Stephen Lendman

On March 18, Reuters headlined, "Haiti's Aristide heads home before runoff vote," saying he

"headed back to his country on Friday after ignoring US opposition to a homecoming some fear could disrupt Haiti's presidential election runoff on Sunday."

For months, State Department officials obstructed him, wanting him permanently excluded, especially during Sunday's illegitimate elections, featuring two unpopular presidential candidates most Haitians spurn. Most, in fact, won't participate, knowing either winner represents Washington, not them.

First round November 28 elections and Sunday's runoff were rigged to defraud. Haitians want democracy, what's absent in Sunday's vote.

Earlier, Obama and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asked South African President Jacob Zuma to prevent his return. He delayed but didn't stop him. In fact, Aristide's charismatic presence runs counter to America's imperial plans - to solidify colonization, resource theft, and exploitation of poor Haitians, what legitimate democrats oppose, including Aristide.

He's wanted to return any time, "to contribute to serving my Haitian sisters and brothers as a simple citizen in the field of education." He has no further political interests. Believe him. It's true. He wants only to aid Haiti's recovery, doing what he knows and loves best.

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Bill Van Auken
WSWS

According to US officials, the United States is moving war-
ships and aircraft, including the USS Enterprise (photo) into
the Mediterranean Sea near Libya. (PressTV)

There is an element of extreme recklessness in the US-NATO intervention. What will it produce? One likely variant would be Libya’s partition and the resurrection of Cyrenaica, the colonial territory set up by Italy in Benghazi in the 1920s. Any elements coming to power under such a regime would be right-wing puppets of imperialism, comparable to Karzai in Afghanistan or Maliki in Iraq, and would inevitably carry out an even bloodier slaughter of the Libyan people.

The United Nations Security Council Thursday night approved a resolution that paves the way for the United States and other major imperialist powers to conduct a direct military intervention in Libya under the pretense of a “humanitarian” mission to protect civilian lives.

The resolution, sponsored by the US, France, Britain and Lebanon, goes far beyond earlier proposals for a no-fly zone, authorizing the use of military force including “all necessary measures … to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack.” These “areas” include Benghazi, the city of one million which remains the sole stronghold of the revolt that began against the Gaddafi dictatorship one month ago. The sole limitation placed by the resolution is its exclusion of “a foreign occupation force on any part of Libyan territory.”

The vote sets the stage for a bombardment of Libya by US, French and British warplanes. French Prime Minister Francois Fillon told France-2 Television that military action could begin within hours of the resolution’s approval. And the Associated Press cited an unnamed member of the British Parliament as saying, “British forces were on stand by for air strikes and could be mobilized as soon as Thursday night.”

American military officials have already warned that even the imposition of a no-fly zone entails the prior destruction of Libya’s air defense capabilities, meaning a major bombing campaign against Libya that will undoubtedly entail “collateral damage” measured in the killing and maiming of Libyan civilians.

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Stephen Lendman

Manning is being emotionally destroyed, assuring his inability to defend himself properly at trial. The Pentagon plans it, besides extracting vengeance and warning other whistle blowers what they'll face if they dare emulate him. Obama very much concurs, showing he's as lawless as Bush.

A previous article discussed him in detail, accessed through this link. Another discussed torture as official US policy, institutionalized under Bush II, continued under Obama, practiced despite official denials.

Manning, of course, is the Army intelligence analyst allegedly turned whistle blower, who supposedly leaked thousands of diplomatic cables, many from Iraq and Afghan war databases, as well as two or more explosive videos, showing US air strikes murdering civilians. As a result, he may have felt obligated to reveal them. They reveal criminal acts by the US government, demanding prosecution of everyone up the chain of command ordering them.

If Bradley [in fact] disclosed them, he did so at great personal risk. He then would deserve praise, not prosecution. He would be a hero, risking personal harm to reveal disturbing truths, what government and media reports suppress, sanitize and distort, letting warlords plunder lawlessly so war profiteers can cash in. Americans are the worse off for it.

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Stephen Lendman

Visible in green within the shattered walls of Fukushima nuclear
power plant, the storage pool is dried up, exposing nuclear fuel
rods to the air. AHB (Photo: AP)

Possibly it's ongoing and concealed. All along, Japanese and Tokyo Electric (TEPCO) officials downplayed or lied about the severity of the crisis. Virtually nothing they say can be believed.

Nor from the Obama administration, budgeting loan guarantees for new reactor construction instead of decommissioning all 104 nuclear plants because operating them risks full core meltdowns.

Partial or full ones gravely harm earth, air, water and food. Three hazardous Fukushima radioactive isotopes are especially problematic. University of Rochester Professor Jacqueline Williams, a radiation expert, says ingesting radioactive iodine-131 causes thyroid and other cancers. So does hazardous beta and gamma radiation from Cesium-137. Released Strontium 90 also causes leukemia and other cancers. Large amounts of all three are spewing daily.

Under a worst case scenario, millions of Japanese, Pacific rim and northern hemisphere people will be harmed, many gravely. Millions of deaths may result. The dangers of nuclear power can't be overstated. Potentially, all planetary life is threatened. What better reason to end all commercial and military use now.

Wikipedia calls a nuclear meltdown "an informal term for a severe nuclear reactor accident that results in core damage from overheating." Partial or full meltdowns result, releasing toxic atmospheric radiation.

Through nuclear fission, reactors generate high heat to produce electricity - essentially boiling water to create steam, used to run turbines and generate power. Unless controlled, dangerously high heat results.

Core meltdowns occur when heat generated exceeds what cooling systems remove, causing uranium and plutonium fuel to melt. At fault may be coolant problems, including accidents, fires, loss of coolant pressure, low coolant flow, or none at all from high heat causing evaporation. In other words, insufficient cooling elevates temperatures high enough to trigger melting and toxic atmospheric radiation releases.

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Niall Green
WSWS

The result of the US occupation of Afghanistan has been devastating. The United Nations reported last week that 2,777 civilians were killed in Afghanistan in 2010, a rise of 15 percent over the previous year. According to the UN, 722 civilians were killed by US and allied forces last year. These figures grossly underestimate the number of civilians killed, due to the US policy of either not reporting civilian casualties or mis-recording them as “insurgents.” A large number of civilians have died in US and NATO attacks so far in 2011, including at least 65 civilians killed in a US-led offensive in the province of Kunar. In one such atrocity, on March 3 a US air strike killed nine children collecting firewood near a Forward Operating Base in the Darah-Ye District.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General David Petraeus demanded increased funds and an indefinite US military occupation in order to secure what he described as “fragile and reversible” gains.

Petraeus, the top commander of US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces in Afghanistan, told senators on Tuesday that “the momentum achieved by the Taliban in Afghanistan since 2005 has been arrested in much of the country and reversed in a number of important areas.”

Since 2009, President Barack Obama has poured an additional 30,000 troops into Afghanistan, while escalating the bombing campaign across the border in Pakistan. There are now 150,000 troops from the US, NATO and other allied countries in Afghanistan, in addition to forces from the Afghan National Army.

Petraeus, the senior military commander in Iraq during the “surge” that brutally suppressed militant opposition to the US occupation between 2007 and 2008, is charged with replicating that policy in Afghanistan.

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Gordon Duff
Veterans Today

We Know They Know But They Don't Care

This week, most members of congress, 100% of the new “Tea Party,” swore allegiance to the State of Israel. To those of us at Veterans Today, we have a problem with this. We have never been all that enthusiastic about Congress in the first place. They are a gutless bunch who feather their own nests, finance their campaigns with laundered drug money and have turned Washington into a modern day Gomorrah, a city of rent boys and call girls.

We have a few issues to pick with Israel.

There is no way any loyal member of the United States military or veteran of its services is likely to “kiss and make up” with Israel until we receive an official apology for the attack on the USS Liberty. Even the “official” veterans organizations, generally a gutless bunch made up of the same spineless sycophants as congress, have spoken up on this one.

Our next issue is 9/11. We know Israel was involved in a major way though there is no way Israel alone could have ordered NORAD to ground its planes. We know members of all key committees in Congress were given a “top secret” briefing on 9/11 and told the following things:

● The World Trade Center was destroyed, not by planes but because of a “national security issue” in order to “save lives.”
● The attack on the Pentagon was not the hijacked aircraft claimed but a different cause that is “classified.”
● The subsequent attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq were necessary for the US to maintain control of energy resources to prevent economic collapse.
● Israel “assisted” the United States on 9/11 and may “appear” culpable but was not.

These things are childish lies, of course. The perverts, cowards and gullible rubes that make up congress, one of the most corrupt institutions on earth, were beaming with self importance, having been briefed on a great conspiracy. After all, many members of congress went to college, some to law school, and are much more deserving and certainly much more important than “normal people.” We call this condition “malignant narcissism.”

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Jesse Walker
Reason Magazine

Three lessons from the week's disasters

An 8.9 earthquake, a 33-foot tsunami, a series of crises at their battered nuclear plants: The people of Japan have withstood the last week with admirable tenacity. There's no shortage of lessons the rest of the world can learn from what we've been seeing. Here are three of them.

1. People are resilient. Disaster movies and disaster research might as well come from different planets. When Hollywood shows you an earthquake, an eruption, or a towering inferno, you see mass panic, stampeding crowds, maybe a looting spree. When sociologists study real-life disasters, they see calm, resourceful people evacuating buildings, rescuing strangers, and cooperating nonviolently. How cooperative can people be? "At a convenience store in one battered coastal prefecture," The Washington Post reported shortly after the Sendai quake, "a store manager used a private electric generator. When it stopped working and the cash register no longer opened, customers waiting in line returned their items to the shelves."

These patterns shift somewhat from culture to culture, and if a disaster coincides with certain conditions —severe class distinctions, a serious pre-existing crime problem, a police department that's especially corrupt—a post-disaster riot may break out. But that's the exception, not the rule. On Monday, Ed West of the London Telegraph asked with awe, "Why is there no looting in Japan?" A better query would be, "When people do loot, what prompted the plunder?"

So it shouldn't be a surprise to see survivors keeping their heads, sharing food and other resources, and doing all they can to contain the damage. That's what usually happens after an earthquake. It's just that most Americans haven't read about, say, the Kobe quake of 1995, when the disaster researchers Kathleen Tierney and James D. Goltz reported that "Spontaneous volunteering and emergent group activity were very widespread throughout the emergency period; community residents provided a wide range of goods and services to their fellow earthquake victims, and large numbers of people traveled from other parts of the country to offer aid." When westerners imagine Japanese people facing a catastrophe, they're more likely to picture an agitated mob fleeing Godzilla. Then they're taken aback when real life doesn't resemble a flick about a fictional fire-breathing lizard.

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Stephen Lendman

Japan's deepening disaster affects everyone. Atmospheric radiation will spread globally, mostly affecting the northern hemisphere. Everyone to some extent will be affected, those in Japan and nearby the most.

An unprecedented catastrophe is unfolding. You'd hardly know it from most major media reports, including US broadcast and cable channels, National Public Radio, Public Broadcasting, BBC, and Al Jazeera, failing to explain a deepening catastrophe placing millions of lives at risk.

On March 16, however, Russia Today said Japan

"may be losing control" at Fukushima after a rise in radiation suggests efforts to contain the disaster aren't working. Nuclear engineer Arnie Gunderson told the Washington Post that evacuating most workers

gn to me that they have given up trying to prevent a disaster and gone into the mode of trying to clean up afterward."

Unit 1 exploded on March 12, Unit 3 on March 14. On March 15, other blasts rocked Units 2 and 4. Fires broke out, the latest at Unit 4. Reports say it's contained. Unexplained is whether thousands of fuel rods are melting.

All six plant reactors broke down. Four so far experienced explosions. Others could happen any time. Four are in serious trouble. All face potential full meltdowns, perhaps ongoing at one or more reactors, but government and media reports won't say.

On March 16, Al Jazeera said Fukushima operations were suspended because of dangerously high radiation levels. Other reports suggested partial resumption. Workers brave enough to do so face death. Hundreds of thousands of Chernobyl "liquidators" experienced major illnesses or died.

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Joseph Dana and Noam Sheizaf
The Nation

As the controversial 443 highway, which connects Tel Aviv with Jerusalem by passing through the West Bank, begins to curve toward Israel’s capital, the eye is inevitably drawn to an imposing gray structure with massive concrete walls, part of the Ofer Military Prison. Commuters are barely aware of what takes place behind those walls, and that’s no accident—the Ofer compound, comprising a military court, detention center and prison, is just one of many black holes that enable Israelis to go on with their daily lives, unaware of the everyday realities of the occupation.

Inside, a man in shackles enters the courtroom. He is wearing a brown prison suit, and his exhausted eyes exchange glances with his wife. The two haven’t met outside the courtroom in more than a year, and for some reason the prison guards are frantically moving the wife so she doesn’t sit too close to her husband, who is officially a “security risk.” Soon the military judge, outfitted in a light green Israel Defense Forces (IDF) uniform and an army beret, enters the room and begins the proceedings.

This trial could be any one of the thousands that have taken place at Ofer. Israeli military justice is swift and unflinching: according to the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, the conviction rate at Ofer is an astounding 99.7 percent. Hearings are short, and apart from relatives who use the opportunity to see their loved ones, nobody bothers to attend or report on the proceedings. But today is different. The small courtroom is full, with twenty European diplomats—including the British general consul, Sir Vincent Fean—as well as a handful of Israelis who have become close to the prisoner through years of joint action.

The prisoner, Abdallah Abu Rahmah, a 39-year-old schoolteacher and father of three, has already been convicted and has served a sentence for incitement and organizing illegal protests in the West Bank village of Bil’in. But after a prosecutor’s appeal, the judge ordered that he be kept in prison. Abu Rahmah would later receive an additional six months of prison time.

It wasn’t only friendship that brought the Israelis to Ofer. They see the case against Abu Rahmah as part of a new effort to crush unarmed resistance in the West Bank. For them, Abu Rahmah is not just another Palestinian activist. By leading the mostly nonviolent weekly protests in his village against Israel’s separation wall, he has become the face of a new uprising against the occupation and a key player in a kind of activism that has united Jews, Palestinians and people from around the world—one that carries a message of hope, something as unusual and unexpected in this part of the world as the recent uprisings that have toppled Arab tyrannies. It is a hope that can even penetrate the forbidding walls of the Ofer military compound.

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Stephen Lendman

A new Physicians for Human Rights - Israel (PHR-I) report discusses atrocities committed against sub-Saharan Africans seeking refugee status in Israel. Titled "Hostages, Torture, and Rape," it explains the ordeal experienced by 284 victims.

PHR-I said its Open Clinic treats about 700 status-less people monthly. About a year ago, many women asked for abortions. Conversations determined they were raped in the Sinai en route to Israel.

On December 13, PHR-I published a report describing their ordeal, based on interviews with first-time patients. After publishing it, dozens more interviews were conducted [Info Sheet, PDF]. This report follows up, based on 284 interviewed victims, as well as more information gotten by human rights activists and groups globally.

Regional turmoil compounds the situation further. Recent Release Eritrea information, an Egyptian-based human rights organization, said that five Northeast Sinai prison facilities were evacuated, prisoners released without identity papers, complicating their status gravely.

Included are about 200 Eritreans and Ethiopians. Some reached Israel. Egypt re-imprisoned others. Many were caught by human trafficking gangs. They're now in captivity held for ransom.

Agenzia Habeshia said about 190 Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees are at two Sinai torture camps, traffickers demanding up to $10,000 each to release them. Testimonies gotten reveal horror stories of violence and rape. PHR-I believes other Sinai camps operate the same way.

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Khalid Amayreh
Al-Ahram Weekly

"To be seen as forthcoming, Israel's prime minister has tabled a new peace initiative. It is as empty as all prior Israeli charades, writes Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem"

Spurred by looming international pressure on Israel over the stalemated peace process with the Palestinians, and especially worried about the possible negative ramifications for Israel of ongoing revolutions in the Arab world, particularly Egypt, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said he was preparing to launch a new peace initiative for resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The new initiative, which Netanyahu hopes will attract large publicity, is based on the concept of creating an interim Palestinian state on 60 per cent of the West Bank, with temporary borders, but with little or no sovereignty.

According to information leaked from the Israeli press, the new plan will leave the Israeli army in the Jordan Valley and in most of the so-called Area-C, or areas outside major Palestinian population centres. None of the Jewish settlements would be dismantled and work would be continued in the so-called "legal settlements" (settlements built with Israeli government approval).

"The Palestinians are not ready to reach a final status agreement to end the conflict in light of the instability in the region," claimed Netanyahu. He added: "We don't want to evade a final status agreement, but an interim agreement is the way to get there."

The Palestinians, who have rejected the new "public relations gambit", are dismissive of talk about an "interim state" and "temporary borders". They fear that an "interim state" would be a sly Israeli prescription for stealing and annexing up to 50 per cent of the West Bank.

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Stephen Lendman

Since March 12, a potentially unprecedented catastrophe has been unfolding in Japan, despite official denials and corroborating media reports - managed, not real news. Believe none of them. Nonetheless, on March 15, Reuters suggested what's ongoing, headlining: "Japan braces for potential radiation catastrophe," saying:

"Japan faced potential catastrophe on Tuesday" after a fourth Fukushima reactor explosion, fire, and high-level radiation release, posing grave human health risks to an expanding area, including Toyko's 20 million population 170 miles south.

France's Nuclear Safety Authority rated the disaster a six on the international seven-point nuclear accident scale. Clearly, it's the worst ever. Europe's energy commissioner, Guenther Oettinger called it an "apocalypse," telling the European Parliament that Toyko lost control of events.

Independent experts agree. It's an unprecedented disaster spreading globally. All six Fukushima reactors are crippled, four of them spewing unknown amounts of radiation.

On March 15, city officials said levels were 20 times above normal, later stating they'd dropped, downplaying the risk. Government authorities also claimed Fukushima levels were falling. For residents throughout the country, believing them is hazardous to their health, given the gravity of the situation, likely deteriorating, not improving.

In Maebashi, 60 miles north of Tokyo and Chiba prefecture further south, Kyodo News reported radiation levels 10 times normal, perhaps downplaying much higher ones. Even Prime Minister Naoto Kan was alarmed, saying "(t)he possibility of further radioactive leakage is heightening," meaning very likely it reached extremely hazardous levels. Earlier official reports downplayed the danger.

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Matthew Nasuti
Kabul Press

Specifics regarding this covert escalation are now “classified”

Last month, the Boston Globe’s Bryan Bender reported that the United States has 155,000 troops into Afghanistan. Mr. Bender appears to have obtained his information from the Office of U.S. Senator John Kerry. This reporter contacted Mr. Bender and Senator Kerry’s office. Neither would confirm nor deny the number.

On February 7, 2011, this author contacted General David Petraeus’ headquarters in Kabul and asked for the current number of American military personnel in Afghanistan. This would include those “assigned” to the country and those on TDY to Afghanistan. U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. John L. Dorrian responded that the information was classified.

The Pentagon has refused to disclose to Kabul Press the total number of American military personnel presently in Afghanistan. Surprisingly that figure is “classified." Kabul Press’ investigation has revealed that the total U.S. military, civilian and contractor force in the region exceeds 400,000 and is growing. In military parlance, these personnel are “in-theater.” This covert escalation may signal that conditions on the ground in Afghanistan are deteriorating faster than expected, thus necessitating a second unannounced surge.

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Barry Grey
WSWS

Even as the United States preaches the sanctity of human rights to the world—in order to disguise its efforts to prop up besieged dictatorships in Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain and install a new client regime in Libya—President Barack Obama is defending the torture of a US citizen at home.

State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley is a casualty of Obama’s determination to defend the Pentagon’s sadistic abuse of Private Bradley Manning. Crowley, a long-time government public relations official, resigned Sunday, forced out for publicly criticizing the military’s treatment of the 23-year-old Army intelligence specialist accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks.

Last Thursday, speaking before a small audience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Crowley was asked about the treatment of Manning, which the questioner described as the military “torturing a prisoner in a military brig.” Crowley, who has played a prominent role in the US government witch-hunt of WikiLeaks and its co-founder, Julian Assange, defended Manning’s incarceration but called his treatment “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.”

Crowley was responding to mounting international protests over the treatment of Manning, including denunciations by Amnesty International and other human rights groups and the launching of a formal investigation by the United Nations.

At a White House press conference Friday, Obama was asked about Crowley’s remark and responded by defending the abuse of Manning—who is being held in maximum custody and virtual isolation, locked in his cell 23 hours a day, kept under 24-hour surveillance, stripped of his clothing at night, and permitted only the most limited access to reading material. Earlier this month and for more than a week, he was forced to stand completely naked for morning inspection in front of his cell.

Manning is incarcerated in the brig at the Quantico, Virginia Marine Corps base, where he has endured these conditions for nearly 8 months. He is awaiting a court martial, and has neither been tried nor convicted of any crime. His cruel treatment is designed to break his will and force him to provide evidence against WikiLeaks and Assange.

At the press conference, Obama dismissed Crowley’s criticism by saying he had received assurances from the Pentagon that “the terms of [Manning’s] confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards.”

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Noga Malkin
Desert Peace

Hiding in the cemetery where her parents are buried, Hakma al-Turi, an Israeli citizen, has watched bulldozers demolish her village — al-Araqib — more than 20 times. The Israel Land Administration first demolished the 45 structures on this patch of land in the Negev desert eight months ago. When the 300 Israeli Bedouin who lived here defiantly rebuilt tarp-covered shacks, the Israel Land Administration demolished them again and again, the last time on March 7.

But the Land Administration inspectors and the police officers escorting them have so far been reluctant to enter the cemetery adjacent to the village, where the extended al-Turi family has been burying family members since 1907. So Hakma, a mother of nine, devised a plan to protect her most fragile possessions: she put her family photographs, children’s medicines, and a small refrigerator full of milk in an improvised wheeled cart. When the bulldozers came, her husband would tie it to their car and drag it from their house and into the cemetery.

But on January 17, as the tenth demolition took place, Hakma’s family was too slow. Police officers caught them on the way to the cemetery, commandeered their car, forced in five other “illegal” residents, and drove it at what Hakma thinks was a deliberately reckless speed over unpaved roads to the police station. “They broke the cart and most of what was in it flew out; they confiscated the rest,” Hakma told me.

The extended al-Turi family lived in al-Araqib from Ottoman times until 1952, when the Israeli army commander told them to leave for six months for military training, according to a government report citing village elders’ testimony. Israeli authorities never allowed them to return, refuse to recognize Bedouin ownership claims, and consider the village illegal.

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