Chris Floyd
Empire Burlesque

The last, wan hope for real change in the American system was not lost through the imperial dithering of Barack Obama's "Bush-Clinton Terror War Continuity" administration during the past two years. No; those last wan hopes went down the drain in 2006 -- the year that the Democratic Party regained control of Congress ... and promptly made a screeching U-turn on virtually every anti-war, anti-imperialist, pro-liberty, pro-people position it had taken against George W. Bush.

The sell-out -- or rather, the pay-off to the corporatist-militarist power factions who actually control the Democrats -- was immediate, brazen and deeply destructive. It helped entrench the vast abuses of power of the Bush Regime (and its bipartisan predecessors), it guaranteed the deaths of thousands of innocent people in the continuation and expansion of the Terror Wars, and it laid the groundwork for Obama's "Third Bush Administration" of presidential death squads, pointless "surges" in bloody quagmires, remote control slaughter by drone, bristling defenses and relentless expansions of authoritarian power, and cringing, servile capitulation to Big Money on every possible front.

As Bruce Dixon points out in a timely and important piece at Black Agenda Report, the instant the Democrats regained Congressional power in 2006, they immediately jettisoned all talk of impeachment, all investigations of war crimes and the handling of Hurricane Katrina, all impetus for real health care reform, all their previously vociferous opposition to Bush's tax cuts for the rich, and a host of other "dissenting" positions that they had cynically trumpeted in order to manipulate the public's genuine anger and thirst for change. (Ironically, the Democrats are now being hoisted on their own petard, as the corporate-run "Tea Party" Republicans are about to oust them from Congress with their own cynical manipulations of genuine anger and thirst for change.)

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Chris Marsden
WSWS

[A photograph taken in hospital in Baghdad shows that Ali was burned across his trunk and that his hands and forearms were incinerated. His head, neck, abdomen and legs were unblemished. Examination of this photograph shows this boy was subjected to the most intense radiated heat – not contact heat. Global Research]

Britain’s armed forces stand accused of torture and murder, perpetrated in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The scale of the abuses involved cannot be attributed to a few “rogue” individuals, or covered up by the routine excuse that Britain simply got “too close” to the United States and is guilty only by association. They present prima facie evidence for war crimes charges.

Revelations regarding Afghanistan focus on the documents released by WikiLeaks, listing 21 British attacks on civilians, including children. But a separate document seen by the Daily Telegraph suggests coalition forces are responsible for up to 1,000 civilian deaths since 2006. This number has doubled in the past four years.

WikiLeaks also cited three reports recording cases of direct abuse by British troops against Iraqi detainees that coincide with mounting evidence of “systemic” abuses of detainees and other civilians.

A preliminary high court ruling in July found, “There is an arguable case that the alleged ill-treatment was systemic, and not just at the whim of individual soldiers”. The court was presented with evidence on behalf of 102 Iraqis held as prisoners by the British military in an action by Public Interest Lawyers headed by solicitor Phil Shiner. The evidence lists the cases of 59 Iraqi civilians who say they were hooded by British troops, 11 subjected to electric shocks, 122 alleging that ear muffs were used for sound deprivation, 52 deprived of sleep, 39 who were subjected to enforced nakedness, and 18 forced to watch pornographic DVDs.

The Iraq war logs also reveal appalling details of the torture and ill-treatment by the Iraqi authorities, after detainees were handed over by US and British forces. This is in breach of international law. States are bound by a duty of “non-refoulement” and must never hand someone over to another state where it is known they face a “real risk” of torture or ill-treatment. Public Interest Lawyers stated, “In the light of the Iraq war logs, the UK cannot say that it did not have evidence that there was a real risk of torture and ill-treatment at the hands of the Iraqi authorities.”

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Khalid Amayreh

1- The overall situation in occupied Palestine has already reached (or is about to reach) the point of “no return.” This means that we have already passed the chances of peace by. This is mainly attributed to the unrelenting Israeli settlement-expansion policy all over the occupied territories, especially Occupied East Jerusalem. This manifestly illegal policy, which flies in the face of international law, has rendered the creation of a viable and territorially-contiguous Palestinian State on the territories occupied in 1967, a virtually impossible and unrealistic goal. In other words, Israel has effectively killed the chances for a viable Palestinian state. Therefore, one can safely claim that the current American-sponsored process has already been rendered more or less irrelevant.

The current Israeli government, which is indisputably the most hawkish and jingoistic in Israel ‘s history, is trying successfully to decapitate, once and for all, any remaining chances for peace, mainly by building more settlements and further narrowing Palestinian horizons. This is also done through irreversibly altering the panoramic face of East of Jerusalem and obliterating the occupied town’s Arab-Islamic identity.

2- The present political process is doomed to failure, for it is none but a mere reproduction and repetition of the same past failed efforts, especially since the Oslo Accords. Hence, pining any real hope on the success of the current process is tantamount to indulging in self-deception.

3- The United States government, regardless of which administration is in office, is unable or unwilling (or both) to force Israel to end its enduring occupation of Palestinian land. This is mainly imputed to the disproportionate influence Israel’s supporters including the so-called Jewish Lobby exert on the American policy in this part of the world. Needless to say, this particular dimension has become well-known to many academics, politicians as well as ordinary people.

4- Israel is not really interested in any genuine and durable peace with her Palestinian neighbors. Indeed, a country that keeps building settlements on occupied land and keeps transferring its own citizens to live on a land that belongs to another people, is obviously not interested in peace. And in order to divert the attention of the world from the hard reality in Occupied Palestine, Israel and her supporters constantly resort to campaigns of lie, otherwise called hasbara, all for the purpose of laying the blame on Palestinians for the political deadlock or dead-end which the situation in our region has reached.

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Stephen Lendman

On October 22, Reuters confirmed Haiti's cholera outbreak, saying efforts were being made to prevent an epidemic that so far "killed nearly 200 people and sickened more than 2,000," official reports understating the threat.

On the same day, New York Times writer Donald McNeil, Jr. headlined, "Cholera Outbreak Kills 150 in Haiti," saying:

"A cholera outbreak in a rural area of northwestern Haiti....overwhelmed local hospitals with thousands of sick," according to the World Health Organization. Rural Artibonite, Haiti's main rice-growing area, 62 miles north of Port-au-Prince was struck, though cases were surfacing elsewhere. They're now in the nation's capital where overcrowding threatens a possible epidemic.

Though normally less congested, Artibonite hosts thousands of earthquake victims, most drinking St. Marc River water, contaminated with raw sewage. As a result, a potential disaster there looms as in Port-au-Prince and other parts of Haiti. Dirty water and poor sanitation are the problems, as well as poverty, always the main cause wherever cholera strikes.

St. Marc Hospital was "a horror scene," said David Darg, director of Operation Blessing International. McNeil reported him

"describing people lying in courtyards on sheets soaked with rain and feces, children writhing in agony and adults lying motionless, their eyes rolled back as nurses searched for veins."

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