1. “The author of an internet conspiracy movie about the 7/7 bombings in London was tracked down to a small town in Ireland by the BBC Two series, The Conspiracy Files.
John Hill, also known as Muad Dib, is the author of “7/7 Ripple Effect”.
He has since been arrested and is facing extradition to the UK on a charge of perverting the course of justice.
You can watch the full story – The Conspiracy Files 7/7 – on Tuesday, 30 June, 2009 at 2100 BST on BBC Two or catch-up afterwards on iPlayer
…
He mailed a 7/7 Ripple Effect DVD copy to the judge.
That was his crime, the sole reason for his arrest. And for the police confiscation of his computers, as well. He now faces extradition to the UK and a maximum of *life sentence* as penalty for his offense. Please get informed about Mr. Hill’s ordeal against this tyranny, and support him.
This is not a matter of whether or not one agrees with Mr. Hills views on 7/7 (or on other themes as well). Its a matter of the basic freedom of speech to which he is entitled — and which the people must defend.’
…
[This is how our enemies destroy things by using the term conspiracy theory:]
Note the tactics of the Conspiracy Files treatment:
Use ponderous, threatening music.
Have a pompous and outraged narrator, who uses emotional language.
Cherry-pick the weakest or most tentative suggestions and concentrate on those.
Interview people you support and try to humanize them, while giving as little evidence as possible for your assertions.
Use the term “conspiracy” and “conspiracy theorist” a lot and associate it with evil.
Ignore all the most serious factual allegations of your opponent.
When in doubt, simply assert your position and claim it’s the truth.”
http://www.911blogger.com/node/20547
2. “Why Trial Date For African Embassy Bombing Suspect Is Good News
OK, so nearly 12 years after he was indicted for his alleged part in the African embassy bombings in August 1998, over six years since he was seized after a gunfight in Gujrat, Pakistan in July 2004, and four years after his transfer to Guantánamo — after two years in secret CIA prisons, where, he says, he was “a victim of the cruel ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’” — Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian and one of 14 supposedly “high-value detainees” transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006, will face a trial in a federal court in New York. On Thursday, Federal Court Judge Lewis Kaplan set a date of September 13, 2010 for his trial to begin.
This is ironic for three reasons: firstly, because it means that Ghailani — the first Guantánamo prisoner to make it to the US mainland — will persistently expose the lies of the cowardly, scaremongering politicians who recently whipped up a frenzy about bringing prisoners to the mainland when he fails to escape from prison over the next 14 months; secondly, because it should demonstrate to the Obama administration that federal courts work, whereas Ghailani’s proposed trial by Military Commission at Guantánamo (the Dick Cheney-inspired system that Obama has hinted he wants to revive) came to nothing and would almost certainly have lacked legitimacy had it gone ahead; and thirdly, because it demonstrates that the five years from the date of his capture to his first appearance in a New York courtroom in June — when he pleaded not guilty to the 286 charges against him — was a complete waste of time (if that isn’t too light-hearted a description of the Bush administration’s chronically cruel and obtuse program of “extraordinary rendition” and torture), and the Justice Department is clearly fortunate that, notwithstanding Ghailani’s claims of torture in secret CIA prisons, his case appears to be relatively straightforward to prosecute.”
3. Don’t think so:
“Was Kosovo the Good War?”
http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/jul_09_gibbs
4. “The Banality of Evil Applies to Everyone
One of the aspects of the Iraq War that has fascinated me the most is how CIA agents and U.S. soldiers could actually bring themselves to kill, torture, and sexually abuse Iraqis. After all, don’t forget that neither the Iraqi people nor their government participated in the 9/11 attacks. The worst “crime” that any Iraqi committed against any American was resisting an unlawful invasion of his country.
Nonetheless, even though the Iraqi people were innocent of any attacks on the United States, many CIA agents and most U.S. soldiers have been able to bring themselves to kill and maim hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in an invasion and occupation of a country that never attacked the United States, and murder, torture, and sexually abuse dozens of Iraqis detainees and prisoners.
How is a government able to bring men and women to do such things to people who never did anything to harm the United States?
I’m currently reading a fascinating book entitled Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning. It’s about a police unit from Hamburg, Germany, which was assigned the task of rounding up hundreds of Jews in villages in Poland and shooting them at point-blank range.
What makes the book interesting is that the members of the unit were not hard-core SS troops or Gestapo members but rather ordinary middle-aged German men, many of whom had regular jobs at home and were simply members of a reserve police unit.
When the German unit arrived at a Polish village called Jozefow, it soon learned the nature of its mission from its battalion commander, a 53-year old German captain, Wilhelm Trapp, who was an ordinary career policeman back home.
Trapp explained to his men that they were to search targeted homes in Jozefow for Jews, round them up, march them into the forest, and kill them by shooting them at point-blank range. Elderly Jews and infants were to be killed on the spot in their homes.
Appreciating the difficult nature of this task, Trapp offered his men the opportunity to opt out of the mission, which undoubtedly was one of the reasons that two of his subordinate officers later described him as weak and unmilitary. A few men opted out of the mission.
As the round-ups and shootings proceeded, however, more men began dropping out, unable to stomach the point-blank shootings of defenseless men, women, and children. They were accused of being cowardly and weak by their fellow soldiers who continued to do the shootings.
Most of Unit 101 continued performing their assigned task. They convinced themselves that it was okay to continue following orders because Germany was at war, the Jews were part of the enemy, and the enemy was killing Germans every day.
The Iraqi people never did anything bad to the American people. In fact, many Iraqis admired and respected the United States. Yet, CIA agents and U.S. soldiers had no moral reservations whatsoever in following orders to attack and occupy Iraq and kill and maim hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in the process.
Moreover, the CIA agents and U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib obviously had no moral reservations about the murder, torture, and sex abuse committed against Iraqi prisoners, notwithstanding the fact that the Iraqis, again, had never attacked the United States. The thought that Iraqi prisoners should be treated with decency and respect, especially given that they were the defenders, not the attackers, obviously never even entered the minds of the CIA agents and U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib.
The rationales for the killings, murders, torture, and sex abuse varied from agent to agent and soldier to soldier. Some said, “We’re doing it because Saddam Hussein was about to attack the U.S. with WMDs.” Others said, “We’re doing it because Islam is at war against the West.” Others said, “We’re doing it to stop them from killing us here.” Others said, “We’re doing it to bring democracy to their land.” Others said, “We’re doing it because of what al-Qaeda did on 9/11.” Others said, “We’re doing it for freedom.” The more honest of them said, “We’re doing it because we’ve been ordered to do it.”
Today, many U.S. officials are cavalierly claiming that the invasion and occupation of Iraq — along with the deaths and maiming of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people — have been worth it because “democracy” has been brought to Iraq. Clearly they would not be saying the same if it had been hundreds of thousands of American soldiers and CIA agents who had been killed, maimed, and tortured instead.
Of course, this mindset of callous indifference toward Iraqi life didn’t begin with the U.S. war of aggression on Iraq. Many years ago, it was also reflected by the mindset of U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright, who announced to the world that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the U.S. and UN sanctions on Iraq had been “worth it.”
With the phrase “the banality of evil,” Hannah Arendt explained that the great evils of history are not executed by evil sociopaths but rather by ordinary people who meekly accept the rationales of their government and who participate in the evil under the belief that their actions are normal.
Arendt’s concept applies not just to Germans, but to everyone else as well.”
http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2009-07-02.asp
5. “A Road Map to Nowhere
By shrinking from declaring Israeli settlement activity illegal, Obama has guaranteed that, in substance, his Middle East policy cannot depart significantly from that of George W. Bush. Obama’s insipidly favorable response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conditional “acceptance” of the two-state formula underscores an unfortunate continuity in America’s Middle East policy. In the end, Obama’s Middle East policy is rooted in his predecessor’s profoundly flawed 2003 road map for a two-state solution and the feckless process that Bush’s secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice launched at Annapolis in 2007. Worse, in contrast to other policy mistakes made early in his presidential tenure, Obama will be hard put to reverse the damage done by his lack of clarity and courage on the settlements issue by coming back at a later date and arguing that Israeli settlements in occupied territory are, in fact, illegal.”
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/07/01/a_legal_mis_settlement
6. “Honduran military lawyer admits breaking law with coup
The military officers who rushed deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya out of the country Sunday committed a crime but will be exonerated for saving the country from mob violence, the army’s top lawyer said.
In an interview with The Miami Herald and El Salvador’s elfaro.net, army attorney Col. Herberth Bayardo Inestroza acknowledged that top military brass made the call to forcibly remove Zelaya — and they circumvented laws when they did it.
It was the first time any participant in Sunday’s overthrow admitted committing an offense and the first time a Honduran authority revealed who made the decision that has been denounced worldwide.
”We know there was a crime there,” said Inestroza, the top legal advisor for the Honduran armed forces. “In the moment that we took him out of the country, in the way that he was taken out, there is a crime. Because of the circumstances of the moment this crime occurred, there is going to be a justification and cause for acquittal that will protect us.”
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/71238.html
7. “When in war, why bomb the innocent?
Historians argue that bombing civilians is a tragic and virtually ineffective strategy
Selden and colleagues are not out to exonerate the Japanese or privilege their suffering over what they inflicted on others. He is reminding us, though, that the U.S. systematically firebombed and gutted 66 Japanese cities in 1945 under flimsy excuses that these were primarily military targets.
The intention, however, was not solely a matter of zapping Japan’s factories and infrastructure. This aerial terror amounted to vengeance, payback for Pearl Harbor and mistreatment of prisoners of war, and was intended to inflict as much suffering on the civilian populace as possible.
However much this campaign of “terror bombing” disrupted life and demoralized the people, Japan’s military leaders were undaunted as they persisted in gambling on a decisive battle. For this, there was a price to be paid and, as in most modern conflicts, civilians paid the highest price. The firebombing of Tokyo alone killed an estimated 100,000 people. The total firebombing tally is roughly 300,000 plus 400,000 wounded (these figures exclude Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
Selden reminds us that the comforting dominant narrative of the Good War (aka World War II) averts our eyes from the grim realities of these crimes against humanity and the ongoing evasion of accountability.
Selden believes the failure to hold the victors accountable for crimes is crucial to understanding why “Mass murder of civilians has been central to all subsequent U.S. wars.” He concludes that “the pre-eminence of strategic bombing as quintessential to the American way of war” persists even though it has not been effective.
Marilyn Young’s essay explores the fallacy that bombing of civilians is effective, a mistaken assumption that has led to horrific humanitarian consequences for little strategic gain.
Yuki Tanaka traces the early history of aerial bombing of civilians from World War I. In the aftermath, the battered British found such bombing an economical way to maintain imperial interests. The first campaign was against Afghanistan in 1919 followed by Somaliland and then far more extensively in Iraq during the 1920s and 1930s.”
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fb20090628a1.html
8. “Mediterranean Piracy on the Fourth
US hostages held in foreign country on Fourth of July, including a former Congresswoman, after having been captured in a naked act of piracy in international waters after the Americans attempted to respond to a crisis provoked by crimes against humanity, as detailed by Amnesty International.
Once upon a time, Americans would have had the guts to mind such a thing.
Gazans and other Palestinians under Israeli occupation do not enjoy “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” and have not been able to “institute” a “government” of their own to secure those rights. The occupation authority that rules them does not derive its “powers” from the “consent of the governed” The occupation government has become destructive to these ends. I think we know what the American Founding Fathers would say the Palestinians need.
…
Fareed Zakaria’s (implicit reply to Bomber Bolton):
CNN: What about a military strike?
Zakaria: It would be bizarre to bomb Iran– which means bombing Iranians — now that we have seen the inside of that country. Moussavi and his supporters want a less confrontational approach to the world. So do many members of the establishment.
Moussavi attacked Ahmadinejad repeatedly for his aggressive foreign policy. So we now know the answer to the question, “Are there moderates in Iran?” Yes, millions of them.’”
