CAMBODIA WAR CRIMES TRIALS

Some additional information and personal thoughts of
Professor Kenneth J. Herrmann
former US Vietnam Vet and now activist for peace
who is dedicated to assisting the victims of Agent Orange.

Most people are familiar with the film The Killing Fields.

Many noticed yesterday that a special tribunal began the trial of a Khmer Rouge leader who was partly responsible for the genocidal slaughter of 1.7 million Cambodians, directed by Pol Pot, the madman who declared the year 0 and abolished money the day his revolution took charge of Cambodia in 1975.

Observers are aware of the heinous murder of babies (often slicing them in two), the cutting open of pregnant women and the eating of the fetus, the attacks on neighboring Vietnamese villages and the slicing out of Vietnamese captives’ livers (which were fried and eaten by the Khmer Rouge).

Many are aware of this horrible history.

Few seem to recall that the United States supported the Khmer Rouge. President Carter and his administration, in fact, were the strongest supporters of Pol Pot’s murderous regime. They channeled money through China to arm and support these killers. Carter, however, will not be tried during the war crimes’ trials in Cambodia.

In fact, fewer still might know that the Khmer Rouge representative to the United Nations was Thiounn Prasith (known for justifying and often covering up the Khmer Rouge genocide), who lives in Mt Vernon, NY with the protection of the US government.

He is known for urging Cambodians during the Khmer Rouge rampages to return to Cambodia to what they did not know would be a certain death. Among these were Sokhom Hing, a professor at SUNY Stony Brook and an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, who was tortured for ten days at the S-1 Prison before being murdered.

The commander of this infamous prison is the first to stand trial this week. Sokhom Hing’s bones might be among the tens of thousands tourists view today when they visit this prison in Cambodia. If so, I presume they call out for justice for the Khmer Rouge official who personally talked him into returning – Thiounn Prasith – and the American leaders who supported this horror.

Bush left office with a track record of a blatant disregard of human rights, attacked two nations under the guise of national defense, two nations that had nothing to do with the attack on New York. His record of violations of American and international law seems endless. Congress seems to care less.

The rest of the world knows our human rights record: the genocide and oppression of Native Americans, slavery, two nuclear attacks on civilian populations in Japan, Vietnam War, the denial that our spraying 20,000,000 gallons of Agent Orange has had deleterious effects on the Vietnamese while we compensate American vets for brief exposure to the chemical, Gitmo and torture, avoiding the basic rights of Americans guaranteed by the Constitution under the guise of the war on terrorism, using tens of thousands of mercenaries in Iraq, and providing safe haven to known terrorists in America – terrorists whom we supported. We kill the leaders of other nations we do not like and condemn others for less heinous acts which are often a response to our arrogant oppression of people around the world.


Cambodia is just one small nation in which we supported a massive genocide a few decades ago, but is more than a memory for those families who recall how Jimmy Carter sanctioned and supported the horror. For many, he is a champion of human rights. For many this phony image and Thiounn Prasith living a comfortable life in Weschester County is but another example of our loss of moral standing on the world stage.



Kenneth J. Herrmann, Jr., LCSW, ACSW

Associate Professor, Dept. of Social Work
Director, The College at Brockport Vietnam Program
Exec. Director, Danang/Quang Nam Fund, Inc.

kherrman@rochester.rr.com

www.AgentOrangeChildren.org

http://www.brockportabroad.com/programs/vietnam/index.html

HEARTBREAK OF WAR . . .

Recently, an email was sent to me with an attached newspaper article "Heartbreak of war that echoes abroad". The article is about Vietnamese 'boat people' refugees who have "enriched Australia" but for whom the "tragedy of Vietnam lives on." It was an article by Ann Beveridge, but there were no details given as to where and when it was published.

The email had no message, just the attached article. Perhaps the person who sent me the email did so by way of criticism, because he had entitled his attachment "flip side"! If so, perhaps he was surprised by my response, which (with a few small changes) is below. The extracts in red are from the original article.

I think it might give some insights into Viet Nam, and also why I have been an anti-war activist for some 40 years. This is my response to the email.....

Thanks for the article you sent on "Heartbreak of war...."
I have read it, and agree with most of the comments made, although it is not new to me.

It beautifully explains just why war is so horrible and wrong, and why humanity has to find a more civilized way to settle our differences, if we want to survive or be considered better than barbarians. It is why I am anti-war!

This is summed up nicely at the end of the article by Pham herself:

".....I'm not a very political person but I feel for those who lost people in the war. In this war nobody won. In the end nothing was achieved and yet the costs were very great. I just hope that how war makes people feel is considered by the people who make the decision to go to war, that they feel what we feel before they let it happen again....."

However, I think it does help to be a "political person", or at least read lots of different history books, because then you can have a better idea of why such terrible and unnecessary things happened in the first place, and be better equipped to stop them in the future! (And also appreciate what exactly was fought for and won, and why it had to be won!)

It is not true that "nobody won"! Of course, the majority of Vietnamese, north and south, who supported Ho Chi Minh's quest for freedom, independence and reunification of their country, won. (That was conservatively 80% of the whole population, according to US President Eisenhower - which of course is why the US-backed side of 20% refused to hold the nationwide democratic elections under international supervision in 1956, as provided for in the Geneva Agreement!).

Yes, the Vietnamese majority won, but at a terrible price, of course. Even the Allies in World War 2 won, and were prepared to pay a terrible price for the victory they had to have. Sometimes important things don't come cheap.

THE Vietnam War cost the lives of more than 4 million people, half of whom were civilians....

But the most important question is: Who made the decision to "go to war" in the very first place, instead of allowing a peaceful outcome for the people of Viet Nam?

The answer to that is the government of the USA, in 1945. They decided to stop supporting the popular nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh (their ally against Japan in WW2, who seriously wanted to continue friendly relations with America), and instead to support the return of the cruel French colonialists, which most Vietnamese did not want.

From that wrong and fateful decision, everything else inevitably followed. Thus, the boat people refugees were just some of the resulting victims of a war decided in Washington!

It is usual in the aftermath of war or extreme poverty that some people will seek to leave for a better life. But the vast majority did not leave, despite the terrible consequences of war and the crippling 20-year US economic embargo. Instead, they stayed to rebuild their shattered country, despite the hardships. And, for most of these people, they were the 'victors' in the war anyway, north and south!

And yes, many horrible things happened on both sides - as they do in all wars.

"....Tet (New Year) Offensive in 1968. Instead of observing the expected ceasefire on this sacred day, Viet Cong (the guerilla force of the North Vietnam-backed National Liberation Front) attacked Saigon, capital of South Vietnam...."I still find it inexcusable that the communists violated the armistice during Tet....

The surprise Tet Offensive in 1968 was part of the consequence and strategy of winning the war. The Vietnamese did the same thing way back in Tet 1789, when they surprised the invading Chinese and defeated them in the famous Battle of Dong Da near Hanoi. Was this also "inexcusable" at the time? I don't think so! If invaders invade they will be defeated! The lesson should be: "Don't invade! And if you do, don't blame the defenders for the consequences!" A lesson the US government failed to learn years later, and still fails to learn today!

"....That month, television news revealed the massacre at Hue...."

And yes, at Hue in 1968 there was a masacre of civilians - on both sides! To some extent, the massacres that happened during Tet '68 in Hue were paybacks for the massacres already carried out by the Saigon government under President Diem and others. And when the siege of Hue was over, the Saigon government conducted more massacres. Massacres on all sides are another consequence of war. (Yet the article only refers to those of one side!)

War itself is a massacre. And a most inappropriate way to settle most disputes between people and nations. But, of course, it is "big business" to lots of powerful people who make their obscene wealth from the suffering of others. So anyone who wants to stop war has to battle some very powerful and selfish interests. Be prepared for a tough road!!!

Thanks for sending me the article, and I hope you will make good use of it, and other information, to help bring an end to this absurdity we call "war".

Best wishes to you.
Keep in touch.
Cheers from Bruce.

Cambodia's Missing Criminals

By John Pilger

February 21, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- At my hotel in Phnom Penh, the women and children sat on one side of the room, palais-style, the men on the other. It was a disco night and a lot of fun; then suddenly people walked to the windows and wept. The DJ had played a song by the much-loved Khmer singer, Sin Sisamouth, who had been forced to dig his own grave and to sing the Khmer Rouge anthem before he was beaten to death. I experienced many such reminders in the years following Pol Pot’s fall.

There was another kind of reminder. In the village of Neak Long, a Mekong River town, I walked with a distraught man through a necklace of bomb craters. His entire family of 13 had been blown to pieces by an American B-52. That had happened almost two years before Pol Pot came to power in 1975. It is estimated more than 600,000 Cambodians were slaughtered that way.

The problem with the United Nations-backed trial of the remaining Khmer Rouge leaders, which has just begun in Phom Penh, is that it is dealing only with the killers of Sin Sisamouth and not with the killers of the family in Neak Long, and not with their collaborators.

There were three stages of Cambodia’s holocaust. Pol Pot’s genocide was but one of them, yet only it has a place in the official memory.

It is highly unlikely Pot Pot would have come to power had President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, not attacked neutral Cambodia.

In 1973, B-52s dropped more bombs on Cambodia’s populated heartland than were dropped on Japan during all of the Second World War: the equivalent of five Hiroshimas.

Declassified files reveal that the CIA was in little doubt of the effect. “[The Khmer Rouge] are using damage caused by B52 strikes as the main theme of their propaganda,” reported the director of operations on May 2, 1973. “This approach has resulted in the successful recruitment of a number of young men [and] has been effective with refugees.” Prior to the bombing, the Khmer Rouge had been a Maoist cult without a popular base. The bombing delivered a catalyst.

What Nixon and Kissinger began, Pol Pot completed.

Kissinger will not be in the dock in Phom Penh. He is advising President Obama on geo-politics. Neither will Margaret Thatcher, nor a number of her comfortably retired senior ministers and officials who, in secretly supporting the Khmer Rouge after the Vietnamese had expelled them, contributed directly to the third stage of Cambodia’s holocaust.

In 1979, the US and British governments imposed a devastating embargo on stricken Cambodia because its liberators, Vietnam, had come from the wrong side of the cold war.

Few Foreign Office campaigns have been as cynical or as brutal. At the UN, the British demanded that the now defunct Pol Pot regime retain the “right” to represent its victims at the UN and voted with Pol Pot in the agencies of the UN, including the World Health Organisation, thereby preventing it from working inside Cambodia.

To disguise this outrage, Britain, the US and China, Pol Pot’s principal backer, invented a “non communist” coalition in exile that was, in fact, dominated by the Khmer Rouge. In Thailand, the CIA and Defence Intelligence Agency formed direct links with the Khmer Rouge.

In 1983, the Thatcher government sent the SAS to train the “coalition” in landmine technology – in a country more seeded with mines than anywhere on earth except Afghanistan.

“I confirm,” Thatcher wrote to opposition leader Neil Kinnock, “that there is no British government involvement of any kind in training, equipping or co-operating with Khmer Rouge forces or those allied to them.”

The lie was breathtaking.

On June 25, 1991, the Major government was forced to admit to parliament that the SAS had been secretly training the “coalition”.

Unless international justice is a farce, those who sided with Pol Pot’s mass murderers ought to be summoned to the court in Phnom Penh: at the very least their names read into infamy’s register.

See Also

Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia

John Pilger vividly reveals the brutality and murderous political ambitions of the Pol Pot / Khmer Rouge totalitarian regime which bought genocide and despair to the people of Cambodia while neighboring countries, including Australia, shamefully ignored the immense human suffering and unspeakable crimes that bloodied this once beautiful country..

A Documentary Film By John Pilger

Click to view

www.johnpilger.com

Are generals disputing Iraq pullout? Do disagreements amongst top generals and Obama on Iraq pullout plan represent a more profound debate? view

Where are Afghanistan's missing millions?
Clancy Chassay hears charges of corruption leveled against the UN and aid agencies view

In the rubble of Jabal al Rayas
Gaza families struggling to survive in homemade shelteres view

Weapons programs re-branded as jobs programs
Military industry appeals to job-loss fears Pt2/2 view

Two years recession, or ten years of hell? Pt.4
Engdahl: Mass action in streets needed to demand bank nationalization and cuts in military spending view

The war that did not make the headlines

Over Five Million Dead in Congo?

By Keith Harmon Snow

Behind the Numbers Redux:

How Truth is Hidden, Even When it Seems to Be Told.

A brilliant report of war and plunder in Congo.

You may be surprised by some of the famous names implicated!

"......Starvation happens not because this is Africa, or the Congo, it is because we are witnessing the most devastating example of predatory capitalism and heartless, absolute greed, combined with a spiritual crises—in the “first” world—of unprecedented proportions. The long term control of Congo’s resources is best served by eliminating as many black people as possible. The capacity to control Congo’s resources is enhanced by spreading terror, uprooting people, destroying families, sowing distrust and hatred. It is called divide and conquer and it is the oldest trick in the book of European conquest.....

And all the while the humanitarian “misery” industry is raking in billions of dollars on programs to “help” the Congolese people, and universities create new programs and departments to train the privileged “development” work force, all to create and institutionalize dependency. This is structural violence, and it is part of a cycle of perpetuated wealth and privilege. It is managed inequality.

This is the U.S. foreign policy in action. The International Rescue Commitee merely institutionalizes the false framework of thinking that supports war and plunder and the entrenchment, rather than alleviation, of structural violence. Behind the psychological warfare the picture in Congo is very different, and the responsible forces are easily identified.....

Continue

Ship of Fools

By Paul Craig Roberts

The Russians, overflowing with energy and mineral resources, and not in debt, have learned that the US government is not to be trusted. Russia has watched Reagan’s successors attempt to turn former constituent parts of the Soviet Union into US puppet states with US military bases. Continue

Iraq's Shocking Human Toll

About 1 Million Killed,
4.5 Million Displaced,
1-2 Million Widows,
5 Million Orphans

By John Tirman

Now that Bush is gone, perhaps the United States can honestly face the damage we have wrought and the responsibilities we must accept from it. Continue



Call to Try Bush:
Now that former U.S. president George W. Bush is an ordinary citizen again, many legal and human rights activists in Europe are demanding that he and high-ranking members of his government be brought before justice for crimes against humanity committed in the so-called war on terror.

Prosecutor looks at ways to
put Israeli officers
on trial for Gaza 'war crimes':

The International Criminal Court
is exploring ways to prosecute
Israeli commanders over alleged
war crimes in Gaza.

The Mideast's One-State Solution

By Muammar Qaddafi

Everywhere one looks, among the speeches and the desperate diplomacy, there is no real way forward. A just and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians is possible, but it lies in the history of the people of this conflicted land, and not in the tired rhetoric of partition and two-state solutions. Continue

Obama: Regime Rotation

By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

The arrival of the Obama administration will not fundamentally alter the course of military expansion accelerated during the Bush era. ... The key differences will be in language and method, not substance.

Obama and National Security: “It’s the Oil, Stupid!”

This became increasingly clear as Barack Obama’s administration appointees became known – individuals whose political and ideological positions are largely commensurate with neoconservative ideals particularly on security matters, and whose social and intellectual connections link them to neo-conservative think-tanks and policy-makers.....

Obama and the Economy: Déjà vu?

As for Obama’s ambitions for tackling the financial crisis, even a scathing New York Times editorial noted that President Obama’s economic team, put together to tackle the economic and financial crisis, consisted of the very same people who had “played central roles in policies that helped provoke today’s financial crisis.”

These include Tim Geithner who as president of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York “helped shape the Bush administration’s erratic and often inscrutable responses to the current financial meltdown, up to and including this past weekend’s multibillion-dollar bailout of Citigroup”; and former World Bank chief, Larry Summers, who “championed the law that deregulated derivatives, the financial instruments – aka toxic assets – that have spread the financial losses from reckless lending around the globe.”....

Obama Shuts Down ‘War on Terror’… Not

So what should we make of Obama’s opening measures, almost as soon as he was inaugurated as President, to close Guantanamo Bay, de-legitimize torture and challenge CIA practices of extraordinary rendition? Firstly, we should of course welcome any such public condemnations of these practices, particularly by the new American President.

But this should not blind us from critically examining what Obama’s Executive Orders actually meant.

While around the world, Obama’s measures were interpreted as completely reversing the Bush administration policies of torture, extraordinary rendition and secret prisons – starting with the declaration of the complete closure of Guantanamo Bay – deeper inspection of the details of his Executive Orders suggests, unfortunately, that cries of joy are slightly premature.....

This means that Obama’s public disavowals of torture do not actually represent the end of the systemic practice of the CIA's traditional interrogation techniques, conducted without public scrutiny for decades. Rather, they portend a sheepish return to secrecy......

Not One to Waste Time

Abroad, the Obama administration began its first days in office by committing more troops to Afghanistan, intensifying military pressure on Pakistan, stepping-up covert warfare on Iran, and deepening military-political penetration of Central Asia and West Africa.

The overarching motivations for these policies are US domination of energy reserves and transportation routes, exemplified in the appointment of oil-obsessed ex-NATO Marine Gen. James Jones as Obama's national security czar.

Rather than reversing the pattern of attempting to intensify state power, these policies will severely exacerbate the potential for geopolitical competition and violent conflict.


Regime Rotation: Hegemony Rehabilitation, Systemic Stabilization

After the Bush administration’s record of essentially trampling on any semblance of half-decent PR, leading to the very concept of US world leadership being vehemently opposed or incredulously ridiculed around the world, the arrival of Obama is set to rehabilitate American hegemony and restore some sense of credibility and even respectability to US military and financial power.....

In other words, not changing the system, but protecting it – violently if necessary, but this time with greater attention to PR....

The outcome has already been disturbing: while neutralizing and thoroughly confusing progressive social and anti-war movements in and outside the West, the arrival of Obama has allowed the US government to rally unprecedented popular support behind it, for whatever it intends to do.

We will see, in this respect, a marked shift in the language and rhetoric of foreign policy, a return to more diplomatic strategies, as well as military policies couched in the discourse of humanitarian intervention and aid. Unfortunately, for a while, this shift will seem more convincing coming from Obama, as opposed to Bush.

More than ever, therefore, progressive movements will need to up their game in understanding and accurately critiquing the new administration’s policies, if they are to prevent processes of imperial militarization from intensifying.

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and teaches International Relations at the University of Sussex, Brighton. He is the author of The London Bombings (2006); The War on Truth (2005); Behind the War on Terror (2003); and The War on Freedom (2002).

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The entire column by Michael Leunig is available online at
http://www.theage.com.au/news/entertainment/arts/little-picture-big-picture/2009/01/08/1231004194072.html

Gaza was a Gas ?

qui bono ? - who benefits/profits?

From TimesOnline.com May 23, 2007

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/ natural_resources/

article1826739.ece

BG Group at centre of $4bn deal to supply Gaza gas to Israel
The British energy firm is set to agree terms of a $4bn, 15-year deal over gas discovered off the Gaza coast

BG Group is poised to agree to the terms of an historic $4 billion (£2 billion) deal to supply Palestinian gas to Israel from a discovery off the Gaza coastline, The Times has learnt.

Representatives from the British energy company are scheduled next week to meet a team of negotiators chosen by the Israeli Cabinet to thrash out a 15-year contract. Despite the violence in Gaza, the Israeli Foreign Ministry has insisted that it wants to conclude a deal “as soon as possible”......

Alarm Spreads Over Use of Lethal New Weapons

By Erin Cunningham

Eighteen-year-old Mona Al-Ashkar says she did not immediately know the first explosion at the United Nations (UN) school in Beit Lahiya had blown her left leg off. There was smoke, then chaos, then the pain and disbelief set in once she realised it was gone - completely severed by the weapon that hit her...

...Palestinian doctors (are) baffled by the type of weaponry used in the Israeli operation. High-profile human rights organisations like Amnesty International are accusing Israel of war crimes. Mona's doctors at Gaza City's Al-Shifa hospital found no shrapnel in her leg, and it looked as though it had been "sliced right off with a knife."

"We are not sure exactly what type of weapon can manage to do that immediately and so cleanly," said Dr. Sobhi Skaik, consultant surgeon general at Al-Shifa hospital.

"What is happening is frightening. It's possible the Israeli army was using Gaza to experiment militarily."

Both international organisations and human rights groups, including the UN, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have condemned Israel's use of unconventional weapons in civilian areas of the Gaza Strip.

Amnesty International's chief researcher for Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Donatella Rovera, told IPS in Beit Lahiya that Israel's use of white phosphorus and other "area weapons" on civilian populations amounted to war crimes.

"The kind of weapons used and the manner in which they were used indicates prima facie evidence of war crimes," she said....

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog, said it would look into a claim made by the ambassadors of a number of Arab nations that Israel used depleted uranium in its recent attacks on Gaza.

Local doctors say a number of both widespread and unusual injuries may indicate that new types of weapons were used on the Gaza population during the war....

Mona's injury is characteristic of Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME). DIMEs are munitions that, packed with tungsten powder, produce an intense explosion at about the level of the knee, with signs of severe heat at the point of amputation....

Once in the body, tungsten is both difficult to detect and extremely carcinogenic, and can produce an aggressive form of cancer, according to both military experts. Dr. Skaik says the Al-Shifa hospital alone has seen between 100 to 150 patients with this type of injury...What is worrying health officials even more, however, is that some of the patients' organs are being ruptured with little or no sign of a shrapnel entry point.

This is something they have never seen before, they say, and also something they do not know how to treat.

"Normal shrapnel has a clear path, with both an entry and an exit point," said Dr. Mohamed Al-Ron, another surgeon at Al-Shifa hospital.

"But someone's entire abdomen will be ripped open, and only after searching will we find a miniscule hole in the skin. Then we will find small black dots all over the organ, but we don't know what they are."

It is an indication, he continued, that whatever is entering the body is exploding and doing the damage once it is inside. Multiple organs will fail, and will continue to fail even after surgery removes any shrapnel.

"We are consulting with international colleagues, and they are confirming that there is something unusual going on with these cases," said Dr. Skaik.

"We have seen plenty of nails, of metal shrapnel and foreign metallic parts, but there was never violence of this character or something that continued to damage even after the parts of the weapon were removed. What is being intentionally created is a population of handicapped people."

Some of the injuries, including multiple organ failure, mutilation and severed limbs, are so debilitating that Dr. Karim Hosni, an Egyptian doctor volunteering at the Al-Naser hospital in Khan Younis, says he wishes he could just end his patients' misery.

"Sometimes I wish my patients would just die," he said. "Their injuries are so horrifying, that I know they will now have to lead terrible and painful lives."

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UN Special Rapporteur Likens Gaza to Warsaw Ghetto

By Press TV

There is more than enough evidence that Israel committed war crimes in its three week-long offensive into Gaza, says a UN investigator.

UN special rapporteur Richard Falk (a Jewish American academic) called for an independent inquiry into Israel's violation of international humanitarian law.

Falk said Israel's actions against the besieged Gazans are reminiscent of "the worst kind of international memories of the Warsaw Ghetto" which included the starvation and murder of Polish Jews by Nazi Germany in World War Two...

Israeli officials moved closer to being prosecuted for war crimes after Norwegian medics in Gaza found traces of depleted uranium on Gaza victims...The Geneva Convention has classified depleted uranium ammunitions as 'illegal weapons of mass destruction' due to their high radioactivity and toxicity....

Israel faces potential war crimes charges over its excessive use of other controversial weapons on the densely-populated coastal strip.

Human rights group Amnesty International has also touched on the issue, saying that Tel Aviv used white phosphorus munitions "indiscriminately and illegally" in overcrowded areas of Gaza.

"The repeated use [of White Phosphorus] in this manner, despite evidence of its indiscriminate effects and its toll on civilians, is a war crime," said Donatella Rovera of the Amnesty International.

White phosphorus is a high-incendiary substance that bursts into all-consuming flames that cannot be extinguished with water, burning flesh to the bone and often leading to death.

Israel launched its Operation Cast Lead on December 27 to allegedly defend its territories from Hamas rockets, which were fired in retaliation for Israel's violation of a ceasefire that had then been in place.

Falk, dismissed Israel's argument that the assault was for self-defense, saying that "the UN charter, and international law, does not give Israel the legal foundation for claiming self-defense."

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Come On Down For Your Freedom Medals

By John Pilger

On 13 January, George W. Bush presented “presidential freedom medals”, said to be America’s highest recognition of devotion to freedom and peace. Among the recipients were Tony Blair, who, with Bush, bears responsibility for the physical, social and cultural destruction of an entire nation; John Howard, the former prime minister of Australia and minor American vassal who led the most openly racist government in his country’s modern era; and Alvaro Uribe, the president of Colombia, whose government, according the latest study of that murderous state, is “responsible for than 90 per cent of all cases of torture”....

Although more spectacular in its choreographed histrionics, Barack Obama’s inauguration carried the same Orwellian message of inverted truth: of ruthlessness of criminal power, if not unending war....

...only days earlier, the House of Representatives, dominated by the new president’s party, the Democrats, voted 390-5 to back Israel’s massacres in Gaza. The supply of American weapons used in the massacres was authorised previously by such a margin. These included the Hellfire missile which sucks the air out of lungs, ruptures livers and amputates arms and legs without the necessity of shrapnel: a “major advance”, according to the specialist literature.

As a senator, then president-elect, Obama raised no objection to these state-of-the-art [sic] weapons being rushed to Israel – worth $22 billion in 2008 – in time for the long-planned assault on Gaza’s fenced and helpless population. This is understandable; it's how the system works.

On no other issue does Congress and the president, Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, give such absolute support. By comparison, the German Reichstag in the 1930s was a treasure of democratic and principled debate.....

Across the world, people once indifferent to the arcane “conflict” in the Middle East, now ask the question the BBC and CNN rarely ask: Why does Israel have a right to exist, but Palestine does not?

They ask, too, why do the lawless enjoy such immunity in the pristine world of balance and objectivity?

The perfectly-spoken Israeli “spokesman” represents the most lawless regime on earth, exotic tyrannies included, according to a tally of United Nations resolutions defied and Geneva Conventions defiled.

In France, 80 organisations are working to bring war crimes indictments against Israel’s leaders.

On 15 January, the fine Israeli reporter, Gideon Levy, wrote in Ha’aretz that Israeli generals “will not be the only ones to hide in El Al planes lest they are arrested [overseas]”.

One day, other journalists and their editors and producers may be called upon to not only explain why they did not tell the truth about these criminals but even to stand in the dock with them. No Bush Freedom Medal is worth that.

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A Time to Break Silence

By Rev. Martin Luther King

See and read this historic speech,

which is still very relevant today!

In his "Beyond Vietnam" speech delivered at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 -- a year to the day before he was murdered -- King called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."

Time magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi," and the Washington Post declared that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."

History proved Martin Luther King was spot on . . . . while the media icons were wrong!

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Punishing the Palestinians

By Ralph Nader

In the long sixty-year tortured history of the Palestinian expulsion from their lands, Congress has maintained that it is always the Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority, and now Hamas who are to blame for all hostilities and their consequences with the Israeli government.... Continue

Punishing the Palestinians

By Ralph Nader

January 18, 2009 "Commondreams" -- In the long sixty-year tortured history of the Palestinian expulsion from their lands, Congress has maintained that it is always the Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority, and now Hamas who are to blame for all hostilities and their consequences with the Israeli government.

The latest illustration of this Washington puppet show, backed by the most modern weapons and billions of taxpayer dollars annually sent to Israel, was the grotesquely one-sided Resolutions whisked through the Senate and the House of Representatives.

While a massive bombing and invasion of Gaza was underway, the resolution blaming Hamas for all the civilian casualties and devastation-99% of it inflicted on Palestinians-zoomed through the Senate by voice vote and through the House by a vote of 390 to 5 with 22 legislators voting present.

There is more dissent against this destruction of Gaza among the Israeli people, the Knesset, the Israeli media, and Jewish-Americans than among the dittoheads on Capitol Hill.

The reasons for such near-unanimous support for Israeli actions-no matter how often they are condemned by peace advocates such as Bishop Desmond Tutu, United Nations resolutions, the World Court and leading human rights groups inside and outside of Israel, are numerous. The pro-Israeli government lobby, and the right-wing Christian evangelicals, lubricated by campaign money of many Political Action Committees (PACs) certainly are key.

There is also more than a little bigotry in Congress against Arabs and Muslims, reinforced by the mass media yahoos who set new records for biased reporting each time this conflict erupts.

The bias is clear. It is always the Palestinians' fault. Right-wingers who would never view the U.S. government as perfect see the Israeli government as never doing anything wrong. Liberals who do not hesitate to criticize the U.S. military view all Israeli military attacks, invasions and civilian devastation as heroic manifestations of Israeli defense.

The inversion of history and the scope of amnesia know no limits. What about the fact that the Israeli government drove Palestinians from their lands in 1947-48 with tens of thousands pushed into the Gaza strip. No problem to Congress.

Then the fact that the Israeli government cruelly occupied, in violation of UN resolutions, the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 and only removed its soldiers and colonists from Gaza (1.5 million people in a tiny area twice the size of the District of Columbia) in 2005. To Congress, the Palestinians deserved it.

Then when Hamas was freely elected to run Gaza, the Israeli authorities cut off the tax revenues on imports that belonged to the Gaza government. This threw the Gazans into a fiscal crisis-they were unable to pay their civil servants and police.

In 2006, the Israelis added to their unrelieved control of air, water and land around the open-air prison by establishing a blockade. The natives became restless.

Under international law, a blockade is an act of war. Primitive rockets, called by reporters "wildly inaccurate" were fired into Israel. During this same period, Israeli soldiers and artillery and missiles would go into Gaza at will and take far more lives and cause far more injuries than those incurred by those rockets. Civilians-especially children, the infirm and elderly-died or suffered week after week for lack of medicines, medical equipment, food, electricity, fuel and water which were embargoed by the Israelis.

Then the Israeli bombing followed by the invasion during the past three weeks with what prominent Israeli writer Gideon Levy called "a brutal and violent operation...far beyond what was needed for protecting the people in its south." Mr. Levy observed what the president of the United Nations General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann called a war against "a helpless and defenseless imprisoned population."

The horror of being trapped from fleeing the torrent of the most modern weapons of war from the land, air and seas is reflected in this passage from Amira Hass, writing in the leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz:

"The earth shaking under your feet, clouds of choking smoke, explosions like a fireworks display, bombs bursting into all-consuming flames that cannot be extinguished with water, mushroom clouds of pinkish-red smoke, suffocating gas, harsh burns on the skin, extraordinary maimed live and dead bodies."

Ms. Hass is pointing to the use of new anti-civilian weapons used on the Gazan people. So far there have been over 1100 fatalities, many thousands of injuries and the destruction of homes, schools, mosques, hospitals, pharmacies, granaries, farmer's fields and many critical public facilities. The clearly marked UN headquarters and UN school were smashed, along with stored medicines and food supplies.

Why? The Congressional response: "Hamas terrorists" everywhere. Sure, defending their Palestinian families is called terrorism. The truth is there is no Hamas army, airforce and navy up against the fourth most powerful military in the world. As one Israeli gunner on an armored personnel carrier frankly said to The New York Times: "They are villagers with guns. They don't even aim when they shoot."

Injured Gazans are dying in damaged hospital corridors, bleeding to death because rescuers are not permitted to reach them or are endangered themselves. Thousands of units of blood donated by Jordanians are stopped by the Israeli blockade. Israel has kept the international press out of the Gazan killing fields.

What is going on in Gaza is what Bill Moyers called it earlier this month - "state terrorism." Already about 400 children are known to have died. More will be added who are under the rubble.

Since 2002, more than 50 Arab and Muslim nations have had a standing offer, repeated often, that if Israel obeys several UN resolutions and withdraws to the 1967 borders leaving 22 percent of the original Palestine for an independent Palestinian state, they will open full diplomatic relations and there will be peace. Israel has declined to accept this offer.

None of these and many other aspects of this conflict matter to the Congress. Its members do not want to hear even from the Israeli peace movement, composed of retired generals, security chiefs, mayors, former government ministers, and members of the Knesset. In 60 years these savvy peace advocates have not been able to give one hour of testimony before a Congressional Committee.

Maybe members of Congress may wish to weigh the words of the founder of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, years ago when he said:

"There has been anti-Semitism the Nazis Hitler Auschwitz but was that their [the Palestinian's] fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country."

Doesn't that observation invite some compassion for the Palestinian people and their right to be free of Israeli occupation, land and water grabs and blockades in the 22 percent left of Palestine?

"We Are The Authors Of This Tragedy"

By George Galloway - Video

George Galloway's powerful speech in the House of Commons debate on Gaza, Thu 15 Jan 2009 (5.30pm), highlighting the hypocrisy and brazen double-standards of Western foreign policy towards Israel policies, including assassinations and other war crimes. Continue

Israel Bombs Main UN HQ / Compound With

'White Phosphorus' Shells:

By Sheera Frenkel, Jerusalem, and Philippe Naughton -

Video and Text

The main UN compound in Gaza was left in flames today after being struck by Israeli artillery fire, and a spokesman said that the building had been hit by shells containing the incendiary agent white phosphorus. Continue

Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered In US War And Occupation Of Iraq "1,307,319"

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Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In U.S. War And Occupation Of Iraq 4,227

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Cost of U.S. War and Occupation of Iraq

$588,017,165,620
For more details, click here.