womb and not being given the appropriate medical attention. She added that Amal Juma’a, who has suffered bleeding for the past five years because of the cancer, receives only sedatives and sleeping pills. Al -Kan, 23, from the village of Kafr Qallil near Nablus, who was released on 16 June after spending almost five years in occupation jails, told the Prisoners’ Studies Centre that female captives are living very harsh conditions in Israeli occupation jails and need serious support…
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PA Still reticent over death of detainee in Mukhabarat custody
From Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank
Palestinian Authority (PA) officials have been quite reticent over the death of Haitham Amr, a 28-year-old nurse, in PA custody in Hebron earlier this week. Amr, a father of two children, was arrested on Thursday, 11 June at his home, at the village of Beit al-Rush el-Fouga, 20 km south-west of al-Khalil, by a combined force of the Preventive Security (PSF) and General Intelligence (GI) or (Mukhabarat). The village is classified as part of “Area-C,” which means that PA security personnel can’t enter it without prior coordination with the Israeli occupation army…
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The language that absolves Israel
A special political vocabulary prevents us from being able to recognize what’s going on in the Middle East.
By Saree Makdisi
On Sunday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech that — by categorically ruling out the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state — ought to have been seen as a mortal blow to the quest for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On Monday morning, however, newspaper headlines across the United States annou nced that Netanyahu had endorsed the creation of a Palestinian state, and the White House welcomed the speech as “an important step forward.”…
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Obama-backed Bill to Ban Release of Bush-Era Torture Photos Passes Senate
Jeremy Scahill
In a move that didn’t receive much attention, the Senate on Wednesday passed by unanimous consent the Graham-Lieberman bill, which seeks to make it illegal to make public any images of US prisoner abuse and torture from the Bush era. Specifically, the bill bans the release of images “taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, b y the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States.” The Obama White House supports this outrageous legislation whose sole purpose is to make it illegal to reveal the truth about US torture…
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Weekly Report: On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory No. 24/2009 (11 – 17 June 2009)
PCHR – Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law continued in the OPT during the reporting period (11 – 17 June 2009): Shooting: During the reporting period, one Palestinian was killed by IOF in the West Bank. Additionally, IOF wounded 13 Palestinian civilians, including 4 children and a paramedic, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. On 14 Jun e 2009, medical sources at an Egyptian hospital declared that Yasser ‘Arafat Sbair, 27, from Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, died of wounds he had stained during the recent IOF offensive on the Gaza Strip. An IOF drone fired a missile at him on 12 January 2009 when he was near his house. He was a member of the Palestinian resistance…
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Back in the fold: Comic Stephen Colbert in Baghdad
David Walsh
Its unsurprising character does not make comic Stephen Colbert’s trip to Iraq and his solidarizing himself with the US war effort any less disgraceful. Colbert, whose Colbert Report (with a silent “t” in “Report”) on the Comedy Central cable channel has a considerable following among students and young people, taped four episodes of his nightly show in Baghdad June 8-11 before an audience of American military personnel. In the course of the programs, he interv iewed top US military commanders and Iraq’s deputy prime minister and aired “shout-outs” from President Barack Obama, former presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Vice President Joe Biden, senators John McCain of Arizona and Jim Webb of Virginia, and Alaska’s governor, Sarah Palin…
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These Are Obama’s Wars Now
Joshua Frank
On Monday the Democrat controlled House voted 226-202 to approve a rushed $106 billion dollar war spending bill, guaranteeing more carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan (and lately Pakistan) until September 30, 2009, which marks the end of the budget year. The Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of the bill’s first draft last month, with the final vote on a compromised version to occur in the Senate sometime in the next couple of weeks…
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GI Special 7F10: Reaction Force [ 17 June 2009 ]
Thomas F. Barton
Reaction Force teams, sometimes called “Extraction Teams,” are used in one form or another in every major prison in the USA, with less protection for prisoners and more brutality than at Guantanamo. And for some odd reason, reporters oh so shocked and outraged about Guantanamo are silent about what’s done to Americans, mostly African-Americans of course, right here in prisons in the USA. Aside from Prison Legal News, which documents the horrors with regul arity, guess the others just don’t give a shit. For prisoners in a whole lot of hell holes in the USA, a transfer to Guantanamo would be a huge step towards better treatment, infinitely better food and medical care, and less brutality at the hands of Reaction Force teams and U.S. prison personnel generally.
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