Process Philosophy: Immorality and Imbecility in the Torture Memo Mess
Chris Floyd
Let’s do something we rarely do around these parts. Let’s do a “process story,” looking at an issue from the standpoint of how it plays out in the political game. As a rule, we prefer to focus much less on political kibitzing in the imperial courts, and more on the actual products of imperial policy: i.e., corpses, chaos and corruption. But just for a moment, let’s “processize” Barack Obama’s bold, progressive, morality-restoring decision n ot to prosecute anyone at all for the filthy torture system installed by the very highest officials of the Bush Administration, even as he releases memos showing clearly that practices which are high crimes under U.S. law were explicitly authorized by the White House. (And make no mistake; Obama has not only decided to let the actual, ground-level waterboarders, wall-slammers and child torturers get off scot-free; he is also going to let the gilded creators and framers of the system live on untroubled in peace, prosperity and privilege. Obama’s chief gatekeeper and hatchet man, Rahm Emanuel, made this clear over the weekend, telling Beltway waterboy George Stephanopoulos: “But those who devised the [torture] policies – [Obama] believes that they were — should not be prosecuted either.”)…
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Israeli Apartheid “justice”: Kill an Arab = 6 months community service
Gaza; Peace n’ Freedom
From Ynet: The Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Haim Castro, a former Border Guard officer, who was convicted of shooting dead an Israeli Arab in Kfar Qassem six years ago, without there being any immediate threat to his life. Castro was sentenced to six months community service by a district court. He then appealed to the Supreme Court arguing he did not shoot the man in question, but his appeal was rejected. Do you really need any further argument that Israel is an Apartheid state? The same state holds thousands of Palestinian in detention, many of them having done no crime at all…
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Video: Arabs in Israel complain of discrimination
Aljaeera.net
Israel’s treatment of its Arab citizens has raised accusations of racism. Most Palestinians living in East Jerusalem are not Israeli citizens, instead Israel issues identity cards permitting them to live there. But now authorities are threatening to retrieve dozens of IDs…
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Iraq: the forgotten war
James Cogan
Not so long ago, the term “the forgotten war” was being used to describe American lack of interest in its military occupation of Afghanistan. US domination of that country was assumed to be an accomplished fact. Now the same label could be applied to Iraq—and for the same reason. To a large extent, the American ruling elite has been convinced by its own propaganda. From the Obama administration to the Republican opposition and the mass media, there is a consensus that the US troop surge to Iraq in 2007 and 2008 led to “victory”… The current relative stability was accomplished by more than five years of bloody repression of Iraqi opposition to the US invasion—the most violent being the surge years. As many as 1.2 million Iraqis lost their lives, as well as over 4,500 American and other occupying troops. The legacy of US occupation is a shattered and traumatised society, wracked by communal divisions and incapable of satisfying even the most elementary social needs of the population…
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Director of Maps in Jerusalem: Israeli forces to begin work on largest settlement ever
PNN
A Palestinian official noted on Monday that the Israeli government will soon begin the bidding for the implementation of a scheme for the largest settlement in the West Bank and city of Jerusalem since the 1948. The Director of Maps and the Orient House for the Palestinian Authority in the city of Jerusalem, Khalil Tefakji, said today that it will cost 5 billion dollars over five years. Tefakji told reporters that “this is classifie d as the largest planned settlement project with the most dangerous right-wing government which has launched the new functions to ratify it after it was founded in the last days of the previous government.”…
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Renouncing Israel on Principle
Steven Salaita
… Many people, anyway, have written in more detail about the insidiousness underlying affirmations of Israel’s “right to exist,” a phrase so ambiguous it should invoke any thinking person’s suspicion. Rather than limiting my discussion to philosophical, political, and practical factors, I’d like to mention a worthy psychological reason to refuse the demand that anybody who wants to enter into a conversation about the Israel-Palestine conflict must first proclaim devotion to Israel’s existence: principle. Indeed, I would suggest refusing to acquiesce on principle. Zionists hold nearly all the power in the Israel-Palestine conflict and much of the power in the culture wars the conflict inspires. They have more funds, better access to corporate media, and the backing of the American military. The Palestinians, however, hold one form of power that doesn’t require money, media sympathy, or weaponry: the legitimacy that Zionists so desperately want us to confer to Israel. It is a small power, one without a material apparatus, but it is power, nevertheless, one I am unwilling to relinquish, one I have no moral obligation to relinquish. Zionists already took Palestine. Now they’re trying to appropriate our right to resist, too…
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Thanks, Palestinians, for St George!
Stuart Littlewood
April 23 is when we in England celebrate our patron saint, George. St George and the Dragon are to be seen everywhere in Bethlehem, especially in and around the ancient Church of the Nativity. Many Bethlehem houses have a panel of St George carved in stone and set in the wall above the front door. Although George is England’s patron saint he never set foot here, and there is much argument about who this warrior-saint was and where he came from. But there are no such d oubts in Palestine: George was a Palestinian born at Lydda and brought up in the Christian faith, although some sources insist that he was born in Cappadocea (Turkey) and taken home by his mother to her native Palestine when his father died…
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PFLP: Some in Hamas and Fatah benefitting from ongoing division
Ma’an News
An “interest group” within both Hamas and Fatah are benefitting from the ongoing state of infighting between the two movements, said a senior leader in the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) on Sunday. Jamil Mizher, a member of the PFLP Central Committee said, “It is unacceptable for Fatah and Hamas to continue this division that diminishing the Palestinian national project increasing the tragedies and pains of the Palesti nians.” He called for “a popular move to pressure the two sides to end division restoring unity.”..
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Israeli forces besiege Bethlehem to protect alleged thieves
Ma’an News
Israeli forces besieged the southern West Bank city of Bethlehem on Sunday night, closing all military checkpoints leading to the area. As a result, more than 200,000 residents of the city were under collective punishment under the pretext that an Israeli settler came under fire in the eastern Bethlehem district, near Tuqu’ village. However, Ma’an has learned that the Israeli claims were false, and that the siege on Bethlehem was meant to provide cover age for thieves who broke into the home of Bassam Musallam in the town of Beit Jala; Palestinian police detectives reportedly arrested them. Interrogations revealed that the thieves were holders of Israeli IDs…
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Gaza war legacy persists
Yousef Al-Helou
…3 months have passed since Israel ended its offensive on the besieged costal strip, but still no inquiry has been conducted into possible Israeli war crimes and nothing has been done to bring alleged perpetrators to justice. Despite the fact that many international lawyers and international fact-finding missions visited war-torn Gaza and gathered testimonies and talked to survivors, but it seems that Gaza is forgotten now while its people are suffering not because of the consequ ences of the war but also because of the nearly 2-years long tight blockage imposed on Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants who are isolated from the rest of the world…
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Israeli drones still hovering over Gaza despite ceasefire
Yousef Al-Helou
During the Israeli 22-day long offensive on the besieged Gaza waged on Dec 27, Israeli air force used various kinds of warplanes including military drones known as UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle). The loud buzzing of Israeli drones can be heard and they are clearly visible in the sky above, the drones are operated from a remote position, usually outside the combat zone. They use optics that are able to see the details of a man’s clothing and are fitte d with pinpoint accurate missiles killing Palestinians…
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Obama’s Iraq: NO ‘CHANGE’
Sarah Meyer, Index Research
…Asked in Turkey how he was different from President Bush, Mr. Obama said: “Here in the US is like piloting a big tanker. They’re not like people … You can’t just whip them around and go in a new direction. Instead, you’ve gotta slowly move it and then eventually you end up in a very different place. ” Very difficult for President Obama, when – for political survival – he has chosen to listen to those with the mindset from the military – industrial complex/PNAC/AIP AC. The key word that now gives a clue to the reality of Obama’s formerly hopeful policies is “BUT,” following his “change” rhetoric…
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Worse Than Bush
KABOBfest
…With George Bush, we had a clear villain; a murderous abuser of human rights and executor of imperialist policies that many of his actions cam under scrutiny, and even though he managed to get away with many crimes, they were not accepted as righteous by the wider population. So all Bush got to do about this conference that called for recognizing Zionism and racism, was to stay out it, the US and Israel only. Obama, on the other hand, with his liberal movement mandate, gets away with more crim es than Bush, because the liberal who scrutinized Bush’s every action, are sleeping rotten when it comes to Obama, thinking that Change towards an equitable progressive society was achieved on election day. Not only did Obama managed to change the draft text of the conference to omit mentions of the racism inherent to Zionism and the Israeli state, and followed that by having all the side activities critical of Israel pushed out side of the conference, but also he boycotted the conference, influencing a slew of western countries that, despite histories rich with racism and colonialism, had some qualms about associating with Bush…
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The writing on the wall spells “freedom”
Arjan El Fassed
“My dear Palestinian brothers and sisters, I have come to your land and I have recognized shades of my own.” These are the first 20 words of an open letter written by Farid Esack, a South African scholar and political activist known for his role in the struggle against apartheid. The total length of his letter is 1,998 carefully chosen words in which he argues that the situation in Palestine is worse than it ever was in South Africa under apartheid rule. Esack, a bl ack South African who worked closely with Nelson Mandela, is astonished at how ordinary people beat about the bush when it comes to Israel and the dispossession and suffering of the Palestinians. “Do ‘objectivity,’ ‘moderation,’ and seeing ‘both sides’ not have limits?” he asks. “Is moderation in matters of clear injustice really a virtue? Do both parties deserve an ‘equal hearing’ in a situation of domestic violence — wherein a woman is beaten up by a male who was abused by his father some time ago — because ‘he,’ too, is a ‘victim?’”…
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More revelations from Bush torture memos
Tom Eley
The Bush administration memos released last Thursday by the US Justice Department demonstrate that Washington carried out a studied and systematic torture operation for years. The documents, written by lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) to a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) counsel, make clear that the CIA was carrying out torture prior to, and during the time the memos were written in 2002 and 2005. They also show that Bush administration officials were well aw are that the methods discussed could be construed as torture. They therefore sought to develop an ex post facto and pseudo-legal rationale for specific acts of torture, in defiance of US and international laws…
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Int’l organizations: Tens of thousands of Gazans are still homeless
PIC
A coalition of international humanitarian organizations in the Gaza Strip warned that tens of thousands of Gaza citizens are still homeless and do not have access to many basic services such as clean drinking water months after the end of the Israeli devastating war on Gaza. The organizations appealed to the international community especially the EU to practically enhance the scarce humanitarian aid it provides to the impoverished Gaza people whose su ffering increased after the Israeli war…
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