APRIL 2007
ZNet Commentary
CLOSING THE GAP BETWEEN TORTURER AND VICTIM
March 14, 2007
By John Pilger
In Andrew Cockburn's new book, Rumsfeld, the gap between
rampant power and its faraway victims is closed. Donald
Rumsfeld, US secretary of defence until last year and a
designer of the Iraq bloodbath, is revealed as personally
directing from his office in the Pentagon the torture of
fellow human beings, exploiting "individual phobias,
such as fear of dogs, to induce stress" and use of
"a wet towel and dripping water to induce the
misperception of suffocation". Cockburn's documented
evidence shows that other Bush mafiosi, such as Paul
Wolfowitz, now president of the World Bank, "had
already agreed that Rumsfeld should approve all but the
most severe options, such as the wet towel, without
restriction".
In Washington, I asked Ray McGovern, formerly a senior
CIA officer, what he made of Norman Mailer's remark that
America had entered a pre-fascist state. "I hope
he's right," he replied, "because there are
others saying we are already in a fascist mode. When you
see who is controlling the means of production here, when
you see who is controlling the newspapers and
periodicals, and the TV stations, from which most
Americans take their news, and when you see how the
so-called war on terror is being conducted, you begin to
understand where we are headed ... It's quite something
that the nuclear threat today should be seen first and
foremost as coming from the United States of America and
Great Britain."
McGovern was the author of the president's daily CIA
intelligence brief. I interviewed him more than three
years ago, and his prescient words are as striking today
as Cockburn's revelation of Rumsfeld's secret life is
illuminating. His description of fascism within a
nominally free society recalls George Orwell's warning
that totalitarianism does not require a totalitarian
state.
The lies that have caused this extremely dangerous time
are understood and rejected by the majority of humanity.
This was illustrated vividly on 15-16 February 2003 when
some 30 million people took to the streets of cities
around the world, including the greatest demonstration in
British history. It was illustrated again the other day
in Latin America, which George W Bush on tour sought to
reclaim for America's lost "backyard".
"The distinguished visitor," noted one
commentator in Caracas, "was received with fear and
loathing."
There are many connections in Latin America to the
suffering in the Middle East. The crushing of popular,
reformist governments by the US and the setting up of
torture regimes, from Guatemala to Chile, have echoes
from Iran to Afghanistan. The current attacks on the
Chávez government in Venezuela by the media, which Ray
McGovern describes as being "domesticated by their
wish to serve", are essential in disclaiming the
right of the poor to find another way.
Elected last December with a record landslide of votes
cast by three-quarters of the eligible population - his
11th major election victory - Hugo Chávez expresses the
kind of genuine exuberant democracy long ago
abandoned in Britain, where the political class offers
instead the arthritic pirouetting of Tony Blair, a
criminal, and treasurer Gordon Brown, the paymaster of
imperial adventures fought by 18-year-old soldiers who,
on their return home, are so ill treated that there is no
one to change their colostomy bag.
Chávez, having all but got rid of the deadly IMF from
Latin America, dares to use the wealth from Venezuela's
oil to unite the Latin peoples and to expel a foreign
economic system that calls itself liberal and is the
source of historic suffering. He is supported by
governments and by millions across South America from
whom he derives his mandate. You would not know this on
either side of the Atlantic unless you studied carefully.
The propaganda that converts a lively, open democracy to
an "authoritarian" dictatorship is written on
the rusted crosses of Salvador Allende's comrades, of
whom the same was said. It is disseminated by the
embittered effete whose liberal hero was Blair, until he
made an embarrassing mess, and who now claim the
respectability of "the left" in order to
disguise their mentoring by the likes of Wolfowitz, their
promotion of Dick Cheney's ludicrous "world Islamic
empire" and, above all, their passion for wars whose
spilt blood is never theirs.
L "Rumsfeld: his rise, fall and catastrophic
legacy" by Andrew Cockburn is published in the
United States by Scribner ($25)
For 2 Baghdad
booksellers, violence creeps ever closer
By Hamza Hendawi ASSOCIATED PRESS 8:07 a.m. March 18, 2007 BAGHDAD – In the beginning, with Saddam Hussein gone, the two booksellers dreamed of expanding their business and vacationing abroad.
Then the insurgency took hold, and for Atallah Zeidan and Mohammed Hanash Abbas, things started to unravel. Abbas' childhood friend was killed in 2005, and the following April, Zeidan lost his brother in a bombing.
Two weeks ago the shadows crept even closer to the two men when a suicide bombing in Baghdad's book market killed at least 38 people and wounded 105. Their bookstore survived, but their shop window was blown out and the book market, a favorite haunt of the Baghdad intelligentsia, was wrecked.
And yet, even as their daily existence has grown steadily harder in the four years that The Associated Press has been following their lives, these two Shiite Muslims in their early 40s cling to a stubborn belief that somehow, things will get better.
They say that their spirits were lifted by the execution Dec. 30 of Saddam, the arch-oppressor of Shiites, and that the U.S.-Iraqi military crackdown now under way in Baghdad has made them feel safer.
But the book market bombing appears to have touched them in a way that goes beyond personal grief.
Their bookstore, called Iqra'a, the Arabic imperative for “read,” is on the second floor of a dusty, garbage-strewn and mostly empty mall. It sells secondhand books and lends poor students volumes in English, French and German for a small fee.
The books survived and Iqra'a remains open for business. But days after the bomber in a minibus detonated his explosives on a narrow street at 11:30 a.m. on March 5, workers were still recovering bodies from under the blackened debris, and authorities were expecting the final death toll to be well over 38.
The place still smelled of burned flesh. Books on law, philosophy and religion, some torn or stained by soot, were scattered on the ground. On the walls were black banners announcing victims' names and funeral dates. One listed five members of the same family.
American paratroopers discussed with storekeepers how to prevent future attacks. As they spoke, a crane began unloading concrete barriers to close the market's main street to traffic.
On the morning of the bombing, Zeidan had taken his infant son Ali for a vaccination. Abbas, who is getting a degree in English, was in class at a Baghdad University campus not far away. When he heard the blast, he ran the half-mile to the bookstore.
“The market is dead,” said Zeidan, a philosophy graduate, drawing hard on a cigarette. He wonders whether his old clientele will ever return. “They can replace the books and rebuild the shops but where are they going to find people who know about books?”
Abbas, always the more optimistic of the two, said the market has been swallowed by grief, but “it will bounce back, God willing.”
The new security effort is vital to the book market's survival. It lies close to some of Baghdad's hottest spots, where bombings, clashes and sectarian killings are common.
Like most Baghdad residents, Zeidan and Abbas are especially afraid of being kidnapped. So they close their store at 1:30 p.m. instead of 3 p.m. These days, the earlier you get home, the less likely you are to be a target.
Abbas says only 15 to 20 of the 80 students registered in his English class attend lessons because they fear kidnapping or suicide bombings.
For him and Zeidan, the book market bombing is the latest blow.
Abbas said he lost a close friend killed in Fallujah in 2005. The following April the violence first touched Zeidan's life when Inad, his 53-year-old brother and father of 10, was killed by a bomb in the minibus he was riding in. Three months later a cousin was shot dead in a town northeast of Baghdad.
Not particularly religious, Zeidan has taken to saying a prayer before leaving home every morning. He is nervous when riding on the minibuses used as communal taxis. His mother's health has rapidly worsened since Inad's death.
“Before my brother died, we sensed the danger in the city. Now that danger entered our life,” said Zeidan.
Just getting safely home at the end of the day is a small triumph. And violence is not the only threat to an ordinary bookseller's well-being.
One day last summer, when temperatures hovered around 110 degrees, the power went out for 13˝ hours and the neighbor's generator from which they bought power ran out of fuel. His daughter, Fatima, was a toddler and his wife, Mona Jassim, was pregnant.
“We opened the windows in the hope of making a draft. We covered the floors of the balconies with water. We filled the bath tub with water and made Fatima sit there. Then we took her out and took turns fanning her,” Zeidan said.
“What can we say or do except resign ourselves to the mercy of God?”
Meanwhile, business in Iqra'a has been bad for months, hampered by the security, low attendance at universities and a ban on vehicles on Friday mornings – traditionally the book market's busiest day – to avert suicide bombings against Muslims gathered for prayer.
“We are still staying afloat, barely,” Zeidan said in November. “July was not good, August was worse and September was miserable.”
Still, Abbas wasn't giving up hope. In a voice barely audible over the clatter of low-flying helicopters, he said: “We may be hurt but we are not defeated.”
TASTING THE SKY ; A PALESTINIAN CHILDHOOD
From: Sam Bahour Tuesday, March
27, 2007 IMEU Profile: Writer, poet and educator
http://imeu.net/news/article004582.shtml
Ibtisam
Barakat: Writer, poet and educator
IMEU,
Feb 28, 2007
Born in Beit Hanina, near
Jerusalem , Ibtisam Barakat’s life was turned upside
down at age three, when Israel occupied the West Bank and
East Jerusalem following the 1967 war. “I will never
know what my life would have been like without having
grown up under Israeli occupation,” says writer,
poet and educator Barakat. “This influenced me in
every way. And it made me sensitive to all the issues of
injustice that exist in the world.”
Growing up with war and occupation is the focus of
Barakat’s memoir, Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian
Childhood, released this month by Farrar, Straus and
Giroux. “At least 200,000 Palestinians fled their
homes in the Six Day War,” she says. “My family
and I were among them. So I wanted to write this story
for the children of that night, including the young girl
I was, and for children everywhere, especially those
denied a childhood.”
After earning her bachelor’s degree from Birzeit
University in the West Bank, Barakat moved to New York in
1986, where she interned with The Nation. Later,
she earned Masters in Journalism and Human Development
and Family Studies, both from the University of
Missouri-Columbia.
Beginning at a young age, Barakat has used writing for
communicating, as well as for self-understanding.
“My writing is a clear and spacious window,”
she says. “I know whether it’s morning, or
it’s night, whether it’s a rainy day or a
summer day, and whether it’s a season of freedom
outside and inside or a season of fear, all through what
I see reflected in my writing.”
Barakat taught language ethics at Stephens College in
2002, and her work has been published by Simon and
Schuster, Pocket Books, Random House, Scholastic, Weekly
Reader Corporation, and elsewhere. She is the founder of
the Write Your Life seminars, “where people take the
time to explore their life stories, and to turn various
elements into literature and art -- poems, letters,
essays, paintings, songs, plays, short stories, or humor
pieces.
“I find it especially important to encourage people
from under-privileged groups to find their voices and
speak up,”Barakat explains. “Given the harsh
climate of humanity at this time, it is the
responsibility and privilege of all of us to contribute
our stories toward the composition of a book of life and
history that represents all.”
Barakat is working on her second book.
| A bilingual speaker of Arabic and English,
Ibtisam Barakat grew up in Ramallah, West Bank,
and now lives in the Ibtisam
has taught language ethics courses—Language
Uses and Abuses—at In
2001, Ibtisam was a delegate to the third United
Nations conference on the elimination of racism,
which was held in As
an educator, poet, and peace activist, Ibtisam
has spoken at the Center for Southern Literature
/ Margaret Mitchell House and Museum; William
Woods College; Missouri Historic Theater;
Dartmouth College; Printers Row Book Fair in
Chicago; PEN New England; National Writers Union
/ New Jersey chapter; the International
Children’s Literature Day / University of
Wisconsin; Children’s Literature New England
/ Williams College; North Carolina Center for
Advancement of Teaching; Reading the World /
University of San Francisco; and various high
schools, including the school district of
Anchorage, Alaska.
|
“In vivid, beautiful prose,
With
2007 marking the fortieth anniversary of the Middle
East’s Six-Day War, TASTING THE SKY: A
Palestinian Childhood (Melanie Kroupa Books / Farrar,
Straus and Giroux / May 2007 / $16.00) provides a timely
glimpse into historic events from a little-heard
perspective. In her vivid memoir, author
Ibtisam is only three and a half years old, living in Ramallah with her family when the war starts. Soon they are fleeing in the night to seek safety and shelter as Israeli soldiers press into town. For a terrible while, Ibtisam is separated from her family, and learns for the first time that security is not a given. But among the great upheavals of war are gentler surprises: the instant community that builds among those hiding in caves and shelters as bullets whiz by outside, the generosity of the Jordanians who open up their homes to the refugees, and the renewed appreciation of family and home.
Through TASTING THE SKY, readers will witness the harshness of life as a refugee, Ibtisam’s joyful experience at U.N.-sponsored schools (where she becomes a top-ranked student), and the phenomenon of the Israeli soldiers becoming the source of both her “anxiety and entertainment,” as she and her brothers initially hide from them, but then play in their frozen training ground in the winter.
There is also the delight Ibtisam feels upon meeting Alef, the first letter of the Arabic alphabet. This is her initial brush with language, and the start of her passionate connection to words. The refuge of language and storytelling allows her to reach out and connect to the world and later, as an adult, write this memoir.
As a
teenager, Ibtisam also uses language to cultivate a
treasured group of international pen pals from countries
including
Ibtisam
Barakat is a peace advocate, poet, and educator who
has worked with organizations such -as the United Nations
to facilitate conflict resolution and peace-focused
dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis. She lives in
#
# #
Tasting
the Sky:
A
Palenstinian Childhood
by Ibtisam
Barakat
978-0-374-35733-7
Melanie
Kroupa Books / Farrar, Straus and Giroux
May 2007
$16.00 / 192
pages
www.fsgkidsbooks.com
Above:
Contact:
Tasting the Sky is available from Amazon.com .
Travesty
EDWARD HERMAN
FROM I.SHAMIR - (SHAMIR-READERS)
John Laughland's superb new
book , Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and
the Corruption of International Justice, is the
fourth important critical study of the issues pertaining
to the Balkans wars that I have reviewed in Z Magazine.
Laughland notes that "Indictments [by the
ICTY] are drawn up with little or no
reference to the fact that the acts in question were
committed in battle: one often has the
surreal sensation one would have reading a description of
one man beating another man unconscious which omitted to
mention that the violence was being inflicted in the
course of a boxing match." But this stream of
witnesses, that the defense could duplicate in its turn
if given the opportunity - and Milosevic did with a video
presentation of badly abused Serbs for several hours
toward the beginning of his trial - is effective in
demonization and helped mass-produce true believers who
viewed any contesting argument or evidence as
"apologetics for Milosevic."
| This consolidation of a party line
has been reinforced by a virtual lobby of
institutions and dedicated individuals ready to
pounce on both the deviants who challenge the new
orthodoxy as well as the media institutions that
on rare occasion allow a questioning of the
"truth." The refusal to review these
dissenting books and to deal with the issues they
raise is also testimony to the cowardice and
self-imposed ignorance of the media, and
especially the liberal-left media, unwilling to
challenge a narrative that is false at every
level, as is spelled out convincingly in the
three books reviewed earlier and once again in Travesty.
Laughland's Travesty focuses on "The Corruption of International Justice" displayed in the ICTY's performance in the seizure and trial of Milosevic, but in the process the book covers most of the issues central to evaluating the Balkan wars and the role of the various participants. The institutionalized lies are dismantled one after the next. On the matter of "international justice," Laughland stresses the fact that the ICTY is a political court with explicit political objectives that run counter to the requirements of any lawful justice. This political court was organized mainly by the United States and Britain, countries that now freely attack others, but seek the fiction that will give their aggressions a de jure as well as quasi-moral cover. For this reason the rules of the ICTY stood Nuremberg on its head. The Nuremberg Tribunal tried the Nazi leaders for their planning and carrying out the "supreme international crime" of aggression. But the ICTY Statute doesn't even mention crimes against peace (although with Kafkaesque hypocrisy it claims to be aiming at protecting the peace). Thus, Laughland notes, "instead of applying existing international law, the ICTY has effectively overturned it." The dominant powers now wanting to be able to intervene anywhere, the new principles to be applied were a throwback to the Nazis in disrespect for international borders. Laughland says that "the commitment to non-interference in the internal affairs of states, reaffirmed as part of the Nuremberg Principles in the United Nations Charter, is an attempt to institutionalize an anti-fascist theory of international relations. It is this theory which the allies destroyed in attacking Yugoslavia in 1999." And it is this anti-fascist theory that the ICTY and humanitarian interventionists have abandoned, opening the door to a more aggressive imperialism. The ICTY was established not by passage of any law or signing of an international agreement (as in the case of the International Court of Justice) but by the decision of a few governments dominating the Security Council, and Laughland shows that this was beyond the authority of the Security Council (also shown in another outstanding but politically incorrect and neglected work, Hans Kochler's Global Justice or Global Revenge? [Springer-Verlag Wien, 2003]). It was also established with the open objective of using it to pursue one party in a conflict, presumed guilty in advance of any trial. The political objectives were allegedly to bring peace by punishing villains and thus serving as a deterrent, but also to serve the victims by what Laughland calls "the therapeutic power of obtaining convictions. Laughland features the many-leveled lawlessness of the ICTY. It was not created by law and there is no higher body that reviews its decisions and to whom appeals can be made. The judges, often political appointees and without judicial experience, judge themselves. Laughland points out that the judges have changed their rules scores of times, but none of these changes have ever been challenged by any higher authority. And their rules are made "flexible," to give efficient results; the judges proudly noting that the ICTY "disregards legal formalities" and that it does not need "to shackle itself to restrictive rules which have developed out of the ancient trial-by-jury system." The rule changes have steadily reduced defendants' rights, but from the beginning those rights were shriveled: Laughland quotes a U.S. lawyer who helped draft the rules of evidence of the ICTY, who acknowledges that they were "to minimize the possibility of a charge being dismissed for lack of evidence." Laughland notes that the ICTY is a "prosecutorial organization" whose "whole philosophy and structure is accusatory." This is why its judges gradually accepted a stream of rulings damaging to the defense and to the possibility of a fair trial--including the acceptance of hearsay evidence, secret witnesses, and closed sessions (the latter two categories applicable in the case of 40 percent of the witnesses in the Milosevic trial). ICTY rules even allow an appeal and retrial of an acquitted defendant--" Laughland's devastating analysis of the Milosevic indictment and trial is a study in abuse of power in a politically- The original indictment of Milosevic dealt only with his responsibility for alleged war crimes in Kosovo. But as Laughland points out, the wild claims of mass killing and genocide in Kosovo were not sustainable by evidence, and NATO bombing may have killed as many Kosovo civilians as the Yugoslav army. This accentuated the problem that if the Milosevic indictment was limited to Kosovo it would be hard to justify trying him for Kosovo crimes but not NATO leaders, a point even acknowledged by the ICTY prosecutor. So two years after the first indictment, but after Milosevic's kidnapping and transfer to The Hague, the indictment was extended to cover Bosnia and Croatia. A bit awkward, given that back in 1995 when Mladic and Karadzic were indicted for crimes in Bosnia, Milosevic was exempted. There was also the problem that the Bosnian and Croatian Serbs were not under Serb and Milosevic authority after the declared independence of Bosnia and Croatia, and Milosevic fought with them continuously in an effort to get them to accept various peace plans 1992-1995 (documented in Sir David Owen's Balkan Odyssey, another important book neglected perhaps because of its contra-party line evidence). So the prosecution sought to make the case for "genocide" by belatedly making Milosevic the boss in a "joint criminal enterprise" (JCE) to get rid of Croats and Muslims in a "Greater Serbia." The initial indictments that confined his alleged crimes to Kosovo never mentioned any participation in a JCE or drive for a "Greater Serbia." So the prosecution had to start over in collecting evidence for the crimes, JCE, and Greater Serbia aims in Bosnia and Croatia and tying them to Milosevic. Guilt decision first, then go for the evidence, was the rule for this political court. The trial moved ahead while the "evidence" was still being assembled. Most of it was the testimony of scores of alleged witnesses to alleged crimes, a large majority with hearsay evidence, and almost none of it bearing on Milosevic's decision-making or differentiating it from what could have been brought against Izetbegovic, Tudjman or Bill Clinton. Laughland shows very persuasively that the inordinate length of the trial was in no way related to Milosevic's performance - a lie beloved by Marlise Simons and the mainstream media in general - it was based on the fact that this was a political trial that inherently demanded massive evidence, and the prosecution, unprepared and struggling to make a concocted charge plausible, poured it on, trying to make up for lack of any documentation of their charges of a Milosevic-based plan and orders with sheer volume of irrelevant witnesses to civil warfare and Kosovo-war crimes and pain. A key element in the prosecution case was the belated charge that Milosevic was involved in a "joint criminal enterprise" with Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia to get rid of non-Serbs by violence, looking toward that Greater Serbia. The concept of a JCE is not to be found in prior law or even in the ICTY Statute. It was improvised to allow the finding of guilt anywhere and anytime. You are part of a JCE if you are doing something bad along with somebody else, or are attacking the same parties with somebody who does something bad. With that common end you don't even have to know about what that somebody else is doing to be part of a JCE. Laughland has a devastating analysis of this wonderfully expansive and opportunistic doctrine, and his chapter dealing with it is entitled "Just convict everyone," based on a quote from a lawyer-supporter of the ICTY who finds the JCE a bit much. Milosevic probably would have been convicted based on this catch-all, or catch anyone, doctrine. Of course it fits much better the joint and purposeful Clinton, Blair, NATO attack on Yugoslavia, or the Croats U.S.-supported ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Croatian Krajina in August 1995, but there is nobody to enforce the JCE against them, whereas we have the ICTY to take care of U.S. and NATO targets! Laughland has a fine chapter on Greater Serbia, which shows that Milosevic didn't start the breakup wars (even quoting prosecutor Nice admitting this), that he was no extreme nationalist and that accusations about his speeches of 1987 and 1989 are false, that his support of the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia was fitful and largely defensive, and that he was not working toward a Greater Serbia but at most trying to enable Serbs in a disintegrating Yugoslavia to stay together. During Milosevic's trial defense, Serb Nationalist Party leader Vojislav Seselj claimed that only his party sought a "Greater Serbia," as the Croats and Bosnian Muslims were really Serbs with a different religion and his party fought to bring them all within Serbia--Milosevic only wanted the Serbs stranded in the breakaway states to be able to join Serbia. At that point the prosecutor Geoffrey Nice acknowledged that Milosevic was not aiming for a Greater Serbia, but, in Nice's words, only had the "pragmatic" goal of "ensuring that all the Serbs who had lived in the former Yugoslavia should be allowed...to live in the same unit." This caused some consternation among the trial judges, as Milosevic's aggressive drive for a Greater Serbia was at the heart of the ICTY case. You never heard about this? Understandably, as the New York Times and mainstream media never reported it, just as they never tried to reconcile Milosevic's support of serial peace moves with his alleged role as the aggressor seeking that Greater Serbia. There is much more of value in Travesty and I can't do it justice even on the issues discussed here. This is a wonderful book that should be on the reading list of everyone looking for enlightenment on the confused and confusing issues involving the Balkan wars and "humanitarian intervention." It helps shred the notion that the NATO attacks were based on a morality that justified over-riding sovereignty and international law, and it shows decisively that the ICTY is a completely politicized rogue court that is a "corruption of international justice." As Laughland emphasizes (and Johnstone and Mandel do as well), the NATO war and the work of the ICTY in running interference for that war, were very helpful in setting the stage for George Bush's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and possibly also, Iran. It was treated then, and remains treated today, as a "good war," a "humanitarian intervention." So those who swallowed the standard narrative, built on lies, at best failed to see the continuity between Clinton and Bush, and the service of the former and the publicists of the "good war" in removing the protection of the "anti-fascist theory of international relations" that protected small countries from Great Power aggression and unleashing the rule of the jungle. |