David Swanson

Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice) activists hold up placards as
they gather for a party rally in Peshawar on April 2011. U.S. carried
out its first drone attack in Pakistan since [the alleged death of OBL]
in an American raid, killing 10 people in a hail of missiles near the
Afghan border. (Photo: Majeed/AFP/Getty. Caption: ABC News)

'War is legal,' but pointing out its illegality is not mistaken; it's irrelevant and un-strategic. That's the argument I'm hearing from a number of quarters.

Chase Madar has a terrific new book on Bradley Manning in which he argues that many of the offenses Bradley Manning allegedly revealed through Wikileaks (the murder in the collateral murder video, the turning over of prisoners to be tortured by Iraq, etc.) are immoral but legal. When I pointed out to Madar that the Kellogg Briand Pact banned all war, that the U.N. Charter legalized only two narrow categories of war that our government does not meet (defensive wars and wars authorized by the U.N.), and that the Constitution of the United States bans wars not declared by Congress, Madar did not try to argue that I was mistaken. Instead he said it wasn't important to point out war's illegality, because Americans don't care; instead we have to point out its immorality. But if war's illegality is unimportant, why was its supposed legality important enough to develop as a significant part of a book? Why couldn't war's illegality be of help in the movement to oppose it on primarily moral grounds?

I attended a wonderful event on Saturday in Washington, D.C., a "Drone Summit" organized by Code Pink, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Reprieve -- terrific organizations all, some of the best. Included in the summit were speakers from organizations that have concerns about drones but do not oppose war. It's important to work with organizations and individuals who agree on the matter at hand, even if broad differences in world view divide you. I give great credit to every ban-the-drones or reform-the-drones organization that supports war or avoids the topic of war, yet works in coalition with antiwar groups. More credit and gratitude to them.

But many more people than attend one event in one city have these questions running through their minds, and the differences in viewpoint within the anti-drone movement may be helpful in forming one's own view.

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Kourosh Ziabari

US deploying fighter jets to the Gulf - The US says it has deployed a number of its most modern jet fighters to an air base in Southwest Asia. The announcement alarmed many, who suspect the base is actually in the United Arab Emirates just 200 hundred miles from Iran. The Air Force did not specify the exact number or location of the recently-deployed F-22 Raptors, but confirmed that they had been sent to a region that includes the UAE. - RT

The United Arab Emirates officials are burning with a low blue flame. They have once again started insulting the Iranian nation using an arrogant and offensive language. What has irritated them this time is the recent visit paid by the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the Iranian island of Abu Musa in the Persian Gulf as part of his provincial trip to the southern province of Hormozgan on April 11. They claim that the island belongs to the UAE and that Iran has violated their territorial integrity by continuing its "occupation" of this strategic island.

Of course fueling anti-Iranian sentiments has been constantly on the UAE officials' political agenda. The statesmen of the newborn, tiny Arab sheikhdom think that by launching verbal attacks against Iran, they can gain power and popularity. But they have brought their eggs to the wrong market. Hostility and rivaling with Iran will backfire and fail. The hullabaloo of the Emirati officials is a tempest in a teapot and there's no trace of logic and rationality in it. What is annoying and painful is that by credulously neglecting the principle of peaceful neighborhood and coexistence, the Arab officials are muttering the words of Israel, the U.S. and UK about Iran and upsetting a neighbor which has always contributed to their progress and development.

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Stephen Lendman

NATO's "responsibility to protect" (R2P) was subterfuge to wage war. Months of terror bombing left Libya a charnel house.

Africa's most developed country was ravaged, not liberated. Protracted struggle continues. Expect it to persist for years.

When is war not war? It's when mass killing and destruction are called the right thing. It's also when terrorizing and traumatizing an entire population continues unaddressed.

Libya was developed and peaceful until NATO intervened. It arrived on cruise missiles, bombs, shells, other munitions, depleted and enriched uranium, other terror weapons, fifth column infiltrators, and media scoundrel complicity, as well as coverup and denial.

No nation or alliance may interfere in the internal affairs of another except in self-defense if attacked. NATO R2P authority was Trojan Horse deception. Crimes of war and against humanity followed. They continue out-of-control.

NATO's still involved. Thousands of US forces guard key oil facilities, ports, and perhaps other strategic sites. Occasional air attacks occur. NATO warships occupy Libya's ports. US, Italian, French, and perhaps other forces are involved. January reports from Misrata said Apache helicopters slaughtered rebels trying to scale Brega oil platforms.

Insurgents battle each other and Green Resistance for control. Frequent clashes leave rivals and civilians dead or injured. Militias control local areas and neighborhoods. Thousands of Gaddafi loyalists and Black African guest workers were murdered or held captive and tortured. Dark-skinned Libyans and guest workers are especially threatened.

On October 23, Obama duplicitously "congratulated the people of Libya on today's declaration of liberation. After four decades of brutal dictatorship and eight months of deadly conflict, the Libyan people can now celebrate their freedom and the beginning of a new era of promise."

He's a frontman for power. He's an inveterate liar and war criminal multiple times over. He added another imperial trophy to colonize, plunder and exploit. Keeping it's another matter. Libya's one of history's great crime. Green Resistance struggles to restore Jamahiriya rule.

Obama matched the worst of Bush and exceeded him. Libyans, Afghans, Iraqis, and Syrians revile him. So do millions of others for good reason. Hopefully one day they'll have the last word.

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Bill Van Auken

In a book coming out next week, Jose Rodriguez, the former head of the CIA’s clandestine operations directorate, delivers an unequivocal defense of torture and of his order to destroy tapes recording the agency’s crimes.

Rodriguez’s book, titled Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives, will hit bookstores after the airing of an exclusive interview with him by CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday night.

The appearance of this book, which like all writings of former CIA officials had to get pre-publication clearance from the agency, is one more indication of the absolute impunity enjoyed by those who carried out torture and other crimes under the George W. Bush administration, from the former president on down.

As chief of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations (since renamed as the National Clandestine Service), the branch of the agency that carries out covert operations, Rodriguez was directly in charge of the program of extraordinary rendition under which those abducted in the “war on terror” were taken to so-called “black sites,” secret overseas prisons, for interrogation under torture.

Using the euphemism of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” the CIA carried out a whole range of torture of its detainees, ranging from waterboarding to beatings, sexual humiliation, imprisonment in dark boxes for prolonged periods, stress positions and exposure to extreme heat, cold and noise.

Rodriguez defends these loathsome practices unconditionally, while stressing that every section of the American political establishment was implicated in the CIA’s crimes. “I am certain, beyond any doubt, that these techniques, approved at the highest levels of the U.S. government, certified by the Department of Justice, and briefed to and supported by bipartisan leadership of congressional intelligence oversight committees, shielded the people of the United States from harm and led to the capture of killing of Osama bin Laden.”

There is no evidence that torture produced information leading to the [alleged] assassination of Bin Laden. However, it has been established that, far from “shielding” the American people or “saving lives,” much of this secret program was aimed at producing a pretext for war against Iraq by forcing false confessions out of the agency’s detainees that the regime of Saddam Hussein was in league with Al Qaeda.

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Nahida Izzat, Exiled Palestinian

I often pondered as to why the name Holy Land was given to Palestine?

What is it about this land that justifies or legitimizes such a description when in fact that land, through myriad of foreign invasions has witnessed some of the cruelest, most barbaric, most unholy, most immoral human behaviour?

My latest visit to my Home-Land Palestine was a heartrending experience with shocking reality; a roller-coaster, a volcano of paradoxical emotions, an extraordinary visual and sensual intensive course, with daily, if not hourly, spiritual lessons.

While the visit itself did not last more than ten days, I however travelled through time, standing on the terrace of my grandparents, I saw what was, what is and what could be.

As I stood on that old terrace of my grandfather's house, facing the remains of the village of Lifta on one side and the construction of the Jewish colony Givat Shaul with its hideous buildings and eery cemetery on the other, what I saw was indescribable: a vivid screen shot of two extremes of human existence and endeavour, a visual manifestation of a bizarre reality of two paradoxical worlds narrating the tragedy of what had happened and is still happening to Palestine and the world:

In the horizon, there before my eyes, written the truth in plain indisputable language.

With poignant Lifta on my left I saw the past: organic, natural, native, sustainable, gentle, green, alive, flowing, timeless, tender, harmonious, modest, and exquisitely beautiful.

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Stephen Lendman

Israel's prison gulag is one of the world's most hellish. Palestinians held suffer horrifically. Inflicting pain and suffering is official Israeli policy. Rule of law principles are spurned.

Virtually all Palestinians held are political prisoners. Refusing food is their only resistance weapon. The Addameer Prisoner Support Group estimates about 2,000 now engage in open-ended hunger strikes. Most began on April 17, Palestinian Prisoners Day.

Israel responded as expected. More pain and suffering was inflicted. Detainees are attacked and beaten. Personal possessions were confiscated. Electricity was cut off. Salt for water is prohibited.

Transfers are made harsher locations. Solitary confinement is imposed. Visits by family members and lawyers are denied. Addameer said its attorneys can't get access.

Israel hopes tough tactics will undermine the will to resist. Instead it's hardened.

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Trevor Timm

This week [the House of Representatives now has approved Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act], the dangerous ‘cybersecurity’ bill that threatens to decimate Internet users’ privacy in the name of security. EFF and a wide variety of other groups have been protesting the law’s provisions giving companies the power to read users’ emails and other communications and hand them to the government without any judicial oversight whatsoever—essentially a giant ‘cybersecurity’ exception to all existing privacy laws.

We’ve already shown how the bill’s definition of ‘cyber threat information’ can lead the companies and government to surveil citizens for a host of reasons beyond critical cybersecurity threats. But we want to focus on one vital portion of the bill that is not getting enough attention: what the government can do with your private information once companies hand it over.

Even though CISPA is styled as a ‘cybersecurity’ bill, it explicitly allows the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA) to use your information for ‘national security’ purposes—expanding the bill far beyond its purported goal. Bill sponser Mike Rogers introduced a package of amendments [recently], but did not remove “national security” as one of the purposes for which information can be used.

The Erosion of Civil Liberties

In the past decade, the amorphous phrase “national security” has invaded many arenas of government action, and has been used to justify much activity that did not involve legitimate terrorist threats. The most obvious (and odious) example is the unfortunately named USA-PATRIOT Act, a law that was sold to the American public as essential to combating terrorism, but which has overwhelmingly been applied to ordinary American citizens never even suspected of terrorism.

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Stephen Lendman

Land Day, which began in 1976, marks the day Israeli forces killed six Palestinians during a protest against Israeli occupation of what Palestinians consider to be their land. Palestinians around the world will commemorate Land Day with protests and demonstrations. (Photo + Intro: International Solidarity Movement)

In 1948, Israel stole 78% of Palestine. In 1967, they took the rest. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict remains the longest unresolved one of our time.

Long denied justice awaits. Western complicity with Israel prevents Palestinians from living free. So did Arafat's Oslo surrender. Abbas and PA cronies continue working against their own people for whatever benefits they derive.

Palestine's an isolated prison. State terror is official Israeli policy. So is attacking nonviolent Palestinian protesters. Edward Said once said, "Jonathan Swift, thou shouldst be living at this hour."

He'd blanche at how bad things are now. We all should and do something about it. Change depends on it.

Occupied Palestine is the region's epicenter. Israeli police state terror suffocates Palestinians for not being Jews. An inexorable quest for dominance and corrupted self-interest deny justice.

Nonetheless, Palestinians persist. Living free on their own land drives them. Every March 30 they commemorate what's important to remember every day.

Since 1976, Palestinians worldwide observe Land Day and why it matters. Nationwide protests and general strike action erupted. At issue was Israel's land confiscation policy and brutal occupation harshness.

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Stephen Lendman

Palestinians Behind Bars: Prisoners Without Human Rights - A PCHR Video

■ For decades, Palestinians have been slaughtered, displaced, intimidated, humiliated, collectively punished, and denied equal rights as Jews. They've also been mass imprisoned.

■ Palestine is Israeli occupied territory. Military orders govern all aspects of daily life. Democratic rights are denied. Freedom is a non-starter, persecution a way of life.

■ Gaza is an open-air prison. The West Bank and East Jerusalem fare little better. Life in Occupied Palestine for about 4.2 million residents is hell. No one's safe from Israel's wrath.

According to the Addameer Prisoner Support Group, over 700,000 Palestinians were imprisoned since June 1967. Over 20% of the population was affected. For males, it's 40%. For women, it's about 10,000 and for children around 7,000 since 2000 alone.

No other country comes close to these figures. None calling themselves democracies would dare. With the world's largest prison population by far, America comes closest.

Mostly affected are Blacks, Latinos, and Muslims since Washington declared war on Islam. In America and Israel, praying to the wrong God is hazardous.

Palestinian prisoner numbers vary. Thousands are affected at all times. Virtually all are political prisoners. Arabs aren't welcome in Israel. In Palestine they're equated with terrorists.

Pre-dawn raids, arrests, false charges, harsh interrogations, torture, intimidation, rigged trials, and imprisonment terrorize them. Children young as 10 are affected. So is everyone wanting to live free on their own land in their own country. Perhaps one day, but not now.

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Philip Giraldi

Photo: A prostitute poses in a historical street in Cartagena on April 19, 2012. The White House expressed confidence in the chief of the US Secret Service, but the elite bodyguard unit's Colombian sex scandal deepened, with claims that 20 women were involved. More agents will be forced [to resign]. (Manuel Pedraza, Getty Images)

Americans are frequently most hypocritical when they are responding to a sex scandal. The tale of the sins and omissions of the Obama secret service team in Colombia is still being revealed, piece by piece. The miscreants constituted a so-called advance team, flying on a military aircraft, which goes into a location where a protected party is going to be present. The advance team liaises with local police and security personnel at the U.S. embassy or consulate. It checks out security at the airport, along the route of travel on the ground, at the hotel, and at the various venues where meetings will take place. It writes up reports so the team that actually travels with the president will be prepared to provide a security envelope, working with the locals. The advance team members normally leave well before the president arrives.

All of which is to say that the advance team members are not actually protecting anyone and are basically doing a survey to improve the level of security for someone who will follow. They are not normally on 24-hour duty and, in my experience, they tend to be unmarried young men who frequently take advantage of the opportunity provided by foreign travel to hit some bars and try to meet some women. There is not necessarily anything wrong with that.

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Peter Symonds

U.S. and Philippine marine forces are preparing for the annual Balikatan Exercises ("Shoulder-to-Shoulder") to hold combat drills at an oil rig in the Spratly Islands, Province of Palawan - West Philippines Sea (South China Sea). [This is] a potentially oil- and gas-rich chain of islands, shoals, coral outcrops and sand bars being disputed by China and the Philippines, along with Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei. The Spratlys have long been feared as Asia's next potential flashpoint for conflict.

The South China Sea oil field distribution

Joint US-Philippine military exercises are currently underway that can only heighten tensions with China over disputed territorial claims in the South China Sea and in the Indo-Pacific region more broadly.

Yesterday, 4,500 US Marines and 2,500 Philippine troops staged an amphibious landing drill at Ulugan Bay on Palawan Island to simulate the recapture of an island from “militants.” Despite denials by American and Philippine officials, the exercise was pointedly aimed at China, which contests the sovereignty of waters and islands in the South China Sea, including the Spratly Islands, adjacent to Palawan Island.

The South China Sea is rich in gas and oil reserves, leading to disputes over energy exploration and drilling in its waters. Last weekend, US and Philippine special forces troops took part in a simulated assault to retake an offshore oil rig from “militants” off northern Palawan.

The drills are part of annual US-Philippine Balikatan ("Shoulder-to-Shoulder") military exercises, which began last week and are due to conclude today. The confrontational character of the exercise is underlined not only by their location and type, but also by the involvement of troops from Australia, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and Malaysia.

President Barack Obama declared last November that the US would focus on the Indo-Pacific region as its top strategic priority, announcing the greater use of military bases in northern Australia, including the stationing of US Marines near Darwin. Since mid-2009, the Obama administration has been engaged in an aggressive drive to strengthen alliances and strategic partnerships with countries throughout Asia in a bid to undermine Chinese influence.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asserted at an Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in 2010 that the US had “a national interest” in ensuring “freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea. Clinton’s comments signalled US backing for ASEAN nations to more vigorously press their territorial claims against China, and have resulted in the Philippines, in particular, taking a more aggressive stance.

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Stephen Lendman

■ Jefferson called an educated citizenry "a vital requisite for our survival as a free people."
■ Madison warned that "A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or, perhaps both."
■ Jack Kennedy said "The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all."
■ In 1748, Montesquieu said "The tyranny of a principal in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy."
■ In a June 1950 commencement speech, Boston University President Daniel Marsh said, "If the (television) craze continues....we are destined to have a nation of morons."
■ Well before television arrived, journalist Walter Lippmann called the public "the bewildered herd." In policy matters, their function is to be "spectators," not "participants." "The common interests elude public opinion entirely," he said, and that's the way it should be.

America's privileged class alone should manage them. Only the privileged need proper education and training. Treat others like mushrooms - well-watered and in the dark. In other words, distracted by bread and circuses. More on that below.

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Wayne Madsen

George Soros’s and the Neo-Cons’ Control of Washington’s Propaganda Program

An examination of the current 2013 budget for the U.S. government’s Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) that oversees the International Broadcasting Board (IBB) and which determines the slant taken by the U.S. government’s propaganda efforts on radio, television, and, increasingly on the Internet, illustrates the head-lock that George Soros and neo-conservative “soft power projection” interests have on the official state-sponsored information disseminated by the U.S. government to a global audience.

The new propaganda bias of such IBB-controlled outlets such as the Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, and Radio Free Europe should comes as no surprise, considering that former CNN chairman and chief executive officer Walter Isaacson laid down the gauntlet after he assumed the chairmanship of the Broadcasting Board of Governors in 2009 by calling for the United States to aggressively challenge what he termed anti-American “propaganda” emanating from such international broadcasters as RT (the former Russia Today), Iran’s Press TV, and China’s CCTV. Isaacson walks in lock-step with the goals of Soros and the Council on Foreign Relations as the head of the politically-connected Aspen Institute. Isaacson stepped down from his broadcasting chairmanship position in January 2012.

The priorities for U.S. propaganda include stepping up efforts to effect political change in what are termed the five remaining “Communist” countries in the world through Cold War-era dissemination of “news” and other content via the Voice of America (VOA), the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB) , and “grantee” organizations RFE/RL (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty), Inc., and Radio Free Asia (RFA). Soros’s Open Society Institute holds a predominant role in the administration of the “grantee” broadcast arms, which were originally operated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) before de facto control was passed to Soros after the collapse of communism in Europe. The targeted five remaining communist nations are China, Cuba, North Korea, Laos, and Vietnam.

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Gilad Atzmon

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Paul Craig Roberts

Andy Worthington is a superb reporter who has specialized in providing the facts of the US government’s illegal abuse of “detainees,” against whom no evidence exists. In an effort to create evidence, the US government has illegally resorted to torture. Torture produces false confessions, plea bargains, and false testimony against others in order to escape further torture.

For these reasons, in Anglo-American law self-incrimination secured through torture has been impermissible evidence for centuries. So also has been secret evidence withheld from the accused and his attorney. Secret evidence cannot be confronted. Secret evidence is distrusted as made-up in order to convict the innocent. The evidence is secret because it cannot stand the light of day.

The US government relies on secret evidence in its cases against alleged terrorists, claiming that national security would be threatened if the evidence were revealed. This is abject nonsense. It is an absurd claim that presenting evidence against a terrorist jeopardizes the national security of the U.S.

To the contrary, not presenting evidence jeopardizes the security of each and every one of us. Once the government can convict defendants on the basis of secret evidence, even the concept of a fair trial will disappear. Fair trials are already history, but the concept lingers.

Secret evidence murders the concept of a fair trial. It murders justice and the rule of law. Secret evidence means anyone can be convicted of anything. As in Kafka’s The Trial, people will cease to know the crimes for which they are being tried and convicted.

This extraordinary development in Anglo-American law, a development demanded by the unaccountable Bush/Obama Regime, has not resulted in impeachment proceedings; nor has it caused an uproar from Congress, the federal courts, the presstitute media, law schools, constitutional scholars, and bar associations.

Having bought the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory, Americans just want someone to pay. They don’t care who as long as someone pays. To accommodate this desire, the government has produced some “high value detainees” with Arab or Muslim names.

But instead of bringing these alleged malefactors to trial and presenting evidence against them, the government has kept them in torture dungeons for years trying to create through the application of pain and psychological breakdown guilt by self-incrimination in order to create a case against them.

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