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Iraq war: make it impossible to inflict such barbarism again

Seumas Milne
Guardian
Tue, 19 Mar 2013 08:46 UTC
Image
© Jean-Marc Bouju/AP
An Iraqi prisoner of war comforts his son at a center for prisoners of war captured by the US army near Najaf in March 2003.
The US and Britain not only bathed Iraq in blood, they promoted a sectarian war that now threatens the region

If anyone doubted what kind of Iraq has been bequeathed by a decade of US-sponsored occupation and war, today's deadly sectarian bomb attacks around Baghdad against bus queues and markets should have set them straight. Ten years to the day after American and British troops launched an unprovoked attack on a false pretext - and more than a year since the last combat troops were withdrawn - the conflict they unleashed shows no sign of winding down.

Civilians are still being killed at a rate of at least 4,000 a year, and police at about 1,000. As in the days when US and British forces directly ran the country, torture is rampant, thousands are imprisoned without trial, and disappearances and state killings are routine.

Meanwhile power and sewage systems barely function, more than a third of adults are unemployed, state corruption has become an institutionalised kleptocracy and trade unionists are tried for calling strikes and demonstrations (the oil workers' leader is in court in Basra on that charge tomorrow). In recent months, mass protests in Sunni areas have threatened to tip over into violence, or even renewed civil war.

The dwindling band of Iraq war enthusiasts are trying to put their best face on a gruesome record. Some have drifted off into la-la land: Labour MP Tom Harris claims Iraq is now a "relatively stable and relatively inclusive democracy", which is more or less the direct opposite of reality.
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Sheriff

Blue code of silence: New York City cop says payback likely after stop-frisk testimony

Colleen Long and Larry Neumeister
ABC News
Wed, 20 Mar 2013 08:41 UTC
Image
© Associated Press/Seth Wenig
Protesters participate in a rally near the federal courthouse in New York, Monday, March 18, 2013.
A New York City police officer testified Wednesday that he's already been labeled a rat and expects more retaliation from colleagues for testifying at a civil trial that the department routinely enforces quotas on arrests and other enforcement action and punishes those who do not achieve the artificial goals.

Officer Pedro Serrano told a federal judge in Manhattan that his colleagues in the Bronx already dumped out his locker and stuck rodent stickers on the outside, implying he is a rat for testifying.

"I fear that they're going to try and set me up and get me fired," he said.

Serrano, 43, was speaking publicly for the first time at the trial, which is challenging how the New York Police Department makes some street stops. His testimony was given to show a culture within the nation's largest department that revolves more around numbers and less around actual policing.

Lawyers for the four men who sued say officers unfairly target minorities under the controversial tactic known as stop and frisk, sometimes because of pressure to make illegal quotas. Attorneys for the city say the department doesn't profile - officers go where the crime is, and the crime is overwhelmingly in minority neighborhoods. Police officials have said that they do not issue quotas but set some performance goals for officers.
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Dollar

China's new premier to enforce "painful" market restructuring

John Chan
World Socialist Web Site
Wed, 20 Mar 2013 21:47 UTC
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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang
China's newly installed premier, Li Keqiang, emphasised in his first press conference on Sunday that the government is preparing sweeping "free market" economic restructuring measures, including privatisation of state assets and deregulation of the banking and finance sector. The remarks of Li, who was formally appointed the successor of Premier Web Jiabao by the National Peoples Congress (NPC) that concluded on the weekend, underscore the new Chinese Communist Party leadership is committed to an accelerated assault on the jobs, working conditions, and living standards of the working class.

After the NPC, Li took questions from Chinese and foreign journalists for nearly two hours in Beijing's Great Hall of the People. During the press conference, broadcast live on Chinese state television, the new premier mentioned "reform" two dozen times to emphasise the forceful character of his policy. "The reform is about curbing government power; it is a self-imposed revolution," he declared. "It will require real sacrifice and this will be painful and even feel like cutting one's wrist".
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Stormtrooper

North Korea threatens to attack US bases in Okinawa, Guam


RT
Thu, 21 Mar 2013 02:26 UTC
North Korean soldiers
© Reuters / KCNA
North Korean soldiers attend military drills in this picture released by the North's official KCNA news agency in Pyongyang March 20, 2013.
North Korea has threatened to target US airbases in Okinawa and Guam as it issued an air raid alert on Thursday and ordered its military to stand ready, the country's state media reported.

"The United States is advised not to forget that our precision target tools have within their range the Anderson Air Force base on Guam where the B-52 takes off, as well as the Japanese mainland where nuclear powered submarines are deployed and the navy bases on Okinawa," the North Korean command spokesman was quoted as saying by KCNA news agency.

The air raid alert was issued at 9:32 am local time (00:32 am GMT) with military units and civilians told to take cover, Korean Central Television said.

A news report by South Korea's Yonhap news agency suggested that the warning appears to be a part of a military drill, though this has not been confirmed by Pyongyang.
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Bizarro Earth

Fruits of 9/11: Little reaction from human rights watchdogs as Gitmo hunger strike continues


RT
Tue, 19 Mar 2013 17:15 UTC
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After 42 days on hunger strike, though acknowledged by the US military, the protest by prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has so far been largely unacknowledged by international humanitarian organizations.

In a comment to RT the United Nations rights body said it is investigating allegations of mistreatment at America's detention facility in Cuba.

"While aware of some of the allegations of mistreatment of inmates said to have provoked the hunger strike - which include undue interference with the inmates' personal effects -- we are still trying to confirm the details," the spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navy Pillay said.

The Red Cross, which visited the island prison from February 18 to 23, was one of the few international organizations to comment on the situation at the Guantanamo detention camp. It acknowledged that a hunger strike was actually taking place, but so far the organization has only released a statement, stating "The ICRC believes past and current tensions at Guantanamo to be the direct result of the uncertainty faced by detainees."

Military censorship makes it quite difficult to access any information about Gitmo prisoners. It was the attorneys for the detainees that first expressed urgency and grave concern over the life-threatening mass hunger strike that reportedly started in the Guantanamo Bay detention facility on February 6.
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Star of David

Israel's incoming defense minister evaded war crimes arrest, called Palestinians "cancer"

Asa Winstanley
Electronic Intifada
Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:07 UTC
Image
© Wikipedia
Israel’s next “defense” minister poses for a photo with notorious racist blogger Pamela Geller
This is Moshe Ya'alon, the Likud parliamentarian set to become minister of "defense" in Israel's new hard-right coalition government due to be sworn in early next week.

In a 2002 interview with Israeli paper Haaretz, when he was Chief of Staff of the Israeli army, Ya'alon said the "Palestinian threat" was "like cancer" and an "existential threat." He explained that his solution was "applying chemotherapy."

The "chemotherapy," was the massive destruction his forces visited on Palestinian society during the second intifada. Israeli forces infamously fired over a million bullets at Palestinian demonstrators within the first few days of that popular uprising.

Under pressure, Ya'alon later back-pedaled, saying his statements were "inopportune," but that he had been "taken out of context" reported financial publication Globes in Hebrew.
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Handcuffs

Bell officials guilty of defrauding California town, jury finds

Steven Nelson
U.S. News
Wed, 20 Mar 2013 17:01 UTC
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Former city manager Robert Rizzo, former assistant city manager Angela Spaccia, former councilman Victor Bello and ex-mayor Oscar Hernandez appear in court, Sept. 22, 2010. Rizzo and Spaccia have not been put on trial yet.
Small town officials were charged with unlawfully inflating salaries

The 36,000-person town of Bell, Calif., once had a city manager earning twice as much as the U.S. president, despite a quarter of the population living in poverty. Now, five former town council members have been found guilty of a slew of offenses after 18 days of jury deliberations.

Robert Rizzo, the former city manager, was characterized during the trial as the ringleader of the alleged fraud by the defendants, who claimed they were kept in the dark about city business.

Jurors didn't buy the argument, finding the five defendants each guilty of several felony charges of "misappropriation of public funds" for payment received as members of Bell's solid waste and recycling authority. The defendants were each found not guilty of charges relating to their service on the town's public financing authority.

A sixth defendant, Luis Artiga, was found not guilty of 12 charges brought against him. He sobbed in court as the verdicts were read.
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Magnify

Christine Lagarde's flat raided by French police

Kim Willsher
Guardian
Wed, 20 Mar 2013 16:57 UTC
Image
© Eric Vidal/Reuters
Christine Lagarde's lawyer said the police raid and wider investigation would help exonerate the IMF chief from any criminal wrongdoing.
IMF chief's residence searched amid inquiry into her handling of €285m payout to Nicolas Sarkozy supporter Bernard Tapie

Police have searched the Paris home of the head of the International Monetary Fund as part of a fraud investigation centred on a supporter of former president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Christine Lagarde's flat was raided along with that of her office manager and the home of businessman Bernard Tapie, a former politician, actor, singer and television celebrity.

The IMF chief has been the subject of preliminary investigations for "complicity in the embezzlement of public funds", since 2011, when Tapie was awarded €284m of public money in compensation in a financial dispute while she was economy minister.

The search came hours after the French government was rocked by a separate scandal after the budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac was put under criminal investigation amid claims he hid money from the French taxman in a secret Swiss bank account. Lagarde and Cahuzac have vehemently denied any wrongdoing.

Lagarde's lawyer, Yves Repiquet, said Wednesday's searches would vindicate his client. "They will serve to establish the truth and will contribute to the exoneration of my client of any criminal wrongdoing," he told Reuters.
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Vader

NATO brands civilian 'hacktivists' as terrorists and 'legitimate' targets for elimination

Shaun Waterman
The Washington Times
Wed, 20 Mar 2013 16:33 UTC
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Politically motivated civilian hackers, or "hacktivists," who conduct online attacks as part of a nation's cyberwar efforts could lawfully be targeted with deadly force, according to a new study commissioned by NATO's cyberwarfare center.

"An act of direct participation in hostilities by civilians renders them liable to be attacked, by cyber or other legal means," reads the study, "The Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare."

An international group of experts in the laws of warfare wrote the manual, at the invitation of NATO's Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence in Tallinn, Estonia. It is not a statement of official policy by NATO or any of its member governments, but it reflects a consensus view of a large group of legal scholars and practitioners, including several senior military lawyers from NATO countries.

The manual is being launched next week in Washington, and the issue it raises, of hacktivists who join hostilities online, is far from merely hypothetical.
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Laptop

Chutzpah! NATO dictates 'international law' on cyberwarfare

Owen Bowcott
The Guardian
Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:30 UTC
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Handbook drawn up for Nato's Co-operative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence is first attempt to codify how international law applies to state-sponsored online attacks

State-sponsored cyber-attacks must avoid sensitive civilian targets such as hospitals, dams, dykes and nuclear power stations, according to an advisory manual on cyber-warfare written for Nato, which predicts that online attacks could in future trigger full-blown military conflicts.

The first attempt to codify how international law applies to online attacks includes a provision for states to respond with conventional force if aggression through hacking into computer networks by another state results in death or significant damage to property.

The handbook, written by 20 legal experts working in conjunction with the International Committee of the Red Cross and the US Cyber Command, says full-scale wars could be triggered by online attacks on computer systems. It also states that so-called "hacktivists" who participate in online attacks during a war can be legitimate targets even though they are civilians.

Comment: NATO preaching to others about international law; it's like handing over school administration to pedophiles. NATO's decree that it's foul play to 'cyber-attack' hospitals apparently doesn't extend to the real thing:

NATO Missiles Target Libyan Hospital, Kill 50 Children

These same 'cyber' attacks, like 'terrorist' attacks, are generally sourced to the countries that spend most time talking about them:

Korea and US DDoS attacks: The attacking source located in United Kingdom

See also: NSA chief says America is ready to cyberattack

Mashable.com
Thu, 14 Mar 2013
For the first time, NSA chief and head of the U.S. Cyber Command Gen. Keith Alexander admitted America is ready to attack in cyberspace. Never before has a U.S. official acknowledged that the U.S. government is working on or is in possession of malware capable of attacking a foreign nation in a cyber conflict, despite the fact that at least one attack - the famous Stuxnext worm - has been attributed to the U.S.

On Wednesday, in his annual testimony to the House Armed Services Committee, Alexander took the cyberwar rethoric coming out of Washington up a notch. "I would like to be clear that this team, this defend-the-nation team, is not a defensive team," he said. "This is an offensive team."


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