Raina: India, Australia

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What is the Difference?

By Badri Raina , ZNet, Feb 9, 2010

Badri Raina’s ZSpace Page

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The  Victorian  police  chief,  Simon Overland, has finally found the answer to the  attacks that  Indians have been subjected to down under.

“Try to look as poor as you can,” he advises Indian immigrants to Australia: “don’t display your iPods, valuable watch, valuable jewellery.”

The implication here is explicit:  if you don’t flaunt, you will not tempt.

Thus, the onus that the state and law-enforcement ought to bear is neatly transferred to the victim on a principle of the call of “nature,” if you will.  To wit, men will be sinners; so the best course is to seduce as little as possible.

The Indian community has characterized this approach to crime as “ridiculous”—with justice.

I have no doubt we shall soon have fiercely outraged debates on Mr.Overland’s take on crime here on Indian TV channels.

But do ask yourself: how is Mr.Overland’s  advice here any very different from what Indian women are routinely advised by our own custodians of morality?  Or custodians of morality in large parts of the world?

If you flaunt, you invite rape—and on the same principle of  “nature” that informs Overland’s  counsel to Indians down under.  Thus, bigots of all hue argue that it is not the rapist and the molester who is out of order but the women who are thus raped or molested.

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US Justice and Dr Aafia Siddiqui

by Yvonne Ridley, Dissident Voice,  February 9th, 2010

Many of us are still in a state of shock over the guilty verdict returned on Dr Aafia Siddiqui.

The response from the people of Pakistan was predictable and overwhelming and I salute their spontaneous actions.

From Peshawar to Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore and beyond they marched in their thousands demanding the return of Aafia.

Even some of the US media expressed discomfort over the verdict returned by the jurors … there was a general feeling that something was not right.

Everyone had something to say, everyone that is except the usually verbose US Ambassador Anne Patterson who has spent the last two years briefing against Dr Aafia and her supporters.

This is the same woman who claimed I was a fantasist when I gave a press conference with Tehreek e Insaf leader Imran Khan back in July 2008 revealing the plight of a female prisoner in Bagram called the Grey Lady.

She said I was talking nonsense and stated categorically that the prisoner I referred to as “650” did not exist.

By the end of the month she changed her story and said there had been a female prisoner but that she was most definitely not Dr Aafia Siddiqui.

By that time Aafia had been gunned down at virtually point blank range in an Afghan prison cell jammed full of more than a dozen US soldiers, FBI agents and Afghan police.

Her Excellency briefed the media that the prisoner had wrested an M4 gun from one soldier and fired off two rounds and had to be subdued. The fact these bullets failed to hit a single person in the cell and simply disappeared did not resonate with the diplomat.

In a letter dripping in untruths on August 16 2008 she decried the “erroneous and irresponsible media reports regarding the arrest of Ms 
Aafia Siddiqui”. She went on to say: “Unfortunately,
there are some who have an interest in simply distorting the facts in an effort to manipulate and inflame public opinion. The truth is never served by sensationalism…”

When Jamaat Islami invited me on a national tour of Pakistan to address people about the continued abuse of Dr Aafia and the truth about her incarceration in Bagram, the US Ambassador continued to issue rebuttals.

She assured us all that Dr Aafia was being treated humanely had been given consular access as set out in international law … hmm. Well I have a challenge for Ms Patterson today. I challenge her to repeat every single word she said back then and swear it is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

As Dr Aafia Siddiqui’s trial got underway, the US Ambassador and some of her stooges from the intelligence world laid on a lavish party at the US Embassy in Islamabad for some hand-picked journalists where I’ve no doubt in between the dancing, drinks and music they were carefully briefed about the so-called facts of the case.

Interesting that some of the potentially incriminating pictures taken at the private party managed to find the Ambassador was probably hoping to minimize the impact the trial would have on the streets of Pakistan proving that, for the years she has been holed up and barricaded behind concrete bunkers and barbed wire, she has learned nothing about this great country of Pakistan or its people.

One astute Pakistani columnist wrote about her: “The respected lady seems to have forgotten the words of her own country’s 16th president Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865): “You
can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some
of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time”.

And the people of Pakistan proved they are nobody’s fool and responded to the guilty verdict in New York in an appropriate way.

When injustice is the law it is the duty of everyone to rise up and challenge that injustice in any way possible.

The response – so far – has been restrained and measured but it is just the start. A sentence has yet to be delivered by Judge Richard Berman in May.

Of course there has been a great deal of finger pointing and blame towards the jury in New York who found Dr Aafia guilty of attempted murder.

Observers asked how they could ignore the science and the irrefutable facts … there was absolutely no evidence linking Dr Aafia to the gun, no bullets, no residue from firing it.

But I really don’t think we can blame the jurors for the verdict – you see the jury simply could not handle the truth. Had they taken the logical route and gone for the science and the hard, cold, clinical facts it would have meant two things. It would have meant around eight US soldiers took the oath and lied in court to save their own skins and careers or it would have meant that Dr Aafia Siddiqui was telling the truth.

And, as I said before, the jury couldn’t handle the truth. Because that would have meant that the defendant really had been kidnapped, abused, tortured and held in dark, secret prisons by the US before being shot and put on a rendition flight to New York. It would have meant that her three children – two of them US citizens – would also have been kidnapped, abused and tortured by the US.

They say ignorance is bliss and this jury so desperately wanted not to believe that the US could have had a hand in the kidnapping of a five-month -old baby boy, a five-year-old girl and her seven-year-old brother.

They couldn’t handle the truth … it is as simple as that.

Well I, and many others across the world like me, can’t handle any more lies. America’s reputation is lying in the lowest gutters in Pakistan at the moment and it can’t sink any lower.

The trust has gone, there is only a burning hatred and resentment towards a superpower which sends unmanned drones into villages to slaughter innocents.

It is fair to say that America’s goodwill and credibility is all but washed up with most honest, decent citizens of Pakistan.

And I think even Her Excellency Anne Patterson recognizes that fact which is why she is now keeping her mouth shut.

If she has any integrity and any self respect left she should stand before the Pakistan people and ask for their forgiveness for the drone murders, the extra judicial killings, the black operations, the kidnapping, torture and rendition of its citizens, the water-boarding, the bribery, the corruption and, not least of all, the injustice handed out to Dr Aafia Siddiqui and her family.

She should then pick up the phone to the US President and tell him to release Aafia and return Pakistan’s most loved, respected and famous daughter and reunite her with the two children who are still missing.

Then she should re-read her letter of August 16, 2008 and write another … one of resignation.

Yvonne Ridley is a patron of Cageprisoners which first brought the plight of Dr Aafia Siddiqui to the world’s attention shortly after her kidnap in March 2003. The award-winning, investigative journalist also co-produced the documentary In Search of Prisoner 650 with film-maker Hassan al Banna Ghani which concluded that the Grey Lady of Bagram was Dr Aafia Siddiqui. Read other articles by Yvonne.

“When the ‘War on Terror’ Becomes Genocide”

by J.B.Gerald, nightslantern.ca, Feb 10, 2010

The “Convention for the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide” stresses the prevention of genocide more than prescribing its exact manner of punishment. Genocide does not have to be committed for the Convention to have effect. By defining “genocide” it seeks to avert agendas which will confirm the crime. Physical manifestations of genocide are preceded by psychological preparation and the resulting psychological damage to entire victim groups. There is no way not to apply this awareness to current pressures on Islamic communities in North America, so this is an obvious and rather late notation of a genocide warning for Islamic peoples in the U.S. (see also Canada), late, in that one could sense the program over twenty years ago without knowing the scope of its intentions. The threat of whole or partial destruction of this religious group is exacerbated by Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people, bombing of civilian Lebanon, invasion of Gaza, which placed essentially Islamic civilian populations without human value, in a manner politically acceptable to U.S. and Canadian governments.

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Lebanese PM warns of escalating Israeli war threats

Middle East Online,First Published 2010-02-10


‘We will stand against Israel. We will stand with our own people’

Hariri voices concern about ‘dangerous’ Israeli military maneuvers ‘day in and day out’.

LONDON – Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri voiced concern about Israeli threats and escalating military activity in a BBC interview broadcast Wednesday.

“We hear a lot of Israeli threats day in and day out, and not only threats,” Hariri told the British broadcaster.

“We see what’s happening on the ground and in our airspace and what’s happening all the time during the past two months – every day we have Israeli planes entering Lebanese airspace.

“This is something that is escalating, and this is something that is really dangerous,” said the prime minister.

Hariri warned Israel not to count on Lebanon, whose politics is highly factious, remaining divided in case of an attack.

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Wars sending United States into ruin

by Eric Margolis, Toronto Sun/Canada, Feb 10, 2010

U.S. President Barack Obama calls the $3.8-trillion US budget he just sent to Congress a major step in restoring America’s economic health.

In fact, it’s another potent fix given to a sick patient deeply addicted to the dangerous drug – debt.

More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion. The latest example was the Soviet Union, which spent itself into ruin by buying tanks.

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Judges order release of secret Binyam Mohamed torture evidence

Times Online, February 10, 2010

(PA)

Binyam Mohamed: held in Guantanamo

The Foreign Secretary David Miliband today lost his appeal court bid to prevent senior judges disclosing secret information relating to torture allegations in the case of Binyam Mohamed.

The former Guantanamo Bay detainee says that he was tortured in Pakistan while held by the CIA, with the knowledge of the British.

Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones want to disclose summaries of information held by the British security services. Mr Miliband, branded them “irresponsible” in an unprecedented attack on the judiciary, but today three of the country’s highest-ranking judges rejected both the minister’s accusations and his appeal.

The court rejected the Government’s claim that revealing the information would damage transatlantic intelligence co-operation.

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The Terror-Industrial Complex and Aafia Siddiqui

By Chris Hedges, TruthDig.com, Feb 8, 2010

AP / Fareed Khan

Mohammad Ahmed, son of Aafia Siddiqui, takes part in a demonstration arranged by Human Rights Network.

The conviction of the Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui in New York last week of trying to kill American military officers and FBI agents illustrates that the greatest danger to our security comes not from al-Qaida but the thousands of shadowy mercenaries, kidnappers, killers and torturers our government employs around the globe.

The bizarre story surrounding Siddiqui, 37, who received an undergraduate degree from MIT and a doctorate in neuroscience from Brandeis University, often defies belief. Siddiqui, who could spend 50 years in prison on seven charges when she is sentenced in May, was by her own account abducted in 2003 from her hometown of Karachi, Pakistan, with her three children—two of whom remain missing—and spirited to a secret U.S. prison where she was allegedly tortured and mistreated for five years. The American government has no comment, either about the alleged clandestine detention or the missing children.

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Obama, the war president

by Helen Thomas, The Albany Times-Union (New York), Feb 8, 2010

President Barack Obama does have a foreign policy. It’s called war.

The President has not defined any real difference between his hawkish approach to international issues and that of his predecessor, former President George W. Bush.

Where’s the change we can believe in?

Bush left a legacy of two wars, neither of which was ever fully explained or justified. Obama has merely picked up the sword that Bush left behind in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the struggle against terrorism, one might say, “Who cares?”

One group that cares consists of Americans who follow the rules and think we should honor all the treaties we have promoted and signed over the years.

The President gave short shrift to foreign policy in his State of the Union address, mentioning neither the lives lost nor the cost of the global hostilities that the U.S. has involved itself in. He also didn’t mention U.S. policies in the Middle East, though those are the root cause of many of our problems.

While U.S. special envoy George Mitchell has a hopeful outlook for the resumption of the stalemated talks between the Israelis and Palestinians after a year of trying, Obama seems to have temporarily thrown in the towel.

Obama said he was keeping his promise to leave Iraq by the end of August.

Meanwhile, frequent suicide bombings continue in that beleaguered country.

Afghanistan is a different story. U.S. forces there are involved in manhunts of al-Qaida and Taliban leaders. But the cost in civilian life is heavy when drones are used and whole families have been wiped out to get one suspected leader.

The U.S. seems to have convinced the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan that it’s their war too. The Washington Post said the loss of Hakimullah Mehsud has dealt a fatal blow to his followers.

The U.S. military web has spread to Yemen, where American intelligence teams have joined Yemeni troops in planning missions against al-Qaida elements. Scores have been killed there.

Then there’s the ramped-up U.S. saber-rattling toward Iran.

In his speech, Obama warned Iran of “consequences” if it didn’t play ball and co-operate on nuclear inspections. It’s unclear whether those consequences are of the financial variety or of a pre-emptive military strike by the U.S. or Israel.

All this comes at a time when the U.S. has bolstered its naval presence in the Persian Gulf and the neo-conservatives are calling for “regime change” in Iran.

But neo-con Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment, sees the possibility of peaceful regime change in Iran. Organic regime change could change the Iranian equation, Kagan concludes in a Washington Post article.

Iran, reacting to Western pressure or from fear of an attack, recently offered to send its uranium abroad for enrichment for industrial use.

There are new tensions in other parts of the world. China is upset with the U.S. $6 billion-plus arms sale to its nemesis, Taiwan. China’s also irked at Google for its belated push-back against Chinese hacking into Google’s G-mail accounts.

So while the President’s Democratic base of support mutters about his abandonment of health reform and immigration reform, Obama can take solace in support from the Republican Party whenever he flexes U.S. military muscle.

And so this president takes his place among other U.S. chief executives who have sought the glory of leading the nation in military conflict. He has attained the desired status of “War President.”

© 2010 Albany Times-Union

Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. E-mail: helent@hearstdc.com.  Among other books she is the author of Front Row at The White House: My Life and Times.

80,000 Afghans forcibly displaced

Morning Star Online,  February 8, 2010

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US occupation forces in Afghanistan

Thousands of Afghan civilians have began fleeing their homes before a threatened US military offensive against Taliban fighters.

International Red Crescent aid workers in the southern Afghanistan city of Marjah, Helmand province, reported that US warplanes had dropped leaflets on the area warning people to leave or be killed.

The Taliban has inflicted a huge number of casualties on the US-led occupation forces in Marjah.

Commander of more than 55,000 foreign fighters in Afghanistan US General Stanley McChrystal claimed that the leaflets were directed at Taliban militants.

Hee added that the offensive against the city, which has a population of 80,000, was intended to “re-establish security.”

Red Crescent spokesman Bijan Farnoudi warned that the Afghanistan government did not seem prepared to deal with an exodus of refugees and revealed that medical posts in the province were already recording an increase in the number of patients with bullet or shrapnel wounds.

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Tomgram: Pratap Chatterjee, Destabilizing Pakistan

Posted by Pratap Chatterjee , TomDispatch.com, February 7, 2010.

Almost every day, reports come back from the CIA’s “secret” battlefield in the Pakistani tribal borderlands.  Unmanned Aerial Vehicles — that is, pilot-less drones — shoot missiles (18 of them in a single attack on a tiny village last week) or drop bombs and then the news comes in:  a certain number of al-Qaeda or Taliban leaders or suspected Arab or Uzbek or Afghan “militants” have died.  The numbers are often remarkably precise.  Sometimes they are attributed to U.S. sources, sometimes to the Pakistanis; sometimes, it’s hard to tell where the information comes from.  In the Pakistani press, on the other hand, the numbers that come back are usually of civilian dead.  They, too, tend to be precise.

Don’t let that precision fool you.  Here’s the reality:  There are no reporters on the ground and none of these figures can be taken as accurate.  Let’s just consider the CIA side of things.  Any information that comes from American sources (i.e. the CIA) has to be looked at with great wariness.  As a start, the CIA’s history is one of deception.  There’s no reason to take anything its sources say at face value.  They will report just what they think it’s in their interest to report — and the ongoing “success” of their drone strikes is distinctly in their interest.

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