Category Archives: Issues

We can’t grow ourselves out of debt, no matter what the Federal Reserve does

Charles Eisenstein writes: Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke’s pledge at Jackson Hole last Friday to “promote a stronger economic recovery” through “additional policy accommodation” has drawn criticism from economists, liberal and conservative, who question whether the Fed has the wherewithal to stimulate economic growth. What we actually need is more spending, say the liberals. No, less spending, say the conservatives. But underneath these disagreements lies an unexamined agreement, a common assumption that no mainstream economist or policy-maker ever questions: that the purpose of economic policy is to stimulate growth.

So ubiquitous is the equation of growth with prosperity that few people ever pause to consider it. What does economic growth actually mean? It means more consumption – and consumption of a specific kind: more consumption of goods and services that are exchanged for money. That means that if people stop caring for their own children and instead pay for childcare, the economy grows. The same if people stop cooking for themselves and purchase restaurant takeaways instead.

Economists say this is a good thing. After all, you wouldn’t pay for childcare or takeaway food if it weren’t of benefit to you, right? So, the more things people are paying for, the more benefits are being had. Besides, it is more efficient for one daycare centre to handle 30 children than for each family to do it themselves. That’s why we are all so much richer, happier and less busy than we were a generation ago. Right?

Obviously, it isn’t true that the more we buy, the happier we are. Endless growth means endlessly increasing production and endlessly increasing consumption. Social critics have for a long time pointed out the resulting hollowness carried by that thesis. Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly apparent that infinite growth is impossible on a finite planet. Why, then, are liberals and conservatives alike so fervent in their pursuit of growth? [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

All-American terrorists and the jihadist threat that never materialized

Kelley B. Vlahos writes: In what papers are calling “one of the most startling and potentially serious cases of an anti-government militia to be brought before the courts in recent years,” three U.S. soldiers have been arraigned for murder and may get the death penalty, stemming from charges they amassed an arsenal, plotted several domestic terror attacks, and killed two friends who had become “loose ends” in their diabolic plans.

You haven’t heard of this? Not surprising, since this story doesn’t square with the narrative that homegrown Muslim radicals are not only infiltrating the government, and the military, but plotting the next big domestic terror assault on American soil. These militiamen, arrested in Georgia where they were stationed at Fort Stewart, are white. They don’t pray in a mosque and certainly don’t want to build one. According to reports, however, they were members of FEAR — Forever Enduring Always Ready — which has been loosely described as an anarchist group set on overthrowing the government and killing President Obama.

These aren’t the first white militia types to be arrested in recent years. Indeed, they join a string of supposed Muslim plotters arrested since 2001. The difference between the recent Georgia case and many of the others is the FBI wasn’t involved from the beginning to set them up and lead them by the nose (the Muslim community is quite familiar with these tactics). These FEAR guys were apparently the real deal. They bought real weapons, and a lot of them, and in the case of the Fort Stewart gang, they committed real murder, killing the guy who allegedly helped to get them the weapons and his girlfriend, execution style, after luring them into the woods. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

We’re one crucial step closer to seeing Tony Blair at The Hague

George Monbiot writes: For years it seems impregnable, then suddenly the citadel collapses. An ideology, a fact, a regime appears fixed, unshakeable, almost geological. Then an inch of mortar falls, and the stonework begins to slide. Something of this kind happened over the weekend.

When Desmond Tutu wrote that Tony Blair should be treading the path to The Hague, he de-normalised what Blair has done. Tutu broke the protocol of power – the implicit accord between those who flit from one grand meeting to another – and named his crime. I expect that Blair will never recover from it.

The offence is known by two names in international law: the crime of aggression and a crime against peace. It is defined by the Nuremberg principles as the “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression”. This means a war fought for a purpose other than self-defence: in other words outwith articles 33 and 51 of the UN Charter.

That the invasion of Iraq falls into this category looks indisputable. Blair’s cabinet ministers knew it, and told him so. His attorney general warned that there were just three ways in which it could be legally justified: “self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UN security council authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case.” Blair tried and failed to obtain the third.

His foreign secretary, Jack Straw, told Blair that for the war to be legal, “i) there must be an armed attack upon a state or such an attack must be imminent; ii) the use of force must be necessary and other means to reverse/avert the attack must be unavailable; iii) the acts in self-defence must be proportionate and strictly confined to the object of stopping the attack.” None of these conditions were met. The Cabinet Office told him: “A legal justification for invasion would be needed. Subject to law officers’ advice, none currently exists.”

Without legal justification, the attack on Iraq was an act of mass murder. It caused the deaths of between 100,000 and a million people, and ranks among the greatest crimes the world has ever seen. That Blair and his ministers still saunter among us, gathering money wherever they go, is a withering indictment of a one-sided system of international justice: a system whose hypocrisies Tutu has exposed. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Iran could strike at U.S. bases in region if Israel attacks: Hezbollah

The Daily Star reports: Hezbollah said Monday it would never resort to the use of chemical weapons in any future war with Israel but said its present arsenal was enough to deal a severe blow to the Jewish state.

The head of the Lebanese resistance group also warned that U.S. military bases in the region could be targeted by Iran if Israel launched an attack on the Islamic Republic.

“We don’t have chemical weapons and we don’t need to use them … because [Israel] has factories and locations that are in the reach of our rockets,” Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary general, said in a rare face-to-face interview with Almayadeen television.

He said it was religiously unacceptable for his group to use chemical weapons.

Several reports emerged over the past year of U.S. and Israeli concerns of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile falling in to the hands of the Lebanese resistance group.

Nasrallah, who said in August his group could wrack havoc should Israel launch an assault of Lebanon, reiterated his threat, saying even a first strike that wiped out many of the group’s missile sites would still leave enough rockets to harm hundreds of thousands of Israelis.

“We don’t have a mighty power but we have a power that is effective. The available power today can represent a powerful deterrent force,” the leader of Hezbollah said.

He also reiterated how the missiles his group enjoyed possessed advanced targeting and range capabilities.

“The rockets of the Islamic resistance can strike at any target in occupied Palestine [Israel] that you can think of,” Nasrallah said.

He also said the capabilities of his group should not be undermined and that the resistance remained on alert for any possible confrontation.

“Since 2000 until today, there is a perception that Hezbollah is preoccupied and there are a thousand issues that it has to deal with. However, we have a big team, the resistance’s team, which is not involved in domestic affairs but works day and night on training, arming, planning, and is concerned with keeping itself prepared [for any eventuality],” he said.

Asked about repercussions on the party as a result of the Syria crisis, Nasrallah said: “We are comfortable, reassured and confident, based on an objective view of what is going on in the world in terms of economic conditions, the changes … in Syria, Lebanon and North Africa.”

“We have a very optimistic view of the future,” he added.

Facebooktwittermail

In 2012, some American workers don’t even have access to clean drinking water

Rose Aguilar writes: Today is Labour Day in the United States, and in the year 2012, people doing backbreaking work in the heat don’t have access to clean drinking water. That’s right, in the land of the free, where corporate profits continue to reach all-time highs, workers doing actual labour, either drink brown water or have no water at all in temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius).

Since the state of California – the country’s breadbasket – issued the first heat regulations in the country in 2005, 16 farm workers have died from heat related illnesses. The Farm Worker Safety Act, which is currently on Governor Jerry Brown’s desk, will allow the 400,000 workers who pick our fruits and vegetables in unbearable heat to sue employers who repeatedly fail to comply with mandatory requirements for shade and drinking water. These are basic human rights that most of us take for granted. Governor Brown should sign this bill immediately.

In July, Southern California warehouse workers who move goods for Walmart, the world’s largest corporation, filed a complaint with the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) detailing more than a dozen violations, including no access to clean water, wage abuses, broken equipment, and unreasonable and unsafe moving quotas. Workers say they are denied access to medical care, are told they will be laid off if they can’t work while injured, and are often blocked inside the trailers they are loading for up to 30 minutes with no exit. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Netanyahu’s Kennedy moment

Trita Parsi and Roi Ben-Yehuda write: Watching the conflict between Iran and Israel escalate, it’s hard not to draw analogies and lessons from history. Indeed, Netanyahu’s thinking in this regard is very much anchored in the past: “The year is 1938 and Iran is Germany”, time and again he has warned. Such analogs provide leaders with a quick and handy “user manual”: a way to sell a desired policy path and provide a platform for action.

Yet as mental shortcuts, analogs could easily lead to unwanted outcomes. Crucial decisions, like going to war, could be based on paying attention to the wrong lessons, or making a false comparison between two different situations. Indeed, it is neither 1938 (Iran is far from having a bomb or a delivery system) nor is Iran Nazi Germany (Iran’s military budget is fraction of that of Israel and the US). Claiming so, however, leaves no room for any response save military force.

Recently, another historical episode, the Cuban Missile Crisis, has been gaining traction. Just as the US, the analogy goes, faced the intolerable choice of either attacking Cuba or allowing Soviet nuclear weapons in its own backyard, so too Israel/US must decide between attacking Iran or allowing it to become nuclear.

General Eitan Ben-Eliyahu, former Israeli Air Force Chief, has stated that the current situation is following the Cuban Missile Crisis model in at least two respects: sanction imposed on Iran are similar to the naval blockade imposed on Cuba, and military threats by Israel (and the US) are akin to the Kennedy administration flexing its muscles and putting the armed forces on high alert.

Ben-Eliyahu also noted that the successful resolution of the conflict rested on a third pillar: a secret channel of communication between the parties that allowed the Russians to back down. It’s unknown, albeit doubtful, if Israel and Iran have established such channels of communications. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The fall of the COINdinistas

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos writes: Lt. Col. John Nagl was at his peak.

It was 2007, the shimmery dawn of the group think experiment we now call the mass COIN (counterinsurgency) delusion. Nagl’s boss, Gen. David Petraeus, Washington’s newest demigod, had convinced everyone that his Surge Strategy could tame the wild disaster that had become the Iraq War. Nagl, who had positioned himself at Petraeus’s elbow to sell that formula, was now sitting in full dress uniform, his hair in regulation “high and tight,” whacking nimbly at the pathetic softballs lobbed by Jon Stewart who was being embarrassingly — and uncharacteristically — deferential to his decorated guest.

“It’s a very difficult kind of war, it’s a thinking person’s war, and it’s a kind of war we’re learning and adapting and getting better at fighting in the course of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Nagl pronounced in response to a question about FM-24, otherwise known as the “Counterinsurgency Manual,” which was written by committee led by Petreaus, “a remarkable man,” according to Nagl. FM-24 became the bible of COIN and the vehicle by which several of its authors, Nagl included, advanced their careers amid some very heady times — from 2007 through 2010 — in the Washington security world (I began sensing the decline as early as January 2010).

Iraq veteran and writer Carl Prine takes credit for calling them the COINdinistas first. They are the post-Bush civilian and military “crusaders” (as pegged by arch-COIN critic and TAC contributor Andrew Bacevich) dominating the Washington security establishment. Having gobbled down the fairy dust about the Iraq Surge signifying a new “graduate level,” “population-centric” counterinsurgency strategy (and ignoring our overwhelming firepower over Baghdad and Sunni strongholds and the complicated ethnic dynamics on the ground), they attempted to apply the same hocus-pocus to our war in Afghanistan under President Obama. FM-24 became more than a bible, but code for who was in and who was clearly out of the loop, infecting not only the think tank and beltway banditry, but the military agenda, too.

Then Tom Ricks, Washington Post correspondent-court scribe, conducted a full-blown high school popularity contest, literally ranking the “brains behind counterinsurgency’s rise from forgotten doctrine to the centerpiece of the world’s most powerful military.” In this cringe-worthy “top ten” published in Foreign Policy in December 2009, Ricks places “King David” Petraeus at Number 1, and then Nagl, whose Oxford dissertation-turned-Barnes-and-Noble-bestseller Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife made him a counterinsurgency “scholar,” among other bright lights of the time. Nagl, Ricks predicted, would be “in a top Pentagon slot within a year or two.”

That was just three years ago. Today, there is no better symbol for the dramatic failure of COIN, the fading of the COINdinistas and the loss that is U.S war policy in Afghanistan than this week’s news that Nagl is leaving Washington to be the headmaster of The Haverford School, a rich preparatory school (grades k-12) for boys on Philadelphia’s Main Line.

That’s right — Nagl, once called the Johnny Appleseed of COIN, who reveled in his role as face man, tutoring reporters with practiced bookish charm on the “the new way of war,” and burnishing his personal story to convince everyone that he was a counter-insurgent before his time — a modern T.E. Lawrence — is packing up for good. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Violence dims hope of solution to Turkish Kurd conflict

Reuters reports: Images of smiling Kurdish MPs hugging rebels, rifles slung over their shoulders, at a remote roadblock in Turkey’s mountainous southeast hit a raw nerve.

The embrace, depicted in Turkish newspapers as battles raged with government troops, fed a climate of animosity which is undermining hopes of a revival of secret talks to end a 28-year-old separatist conflict.

Escalating violence could instead now entrench a primarily military response from Ankara to an insurgency that has killed more than 40,000 people. Nine Turkish police and soldiers were killed over the weekend in clashes with Kurdish rebels.

The roadside meeting came as Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels, inspired by the growing influence of an allied Kurdish group in Syria, laid siege to Turkey’s mountainous district of Semdinli bordering Iraq and Iran.

“It is a vicious cycle,” said Soner Cagaptay from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Whenever there is a spike in violence, Turkey’s willingness to consider a political solution becomes weaker.”

Ankara sees the hand of Damascus in the PKK’s new found energy, accusing it of arming the rebels and allowing a PKK-linked party to control parts of Syria to prevent locals joining the 17-month uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

“The PKK has been excited by the developments in Syria and is trying to prove its worth and credibility by trying to take parts of Turkish territory, however temporarily,” Cagaptay said.

In a show of strength, the PKK has set up roadblocks and kidnapped Turkish officials and is believed to be behind recent deadly bomb attacks on the western coast of Turkey and in the city of Gaziantep, near the Syrian border.

“The aim of these acts is to show that no place in Turkey is safe, that they are capable of spreading terrorism to every region…and prove their control and influence,” said retired major general Armagan Kuloglu, an analyst at a think-tank in Ankara.

He said the attacks were aimed to sow discord between Kurds and Turks. The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and European Union, had little prospect of drawing Ankara back to the negotiating table with such a strategy.

Talking to the PKK was long unpalatable to Turkish public opinion. While recordings leaked last year from secret meetings in Oslo between the intelligence service and the outlawed group suggested times may have changed, that window for negotiations may be closing. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The GOP, China and Sheldon Adelson

Robert Keatley writes: Mitt Romney promises that as president he would be tougher on China than Barack Obama, the man he hopes to replace in the White House. He vows that he wouldn’t coddle Beijing’s communist leaders and would demand they cancel their expanding list of trade restrictions, give the currency an honest value and stop abusing human rights. He also promises to expand the U.S. Pacific fleet to discourage any expansionist ideas they may hold.

But when it comes to campaign cash that flows, indirectly at least, partly from China with perhaps illegal origins, he seems bent on taking all he can get, even though that money supply depends largely upon the continued goodwill of those who command the Chinese Communist Party.

The issue centers on the relationship of Romney and the Republican Party with Sheldon Adelson, the casino multibillionaire who has pledged up to a startling $100 million to defeat Obama and put in office a president he expects to be much friendlier to Israel, one of his lifelong concerns. The main source of the Adelson billions has become Macau, a city on the southern coast near Hong Kong that is the only Chinese territory where its wealthy citizens can gamble legally—and where many, it is commonly believed, find its thirty-five casinos convenient for laundering cash acquired by less-than-honest means. The Adelson political contributions come as he is being investigated by the state of Nevada, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Securities and Exchange Commission for possible bribery of mainland and Macau officials, which would be in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. (He denies all allegations strenuously.)

Sheldon Adelson controls four of Macau’s biggest and most spectacular casinos, and they have become the main profit center of the traded companies he heads—the Las Vegas Sands Corp. and its listed subsidiary, Sands China Ltd. Forbes earlier this year estimated his net worth at $24.9 billion, seventh highest in the United States and fourteenth in the world. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Palestinian farmers fighting to survive

Jillian Kestler-DAmours reports: For Palestinian farmer Esam Foqaha, agriculture is more than a profession, it’s a way of life. “Farming is not only a job. It’s our lifestyle and we will do it forever,” Foqaha said.

Foqaha lives in Ein Al-Beida, a Palestinian agricultural village located in the West Bank’s northern Jordan Valley area. With his three brothers, he cultivates about 300 dunams (0.3km) of agricultural land. Most of his produce – tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant and other vegetables – is marketed to Jenin, Nablus and other major Palestinian cities in the West Bank.

A member of the Ein Al-Beida Agricultural Union, which represents 70 farmers in the area, Foqaha said a combination of harsh Israeli restrictions on Palestinian farmers, Israel’s near total control of resources, and neglect on the part of Palestinian authorities has made Palestinian agriculture in the West Bank almost impossible.

“Israeli restrictions have a political purpose: to increase the economic reliance of the people on Israel. Some will leave the land and work in settlements instead of farming. They want people to leave,” Foqaha said.

Foqaha’s case isn’t unique. Instead, according to human rights groups, it represents a growing inability among Palestinian farmers to engage in sustainable agriculture in the occupied West Bank. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Tony Blair should face trial over Iraq war, says Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu writes: On what grounds do we decide that Robert Mugabe should go the International Criminal Court, Tony Blair should join the international speakers’ circuit, bin Laden should be assassinated, but Iraq should be invaded, not because it possesses weapons of mass destruction, as Mr Bush’s chief supporter, Mr Blair, confessed last week, but in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein?

The cost of the decision to rid Iraq of its by-all-accounts despotic and murderous leader has been staggering, beginning in Iraq itself. Last year, an average of 6.5 people died there each day in suicide attacks and vehicle bombs, according to the Iraqi Body Count project. More than 110,000 Iraqis have died in the conflict since 2003 and millions have been displaced. By the end of last year, nearly 4,500 American soldiers had been killed and more than 32,000 wounded.

On these grounds alone, in a consistent world, those responsible for this suffering and loss of life should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in the Hague.

But even greater costs have been exacted beyond the killing fields, in the hardened hearts and minds of members of the human family across the world.

Has the potential for terrorist attacks decreased? To what extent have we succeeded in bringing the so-called Muslim and Judeo-Christian worlds closer together, in sowing the seeds of understanding and hope?

Leadership and morality are indivisible. Good leaders are the custodians of morality. The question is not whether Saddam Hussein was good or bad or how many of his people he massacred. The point is that Mr Bush and Mr Blair should not have allowed themselves to stoop to his immoral level.

Facebooktwittermail

An enemy we created

Malou Innocent reviews, An Enemy We Created: The Myth of the Taliban-Al Qaeda Merger in Afghanistan, by Alex Strick van Linschoten & Felix Kuehn: In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, George Tenet, then head of the CIA, told national security advisers in the White House bunker that the Taliban and Al Qaeda were really the same. In An Enemy We Created, Kandahar-based field researchers Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn turn that story on its head. Drawing on six years of experience living in southern Afghanistan, as well as hundreds of interviews with senior Taliban officials, field commanders, and former militants, they find good reasons to doubt that the Taliban and Al Qaeda were once fused as a single entity. They do find, however, that after years of coalition night raids, aerial bombings, and billions in American aid to a predatory regime in Kabul, Al Qaeda ideology is influencing a new generation of Taliban-affiliated insurgents.

During their jihad against the Soviets, the progenitors of the Afghan Taliban, based in the south around greater Kandahar, were religious nationals fighting to protect their communities and customs against the communist government in Kabul and the external occupiers that backed it. “Afghan Arabs,” on the other hand, were based mainly in the south-east and desperate for martyrdom. Many of them, including elements of Al Qaeda’s predecessor (Maktab al-Khidmaat, or “Services Office”), were emptied from prisons of U.S.-allied Arab tyrannies, as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and others disposed of their jihadists by exporting them to Afghanistan. One group of Arabs marked their tents white so they would stand out. Asked why, they replied, “We want them to bomb us! We want to die!”

When the Soviets withdrew in February 1989, thousands of these stateless jihadists were left behind. Eighteen months later, they found a new rallying cry and turned against their American and Saudi sponsors. The stationing of U.S. troops on Saudi soil was like an “earthquake,” as America’s war against Saddam was perceived as a conspiracy to control Muslim states and the oil under their sands. The authors, corroborating much of the existing literature, brilliantly illustrate how Osama bin Laden and his coterie, who in 1992 moved from Afghanistan to Sudan, would eventually seek to draw America into a prolonged and costly war, striking the “far enemy” to weaken the “near enemy”—apostate Arab regimes.

During this period, the book reveals, the Kandahari Taliban “were not ever listening to the radio in those days, being content simply to continue their studies free from the distractions of the outside world.” They were less interested in global concerns than in the looting, murder, and chaos consuming their country. War-ravaged Afghans, looking for order, turned to the Taliban, which from the south gradually spread and established a legal system, arbitrating local disputes and enforcing their harsh interpretation of Sharia law.

By September 1996, U.S. officials largely welcomed the Taliban’s capture of Kabul, a feat the militants accomplished with Pakistan’s generous assistance. But bin Laden’s relocation to Afghanistan earlier that year would become a source of constant friction, not only between Washington and Kabul but also between the Taliban and Al Qaeda. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Evidence in Delhi embassy bombing suggests journalist was framed

Part One — Gareth Porter reports: New Delhi police officials have released hundreds of pages of documents from their investigation into the Feb. 13 bombing of an Israeli Embassy car. The documents aimed to show that a well-known Indian Muslim journalist aided an Iranian conspiracy to plan and carry out the bombing.

But a review by IPS of the evidence filed in the case suggests that the Indian journalist accused in the case has been framed by the police, at least in part to implicate the Iranians in the terror plot.

The “charge sheet” on the embassy car bombing filed by the “Special Cell” (SC) of the Delhi police July 31 claims Indian journalist Syed Mohommed Ahmad Kazmi confessed to helping officials from Iran plan the bombing plot in return for payments totalling 5,500 U.S. dollars.

It also says that a moped used for reconnaissance by the Iranian said to have carried out the bombing was found in Kazmi’s residence and that forensic bomb-making evidence was discovered in the hotel room of that same Iranian.

But an analysis of the documentation included in the filing reveals that the evidence is highly questionable.
The SC has a long history of cases against alleged terrorists that were rejected by the court as involving framing people and planting false evidence. [Continue reading…]

Part Two: The “Special Cell” of the Delhi police has identified an Iranian, Houshang Afghan Irani, as the man it believes carried out the Feb. 13 car bombing at the Israeli embassy in New Delhi that injured the wife of an embassy official. The police believe three other Iranians were also involved in the plot.

But major questions about the integrity of evidence put forward to prove the existence of an Iranian bomb plot cast doubt on that claim, which is the centrepiece of the Israeli accusation that Iran has been waging a campaign of terrorism against Israelis in as many as 20 countries.

Only Indian journalist Syed Mohammed Ahmad Kazmi has been officially charged in the case, and even the treatment of Irani and the other Iranians as suspects depends very heavily on “disclosure statements” supposedly made by Kazmi but denounced by the journalist as police fabrications.

Although the Special Cell (SC) also claims to have forensic evidence of Irani’s link to the bombing, the evidence appears to be tainted by improper police procedures.

A central problem for the SC case is that it has no eyewitness testimony for its contention that Irani planted the bomb on the Israeli embassy car. [Continue reading…]

Part Three: The Delhi Police Special Cell, which has accused an Indian journalist and four Iranians of conspiring to bomb an Israeli embassy car in Delhi Feb. 13, has a long history of planting evidence on those it has accused and of obtaining false confessions, according to court records now cited by critics of the police unit.

The Special Cell (SC) was organised in 1986 to investigate terrorism and major crimes, but it has been given such wide latitude in its operations that it has violated legal norms with complete impunity, critics say.

But the unit’s efforts to frame those it accuses have been so obvious – often employing the same tactics over and over again – that a significant majority of its cases have been rejected by judges in recent years.

Of the 174 individuals against whom the SC has brought charges from 2006 through 2011, 119 of them – nearly 70 percent – have been acquitted, according to official figures obtained under India’s Right to Information Act by activist Gopal Prasad.

The SC response to that development has been to leak false confessions and evidence to the news media in a largely unsuccessful effort to sway judges. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

U.S. scales-back military exercise with Israel, affecting potential Iran strike

(Update below)

Time reports: Seven months ago, Israel and the United States postponed a massive joint military exercise that was originally set to go forward just as concerns were brimming that Israel would launch a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The exercise was rescheduled for late October, and appears likely to go forward on the cusp of the U.S. presidential election. But it won’t be nearly the same exercise. Well-placed sources in both countries have told TIME that Washington has greatly reduced the scale of U.S. participation, slashing by more than two-thirds the number of American troops going to Israel and reducing both the number and potency of missile interception systems at the core of the joint exercise.

“Basically what the Americans are saying is, ‘We don’t trust you,’” a senior Israeli military official tells TIME.

The reductions are striking. Instead of the approximately 5,000 U.S. troops originally trumpeted for Austere Challenge 12, as the annual exercise is called, the Pentagon will send only 1,500 service members, and perhaps as few as 1,200. Patriot anti-missile systems will arrive in Israel as planned, but the crews to operate them will not. Instead of two Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense warships being dispatched to Israeli waters, the new plan is to send one, though even the remaining vessel is listed as a “maybe,” according to officials in both militaries.

A Pentagon spokesperson declined to discuss specifics of the reduced deployment, noting that planning for the exercise was classified. But in an e-mailed statement, Commander Wendy L. Snyder emphasized that the Israeli military has been kept informed of the changes. “Throughout all the planning and coordination, we’ve been lock-step with the Israel Defense Force (IDF) and will continue to do so,” Snyder said.

U.S. commanders privately revealed the scaling back to their Israeli counterparts more than two months ago. The official explanation was budget restrictions. But the American retreat coincided with growing tensions between the Obama and Netanyahu administrations on Israel’s persistent threats to launch an airstrike on Iran. [Continue reading…]

Update — Laura Rozen reports: Late last year, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak asked US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to cancel the exercise, which was originally scheduled to take place this past spring, defense sources previously told Al-Monitor. Panetta agreed to the request only if the exercise was rescheduled, not canceled entirely. So the Pentagon was deeply annoyed when Israeli officials left the false impression that the US was responsible for the war game being postponed. “It was Barak,” a US official told me.

Update: The Pentagon disputed the interpretation offered by Time for the scaled back exercise in a statement late Friday afternoon, noting Austere Challenge-12 will still represent “the largest ever ballistic missile defense exercise” between the United States and Israel.

“The exercise was originally scheduled for May, however at the request of the Israeli Ministry of Defense and Israeli Defense Forces, the exercise was moved to late Fall of this year,” Ltn. Col. Wesley P. Miller IV, a Defense Department spokesman, told journalists in a statement sent out late Friday afternoon, several hours after guidance had been sought on the Time report. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Obama’s justice department grants final immunity to Bush’s CIA torturers

Glenn Greenwald writes: The Obama administration‘s aggressive, full-scale whitewashing of the “war on terror” crimes committed by Bush officials is now complete. Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the closing without charges of the only two cases under investigation relating to the US torture program: one that resulted in the 2002 death of an Afghan detainee at a secret CIA prison near Kabul, and the other the 2003 death of an Iraqi citizen while in CIA custody at Abu Ghraib. This decision, says the New York Times Friday, “eliminat[es] the last possibility that any criminal charges will be brought as a result of the brutal interrogations carried out by the CIA”.

To see what a farce this is, it is worthwhile briefly to review the timeline of how Obama officials acted to shield Bush torturers from all accountability. During his 2008 campaign for president, Obama repeatedly vowed that, while he opposed “partisan witch-hunts”, he would instruct his attorney general to “immediately review” the evidence of criminality in these torture programs because “nobody is above the law.” Yet, almost immediately after winning the 2008 election, Obama, before he was even inaugurated, made clear that he was opposed to any such investigations, citing what he called “a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards”.

Throughout the first several months of his presidency, his top political aides, such as the chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, publicly – and inappropriately – pressured the justice department to refrain from any criminal investigations. Over and over, they repeated the Orwellian mantra that such investigations were objectionable because “we must look forward, not backward”. As Gibbs put it in April 2009, when asked to explain Obama’s opposition, “the president is focused on looking forward. That’s why.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

U.S. will not ‘be complicit’ in a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran

The Guardian reports: An Israeli attack on Iran would delay but probably not stop its nuclear programme, the most senior US military officer has claimed. General Martin Dempsey reinforced Washington’s opposition to unilateral Israel military action as he made clear that US military chiefs were equally wary of getting ensnared in Syria.

In common with Nato’s supreme commander, US admiral James Stavridis, who wrote about Afghanistan for the Guardian on Thursday, Dempsey put a brave face on the situation there. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff was speaking to journalists in London, where he attended the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games as head of the US delegation.

Distancing himself from any Israeli plan to bomb Iran, Dempsey said such an attack would “clearly delay but probably not destroy Iran’s nuclear programme”.

He added: “I don’t want to be complicit if they [Israel] choose to do it.”

Dempsey said he did not know Iran’s nuclear intentions, as intelligence did not reveal intentions. What was clear, he said, was that the “international coalition” applying pressure on Iran “could be undone if [Iran] was attacked prematurely”. Sanctions against Iran were having an effect, and they should be given a reasonable opportunity to succeed.

Facebooktwittermail