Monday, July 10, 2006

Bloglines - In Hicks's case it's not the law that is the ass

CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS
CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS - LiveJournal.com

In Hicks's case it's not the law that is the ass

Richard Ackland
July 7, 2006

A WEEK ago the US Supreme Court determinedly upset much of the legal armoury with which George Bush and, by implication, John Howard have fought the war on terrorism. The Hamdan decision went much further than just striking down the bogus "trial" procedure that the Bush people had concocted to get alleged terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay convicted. The military commission process was illegal because it was not authorised by Congress and it offended the Geneva Conventions, which are judicially enforceable instruments.

But if Geneva Conventions and congressional approval are required for Guantanamo trials, what about the whole slew of "legal" devices that the Bush White House has manufactured for the war on terrorism? This includes warrantless eavesdropping, indefinite detention, interrogation techniques, torture, rendition and CIA black sites.

All these bits of apparatus in the war were conjured by Bush and offend the same principles that the court identified in the Hamdan case. The court's findings run much deeper than Bush and Howard might care to admit. It is the most important decision affecting presidential power since US v Nixon (hand over the tapes).

Back here the news was greeted by Howard with a bit of shuffling of the feet and something about receiving the wrong legal advice. Further, he wasn't much interested in this "bloke" Hicks coming back to Australia without facing "some trial in America" because we can't try him here. "Hicks should be brought to trial as soon as possible," he said.

How many years has that refrain been tapped out by this bloodless little coot? And yet the trial is as far away as ever because Congress is unlikely to grope its way to an agreed process any time quickly.

The true position of the US and Australian governments is that they are not so much interested in trials for the detainees as convictions. Even if the Guantanamo prisoners are innocent, the political imperative is that they should not be released because to do so would be an admission that the war on terrorism has been misconceived, or that it is not as terrifying as it's supposed to be.

The Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, after all, characterised the people held at Guantanamo as "the worst of the worst". You'd think it wouldn't be all that difficult giving fair trials and securing convictions for the worst of the worst. Yet if Hicks or Hamdan or any of the 10 at Guantanamo who have been charged with anything ever go to a trial before a properly constituted military or civil court, they are most unlikely to be convicted. The reasons for that are various: no evidence, tainted evidence (that is, evidence from torture) or no crime.

Howard keeps saying this "bloke" Hicks trained with al-Qaeda and because to do so was not an offence in Australia at the time, he cannot be tried here. In the aftermath of the Hamdan decision it may not be a crime in the US, either. The Supreme Court looked at that issue and said that "war crimes" are limited to offences "committed during, not before or after the war". Training with al-Qaeda was not something Hicks did during the war in Afghanistan. In any event, he is not charged with "training with al-Qaeda", so what is Howard going on about?

The weird rationale behind the US charges against Hicks is that it is a war crime to shoot at Americans in a war, even if you are a soldier on the other side, and particularly so if you are what many US servicemen refer to as a "sand nigger" wearing strange clothes. Of course, this is nonsense. The Geneva Conventions make it nonsense, as the US Supreme Court has found the relevant bit of the Conventions apply as a treaty obligation to the conflict against al-Qaeda.

Last week's Supreme Court decision means that Hicks's habeas case to determine the propriety of his custody can proceed. This is most important and should take place before any trial, even though Howard seems to want the trial first and the committal later. It also means that the Geneva Conventions appeal brought by the US Government against a ruling in Hicks's favour in the US District Court is unlikely to go far.

In fact, Hicks has won at each stage of the legal process. He won in the Rasul case (federal law applies to Guantanamo), he won in the District Court (Geneva Conventions apply in Guantanamo) and he was on the winning side in Hamdan. Quite a lot of winning for someone who's the worst of the worst.

What it does show is the sheer folly of sacrificing our decency in the name of fighting terrorism.

Howard keeps saying this "bloke" Hicks trained with al-Qaeda and because to do so was not an offence in Australia at the time, he cannot be tried here. In the aftermath of the Hamdan decision it may not be a crime in the US, either. The Supreme Court looked at that issue and said that "war crimes" are limited to offences "committed during, not before or after the war". Training with al-Qaeda was not something Hicks did during the war in Afghanistan. In any event, he is not charged with "training with al-Qaeda", so what is Howard going on about?

The weird rationale behind the US charges against Hicks is that it is a war crime to shoot at Americans in a war, even if you are a soldier on the other side, and particularly so if you are what many US servicemen refer to as a "sand nigger" wearing strange clothes. Of course, this is nonsense. The Geneva Conventions make it nonsense, as the US Supreme Court has found the relevant bit of the Conventions apply as a treaty obligation to the conflict against al-Qaeda.

Last week's Supreme Court decision means that Hicks's habeas case to determine the propriety of his custody can proceed. This is most important and should take place before any trial, even though Howard seems to want the trial first and the committal later. It also means that the Geneva Conventions appeal brought by the US Government against a ruling in Hicks's favour in the US District Court is unlikely to go far.

In fact, Hicks has won at each stage of the legal process. He won in the Rasul case (federal law applies to Guantanamo), he won in the District Court (Geneva Conventions apply in Guantanamo) and he was on the winning side in Hamdan. Quite a lot of winning for someone who's the worst of the worst.

What it does show is the sheer folly of sacrificing our decency in the name of fighting terrorism.

justinian@lawpress.com.au

http://www.smh.com.au/news/richard-ackland/in-hickss-case-its-not-the-law-that-is-the-ass/2006/07/06/1152175717909.html

Comments


For you Phd Econonmists....

Catallarchy » Why a Willingness-to-Pay Premium Cannot be an Opportunity Cost

I think I agree with this. The concept of opportunity cost was being mis-applied

I wrote the same thing some time ago, though certainly without the elegance of this explanation.




Bloglines - Garrison Keillor on Ralph Reed


CANNONFIRE
Joseph Cannon (cannonfiremail@yahoo.com)

Garrison Keillor on Ralph Reed

By Joseph

The problem with the recent spate of Republican scandals is simple: They're not simple. You can't explain these things easily to the dullards who vote Republican. But Garrison Keillor knows how to do it. Here's a choice bit of Keillor on the insanely corrupt pseudo-Christian Ralph Reed, running for Lt. Governor of Georgia:
Mr. Reed also argues that his stopping gambling in Texas and Alabama was a good thing in and of itself, even though he was hired by rival casinos to do it. Using the same reasoning, Lucky Luciano was on solid moral ground when he knocked off Dutch Schultz.
Priceless. But Keillor could have jabbed a little deeper when talking about the Marianas aspect of the scandal:
And his work in behalf of the sweatshops and sex factories of the Marianas, arguing that the Chinese women imported there were being given the chance to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, takes us to yet an entirely new level.
Quite a few toilers on the Jesus circuit, including our beloved president, have left me confused about their sincerity. In the case of Reed, I have no doubt. I refuse to believe that a man with such a relentlessly evil history could hold any genuine religious beliefs. He is out to fleece the suckers -- period.




Bloglines - Fake Terrorism and Federal Largess

Another Day in the Empire

Fake Terrorism and Federal Largess

By Administrator on Uncategorized

Tim Dickinson writes on the National Affairs Daily blog over at Rolling Stone: “New information has come to light on the curious timing of yesterday’s [July 7] leak of the Holland Tunnel/PATH Train terror plot, and credible intelligence sources are casting doubt on the seriousness of the threat…. Begging the question, ‘Why did we just hear about this yesterday?’, ABC’s blog, The Blotter reports that the alleged ringleader Assem Hammoud, a.k.a. Amir Andalousi, has been in captivity for nearly three months…”

As noted here, Larisa Alexandrovna of Raw Story quoted “former CIA spook Philip Giraldi” as stating Assem Hammoud and crew are not “professionally trained terrorists” (in other words, they didn’t attend one of those ISI-CIA camps in Afghanistan or Pakistan) and “had no resources with which to carry out the operation they discussed,” that is to say the threat was little more than hot air, although neocons and neocon wannabes are taking Alexandrovna to task on AlterNet’s forums, accusing her of sedition for simply reporting the story.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports this morning that Sen. Robert Menendez and Sen. Charles Schumer are using the hyped story of distant and untrained terrorists to “offer legislative proposals to increase funding for mass transit security” in New York. “The proposals would add $200 million to the $150 million already in the bill for subway and bus system security measures across the country; add $50 million for research and development of protective and warning systems; and add another $50 million to help local governments pay overtime to law enforcement agencies during terrorist threat-related emergencies.”

In short, the senators are exploiting the story to get more Ministry of Homeland Security largess for their district, thus demonstrating terrorism—or vastly overstated threats of terrorism, as the supposed perpetrator in the New York transit case was slapped in a Lebanese jail three months ago—may serve as a way to get cuts in the gravy train line.

Of course, with baseless and hyped terrorism stories making the rounds in the corporate media on a regular basis, “terrorist threat-related emergencies” will become a regular and mundane occurrence, thus conditioning the public to accept more police state intrusions. Never mind the government is unable to apprehend real “al-Qaeda” terrorists and instead depends on the FBI to entrap and frame patsies.

“One year and countless searches later, the practice [of random searches of New York subway commuters] once thought of as a temporary imposition with potential to trample civil rights remains firmly in place while barely causing a stir. The city’s top law enforcement official still insists the measure helps deter terrorism—and has no plans to halt it,” reports the Buffalo Daily News.

However, instead of evil “al-Qaeda” miscreants, the cops in New York are bagging garden-variety petty crime malefactors. “There have been five arrests for drugs, disorderly conduct and other minor charges—but none for terrorism,” apparently a track record worthy enough to excuse the trashing of the Fourth Amendment.

But never mind. If the Buffalo News has it right, most New Yorkers have no problem participating in the wholesale trashing of the Constitution. In fact, at least a few are eager to demonstrate their obedience to unreasonable search and seizure: “At one checkpoint at the Wall Street subway stop last week, some commuters tried to voluntarily open their bags for the officers, who shooed them away. About every 10th person was stopped for searches that lasted perhaps 10 seconds…. If the chosen were bothered, it didn’t show.”

A certain Ben Franklin quote comes to mind in regard to the above, but it is a safe bet most New Yorkers, routinely subjected to cops rifling through their personal effects without suspicion or warrant, are unaware of this quote and instead, when Franklin’s name is mentioned, think of his electricity experiments or the Franklin stove.

Comments


Despicable

Found while browsing....

‘Why Middle Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke’ - Today: Money - MSNBC.com

‘Why Middle Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke’ - Today: Money - MSNBC.com

Damn Interesting » Tesla

Damn Interesting » Tesla

The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia

Baghdad Erupts in Mob Violence
By KIRK SEMPLE 9 minutes ago
The Sunni-Shiite bloodletting was frightening even by recent standards. Also, five more U.S. soldiers were accused in a rape and murder case.
Complete Coverage »

Bloglines - Susan Madrak: The Kabuki Dance

The Huffington Post | Raw Feed
The Huffington Post Raw Feed

Susan Madrak: The Kabuki Dance

By Susan Madrak on Dick Cheney

People were impressed when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a former JAG lawyer, previously raised his voice against rights violations against the prisoners at Gitmo, but those principled times are apparently past. John Dean gives us some interesting backstory on last week's Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ruling:

The Bush/Cheney Administration has been doing everything possible to keep its treatment of purported terrorist detainees out of the federal courts, particularly the Supreme Court. To assist the Administration, Republican Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Jon Kyl of Arizona engaged in a blatant scam that was revealed during the briefing of Hamdan.

Senators Graham and Kyl not only misled their Senate colleagues, but also shamed their high offices by trying to deliberately mislead the U.S. Supreme Court. Their effort failed. I have not seen so blatant a ploy, or abuse of power, since Nixon's reign. [...]

In support of the government's motion, Senators Kyl and Graham filed an amicus brief. There, they brazenly attempted to hoodwink the Court regarding the actions of Congress in adopting the DTA. (It is not clear if their attorney, Jeffrey Lamken, a distinguished and highly able appellate practitioner, was privy to their scheme. But I would be at a loss to explain how he might have missed it.) [...]

Dean goes on to explain a lengthy debate in the Congressional Record between Kyl and Graham - which never actually happened.

Those viewing C-Span's coverage of the Senate, and the Senators on the floor of the Senate, never heard this part, or any of the rest of, this lengthy colloquy between Graham and Kyl. That's because it never happened. No doubt aides of the Senators wrote this bogus and protracted dialogue, and either Graham or Kyl had it inserted in the record.

I first became aware of it when Emily Bazelon, a senior editor at Slate, wrote about it, after she confirmed the colloquy had never happened. As she noted, inserting comments into the Congressional Record is "standard practice." But what is "utterly nonstandard is implying to the Supreme Court" that Senate debate was live, when it most certainly was not. "When a senator wants to put a statement into the record," Bazelon noted, "he or she signs it, and writes 'live' on it, and, with the routine consent of the rest of the body, into the record it goes." This fact was not revealed by Graham and Kyl in their brief, however.

This was more than a simple PR move, however:

In February 2006, Senators Graham and Kyl filed their amicus brief in the Hamdan case, supporting the Government's motion to dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction under the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA). If they had been keeping faith with Senator Levin and the rest of their colleagues, they should have filed a brief on precisely the other side - making clear that the DTA, as amended, had had no intention to touch the Supreme Court's pending Hamdan case, and thus opposing the government's motion!

Instead, Graham and Kyl advised the Court they were sponsors of the Graham-Levin-Kyl amendment, and throughout their brief, cited their fictitious colloquy on December 21, 2005. Indeed, that colloquy is the core of their brief and its argument as to why the Court should dismiss the Hamdan case. Their hubris reaches the point of deception when they claim that the "legislative history confirms that Congress intended all pending claims to be governed by the DTA."

"In an extensive colloquy (which appears in the Congressional Record prior to the Senate's adoption of the Conference Report), Senators Graham and Kyl made it clear that the statute 'extinguish[es] one type of action - all of the actions now in the courts - and create[s] in their place a very limited judicial review of certain military administrative decisions." (This misleading statement is cited again later in the brief.)

Absent this bogus colloquy, in which the brief quotes Senator Graham as saying "I want our colleagues to know exactly what they will be agreeing to," there was actually no dispute throughout the deliberation of the Graham-Levin-Kyl language in the House or Senate as to the fact that the DTA would not retroactively remove the jurisdiction of the federal courts over pending cases. Indeed, it is unlikely any of Graham and Kyl's colleagues were aware of this dispute, which was manufactured after the fact.

This little Kabuki dance didn't work:

Hamdan's lawyers, however, spotted the hoax. In their opposition to the motion to dismiss the case, they advised the Court that the supposedly conflicting legislative history was entirely invented after the fact, and that it consisted of "a single scripted colloquy that never actually took place, but was instead inserted into the record after the legislation had passed." The brief noted, quite accurately, that this Graham-Kyl colloquy was "simply an effort to achieve after passage of the Act precisely what [they] failed to achieve in the legislative process."

Ultimately, the Supreme Court did not decide the jurisdictional issue until it rendered its full ruling on June 29 of this year. There, Justice Stevens concluded correctly that the Congress had not stripped the Court of jurisdiction with the DTA.

Out of an apparent concern for interbranch comity, the High Court has chosen to ignore the bogus brief filed by Senators Graham and Kyl, rather than reprimanding the Senators. Nevertheless, when Graham and Kyl sought to file the very same brief, a month later, with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columba, Slate's Emily Bazelon reports that court "issued an unusual order rejecting" their amicus brief alone, although they accepted five others.

No one familiar with this remarkable behavior by Graham and Kyl can doubt why the court did not want to hear from these senators.

Now this question remains: Who orchestrated this little show?

Link


Silber Strikes Again (and that's a good thing)

Linked post....Disappointing Words (lies). Not surprising for TNR.


TV Watching Blogging: Hollywood Demonstration

Watching CNN News. Minute Men altercation in Hollywood covered. Second time in the afternoon that it showed the fights and police action.

Looks like Minute Men are infiltrated and media is supporting the provoked conflict.

Bloglines - Is FOX News Contributor Newt Gingrich Trying To Do Away With The Bill Of Rights?


News Hounds: We Watch Fox So You Don't Have To News Hounds
We watch FOX so you don't have to.

Is FOX News Contributor Newt Gingrich Trying To Do Away With The Bill Of Rights?

By Ellen on War on Terror

FOX News contributor Newt Gingrich did a telephone interview on Hannity & Colmes Friday night (7/7/06) in which he attacked The New York Times and called for “much more intense anti-terrorist laws.” Given that he has already revealed his antagonism to the Fourth Amendment and that he made it clear he’d like to stifle freedom of the press, one can only imagine what else he has in mind. Whatever it is, FOX News is a willing partner in promoting it.




Ahmadinejad warns of 'Islamic explosion' - News from Israel, Ynetnews

Ahmadinejad warns of 'Islamic explosion' - News from Israel, Ynetnews

Note to Dense Mainstream Media -- Why We Hate Lieberman

Bloglines - The Flight 93 Engines: WTF???


Humint Events Online
The 9/11 hijacking attacks were very likely facilitated by a rogue group within the US government that created an Islamic terrorist "Pearl Harbor" event as a catalyst for the military invasion of Middle Eastern countries. This weblog will explore the incredibly strange events of 9/11/01, and other issues of US government responsibility.

The Flight 93 Engines: WTF???

By Spooked

This post by Killtown pointed me to this picture of one of the flight 93 engines that was supposedly dug up from the crater (a picture released at the Moussaoui trial):



Now, already this is odd, because officially the rear three-quarters of the 150 foot long flight 93 fuselage "accordioned" and disappeared into the hole completely, 30 feet below the earth's surface.* The two black boxes were found 15 and 25 feet underground!* Yet here we have the massive jet engine-- with all it's weight and thrust--that barely managed to penetrate the surface of the ground!

But beyond that, a Boeing 757 of course has TWO engines. What happened to the other one?

Many of you may recall that the fate of one of the flight 93 engines was already famously described in the press very early on. According to mainstream media accounts, the other engine landed over a thousand feet from the crash site, as shown in this diagram from Popular Mechanics:



This story of one of the engines being found so far from the crash crater led to the theory** that flight 93 was actually shot down by a heat-seeng missile that targeted one engine, blowing it off and causing it to land far from the rest of the plane.

The supporters of the official 9/11 story, such as Popular Mechanics, said there was no shootdown, that the engine merely ricocheted off the ground as the plane impacted and was flung over a thousand feet by the force of the crash.

And now we seem to know what happened to both of the flight 93 engines. One broke off as the plane crashed and bounced over a thousand feet away by the force of the crash, and the other was deposited in the crash crater.

No problem then, right?

Err, well, um, I have a wee problem with this scenario.

Officially, when the plane crashed, it went more or less straight into the ground:



Leaving aside the many other oddities of the flight 93 crash site, there is this question: if flight 93 simply crashed into the ground as the official story holds, how could the two engines suffer such completely different fates? How is it possible that one engine burrowed into the ground right next to the plane while the other engine broke off and flew a quarter of a mile away? What accounts for this huge discrepency? Even if the plane hit at an angle such that one engine hit first, it is not at all clear to me how this explains the discrepency. Remember, the BULK of the plane officially burrowed into the soft ground (which was mostly topsoil covering an old stripmine). What would have caused one engine to break off and bounce so far away? And why did the second engine not burrow into the ground as deeply as the huge fuselage?

This is part of the reason why I think the flight 93 crash is most likely a massive hoax.


*Jere Longman's "Among the Heroes" Harper Collins, 2002

**e.g. David Ray Griffin "The New Pearl Harbor, Dsiturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11", Olive brnach Press, 2004




Bloglines - I Was a Mouthpiece for the American Military

Bloglines user bill.giltner@gmail.com has sent this item to you.


Fountainhead
Truth exists, falsehood has to be invented.

I Was a Mouthpiece for the American Military

By Anwaar Hussain

“I Was a Mouthpiece for the American Military”

An embedded TV producer's frank assessment

Posted on Friday, July 7, 2006. By Ken Silverstein.

In an interesting interview published this week in Foreign Policy, Newsweek's Rod Nordland spoke about the difficulties of reporting from Iraq. He said that the Bush Administration has been largely successful in managing the news “to the extent that most Americans are not aware of just how dire it is and how little progress has been made” and revealed that some embedded reporters “have been blacklisted because the military wasn’t happy with [their] work.”

Many embedded reporters have managed to do fine work from Iraq, but there are significant obstacles for even the best and most determined journalists. I recently spoke with a former senior TV producer for Reuters who worked in Iraq between 2003 and 2004. The producer, who asked that she not be identified by name, arrived in Tikrit soon after the capture of Saddam Hussein on December 13, 2003, and was embedded with American troops for 45 days. She told me that, over the years, she has worked closely with the French army, NATO troops in the Balkans, and UN peacekeepers in covering war and conflict, but she said had never faced the sorts of restrictions imposed by the Pentagon on journalists in Iraq. “I was,” she said, “a mouthpiece for the American military.”

In Tikrit, she was based with U.S. troops at a military compound established at one of Saddam's former palaces, where she provided pool coverage for Reuters TV and AP TV (which was fed to other media outlets). When insurgents attacked civilians, she told me, the American military would rush her to the scene so she could record the carnage and get shots of grieving Iraqis.

When it came to other stories that were clearly sympathetic to the U.S. side, such as funerals for American soldiers killed in combat, the U.S. military was extremely helpful—indeed, encouraging. In such cases, she was granted full access and allowed to film speeches by officials honoring the dead, the posthumous awarding of medals, and other aspects of the ceremony.

But when this producer wanted to pursue a story that might have cast the war effort in an unfavorable light, the situation was entirely different. Every few days, she said, she would receive a call from the Reuters bureau in Baghdad and discover that reporters there had heard, via local news reports or from the bureau's network of Iraqi sources, about civilians being killed or injured by American troops. But when she asked to leave the compound to independently confirm such incidents, her requests were invariably turned down.

“Reuters had an armored car,” she told me, “and we wanted to go out on our own, but I would ask the PIO [Public Information Officer] for permission and he would say he needed to get more information before we could go. Hours would pass, it would get dark—and in the end we were never able to get to the scene.” Even getting an on-camera comment from a military spokesman was impossible in such cases, she said.

The producer said that it was impossible to pursue stories frowned upon by the military—for example, on how the local population viewed the occupation and American troops—because she was not permitted to leave the base on her own. The height of absurdity came when the Tikrit compound came under serious attack one evening and the producer was asked by the Reuters bureau in Baghdad to phone in a report on the situation. “We couldn't find out anything [from the U.S. military],” she said, so Reuters had to cover the fighting from Baghdad, despite having a TV producer and reporter on the ground at the compound in Tikrit.

The producer frequently filmed foot patrols and nighttime raids. She said that for the latter, the military and the embedded journalists would drive for long stretches in pitch darkness. The raids themselves, she said, were blurry and confusing, and afterwards soldiers would round up suspected insurgents and sympathizers for interrogation. It was routine for the producer to wait in one room of a house while detainees were questioned in another. “Not always, but there were times when I would hear detainees screaming during the questioning,” she said. “I'm not sure what was happening but they were screaming loudly—they weren't just being slapped around.” Because she obviously was not permitted to film the interrogations, none of that material could be included in her pool feeds.

She and the other journalists stationed at the base in Tikrit grew cynical about their work and came to believe that they were being used. “Other reporters in Iraq,” she said, “especially local Iraqis [working for Western outlets], were able to get both sides of the story, but we were getting only one side.” During her 45 days in Tikrit, she told me, she didn't file a single story critical of the American project in Iraq. “There was no balance,” she said. “What we were doing wasn't real journalism.”

Source : Harper's.Org



sunflowers


sunflowers, originally uploaded by *Fly*.

Hello little fellow


Hello little fellow, originally uploaded by Blue Planet1.

Bloglines - Doing the Wrong Thing in Afghanistan: Depleted Uranium: The Definitive Moral Paradox

CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS
CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS - LiveJournal.com

Doing the Wrong Thing in Afghanistan: Depleted Uranium: The Definitive Moral Paradox

Environment



By Michael Clarke

It is Canada Day evening, and I can barely hear the whistles, booms and bangs of the fireworks. It sounds a bit like distant bombs exploding, reminding me of the incredible moral paradox our federal government’s aggressive military role in Afghanistan has created for all Canadians.

Our government, military, newspapers, television and radio media are efficiently dispersing the official sound bytes: “our troops in Afghanistan have the moral authority”; “Canada is doing the right thing”; “it’s a noble mission”; and, “we are just spreading freedom and democracy”.

But, they are not telling us that there is something else we are spreading around Afghanistan that any truly moral person would instinctively consider immoral and evil. It is something very real, but some governments refuse to recognize it even exists. Despite their duplicity, it certainly brings to the table a supreme criminal culpability that historians may someday benchmark as the definitive moral paradox marking the failure of Western democracies to resist the rise of global corporate fascism.

After the Taleban resistance fighters’ ambush in May killed Capt. Nichola Goddard, Canadian troops called in a U.S. B-1 Lancer stealth bomber which dropped a 500-pound bomb on a nearby residential compound, killing an estimated 15 to 20 people. According to the U.S. Air Force, that was just one of nearly 2,000 air strikes that were conducted in Afghanistan between March and May 2006.

Tragically, every air strike uses bombs and missiles that are encased and ballasted with depleted uranium (DU) which aerosolizes upon impact, instantaneously being released into the atmosphere as insoluble ceramic uranium oxide nanoparticles. Its gaseous characteristics allow DU to remain suspended in the air and be distributed around the earth as a radioactive component of atmospheric dust, contaminating the environment and indiscriminately killing, maiming and causing disease in all living things wherever rain, snow and moisture remove it from the atmosphere.

Nuclear experts agree that DU is a weapon for killing lots of people that keeps on killing forever. It meets the U.S. government’s own definitions of weapons of mass destruction. And there is no way to ever clean it up.

An estimated 900 tons of DU was released in the initial 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. The approximately 2,000 air strikes this spring could easily have released another 250 tons of DU into the air and onto the ground, water and crops. According to the White House website a total of 24,000 bombs were used in the first year of operations in Afghanistan, which would suggest a minimum of 3,000 tons of DU was aerosolized in only the first 12 months of conflict. There is a lot of deadly radioactive DU around there.

According to one nuclear expert, Leuren Moret, the United States and its willing accomplices like Canada have effectively staged a nuclear war in Afghanistan by using dirty bombs and missiles that “slip the nukes under the wire”. As quickly as the DU aerosols are produced they will permanently contaminate vast areas and slowly destroy the genetic future of populations throughout the region. The permanent radioactive contamination and environmental devastation is unprecedented, resulting in huge increases in cancer and birth defects which will increase over time due to chronic exposure, increasing internal levels of radiation from DU dust and permanent genetic effects passed on to future generations. Of course, DU weapons have also been used in Yugoslavia and the Iraq wars with the same devastating consequences.

Studies to monitor the Afghanis have been carried out by the Uranium Medical Research Center, which has sent several field teams to Afghanistan since 2002 to check the contamination and health conditions around specific locations that are known to have been bombed. Approximately 30% of those interviewed in the affected areas displayed symptoms of radiation sickness, including congenital problems in newborns. In Kabul those who were exposed to US-British “precision bombing” showed extreme signs of contamination consistent with uranium exposure. In Nangarhar every person donating urine specimens tested positive for uranium contamination. The researchers were stunned by the astoundingly high levels of widespread contamination. Their report warned, “The UMRC field team was shocked by the breadth of public health impacts coincident with the bombing. Without exception, at every bombsite investigated, people are ill. A significant portion of the civilian population presents symptoms consistent with internal contamination by uranium.”

Using the same calculation method that the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority employed in their 1990 projection of potential DU consequences in Iraq, the estimated 250 tons of DU from the 2,000 recent air strikes carried out in Afghanistan from March to May 2006 could result in as many as 2,500,000 cancers within the next ten years. The bomb dropped near Capt. Goddard produced 250 pounds of DU that could cause as many as 1,250 cases of cancer in that village within the next ten years. But, the bombing in the initial 2001 invasion could cause as many as 9,000,000 additional cancers within ten years. These horrible estimates tend to support Leuren Moret’s contention that this has been a genocidal plan from the start; this was not a war in Afghanistan, but a war against Afghanistan. And Iraq, and Yugoslavia.

However, the laws of war prohibit the use of weapons that have deadly and inhumane effects beyond the field of battle, or remain active or cause harm after hostilities cease. The military use of DU weapons violates international humanitarian law (Hague & Geneva), violates the principles of international environmental protection and contradicts the right to life established by the UN Subcommittee on Human Rights. The UN Human Rights Commission determined a decade ago that DU is a weapon of mass destruction that should never be used. These rulings mean that the use of DU is intrinsically immoral as well as illegal.

Of course, there will always be wags who insist that DU is harmless so there really is no problem. Robert Jensen, a professor of journalism at UT Austin, recently delivered a speech at the Brisbane (Australia) Social Forum titled “The Threats to Sustainable Democracy” in which he said, “…there is no power so convinced of its own benevolence as the United States. The culture is delusional in its commitment to this mythology, which is why today one can find on the other side of the world peasant farmers with no formal education who understand better the nature of U.S. power than many faculty members at elite U.S. universities.”

Leuren Moret dramatically proved his point in an article published in World Affairs – the Journal of International Issues (July 2004) when she wrote, “…even uneducated Afghanis understand the impact these [DU] weapons have had on their children and on future generations:

“After the Americans destroyed our village and killed many of us, we also lost our houses and have nothing to eat. However, we would have endured these miseries and even accepted them, if the Americans had not sentenced us all to death. When I saw my deformed grandson, I realized that my hopes of the future have vanished for good, different from the hopelessness of the Russian barbarism, even though at that time I lost my older son Shafiqullah. This time, however, I know we are part of the invisible genocide brought on us by America, a silent death from which I know we will not escape.” (Jooma Khan of Laghman province, March 2003)

Genocide? The word fits too perfectly! The statistical potential for numbers of DU cancer deaths in Afghanistan with the passage of time easily surpasses the Holocaust victim total and sets new upper limits for satanic crimes against humanity. When government tells us that we are in Afghanistan with full moral authority they are being disingenuous, because genocide can only spring from immoral authority. Dr. K. Yagasaki has calculated that the U.S. has used more DU since 1991 than the atomicity equivalent of 400,000 Nagasaki bombs, and it has been spread all around the planet. Despite the fact that Depleted Uranium weaponry will eventually annihilate all species on earth, our “leaders” continue to deploy it with full knowledge of its destructive potential, even as they say there is no DU problem. Throughout the history of this world there has been no greater atrocity against the people and the planet. Dr. Bartell coined the term omnicide to reflect DU’s supreme immorality. Jooma Khan will never believe that the foreign troops occupying his province have any moral authority. It is no coincidence that a major international Pew poll last month showed that the majority of Muslim society around the world believes Western countries are immoral.

So, here’s the moral paradox for all Canadians: How can the Conservatives, the military, the corporate media and the regressive Liberals possibly be correct when they tell us that Canada’s mission in Afghanistan is noble and moral if our soldiers initiate the deployment of illegal nuclear DU weapons that deliver horrific radioactive genocide and cause the permanent destruction of the environment?

The paradox is instantly resolved. Simply by requesting air strikes with illegal radioactive DU weaponry Canadian soldiers are, by definition, perpetrating immoral crimes against humanity. Therefore, it is logically impossible that our mission in Afghanistan is the “right thing to do”. To the contrary, Canada has become a state sponsor of terror just like America which is the very wrong thing to do, and the DU problem we have become involved with due to our unwise military commitments to the U.S. and NATO implicate us in terrorist acts much worse than 9/11. The Muslim world is astute. Western society is immoral. Our supposedly superior democratic institutions have allowed the DU atrocities to be perpetrated globally free from any threat of international prosecution. In fact, the Canadian government has suppressed those who would attempt to bring war crime charges of torture against the United States, a far lesser crime in comparison.

Take action now. Demand an international public enquiry about DU war crimes and demand that Canada bring our troops home immediately and stop expanding the killing fields.
But, be wary, because democracy around the world has had a complete breakdown. The Depleted Uranium insanity is the definitive moral paradox that marks the triumph of global corporate fascism over the world’s weak and easily corrupted democratic institutions. Those who understand that fundamental morality must begin with serving humanity and stopping the destruction of Gaia must rise up in resistance. And they will call us terrorists even though we strive for the highest moral standards and the greatest good and, ironically, respect the Nuremburg Principles.

As Robert Jensen warned the Brisbane Social Forum, “The world is at risk.”

To Learn More - Main sources used in this commentary that readers are encouraged to consult:

August 2004 World Affairs Journal. Leuren Moret: “Depleted Uranium: The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War”, www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04.htm

May 2006 Vital Truths and Information Clearing House. Doug Westerman: “Depleted Uranium – Far Worse than 9/11”, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20060503&articleId=2374

May 2006 Brisbane Social Forum, Australia: Robert Jensen: “The Threats to Sustainable Democracy”
http://www.counterpunch.org/jensen05302006.html

http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20060706210639293

Comments