William Bowles.info

Supressing Evidence, David Miliband and UK Complicity in Torture
By Sarah Gillespie
March 6, 2010 – Last Saturday I went to see Polly Nash and Andy Worthington’s harrowing documentary ‘Outside the Law, Tales from Guantánamo’ at London’s BFI. The film knits together narratives so heart-wrenching I half wish I had not heard them. Yet the camaraderie between the detainees and occasional humorous anecdotes, such as Binyam Mohammed’s false confession that he tried to induce nuclear fission on April 1st, provide a glimpse into the wit, courage and normalcy of the men we are encouraged to perceive as monsters. Nash and Worthington’s film also explores the legal and pragmatic implications of our transatlantic freefall into ethical bankruptcy…

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Iraq and Gordon Brown’s New World Order
Chris Cook
March 6, 2010 – British prime minister, Gordon Brown appeared before that nation’s Chilcot Inquiry yesterday, ostensibly to answer to Britain’s entry into the invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. In a lengthy examination, Mr. Brown was unapologetical for his country’s part in the destruction of Iraq, insisting on several occasions the necessity for the war to oust Hussein depended on the Saddam Hussein’s threat to international stability in the post-Cold War world. The “post-Cold War world” term came up several times, appearing with more than a dozen mentions of an “international community” that could not brook Saddam Hussein’s defiance; that defiance, more than weapons of mass destruction, or the possibility of mushroom clouds blooming over London or New York City, according to Brown, justified the war…

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New Afghan chief in Marjah has criminal record
By DEB RIECHMANN and KIRSTEN GRIESHABER (AP) –
March 6, 2010 — The man chosen to be the fresh face of good Afghan governance in a town just seized from the Taliban has a violent criminal record in Germany, but Western officials said Saturday they are not pushing to oust him. Court records and news reports in Germany show that Abdul Zahir, the man appointed as the new civilian chief in Marjah, served part of a more than four-year prison sentence for stabbing his son in 1998…

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Palestinian prisoner paralyzed from Israeli guard beating, father says
Ma’an News
March 6, 2010– A beating by Israeli prison guards has caused a Palestinian man in Israeli custody to became completely paralyzed, the Wa’ed Society for Detainees said on Saturday. The prisoner, identified as 33-year-old Muhammad Abu Libda from the northern Gaza town of Jabaliya, was in good health when he was detained, his father said, adding that injuries he sustained in the Ashkelon prison were never properly treated. Muhammad’s father said his son participated in a prisoners strike in 2004, and was beaten by guards who accused him of inciting the event…

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Cover-up exposed in post-Katrina police killings
Patrick Martin
March 6, 2010 – A New Orleans police supervisor pled guilty February 24 in a federal court to charges of conspiracy to cover up the police shooting of six unarmed people a few days after Hurricane Katrina struck the city. Two of the victims, Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old mentally disabled man, and James Brissette, 19, were killed, while the other four were seriously wounded, one losing part of her arm. Police lieutenant Michael Lohman, who just retired from the force at age 42, admitted taking the lead in efforts to manufacture evidence that the police shooting was legitimate. He described the events of that day in detail in sworn testimony before US District Judge Ivan Lemelle…

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Canada wanted Afghan prisoners tortured: lawyer
CBC News
March 6, 2010 – Federal government documents on Afghan detainees suggest that Canadian officials intended some prisoners to be tortured in order to gather intelligence, according to a legal expert. If the allegation is true, such actions would constitute a war crime, said University of Ottawa law professor Amir Attaran, who has been digging deep into the issue and told CBC News he has seen uncensored versions of government documents released last year…

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Afghan resistance statement
Kabul Recent Attack, a Clear Reflector of Mujahideen’s Military Victory
Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan
March 6, 2010 – …On the other hand, after the beginning of the operations Mushtarak by the enemy, the Afghan people and the public of the world came to know the true face of the farcical endeavors of Obama and his war-mongering Allies in London, Istanbul and Abu Dhabi for restoration of peace in Afghanistan. Apparently, the Marjah operations were Obama’s peace gift to the residents of Marjah town! In fact, the Mushtarak brutal operations have been launched under the name of establishment of peace in the country. The soldiers’ mobilization and the military hardware preparation took place under the same name of peace. A well-known Afghan proverb which says “ liars do not remember what they say,” aptly applies to the organizers and implementers of these operations.Two weeks before the inception of the military operations Mustarak, the invaders had launched a media war, claiming that they were making every effort to establish peace in Afghanistan. They said that they needed economic assistance from the international community to achieve this goal. When they received some assistance under this phony demand, then they forgot all about restoration of peace in the country. Instead, they used the fund to carry out the destructive operations…

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Mahdi army returns to Baghdad
Minority Sunnis fearful of Shiite group ahead of elections
Associated Press
March 6, 2010 – They’re back, on street corners in places Sunnis had thought were safe again: the Shiite militiamen who drove them from their homes in a bloody campaign that brought Iraq to the brink of civil war. Many Iraqis in areas where anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army once held sway say young men who had worn the militia’s signature black shirts have returned ahead of Sunday’s parliamentary elections, albeit in smaller numbers and a low profile. Many Sunnis in flashpoint neighborhoods say they are lying low or temporarily moving to safer areas as they wait in fear that the elections will spark a new sectarian backlash against them. Omar al-Jubouri, a 26-year-old Sunni university worker, saw some of the same Shiite militiamen who forced him to flee his home five years ago back in his south Baghdad neighborhood…

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Specter of new Intifada hovers over West Bank
From Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem
March 6, 2010 – An intifada-like atmosphere is gradually descending on the West Bank as the hawkish Israeli government headed by Benyamin Netanyahu continued to provoke Palestinians and Muslims in general by encroaching on the Aqsa Mosque. On Friday, 5 March, Muslims in Amman, Jerusalem and several other Palestinian towns demonstrated in protest against a recent Israeli decision to consider two important Muslim shrines in the West Bank as part of a “Jewish heritage list.” In East Jerusalem, known as al-Quds al Sharif or Noble Jerusalem, Israeli occupation troops fired rubber-coated bullets and stun grenades at protesters following the Friday prayers at the Aqsa Mosque…

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Israel Penalizing Nakba Commemoration: One More Step Down the Path of Apartheid
Badil Resource Center
March 6, 2010 – The Israeli parliamentary Law Committee has recently approved a law proposal the (”Nakba bill”) that, if passed by the Knesset, would impose economic sanctions on the organizers of Nakba commemorations. Every year in May, Palestinians and supporters of their right of return commemorate the Nakba of 1948, which marks the single most traumatic and far-reaching event in the long and ongoing process of forced displacement and dispossession of the Palestinian people by the state of Israel. Nakba commemorations are important events in Israel, where some 335,000 Palestinians, citizens of Israel, continue to be denied their right to return to their homes, lands and communities, and are forced to live as internally displaced persons within their own country…

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CONCLUSIONS OF THE RUSSELL TRIBUNAL ON PALESTINE
First session in Barcelona, 1-3 March 2010
RUSSELL TRIBUNAL ON PALESTINE
March 6, 2010 – … Having taken note of the experts’ reports and having heard the witnesses summoned by the latter, the RTP finds that Israel has committed and continues to commit grave breaches of international law against the Palestinian people. In the view of the RTP, Israel violates international law by the conduct described below: .1 by maintaining a form of domination and subjugation over the Palestinians that prevents them from freely determining their political status, Israel violates the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination inasmuch as it is unable to exercise its sovereignty on the territory which belongs to it; this violates the Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples (A/Res. 1514(XV), 14 Dec. 1960) and all UNGA resolutions that have reaffirmed the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination since 1969 (A/Res. 2535 B (XXIV), 10 Dec. 1969, and, inter alia, A/Res. 3236 (XXIX), 22 Nov. 1974, 52/114, 12 Dec. 1997, etc); .2 by occupying Palestinian territories since June 1967 and refusing to leave them, Israel violates the Security Council resolutions that demand its withdrawal from the territories concerned (SC/Res. 242, 22 Nov. 1967; 338, 22 Oct. 1973)…

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My “Relationship” With Tom Campbell
A Wrench in the Israeli Gears
ALISON WEIR
March 6, 2010 – …Even while the United States, and particularly California, is facing a financial crisis, no candidate dares, in all the cuts being proposed in American programs, to reduce the enormous aid we give annually to Israel. Furthermore, this money is given at the beginning of each year, which means, since we are operating at a deficit, that our government pays interest on money we no longer have, while Israel makes interest on it. Such power, which is exerted within virtually every major institution in the US, and yet is invisible to a great many people, was not built overnight. It largely began in the early 1900s with its precursor, political Zionism, an international movement to create a Jewish state in what was then known as Palestine. Begun in Europe, this movement managed fairly early on to enlist such eminent Americans as future Supreme Court Justices Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter…

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Send a letter to David Miliband calling for the return from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer
Andy Worthington
March 6, 2010 – Throughout 2010, former Guantánamo prisoner Omar Deghayes and I are touring the UK, showing the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (directed by Polly Nash and myself). The film focuses on the stories of three British residents — Shaker Aamer, Binyam Mohamed and Omar — and throughout the tour we are encouraging audiences to campaign on behalf of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident still held at Guantánamo, despite being cleared for release in 2007. Omar and I are primarily encouraging people to write letters to foreign secretary David Miliband, urging him to do more to secure Shaker’s return, and I’m extending this campaign to the internet by reproducing below a letter that readers can cut and paste and send to David Miliband…

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IRAQ: Secular Candidates Have Their Best Chance
By Mohammed A. Salih
March 6, 2010 – As Iraqis go to the polls on Sunday, a key question in the minds of many in Iraq and Washington is whether secular candidates can continue their recent rise and possibly come out as winners. For the first time after the war, the seculars can now make a strong showing in the country’s parliamentary elections and emerge as a major force. That is in stark contrast to the last two parliamentary elections, when sectarian and religious groups dominated the scene…

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Gordon Brown washed away like the trash he is
The Common Ills
March 6, 2010 – …Whenever required, Brown has delivered full support for the Iraq invasion and 100 per cent loyalty to Blair in his judgements. He did it on the eve of the vote in the House of Commons that authorised military action. He did it a week before polling day in the last election campaign. And he did it last week. Each time, the formal robustness of the words was qualified by the long silences in between, but the idea that he might give voice to the words that everyone reads into those silences remains a figment of anti-war wish-fulfilment. Thus he said on Friday that it was “the right decision and made for the right reasons”. That is the thing about collective Cabinet responsibility. Even if you want to have a go at Blair for undermining cabinet government, the principle of collective responsibility still applies: if you didn’t resign then, you cannot pick and choose now. Although at one point Brown did try to have it both ways by saying: “We have learnt lessons from the informality of the former procedures.”..

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SAS in Afghanistan suffers worst losses for 60 years
Michael Smith
March 6, 2010 – BRITAIN’S special forces have suffered the worst blow to their fighting strength since the second world war, with 80 members killed or crippled in Afghanistan. Serious injuries have left more than 70 unable to fight, while 12 have been killed. It means the forces have lost about a sixth of their full combat capacity…

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Gordon Brown visits Afghanistan as two soldiers’ deaths announced
Patrick Hennessy in Helmand and Sean Rayment
March 6, 2010 – …The two soldiers, both from 3rd Battalion The Rifles, were killed near Sangin in Helmand Province, the Ministry of Defence said. One died after being shot during a battle with insurgents yesterday. The other was killed in an explosion while on foot patrol on Friday. Lieutenant Colonel David Wakefield, spokesman for Task Force Helmand, said of the latest death: “He was on a deliberate operation against insurgents to the south of Sangin District Centre, near Patrol Base Suffolk, when he was shot…

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West Bank: Weekly Protest Video Round-Up
Palestine Monitor
March 6, 2010 – Palestinian, Israeli and international activists joined demonstrations in villages up and down the West Bank yesterday, marking the Global Week Against racism. A Palestinian boy was seriously wounded during An Nebi Saleh protest. Here is what happened.

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Stop killings and harassment against the revolutionary movement in Honduras!
In Defence of Marxism
March 6, 2010 – We have received the following message from Honduran activists of the National Front of Peoples’ Resistance against the repression of the Porfirio Lobo government. His government was installed through fraudulent elections organised by the coup regime, despite massive abstention of the masses and harsh repression. The repressive attitude of the Lobo government uncovers its pretence of being democratic…

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Settlers assault Palestinian village
Palestinian Information Center
March 6, 2010 — Jewish settlers escorted by Israeli occupation forces (IOF) attacked the village of Irak Burin, south of Nablus city, on Saturday, local sources reported. The sources said that the heavily armed settlers came from the nearby Brakha settlement and attacked their village. They added that IOF soldiers backed the settlers in confrontations with the villagers, who were defending their village.

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Iraqi JAC Not Publishing Reasons for Election Disqualifications
Asharq Al-Awsat
March 6, 2010 – The head of the Iraqi Justice and Accountability Commission, Ahmad Chalabi, said that a UN representative requested that the reasons for disqualifying hundreds of candidates from the Iraqi parliamentary elections remain unpublished until after the elections. Chalabi also revealed that two new lists have been issued by the Commission containing the names of officers from the Ministries of Defense and Interior…

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