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| Anti-U.S. demonstration Middle East |
Unchecked power is global threat ─ no matter who or what holds it; and it may soon be checked
‘In
questions of power … let no more be heard of confidence in man;
‘Bind
him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.’ [Greenwald quotes Jefferson]
Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett
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ensored and ignored
Human costs suffered by Fallujans (Iraq) Ross Caputi at yesterday’s Guardian UK
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| U.S. war on Iraq |
“One of the most severe public health crises in history, for
which the U.S. military may be to blame, receives no attention in the United
States.
Four new studies on the health crisis in Fallujah have been
published in the last three months. Ever since two major U.S.-led assaults
destroyed the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004, Fallujans have witnessed dramatic
increases in rates of cancers, birth defects and infant mortality in their
city.
The latest study by Dr Chris Busby “is not abstract,” Ross
Caputi writes. “It is not merely an intellectual or medical issue.” The modern
means of warfare may be inherently indiscriminate. This has real world
importance.
Quoting Dr. Busby, author and co-author of two studies on
the Fallujah heath crisis, Caputi says Busby calls this “‘the highest rate of
genetic damage in any population ever studied.’”
But those who do not want to hear the costs of war dismiss
or reject Busby’s studies.
Many naysayers have dismissed the authors’ hypotheses
as speculative (hypotheses by definition are always speculative to a degree: informed
yet their claims intended to be verified or falsified) “because they do not
like their moral and political implications.” In their dismissal, they offer no
further studies ─ “many of these naysayers have not responded to these studies
by calling for more research and investigation to test the hypotheses of Dr.
Busby or Dr. Williams” [studies by Dr. Dai Williams suggest that there is a new
generation of weapons being used, possibly by the U.S. and Israeli militaries, which
could have serious indiscriminate health effects on the populations living near
bombing targets]. Rather they have expressed
“a great deal of antipathy for the scientific method and the pursuit of truth”;
and even “more importantly, they dismiss the suffering of the people of
Fallujah, and all people affected by these issues.”
Ross Caputi concludes the obvious that to help the people of
Fallujah, more studies must be done to figure out what is harming the children then
steps must be taken to ensure that this never happens again; but, first, he
says, “we must find a way to overcome the stifling silence of governments.”
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| Pakistanis protest U. S. assassination drones |
U.S. Left to Right, Right to Left
Coddling a murderous paradigm
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f it’s not their children, and lacks immediacy in that perception,
then they just don’t care. Slaughter other people’s children: kill them, let
them die, let them suffer and when the bomblets explode, let them suffer well into
the future when war has been pronounced ended.
Glenn Greenwald had a piece at the Guardian online this week
on “journalist” at large MSNBCer Joe Klein’s latest pledge of allegiance to drones
to kill other people’s children and his good-guy versus his bad-guy orders to
kill other people’s children.
In the article “Joe Klein’s sociopathic defense of drone
killings of children,” Greenwald quotes Klein’s drone advocacy when he says:
they take “‘out a lot of bad people and sav[e] Americans’ lives … because our
troops don’t have to do this . . . You don’t need pilots anymore because you do
it with a joystick in California.’”
However “‘… there is a major possibility of abuse,’” Klein says,
“‘if you have the wrong people running the government. But the bottom line is: whose
4-year-olds get killed?’”
Not mine, he seems to say.
What
we're doing is limiting the possibility that 4-year-olds here [in the
United States] will get killed by
indiscriminate acts of terror.
Greenwald responds that “the only difference between the Joe
Kleins of the world and Osama bin Laden” ─ in justifying the slaughter of
civilians ─ “is that they are on different sides.
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| U.S. drones attack Somalis |
“To the extent one wanted to distinguish” these men,
Greenwald says, “one could say that the violence and aggression brought by the
U.S. to the Muslim world vastly exceeds ─ vastly exceeds ─ the violence and
aggression brought by the Muslim world to the United States.” That’s fact, nor
opinion.
Greenwald continues.
“Leaving aside the sociopathic, morally grotesque defense of
killing 4-year-olds with a ‘joystick from California,’ Klein’s claims are
completely false on pragmatic grounds.
Slaughtering Muslim children does
not protect American children from terrorism. The opposite is true.…
The reason
American 4-year-olds are in danger from terrorism ─ to the very limited extent
they are ─ is precisely because those empowered in U.S. government and media
circles think like Joe Klein does ….
Soulless cheerleaders for indiscriminate
killing.…
Leaving aside the authoritarian willingness to trust certain
leaders with unchecked power,” Greenwald observes, quoting a warning of America’s
third president, Thomas Jefferson:
‘In
questions of power … let no more be heard of confidence in man;
Bind
him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.’
“Once a power is legitimized and institutionalized, it is then
vested in all presidents, current and future, Democratic and Republican [and] those
who cheer for the unchecked power to assassinate in secret because it is Obama
who currently wields that power ─ will be the ones fully responsible when some
leader they do not trust exercises it, abuses it in the future.”
Peril of unchecked superpower: its own undoing
Seumas Milne writes this week at the Guardian
“Whoever runs Washington heads a global empire” … and “whatever
the personal views of the politician at the top, the U.S. empire is a system ─
not a policy ─ underpinned by corporate and military interests,” he writes.
“Romney would very likely be a more dangerous leader. But
almost every U.S. president has sanctioned military action. And the risk of war
with Iran or growing intervention in Syria would remain under a second Obama
term.”
However, the overreach in the “war on terror,” paid in blood
and treasure by Americans and other peoples of the world, has hastened the decline
of the imperial system. The United States has troops stationed in a majority of
countries; its military spending exceeds the combined spending of the next 20
powers combined. And though American politics affects people’s lives in every
part of the world ─ often as a matter of life or death ─ the rest of the world
wants the United States “off its back.”
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| United Natons General Assembly 193 nations |
ill the United Nations succeed in checking unchecked U.S.
global killing project? Legal affairs correspondent Owen Bowcott reports for the Guardian
UN special rapporteurs seem to be trying to rein in U.S. reign
of assassination drone terror on peoples of the world.
United Nations at Geneva is reportedly establishing an
investigations unit “to examine the legality of drone attacks in cases where
civilians are killed in ‘targeted’ counter-terrorism operations.”
Special rapporteur Ben Emmerson (QC) this past summer called
for effective investigations into drone attacks and this week he announced
during a speech at Harvard law school that he and his colleague Christof Heyns,
the UN special rapporteur on extra-judicial killings, will launch “an
investigation unit within the special procedures of the [UN] Human Rights
Council to inquire into individual drone attacks.”
Emmerson monitors counter-terrorism for the UN and has said
that some U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan “may amount to war crimes.”
Challenge impunity
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| Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1947 |
Emmerson maintains that the United States’ position “that it
can conduct counter-terrorism operations against al-Qaeda or other groups
anywhere in the world because it is deemed to be an international conflict was
indefensible.”
The
global war paradigm has done immense damage to a previously shared
international consensus on the legal framework underlying both international
human rights law and international humanitarian law.
The
global war paradigm has also given a spurious justification to a range of
serious human rights and humanitarian law violations.
The
global war paradigm was always based on the flimsiest of reasoning, and was not
supported even by close allies of the United States.
Sources and notes
“The victims of Fallujah's health crisis are stifled by
western silence ─ To research a possible link between US bombardment and rates
of birth defects and pediatric cancer in Iraq is a moral imperative” (Ross
Caputi, guardian.co.uk), October 25, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/25/fallujah-iraq-health-crisis-silence
Busby is not the only researcher who takes ‘controversial’
positions.
His findings are complimented by the work of Dr Dai
Williams, an independent weapons researcher. Williams has been investigating
what he calls ‘third generation uranium weapons’.
He has found patents for weapon systems that could use un-depleted
uranium, or slightly enriched uranium, interchangeably with tungsten, either as
a dense metal or as a reactive metal.
Un-depleted and slightly enriched uranium have also been
found on other battlefields (Afghanistan and Lebanon).
These findings lead researchers like Dr Williams to believe
that there is a new generation of weapons being used, possibly by the U.S. and
Israeli militaries, which could have serious indiscriminate health effects on
the populations living near bombing targets.
“Joe Klein’s sociopathic defense of drone killings of
children ─ Reflecting the Obama legacy and U.S. culture, the Time columnist
says: ‘the bottom line is: whose 4-year-olds get killed?’” (Glenn Greenwald,
The Guardian), October 23, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/23/klein-drones-morning-joe
“Americans would also gain from scaling back the empire ─ The
presidential foreign policy debate showed how close the candidates were – and
how far from their own public opinion”
(Seumas Milne, The Guardian), October 23, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/23/better-us-scale-back-global-empire
http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/usa-war-on-terror/1977-the-world-has-voted-in-the-us-presidential-election-get-america-off-our-back
“UN to investigate civilian deaths from U.S. drone strikes ─
Special rapporteur on counter-terror operations condemns Barack Obama’s failure
to establish effective monitoring process” (Owen Bowcott, legal affairs
correspondent, guardian.co.uk) October 25, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/25/un-inquiry-us-drone-strikes
Joe Klein is a regular blogger on time.com’s Swampland blog.
In November 2007, Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald wrote about factual errors in
a Klein story about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Klein
reported that the Democratic version of the FISA bill ‘would require the
surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target’s calls to be approved by the
FISA court’ and that it therefore ‘would give terrorists the same legal
protections as Americans.’
Time later published a comment: ‘In the original version of
this story, Joe Klein wrote that the House Democratic version of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would allow a court review of individual
foreign surveillance targets. Republicans believe the bill can be interpreted
that way, but Democrats don’t.’
Greenwald noted that the text of the legislation does not
require court review of individual targets, and that Time’s response disregards
this fact. Klein’s response was: ‘I have neither the time nor legal background
to figure out who’s right.’
Later, Greenwald reported that Time ‘refused the requests of
two sitting members of Congress ... to correct Klein’s false statements in Time
itself.’ Greenwald has reported that Senator Russ Feingold has been informed by
Time that his letter rebutting Klein will be published in a forthcoming issue.
Klein was later drawn attention to by Greenwald for
revealing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program his advocacy of U.S. drone strikes
resulting in the death and mutilation of young children. Klein stated that the
bottom line in the end was to ask
‘whose 4-year-olds get killed? What we’re doing is limiting the possibility that 4-year-olds here will get killed by indiscriminate acts of terror.’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Klein
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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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