Child’s brain blown out by Blackwater ─ WHY?

Ali Mohammed Hafedh Kinani, son of Mohammed Kinani, “was the youngest person killed by Blackwater forces in the infamous September 16, 2007, Nisour Square massacre” in Baghdad.
From today's Nation magazine and Democracy Now’s exclusive “Blackwater’s Youngest Victim” http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100215/scahill; http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/29/exclusiveblackwaters_youngest_victim_father_of_9
Edited excerpt for Today’s Insight News by Carolyn Bennett

 “Shortly after 9 a.m. Mohammed Kinani was preparing to leave his house for work at his family’s auto parts business in Baghdad when his sister, Jenan, called and asked him to pick up her and her children across town and bring them back to his home for a visit.… Mohammed Kinani's youngest son, 9-year-old Ali Mohammed Hafedh Kinani, asked his father if he could accompany him.

“A few blocks from Nisour Square, they encountered two Iraqi checkpoints and were waved through. As [the family] approached the square, they saw one armored vehicle and then another, with men brandishing machine guns atop each vehicle…. The armored cars swiftly blocked off traffic. 

“One of the gunners held both fists in the air, which Mohammed took as a gesture to stop. ‘Myself and all the cars before and behind me stopped … We followed their orders. I thought they were some sort of unit belonging to the American military, or maybe just a military police unit. Any authority giving you an order to stop, you follow the order.’

“It turns out the men in the armored cars were neither U.S. military nor MPs. They were members of a Blackwater team code-named Raven 23. …

Iraqi Police Officer Ali Khalaf Salman ─
“Iraqi police officer Ali Khalaf Salman approached [a] Kia sedan and it started to slowly drift. The driver had been shot and the car was gliding in neutral toward a Blackwater armored car. … He saw a panicked woman inside the car; she was clutching a young man covered in blood who had been shot in the head. … Salman remembered looking toward the Blackwater shooters [and raised his left arm high in the air to try to signal to the convoy to stop the shooting]. He said he thought the men would cease fire, given that he was a clearly identified police officer. 

Mohammed Kinani (Ali Mohammed Hafedh Kinani’s father) ─
“‘As the officer was waving, the men on the armored cars started shooting at that car, and it wasn’t warning shots; they were shooting as in a battle. It was as though they were in a fighting field. I thought the police officer was killed. It was insane.’ Officer Salman managed to dive out of the way as the bullets rained down. ‘I saw parts of the woman’s head flying in front of me,’ recalled his colleague, Officer Sarhan Thiab. ‘They immediately opened heavy fire at us.’

“The Nisour Square massacre had begun.” 

Mohammed Kinani (Ali Mohammed Hafedh Kinani’s father) ─
“‘One young Iraqi man got out of his car to run, and as he fled, the Blackwater shooter gunned him down and continued firing into his body as it lay on the pavement …

“‘He was on the ground bleeding, and they’re shooting nonstop, and it wasn’t single bullets. The Blackwater shooter … would fire at other Iraqis and cars and then return to pump more bullets into the dead man on the ground. 

“‘He sank in his own blood, and every minute the [Blackwater shooter] would shoot left and right and then go back to shoot the dead man, and I could see that his body would shake with every bullet. He was already dead, but his body was still reacting to the bullets. 

“‘[The shooter] would fire at someone else and then go back to shoot at this dead man. … 

“‘The guy is dead in a pool of blood. Why would you continue shooting him?’…

“[In Mohammed’s vehicle, as the shooting intensified, he yelled for the kids to get down]. … ‘My car was hit many times in different places. All I could hear from my car was the gun shots and the sound of glass shattering’…

“Bullets pierced [his] SUV through the front windshield. A bullet hit the rearview mirror, causing it to whack Mohammed in the face. ‘We imagined that in a few seconds everyone was going to die ─ everyone in the car, my sister and I and our children.…’

“Then the shooting stopped.…
“As the Blackwater forces retreated, Mohammed told Jenan [his sister] he was going to go check on the man who had been repeatedly shot by Blackwater. 

“‘I was deeply impacted by that man they continued shooting at.’ As Mohammed exited his car, his nephew yelled, ‘Uncle, Ali is dead. Ali is dead!’ Jenan began to scream. 

“Mohammed rushed around to Ali’s door and saw that the window was broken. He looked inside and saw his son’s head resting against the door. He opened the door, and Ali slumped toward him. ‘I was standing in shock looking at him as the door opened and his brain fell on the ground between my feet … I looked and his brain was on the ground.’”…

Mohammed Kinani (Ali Mohammed Hafedh Kinani’s father) ─
“‘I wish the U.S. Congress would ask [Blackwater company owner Erik Prince] why they killed my innocent son… Do you think that this child was a threat to your company? This giant company that has the biggest weapons, the heaviest weapons, the planes, and this boy was a threat to them? …

“‘I want Americans to know that

this was a child that died for nothing.’”

Sources and notes
“Blackwater’s Youngest Victim,” by Jeremy Scahill in the Nation magazine, January 28, 2010, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100215/scahill
“… Blackwater’s Youngest Victim: Father of 9 Year-Old Killed in Nisour Square Gives Most Detailed Account of Massacre to Date, Democracy Now exclusive: Report from journalist Jeremy Scahill who has conducted in-depth investigations of the Nisour Squre massacre and of nine-year old Ali Kinani who died after being shot in the head by Blackwater shooters. Scahill filed the exclusive report with Rick Rowley of Big Noise Films. Ali Kinani’s father who has provided the most detailed eyewitness account of the massacre is suing the private military contractor, January 28, 2010,:,” http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/29/exclusiveblackwaters_youngest_victim_father_of_9

Prudence, civic duty, public reasoning rest human future ─ Marquand

Edited excerpt, notes for Today’s Insight News by Carolyn Bennett

 “By rights, this should be a social-democratic moment. The economic crisis of the last two years has shown beyond doubt that the neoliberal economic paradigm, which has dominated academic theory and political practice for nearly thirty years, is – quite simply – wrong. Markets do not behave in the way that neoliberals say they do. They cannot safely be allowed to regulate themselves.  

“It is not the case that government failure is more common than market failure. The rising tide of market-induced growth does not float all boats. Fiscal deficits are not always bad. State management of the economy is necessary – in good times as well as in bad. The unhindered pursuit of individual self interest does not hold the key to prosperity and growth; the assumption that it does has helped to procure the most devastating fall in output and employment for eighty years.…

… The crash has sprung the trap. Market fundamentalism is no longer the monarch of all it surveys. A space for social-democratic discourse – perhaps even for a social-democratic paradigm – should surely have opened up. Yet, so far, the only response has been a deafening silence. 

“The Obama administration in the United States and the Brown government in Britain have signally failed to offer a new social-democratic approach to the new, post-crash world. Both seem bent on returning, as fast as they prudently can, to a cleaned-up version of business as usual…. On the Continental side of the English Channel and the North Sea, the landscape is equally bleak. In the heartland nations of the European Union, the right, not the left, is the chief beneficiary of the crash. [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel, [French President Nicolas] Sarkozy and (astonishingly) even the increasingly battered … [Italian Prime Minister Silvio] Berlusconi dominate their respective political communities.

“The implications are more profound – and a lot more painful – than most social democrats appear to realize. It is an illusion to think that, somewhere at the end of a rainbow, lies a shiny new political vision which would re-vitalize social democracy if only social democrats were clever enough, or eloquent enough – or possibly courageous enough – to discover and articulate it.… 

“This is not a call for political quietism: far from it. We, as a species, will need every ounce of intelligence, skill, courage, determination, forethought and generosity of spirit we possess to avert the catastrophe that looms ahead. But social democrats have no special lien on these. Other traditions – in particular, the conservative tradition of Burkean prudence and the republican tradition of civic duty and public reasoning – have as much to say to the tormented twenty-first century as ours.

“We should stop asking
Whether social democracy has a future

and ask instead

Whether the human race has a future.…”

Sources and notes

Eighteenth century British political leader and philosopher Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was born in Dublin and educated at a Quaker boarding-school and at Trinity College, Dublin. His idea of a “Social Contract” involved generations past, present and future; and urged improvement through political change ─ change evolving over time: To Burke is attributed the line: “A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.” [Britannica and Cambridge Encyclopedia references]
 “A Deafening Silence,” political writer and academic, former Labour MP and chief adviser to the European commission David Marquand, January 19, 2010, Good Society Debate, Social Democracy, David Marquand, http://www.social-europe.eu/2010/01/a-deafening-silence/
Marquand profile, http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_marquand/profile.html

One sided with people & democracy ─ Justice Stevens

From David Hoffman’s “The Greatest Threat to America” and from
Justice John Paul Stevens’ dissent in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
Edited excerpts by Carolyn Bennett

“We are free today substantially but the day will come when our Republic will be an impossibility,”said the fourth president of the United States, James Madison. “Wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few. And when the day comes when the wealth of the nation will be in the hands of the few then we must rely on the best elements in the country to readjust the laws of the nation to the changed conditions.”

Some of the best elements in America have tried to readjust laws to minimize the potential for corporations to use their vast financial resources to purchase political influence.  Unfortunately, Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, Alito and Thomas have ensured that government of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the corporation will cause government of the people, by the people and for the people to perish from the earth. Pravda’s legal editor David Hoffman today was building his case against the U.S. Supreme Court.

Current justices Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas and former Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Chief Justice William Hubbs Rehnquist “bloodied their hands … when they supported the coup of 2000 in the case of Bush v. Gore,” he said. However, dissatisfied with partial destruction of democracy wrought by Bush v. Gore, Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas joined Alito and Roberts to obliterate democracy ─ and the Bill of Rights ─ in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

The ruling last week “strikes down laws that once limited the amount of money corporations could contribute to political campaigns. Now corporations are free to buy and sell politicians like trading cards; and since corporations control the bulk of the ‘mainstream’ media, they can also ensure that any political messages contrary to their perceived interests are silenced. Freedom now only belongs to those [entities] wealthy enough to afford it. Politicians genuinely devoted to serving the public interest will either succumb to the whims of “their corporate masters” or find limitless amounts of money bolstering their political opponents.

In much stronger language, Hoffman accused these men of being at counter purposes to “America’s democracy and its fundamental freedoms.” They “operate in shadowy black disguises,” he said. They are the “conservative bloc” of the United States Supreme Court: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., associate justices Samuel A Alito Jr., Anthony McLeod Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas.

Hoffman directs powerful punches but we need not give up yet on this estate ─ so long as there is at least one powerful dissenter; and we have that. Not all members of the “Roberts” court succumbed to the lopsided majority. 

Justice John Paul Stevens’ dissent in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission should not go without notice because in that dissent he upholds the prerogatives of the Congress, the genius of the People, the distinction between corporations and people, and the purpose, and for whom, was written and ratified First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In affirming the judgment of the (lower) District Court, this is part of what Justice Stevens said in his dissent ─Hillary at any time other than the 30 days before the last primary election. Neither Citizens United’s nor any other corporation’s speech has been ‘banned’… All that the parties dispute is whether Citizens United had a right to use the funds in its general treasury to pay for broadcasts during the 30-day period.…

“The real issue, in this case, concerns how, not if, the appellant may finance its electioneering. Citizens United is a wealthy nonprofit corporation that runs a political action committee (PAC) with millions of dollars in assets. Under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), it could have used those assets to televise and promote Hillary: The Movie wherever and whenever it wanted to. It also could have spent unrestricted sums to broadcast

“The majority cavalierly ignores Congress’ factual findings and its constitutional judgment: It acknowledges the validity of the interest in preventing corruption, but it effectively discounts the value of that interest to zero. This is quite different from conscientious policing for impermissibly anticompetitive motive or effect in a sensitive First Amendment context. It is the denial of Congress’ authority to regulate corporate spending on elections.…

“The fact that corporations are different from human beings might seem to need no elaboration, except that the majority opinion almost completely elides it [omits it, suppresses it, leaves it out of consideration]. Austin set forth some of the basic differences.

“Unlike natural persons, corporations have ‘limited liability’ for their owners and managers, ‘perpetual life,’ separation of ownership and control, ‘and favorable treatment of the accumulation and distribution of assets . . . that enhance their ability to attract capital and to deploy their resources in ways that maximize the return on their shareholders’ investments.’

“Unlike voters in U. S. elections, corporations may be foreign controlled. Unlike other interest groups, business corporations have been ‘effectively delegated responsibility for ensuring society’s economic welfare’; they inescapably structure the life of every citizen. “‘[T]he resources in the treasury of a business corporation,’” furthermore, “‘are not an indication of popular support for the corporation’s political ideas.’” …

“‘They reflect instead the economically motivated decisions of investors and customers. The availability of these resources may make a corporation a formidable political presence, even though the power of the corporation may be no reflection of the power of its ideas.’”

“It might also be added that corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their ‘personhood’ often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.

“These basic points help explain why corporate electioneering is not only more likely to impair compelling governmental interests, but also why restrictions on that electioneering are less likely to encroach upon First Amendment freedoms. One fundamental concern of the First Amendment is to “protec[t] the individual’s interest in self-expression.

 “In addition to this immediate drowning out of noncorporate voices, there may be deleterious effects that follow soon thereafter. Corporate ‘domination’ of electioneering … can generate the impression that corporations dominate our democracy. When citizens turn on their televisions and radios before an election, and hear only corporate electioneering, they may lose faith in their capacity, as citizens, to influence public policy. A Government captured by corporate interests, they may come to believe, will be neither responsive to their needs nor willing to give their views a fair hearing. The predictable result is cynicism and disenchantment: an increased perception that large spenders ‘call the tune’ and a reduced ‘willingness of voters to take part in democratic governance.’…

 “Politicians who fear that a certain corporation can make or break their reelection chances may be cowed into silence about that corporation. On a variety of levels, unregulated corporate electioneering might diminish the ability of citizens to ‘hold officials accountable to the people … and disserve the goal of a public debate that is ‘uninhibited, robust, and wide-open’. … [A] Legislature is entitled to credit these concerns and to take tailored measures in response.

’“The majority’s unwillingness to distinguish between corporations and humans similarly blinds it to the possibility that corporations’ ‘war chests’ and their special may translate into special advantages in the market for legislation.

“When large numbers of citizens have a common stake in a measure that is under consideration, it may be very difficult for them to coordinate resources on behalf of their position. The corporate form, by contrast, ‘provides a simple way to channel rents to only those who have paid their dues, as it were. If you do not own stock, you do not benefit from the larger dividends or appreciation in the stock price caused by the passage of private interest legislation.’ … Corporations, that is, are uniquely equipped to seek laws that favor their owners, not simply because they have a lot of money but because of their legal and organizational structure. Remove all restrictions on their electioneering, and the door may be opened to a type of rent seeking that is ‘far more destructive’ than what noncorporations are capable of. It is for reasons such as these that our campaign finance jurisprudence has long appreciated that the ‘differing structures and purposes’ of different entities ‘may require different forms of regulation in order to protect the integrity of the electoral process.

“The Court’s facile depiction of corporate electioneering assumes away all of these complexities. Our colleagues ridicule the idea of regulating expenditures based on ‘nothing more’ than a fear that corporations have a special ‘ability to persuade,’ as if corporations were our society’s ablest debaters and viewpoint-neutral laws such as §203 were created to suppress their best arguments. In their haste to knock down yet another straw man, our colleagues simply ignore the fundamental concerns of the Austin Court and the legislatures that have passed laws like §203: to safeguard the integrity, competitiveness, and democratic responsiveness of the electoral process. All of the majority’s theoretical arguments turn on a proposition with undeniable surface appeal but little grounding in evidence or experience, ‘that there is no such thing as too much speech’…

“Their conclusion that the societal interest in avoiding corruption and the appearance of corruption does not provide an adequate justification for regulating corporate expenditures on candidate elections relies on an incorrect description of that interest, along with a failure to acknowledge the relevance of established facts and the considered judgments of state and federal legislatures over many decades.

“In a democratic society, the longstanding consensus on the need to limit corporate campaign spending should outweigh the wooden application of judge-made rules. The majority’s rejection of this principle ‘elevate[s] corporations to a level of deference which has not been seen at least since the days when substantive due process was regularly used to invalidate regulatory legislation thought to unfairly impinge upon established economic interests.’ … At bottom, the Court’s opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.”

Sources and notes
“The Greatest Threat to America” (David R. Hoffman, Legal Editor of Pravda.Ru), January 27, 2010, http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/111884-greatest_threat-0 © 1999-2009. «PRAVDA.Ru». When reproducing our materials in whole or in part, hyperlink to PRAVDA.Ru should be made. The opinions and views of the authors do not always coincide with the point of view of PRAVDA.Ru's editors.
CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTIONCOMMISSION, APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, No. 08–205. Argued March 24, 2009—Reargued September 9, 2009––Decided January 21, 2010,
Cite as: 558 U. S. ____ (2010) Opinion of STEVENS, J. , SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES , No. 08–205, CITIZENS UNITED, APPELLANT v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION, ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA , [January 21, 2010] , JUSTICE STEVENS, with whom JUSTICE GINSBURG, JUSTICE BREYER, and JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR join, concurring in part and dissenting in part. http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf

U.S. cuts off nose to spite face

What flamethrowers omit: American ‘values’ at war with America’s interests ─ Steven Hill’s Europe/U.S. values comparisons in Europe’s Promise: Why the European Way is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age are instructive.
Edited excerpts by Carolyn Bennett

Europe has about thirty cities with populations exceeding a million. The United States has ten cities with populations exceeding a million people. 

Europe’s political and economic integration has grown steadily (though always subject to the recurring ups and downs of the economic cycle), increasing people’s personal wealth and security year after year. At the same time it has made fair and more equal distribution of that wealth a hallmark of its raison d’être. An American looking at the comprehensive and universal nature of the supports enjoyed by Europeans sees a strange wonder to behold.

Europeans on average are enjoying the highest of living standards, the most economic security: health care for all, paid parental leave (following the birth of a child), affordable childcare, monthly kiddie stipends, paid sick leave, free or inexpensive university education, ample retirement security, supportive elderly care, generous unemployment compensation, vocational training, efficient mass transportation, affordable housing, and more. They have an average of five weeks of paid vacation (compared with two for Americans) and a shorter workweek, plus a plethora of holidays thrown in. In some European countries, workers on average work per week a full day less than Americans do; yet enjoy the same standard of living.

Flame-throwing ‘Socialism,’‘welfare’ charges shout down attempts to shore up U.S. society and its people
Instead of figuring out an American version of these comprehensive supports for individuals and families, U.S. critics and Euro skeptics have dismissed Europe’s way as a ‘welfare state’ and ‘creeping socialism.’ … More accurately, Europe can be described as a ‘workfare support state’ rather than a welfare state.

(European-style workfare should not be confused with the stigmatized American workfare; it has a different meaning from that in the United States and is grounded in a different philosophy. American workfare is targeted exclusively at the poor and government welfare recipients, making it politically vulnerable. Europe’s workfare support system, however, is for everybody ─ middle class, rich, poor; its application is universal.) Europe’s system is part of the overall capitalist matrix in which Europe’s powerful economic engine produces the wealth needed to underwrite its comprehensive workfare supports; which, in turn, maintain a healthy and productive workforce that keeps the economy humming, like a well-tuned Swiss clock.

Europe’s workfare system has been grossly mischaracterized by Americans enthrall to a fundamentalist free market ideology. U.S. politicians are known for invoking the importance of ‘family values’ and a ‘work hard-get ahead’ creed. Indeed the United States is known as the inventor of the middle class, the attractive ideal that a good life is within reach for the vast majority of people. … [I]f America invented the middle class, Europeans have taken that good idea and run with it one giant step further. They have figured out how to set the middle class on a more solid and secure footing and put some meat on the bones of their family values.

Europe shores up social infrastructure
 Europeans have established various vehicles to ensure their health, productivity, and quality of life, not only in the present, but also in the future. Properly understood, these workfare supports are a necessary part of infrastructure investment, just like the Obama administration’s fiscal stimulus spending on physical infrastructure such as bridges and roads, or spending on energy efficiency. However, ‘social infrastructure’ invests in the most precious resource of all ─ people ─ even as it helps create jobs and stimulates consumer spending, which are two major components of a modern economy.

While Europe and the United States both rely on a powerful capitalist engine as the core of their economies, the presence of a more robust social infrastructure is the reason that Europe has a higher level of economic security for its people than the United States has with its deregulated capitalism. This is Europe’s way of ensuring one of America’s chief principles ─ ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ ─ with results that are vastly different from America’s ‘on your own’ society.

America’ s Militarism deepens war against its own
Following the fall of the Soviet bloc in the late 1980s, bipartisan policy in the United States continued funding huge military budgets ─ budgets three times larger than the combined budgets of all conceivable enemies.

U.S. military expenditures currently eat up more than 4 percent of America’s gross domestic product compared with Europe’s less than 2 percent of GDP spent on its military. The outlay works out to well over 20 percent of the U.S. federal government budget ─ not including huge expenditures on the Department of Homeland Security, the National Security Agency, the CIA, the Veterans Administration, or parts of NASA and the Department of Energy that are engaged in military-related activities. More than either Social Security outlays or the costs of Medicare and Medicaid combined.

Creating a European-like system of universal health care that includes the 47 million uninsured Americans would cost an additional $100 to $150 billion annually, only a fraction of one year’s expenditures on the Iraq war. Creating European-like universal childcare would cost $35 billion annually; the entire annual budget for the United Nations is only $16 billion. The amount spent by the U.S. government on research and development for alternative energy in 2006 was only $4 billion, while the amount spent on R&D for new weapons was $76 billion.


U.S. militarism has long been a core part of the American Way, doing triple duty as a formidable foreign policy tool, a powerful stimulus to the economy, and a usurper of tax dollars that could be spent on other budget priorities. ‘Our problems are those of a very rich country which has become accustomed over the years to defense budgets that are actually jobs programs and also a major source of pork for the use of politicians in their reelection campaigns’ [says prominent military critic Professor Chalmers Johnson].

This gargantuan difference in military spending is one of the greatest gaps between the American Way and the European Way. It is in some ways the elephant in the living room, which overshadows most other aspects of the transatlantic relationship.

The American Way of big-stick diplomacy, which has been practiced with varying degrees of success since the late nineteenth century, has perhaps overstretched its usefulness. Not only has it been marginally successful of late, it also is extremely expensive.

The European Union’s way of foreign policy uses carrots instead of a big stick. It succeeds not because of coercion but because it is attractive to countries wishing to join the E.U. or trade with it, and receive investment and foreign aid. Europe has become the world’s largest bilateral aid donor, providing more than twice as much aid to poor countries as the United States. The E.U’s velvet diplomacy also costs a lot less money, allowing those resources to be steered instead into social spending and workfare supports that better support families and individuals.

Sources and notes
Steven Hill is the author of Europe’s Promise: Why the European Way is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age (http://www.europespromise.org/). Hill is a political writer and director of the Political Reform Program at the New America Foundation, “which seeks to develop the best opportunities for reform, educate opinion leaders and the public about electoral alternatives, and encourage the formation of a broad-based coalition” http://www.newamerica.net/people/steven_hill See also http://www.europespromise.org/
“Letters to Washington” Pacifica Network’s Mitch Jesserich interviewed Steven Hill on the political differences between Europe and the U.S, January 25, 2010, http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/58077
“Letters to Washington” looks at national politics from a progressive perspective

Schechter Challenges ‘Progressives’

Excerpted with minor editing by Carolyn Bennett
The challenge now is not to walk down memory lane but to strategize about building the future in an imperfect world.

 Perhaps the disillusion now building on the left will lead to direct challenges to the ‘Obama style and approach’. On the other hand, it could lead to fatalism and a dropping out of politics by people previously mesmerized by presidential candidate Barack Obama’s charisma; and naïve about how politics really works. If that happens, the ‘right’ will dominate the discourse and try to retake Congress. We have seen this before ─ 36th President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s forsaking butter for guns; 42nd President William Jefferson Clinton’s taking refuge in the corporate centre.

Liberals have not invested in media institutions to reach the mass audience. Neither have they rallied to the realization that the United States needs channels like Al Jazeera to build larger-world awareness through mass media where parochialism and propaganda are rife.

How can 'progressives' reenergize an outside-in strategy? How can they/we start re-framing issues, building a base and then mobilizing it? Will there be a return to the streets or more co-optation by the illusions of power in the suites?

'Progressives' need a new strategy

To remake the Democratic Party into something more democratic

To resist the power of big money in politics

To readopt a populist message along economic lines

To champion millions out of work before they become millions out of hope.

Danny Schechter (‘The News Dissector’) is a television producer, independent filmmaker, blogger, and media critic who writes and lectures about the media in the United States and worldwide. Schechter is a graduate of Cornell University and the London School of Economics. He was a Neiman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University and an adjunct professor with Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. In the 1960s, he was a civil rights worker and communications director of the Northern Student Movement and worked as a community organizer in a War on Poverty program. His media experience is considerable and includes work at Boston radio station WBCN (the start of his ‘News Dissector’ production), producer for the ABC newsmagazine 20/20 receiving two Emmy Awards, producer with CNN’s start-up staff in Atlanta. Schechter has reported from 49 countries.

Sources and notes

“Obama: One year on - Has Obama become Bush II?” views of Danny Schechter were posted at Al Jazeera English by News dissector Danny Schechter (editor of Mediachannel.org, author of The Crime of Our Time on the financial crisis as a crime story; See also plunderthecrimeofourtime.com; dissector@mediachannel.org. Views of the author “do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.”

“Has Obama become Bush II?” (Danny Schechter), January 20, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/obamaoneyearon/2009/12/2009123012137152985.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Schechter

U.S./Corp Extremism, Proselytizing undermining law

In the name of men, their gods and guns comes made-in-the-USA violent extremism. A military company’s Bible weaponry infiltrates U.S. foreign policy and practice, undermines domestic law.
Re-reporting, commentary by Carolyn Bennett

This is what happens when a constitutionally civilian government turns over governance of the United States of America to militarists, military contractors, and religious Bible thumbing bigots.

“We believe that America is great when its people are good,” preaches the website of a Bible-verses-on-killer weapons company founded by a native South African in Michigan USA. “This goodness has been based on biblical standards throughout our history and we will strive to follow those morals,” says this proselytizer embedded in the U.S. military.

The United States Government, according to statements by the Marine Corps (ref ABC News' breaking story), has handed out to gunsight maker Trijicon Inc “a $660 million” multi-year contract to make “800,000 units” of their Bible-imprinted products. Under contracts with the U.S. army and Marine Corps, Trijicon gun sights have been affixed to “weapons used during the training of Afghan and Iraqi soldiers.”

For more than two decades, Trijicon, effectively established within U. S. foreign policy and practice, has pulled down hundreds of millions of dollars from U.S. taxpayers and their government. The U.S. government has in effect promoted religion and religious bigots and proselytizers through the private military industry. All the while United States and other governments (New Zealand, Britain) were using these instruments of war (Trijicon’s Advanced Combat Optical Gun sights), they were maintaining deniability.

Denials abound.
New Zealand’s defense ministry, with orders for 260 gun sights since 2004, says, “We were unaware of it [Bible verse-imprinted weapons] and we’re unhappy that the manufacturer didn’t give us any indication that these were on there.”
Britain’s defense ministry, with orders for 400 of the gun sights, says they “had not been aware of the significance of the inscriptions.”
 NATO Training Command in Afghanistan Colonel Gregory Breazile tells Al Jazeera, “We were told about it last night [Wednesday, January 20] and when we looked into it we noticed it was true.… We gave the Afghan military these weapons. … We are very disappointed.
Pentagon representative Commander Darryn James tells Agence France Presse the religious imprints, if found to exist, are “clearly inappropriate and we are looking into possible remedies.”

These Bible-imprinted guns “violate the basic ideals and values our country was founded upon,” said Haris Tarin, a representative of the U.S.-based Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). However, the situation is worse than that. It is added evidence of an insidious erosion of the U.S. Constitution and international laws; and the dangerous obliviousness of government officials and non-government Americans to this erosion of rights under law and the overthrow of their civilian form of government enshrined in law.

Tarin went on to say that this subliminal proselytizing “provides propaganda ammo to extremists who claim the existence of a U.S. ‘Crusader war against Islam’”

More than that: this infraction ─  this State-religion-corporation collusion evidenced in this latest exposed global private/religious enterprise and the U.S. government ─  is itself an act of violent “extremism.”

Attributing wire services, Al Jazeera reports today,“The Advanced Combat Optical Gun sight rifle sights used by New Zealand troops carries references to Bible verses that appear in raised lettering at the end of the sight stock number. Markings include ‘JN8:12’ (referencing a King James Bible version of John 8:12: ‘Then spake [spoke] Jesus again unto them saying ‘I am the light of the world: he that followeth [follows] me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.’

“The Trijicon Reflex sight is stamped with 2COR4:6 (referencing a King James Bible version of Corinthians text ‘For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’”

The deep, circular harm here is not merely the incitement of other sects’ violence. It is that the violent enterprise that provokes and forecasts retaliation, and labels “extremists,” uses the pretext of others’ violence to get more contracts to destroy that which the original enterprise has provoked. This is another instance of rabid capitalism at its most violent in both the incitement of world violence and the overthrow of the U.S. Government and its constitutional principles and institutions.

This is what happens when Government (through elected officials sworn to uphold the Constitution) relinquishes its civilian character and its fundamental responsibility to the welfare of the people.

Sources and notes
“Bible codes in Afghan army guns.” Al Jazeera January 21, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/01/20101211239216652.html
Trijicon , Inc., 49385 Shafer Avenue, P.O. Box 930059, Wixom, Michigan 48393, http://www.zoominfo.com/Search/CompanyDetail.aspx?CompanyID=38896082&cs=QGCUYHSkw&pc=indeed
Wixom, Michigan, http://www.city-data.com/city/Wixom-Michigan.html#ixzz0dHM76jad
“Gunmaker criticized for Biblical references on military rifles (Associated Press), January 20, 2010, http://www.mlive.com/news/us-world/index.ssf/2010/01/michigan_defense_contractor_ha.html

UNCHAIN HAITI─ Jubilee USA

Do what is right and long overdue:
Cancel Debt, Rebuild, Welcome Displaced
Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett
Jubilee USA is calling for a clean break with oppressive, poverty-making foreign relations with Haiti: unconditional support, freedom, independence for the country and its people.

 “Provide massive assistance for relief and reconstruction in the form of grants, not loans.”

It is becoming clear that the earthquake has caused unimaginable destruction in Haiti. Already impoverished and struggling, it will be nearly impossible for Haiti to get back on its feet without massive humanitarian and reconstruction assistance. This should come as grants, not loans, so that Haiti does not get again saddled with large debts through no fault of its own. Grant assistance should be provided without harmful economic policy conditions, such as requirements for privatization of services. The new IMF proposal for a $100 million loan to Haiti is inappropriate and disaster relief assistance should come as grants rather than loans. As the largest shareholder on the IMF’s Board, the US government should indicate its support for grant rather than loan support for Haiti.

“Cancel the rest of Haiti’s debt.”

While two-thirds of Haiti’s debt ($1.2 billion) was cancelled in June 2009 with the support of the international community, the country still has $641 million in debt on its books. This is because debt relief agreements from the IMF and other creditors only covered debts acquired up until 2004. New loans Haiti has received since then have been adding to its debt. Half of this total of $641 million is owed to the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB) and the IMF with the other half owed to other countries including Venezuela and Taiwan. In 2010, Haiti is projected to pay around $10 million to the IMF and IDB - and this is money Haiti simply can't pay now that this tragic earthquake has hit.

“Provide Temporary Protective Status for Haitians Living in the U.S.”

Leading Haiti advocates are calling on the U.S. to end the deportation of Haitian immigrants, release those currently held in detention centers pending deportation, and grant Temporary Protected Status for the 30,000 Haitians currently under threat of deportation. Temporary protected status (TPS) is granted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to eligible nationals of countries that cannot safely return to their homelands because of armed conflict, environmental disaster, or other extraordinary and temporary conditions. Haiti clearly fits this description.

Jubilee USA Network is an alliance of more than 75 religious denominations and faith communities, human rights, environmental, labor, and community groups working for the definitive cancellation of crushing debts to fight poverty and injustice in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.


Making its case for debt relief more broadly in impoverished countries, Jubilee USA reports, “In the world’s most impoverished nations, the majority of the populations do not have access to clean water, adequate housing or basic health care. These countries are paying debt service to wealthy nations and institutions at the expense of providing these basic services to their citizens. The United Nations Development Program estimated in 2003 that 30,000 children die each day due to preventable diseases. Debt service payments take resources that impoverished countries could use to cure preventable diseases. Debt cancellation frees up resources to reverse this devastating reality.…

“If we seek only to challenge surface (albeit far-reaching) aspects of the debt crisis, we will have only partly met our end: there will still exist bonds, still exist slavery, still exist a debt. Our challenge, then, must be expanded to address the ways and reasons for which things are done by global authorities like the G7, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank.

“We must clarify and heighten our call for the righting of relationships and expand our concept of justice.”

Sources and notes
“Debt for Disaster? Jubilee USA Dismayed by IMF Proposal for $100 Million Loan to Haiti ─ Network Urges Obama Administration to Support Massive Grants, Expanded Debt Relief” Jubilee USA Network, January 15, 2010, http://www.jubileeusa.org/
Jubilee USA Network, 212 East Capitol Street NE, Washington DC 20003, www.jubileeusa.org web coord(at)jubileeusa.org email
http://www.jubileeusa.org/de/about-us/what-we-believe.html
http://www.jubileeusa.org/press/press-item/article/debt-for-disaster-jubilee-usa-dismayed-by-imf-proposal-for-100-million-loan-to-haiti.html?tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=170&cHash=a050ee1c1d
http://www.jubileeusa.org/truth-about-debt/why-drop-the-debt.html
http://www.jubileeusa.org/about-us/diversity.html

U.S. OCCUPATION knows no bounds

Excerpts, minor editing by Carolyn Bennett
Press TV and Euranet report France charging Washington with militarily occupying Haiti

France is demanding the United Nations investigate and clarify the dominant U.S. role in Haiti, after Washington deployed more than 10,000 troops to Haiti and U.S. 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers, having taken control of the main airport at Port-au-Prince on Friday, turned back a French aid plane carrying a field hospital from the main airport in the Haitian capital. Among those barred entry were Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders).

France’s Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet is reported saying, “This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti.” The United States has been accused in the past of interfering in Haiti’s internal affairs.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton under whose leadership the U.S. has been accused of  “not being quick enough to send aid" to Haiti has denied the charges of "occupation.”

Also in today’s news
U.S. drone attack kills six people in northwestern Pakistan
Two U.S. troops die in alleged roadside blast in south Afghanistan.
Malaysia summons U.S. ambassador over ‘misleading’ travel alert.
Iran’s president blames capitalism and the U.S. for global air pollution.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=116503§ionid=351020706

NEW PROGRESSIVE Vision Forward — Bennett

War or occupation can never be “progressive.” Progress is evolutionary forward movement taking from the best of ideas informing action, improving upon what is, what was, what ideals dream. Progressivism to me rises out of a sense of Society, a rational humanist equality, a cooperative, nonviolent consciousness transcending tribe and narrow individualism, a sense of domestic and global community.

Call for a new model of “liberalist” progressivism
By Carolyn Bennett

 “Progressives” steeped in Nostalgia are baffling to me. They aren’t progressives at all. It would seem to me that the terms nostalgia and progressive are terms in conflict or contradiction: One looks forward, the other backward.

Euphemistically replacing a disgraced or disappointing “liberalism”— as in old liberal, new liberal, crazed neo-liberal capitalist— progressivism nevertheless falls under the spell of regress. Instead of taking the best of the past and pushing forward with new vision into a better future, too many political “progressives” (at least those with microphones and media  mass marketing texts) have fixated nostalgically on dead men such as Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Kennedy and their times. They have conveniently ignored or, inadequately educated, are truly ignorant of the reality of those eras; and that whatever progress those men ushered in, willingly or unwillingly, was in no way the end of sorely needed continuous movement forward.

A pitiful example of this offensive “longing” occurred during debates that weren’t debates in a seemingly endless (and in every respect wasteful) 2008 U.S. presidential campaign. National Public Radio and its listeners that summer “academically” longed for and aired recitations from debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. In this orgy of nostalgia and willful ignorance, they skirted Lincoln’s stated belief in his “racial superiority.” In omitting Lincoln’s shortcomings, they shored up his nineteenth century continuance of a precedent of bigotry, lent it credibility, and reinforced it in the twenty-first century. This is backwardness. Time and again in “intellectual”— sometimes called “liberal” or “progressive”— media there is this pathetic often subliminal regress swallowed whole by mass media subscribers.

Another sad example is radio talkers’ “taking back America.” I often wonder who are the take-backers and what specifically are they proposing to take back. From whom for whom; what piece, in what precise period in history are they proposing to take back? What America or Whose America? Since this history-transcending call from talkers Left, Right and Center fails the test of solidarity in that it fails to account for significant numbers of people or even accuracy in history, it is nothingness. The idea of “taking back” is a regressive notion, not a progressive one—and it often suggests violence.

“Progressive” to me is neither “past” nor carved in stone. It is solid and fluid forward movement. It is “constructive”: building instead of tearing down, benefitting the world’s masses, consisting in evolutionary change. War or occupation could never be “progressive.” Progress as evolutionary forward movement takes from the best of ideas informing action and improves upon what is, what was, what ideals dream. Progressive to me is rational and humanist in a collective, cooperative and societal sense.
 With all due respect to Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and others (including social activist Dr. Martin Luther King ); though they might be said to have risen in their day to some of the challenges, they were not the end-all and be-all of progress for human rights and society. Rights of people under the U.S. Constitution (and in International Law), for example, must be further extended and enforced; neither reduced nor limited to rights and guarantees enjoyed in the times of Madison, Lincoln or any other presidents or social or political leaders. International laws, the Declaration of Human Rights must be enforceable and consistently adhered to; holding all nations and people, all governments, heads of state, corporate entities and sectarian groups and regimes to these standards of law and human principles.

Violence is the antithesis of progress. Whether in the form of war or conflicts with or against people, the overthrow of governments or institutions, or war on poppy plants and coca leaves—violence is the main offender, the stop to progress. Violence among or within nations or families is not only repressive, it is regressive. If development for developing nations is the goal, violence is its antithesis. If eradication of poverty is the goal, violence is the creation and perpetuation of poverty. Violence opposes progress. Whether the death penalty or war, overthrow or disestablishment of institutions, failing states, violence denies human possibility at every level: intellectual, political, societal, structural or infrastructural. This violence has permeated Washington’s domestic and international policies. Violence is the way of America that causes and epitomizes BREAKDOWN. The heart of BREAKDOWN is violence.

Violence is the driving force of BREAKDOWN. It is violence without conscience, without consciousness of or caring for society. It begins in urban spaces and gated places (fear behind walls) and crisscrosses the globe. It is the violence of brain-breaking football, police tasering clubs, terrorist-hunting Gestapo on shoot-to-kill orders their guns leveled and discharged at point-blank range into the backs of travelers boarding trains. It is abduction and transport; holding without charge or trial. It is tyranny and torture.

It is a violence fixed (made permanent) in international policies of powerful nations (led, funded and endorsed by the USA) that lawlessly encamps, occupies, terrifies, rapes, robs, wounds, enslaves and slaughters millions of human beings. It is International violence using sanctions, arms trafficking, direct mercenaries and militaries and weaponry (cluster bombs and mines, drones and missiles) shutting down every possible route of escape by air, sea and land; and forcing nations and peoples into poverty, piracy and corruption. This is a colonizing violence in a post-colonial, post-Cold War era in which huge multitudes are wounded and dying (physically, intellectually, emotionally, psychologically) because powerfully concentrated corporate, State, sectarian (religious) and nonsectarian institutions are taking more than their share; and through protracted violence and conflicts, they are maintaining power over to continue taking more than their share of the planet’s human and material resources. This is violence void of conscience or consciousness of society.

As it kills children and puts down all claims to sovereignty, all protests and resistance by groups and heads of state and sects, this violence is cavalier and callous, offensive yet soaked in contrived pretext (mendacity) of “defensive,” “security-concerned” preemption. This is a violence that is justified in the name of other violence often depicted by a man-made image of a star or a wooden or jeweled cross on which hangs a martyr or villain depending on who created or recreated the iconic image. This is violence in obedience to, worship and praise of self: a man-made icon together with doctrinal dicta and stories attributed to the icon for the sole purpose of gaining and sustaining power over all that makes up the universe.

Nostalgia supports this regression as “wistful or excessively sentimental yearning to return to mythical “good old days.” While I understand that the work of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy may have moved America, it is also indisputable that their work was flawed and incomplete (the same can be said of social activist Martin Luther King’s era and effort). Though these icons have been lauded in mass-marketed history books and among the masses, these men are, nevertheless, men, in the case of presidents, who perpetrated, failed to outlaw, and presided over violence and human rights abuses including (but not limited to) slavery and murder, displacement of indigenous people, unconstitutional internment, war, invasion and occupation; and, against millions of people, denial of justice and liberty in law.

Why do you think we are where we are today? Presidents and their allies have persisted in following regressive precedent.

The Constitution of the United States of America, as fine a document as it may be, was written and ratified by people who had enslaved other people and, emboldened by church, state and prevailing powers, continued to enslave these people based on a false notion enforced by raw power: that these “others” were somehow “less than human” (inherently inferior). Think of women’s rights, Native Americans, indigenous peoples of Haiti and southwest Asia. Regressive (not progressive) generations have attempted and often succeeded in overturning the best parts of an enlightened Constitution.

Insidiously regressive movements continue to enslave (human traffic, imprison) and demonize women, homosexuals, Muslims (Christians, Jews, Bahais, atheists) and other people whose appearance, choices or practices appear at any given time to be different or dissimilar to a variety of state, sectarian, nonsectarian, corporate agencies and individuals holding or abusing power. These notions and actions (e.g., international colonizing and plunder, human trafficking and domestic slavery, violence against and occupation of adherents to Islam) have persisted through the twentieth into the twenty-first century.

The true progressive must overcome and reject the mentally defective, sentimental state of regress.

Evolving for the better, the progressive harnesses and spearheads forward movement, pushes farther forward, and hands succeeding generations a new model of “liberalist” progressivism ─ an open-minded, partnered in equality, generously activist believing in progress and humankind’s essential goodness, an individual autonomy within ─ not apart from ─ society, a deep and abiding commitment to political and civil liberties progressivism.

Whatever the content of a new vision and catalyst for U-turn, it must surely emanate from a substantively, critically new progressivism. A healthy new vision must rise from a movement of heretofore-untried togetherness.

A new vision U-(you) turning from violence will be born of an innate human sensibility, a sense of oneness more deeply ingrained than racial or tribal otherness. A new U-turning will be powered by society insistent upon society in which freedom, liberty, human rights are neither taken in narrow legacies (inheritance) or dynasties nor awarded to the highest bidder (stage and airwaves not narrowed admitting only the few), but are shared equally by all. This Society will anchor itself in the rule of law without prejudice or tribal caprice.

Entrenchment will be uprooted and participatory democracy (in areas such as government office, political campaigns, protest and opposition parties and coalitions, electoral processes) actively encouraged, and opened to everyone.

In this Society of global dimensions, domestic and international relations will operate by a code of nonviolence (militaries reconceived) whereby negotiations dedicate to problem solving for the long term and words not war commit to conflict resolution. Vital to this society will be coalitions of thinkers and activists, laborers including writers meeting secondarily, not essentially, through virtual networks (Internet); conversing constructively and primarily in face-to-face intercultural conversation and activism.

Edited excerpt from BREAKDOWN: Violence in Search of U (you) -Turn Nature and Consequences of U.S. International and Domestic Affairs Geopolitics Occupation Human Rights Historical Contexts (Notes and Commentary) by Dr. Carolyn L. Bennett, published by Xlibris, 2009

“WHY” query on anti-Muslim WARs …

… Raised by veteran U.S. journalist  and Sarajevo survivor
Transcription, excerpts, editing by Carolyn Bennett for Today’s Insight News
Silence encountered in a dream is no longer an option. Though memories are “too painful” to voice, Sarajevo survivor Amela Marin Simic says, “My duty is to speak.”

“For those of us who were in the city when it was under siege the whole thing is chilling. Who was the target of the sniper: my 5-year-old son waiting in a breadline; my 9-year-old daughter awaiting a UN HCR package; me, waiting for water? All of us were dangerous ‘Turks’ in the mind of Karadzic—whether we were Muslim or not.

“Serb paramilitaries … saw my 2-year-old nephew as one of Karadzic’s ‘Turks.’ They shot him while he was sitting on his potty. They were using the deadly sniper bullets that explode as soon as they enter the body. We could only see the tiny hole above his ear where the bullet went in. Despite hearing my sister’s cries for help, these same Serb soldiers rained fire on the entrance to my sister’s building for two hours preventing the child from being taken to the hospital. He survived, somehow; and despite the shrapnel that is still in his body, he became a talented musician, one with excruciating headaches, but still, alive. Thousands of children weren’t so lucky.

For months and months after my nephew was wounded, I wanted to avenge my sister’s nightmares and my nephew’s uncertain future as well as the lives of my family and friends blown up and screwed up forever.

Then, one night, I dreamt I was inside a waiting room – maybe of the war tribunal, I can’t recall now. There they were sitting beside each other: Karadzic, whom I had actually met a few times through the writer’s union in Sarajevo; and others, including an old Shakespeare professor, whose classes I had taken at university – all those who had gone to the mountains to start their blood-soaked war; or even worse, had incited it through their words.

“In my dream, I just stopped and stood there, looking at them, wanting to ask them one simple question – Why. But I didn’t say anything, yet; believing my gaze would somehow pierce through the horror they had created and find some sign of humanity. They just stared back at me. I looked at them once again and then I asked them – Why?

“They didn’t respond. 

“… There is much about that time I can never forget -- That’s why I rarely mention the war years in conversations with people: It’s too painful, too sad, too horrific. I realize that the child, like my dream, won’t answer the question -- Why ordinary people do monstrous things. But the silence I encountered in my dream isn’t really an option right now that Karadzic is on trial. I am not after vengeance. I am after justice. My duty is to speak.”

“Anti-Muslim” wars persist. Ray McGovern leads with the Why query posed by veteran U.S. journalist Helen Thomas.

No one in “the U.S. political/media hierarchy” has explained Why.
“… Why [do] so many people in the Muslim world object to U.S. policies so strongly that they are inclined to resist violently and even resort to suicide attacks?”
Washington PR punts 
“We must communicate clearly to Muslims around the world that al-Qaeda offers nothing except a bankrupt vision of misery and death … while the United States stands with those who seek justice and progress. … That’s the vision that is far more powerful than the hatred of these violent extremists.”
But WHY?
“… Why it is so hard for Muslims to ‘get’ that message? Why can’t they end their preoccupation with dodging U.S. missiles in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Gaza long enough to reflect on how we are only trying to save them from terrorists while simultaneously demonstrating our commitment to ‘justice and progress’? Does [the Administration] believe that all we need to do is ‘communicate clearly to Muslims’ that it is al-Qaeda, not the U.S. and its allies, that brings ‘misery and death’? Does any informed person not know that the unprovoked, U.S.-led invasion of Iraq killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and displaced 4.5 million from their homes? 

“… Many Muslims have watched Washington’s behavior closely for many years and view U.S. declarations about peace, justice, democracy, and human rights as infuriating examples of hypocrisy and double talk … Washington’s sanitized discussion about motives for terrorism seems more intended for the U.S. domestic audience than the Muslim world. … 
 “People in the Middle East have known for decades how [the West and western-leaning countries and allied interests have mistreated] Palestinians. They have known how one after another administration in Federal Washington has propped up Arab dictatorships and how the U.S. Government has imprisoned at Guantanamo hundreds of Muslims without bringing charges against them and how the U.S. military has killed civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. They have known how U.S. mercenaries have slaughtered innocents and escaped punishment for these crimes.

“The purpose of U.S. ‘public diplomacy,’ seems designed to offer feel-good palliatives about beneficence in U.S. actions more than to shine the light of truth for Americans on unpleasant realities. American journalists and politicians, fearing [McCarthyism] smears of un-patriotism or ‘sympathizing with the enemy’ join the charade.”

Amela Marin Simic says it for me: the silence encountered in a dream is no longer an option. “I am not after vengeance. I am after justice. My duty is to speak.”

Sources and notes
From a Commentary given on Radio Netherlands Worldwide; Karadzic is now on trial for war crimes before the war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands; Among 11 charges against him are two counts of genocide – one for the massacre of Muslims in Srebrenica, the other for the siege of Sarajevo
Amela Marin Simic, a writer living in Toronto, Canada, lived through the Siege of Sarajevo.
Britannica notes
Sarajevo is the “capital and cultural centre of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It lies in the narrow valley of the Miljacka River at the foot of Mount Trebević. The city retains a strong Muslim character, having many mosques, wooden houses with ornate interiors, and the ancient Turkish marketplace (the Baščaršija); much of the population is Muslim.”…
Radovan Karadžić
In the 1980s the rapid decline of the Yugoslav economy led to widespread public dissatisfaction with the political system. This attitude, together with the manipulation of nationalist feelings by politicians, destabilized Yugoslav politics. Independent political parties appeared in 1988. In early 1990 multiparty elections were held in Slovenia and Croatia; when elections were held in Bosnia in December, new parties representing the three national communities gained seats in rough proportion to their populations. A tripartite coalition government was formed, with the Bosniac politician Alija Izetbegović leading a joint presidency. Growing tensions both inside and outside Bosnia, however, made cooperation with the Serbian Democratic Party, led by Radovan Karadžić, increasingly difficult.
In 1991, several self-styled “Serb Autonomous Regions” were declared in areas of Bosnia with large Serb populations. Evidence emerged that the Yugoslav People's Army was being used to send secret arms deliveries to the Bosnian Serbs from Belgrade. In August the Serbian Democratic Party began boycotting the Bosnian presidency meetings; in October it removed its deputies from the Bosnian assembly and set up a “Serb National Assembly” in Banja Luka. By then full-scale war had broken out in Croatia, and the breakup of Yugoslavia was under way. Bosnia's position became highly vulnerable. The possibility of partitioning Bosnia had been discussed during talks between the Croatian president, Franjo Tudjman, and the Serbian president, Slobodan Milošević, earlier in the year, and two Croat “communities” in northern and southwestern Bosnia, similar in some ways to the “Serb Autonomous Regions,” were proclaimed in November 1991. When the European Community (EC; now European Union) recognized the independence of Croatia and Slovenia in December, it invited Bosnia to apply for recognition also. A referendum on independence was held February 29–March 1, 1992, although Karadžić's party obstructed voting in many Serb-populated areas. Nearly two-thirds of the electorate cast a vote; almost all voted for independence, which was officially proclaimed on March 3 by President Izetbegović.
In May 1995, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces launched air strikes on Serbian targets after the Serbian military refused to comply with a UN ultimatum. Further air strikes led to U.S.-sponsored peace talks in Dayton, Ohio, in November. The agreement that resulted from those talks called for a federalized Bosnia in which 51 percent of the land would constitute a Croat-Bosniac federation and 49 percent a Serb republic. To enforce the agreement, signed in December, a 60,000-member international force was deployed. An election in September 1996 produced a tripartite national presidency chaired by Izetbegović but including Croat and Serbian representatives. Karadžić had been indicted for war crimes and was prohibited from being a candidate, though he continued to elude capture and retained some support among Bosnian Serbs into the 21st century. The federal legislature, with seats apportioned to each ethnic group, was dominated by nationalist parties.
“Helen Asks Why” (Ray McGovern), posted January 11, 2010, at Antiwar.com; reprinted from ConsortiumNews.com; responses at http://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2010/01/10/helen-asks-why/Helen+Asks+Why2010-01-11+06%3A00%3A35Ray+McGovern
WAR DEAD
AMERICA
Avoidable yet
“Up to 200,000 feared dead” in Haiti
Up to 200,000 people are feared dead following the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that has destroyed much of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince … Lorries piled with corpses have been trying to collect the bodies that have been visible on the streets across Port-au-Prince for burial in mass graves outside the city, [Al Jazeera, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/01/20101167102172106.html
 U.S. Foreign Affairs BLOODLETTING Continues
WAR DEAD, CASUALTIES OF WAR
Update January 16, 2010

Al Jazeera reports

“War without end
“As asymmetrical warfare takes up the fight from conventional wars, battles are replaced by bombings and massacres, military bases by hideouts and remote control rooms, population control and policing by propaganda and terror, and national borders are surpassed by new fault lines passing through every minor Middle Eastern state and every major Western city… All of which begs for a change in the whole paradigm of the ongoing 'global war on terror' that holds entire populations hostage to fear and war” by Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's senior political analyst The US as a great warrior tribe, January 11, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/imperium/2010/01/201011110202267810.html
Is the U.S. militarizing aid? [Riz Khan]
In an effort to win … local ‘hearts and minds’ in Iraq and Afghanistan, is the U.S. militarizing its foreign aid? That is the claim of aid groups working on the ground. They say that development projects are increasingly being implemented by the military and/or civilian military contractors and that this new strategy dangerously blurs the line between projects undertaken to achieve a political goal and those undertaken to advance long-term development, January 11, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/rizkhan/2010/01/2010110103653946180.html
AFGHANISTAN
U.S. releases Bagram prisoner names
“The United States has published the names of 645 prisoners [some under the age of 16] held at a controversial U.S.-run prison in Afghanistan following a freedom of information lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)… U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration is appealing against the decision. Bagram, north of the Afghan capital, Kabul, has been used as a detention facility by the US-led coalition in Afghanistan since the ouster of the Taliban government in December 2001.” http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/01/201011614114260799.html
AfPak
“Pakistan drone attack ‘kills many’”
Suspected U.S. drone attack kills at least 18 people and injures 14 others in Pakistan’s northwest tribal belt near the Afghan border…The attack was the seventh suspected U.S. missile assault in the tribal district this month.… The U.S. has increased drone attacks since a suicide bomber crossed over Pakistan’s border and killed seven CIA employees in an attack in eastern Afghanistan on December 30, 2009, January 14, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/01/201011453930817749.html
AFGHANISTAN
UK reporter killed in Afghanistan
A second journalist [Sunday Mirror defense correspondent Rupert Hamer] has been killed in Afghanistan in 10 days after an explosion killed a UK newspaper reporter on patrol with U.S. Marines… Canadian reporter Michelle Lang of the Calgary Herald newspaper, was killed alongside four soldiers in Kandahar province on December 30 when a roadside bomb exploded beneath their armored vehicle…Three journalists, including Lang, died in Afghanistan last year, according to a tally by the International News Safety Institute, January 10, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/01/20101101638390164.html

AFGHANISTAN
Deadly blast hits Afghan market
At least 16 civilians and 1 police officer have been killed and 13 others injured after a suicide bomber targeted a crowded market in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan, January 15, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/01/201011414347825891.html
Deadliest year for Afghan civilians
The number of civilians killed in war-related violence in Afghanistan touched 2,412 last year, the highest number since the 2001 US-led invasion …Recent incidents, such as the deaths of 10 civilians, including eight teenagers in eastern Kunar province, in an authorized but non-military U.S. operation, have seen Afghans take to the streets to protest against the presence of foreign troops, January 13, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/01/20101131135845111.html.
IRAQ
Civilians killed in Iraq bombing
At least seven people, including five policemen, have been killed and six others wounded in a suicide lorry bombing in Iraq's western Anbar province… Anbar province was the heart of Iraq’s Sunni uprising following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraqi in 2003 but it became relatively secure after local tribal fighters accepted U.S.-backing in 2006, January 13, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/01/201011385712327495.html.
PAKISTAN
“‘Suspects’ die in Karachi explosion”
At least seven people have been killed after an explosion destroyed a house in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi.… Attacks across Pakistan have intensified in recent months in an apparent response to a military offensive against the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan, January 8, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/01/2010184733944362.html
YEMEN
“Yemeni al-Qaeda suspects ‘killed’”
At least six suspected al-Qaeda fighters have been killed in a military air raid in the north of the country…Yemen has intensified operations against the so-called ‘Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula group’ claimed it was behind a failed December 25 attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner, January 16, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/01/2010115141954305381.html.
 From Casualty sites
Iraq, Afghanistan (exact figures and costs of war are unobtainable)
Latest update January 7, 2010
American Military Casualties in Iraq – “Human cost of occupation”: since the war began March 19, 2003: 4,373
Since the Obama inauguration January 20, 2009: 145;
Wounded 31,613-over 100,000;
U.S. veterans with brain injuries: 320,000;
Suicides 18 a day [January 1 update at Anti-war dot com: “Casualties in Iraq, The Human Cost of Occupation” (Edited by Margaret Griffis) http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
Iraq Body Count figures: 95,002-103,65, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
Iraq Coalition Casualty (war dead) figures:
IRAQ: U.S. Coalition total: 4,691; U.S.: 4,373 - AFGHANISTAN: Coalition total: 1,593; U.S.: 961, http://icasualties.org/oif/
Just Foreign Policy lists violent Iraqi deaths caused by the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003”: 1,366,350