Deepening U.S. violence against Iraq impels anti-war push-back

Occupation, Militarization
Must End

Editing and excerpting 

Carolyn Bennett

Associated Press Recap

U.S. Occupying Personnel

“The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is the largest in the world,” roughly 5,000 occupying U.S. personnel. Additional U.S. personnel deployed by the U.S. State Department occupy three U.S. consulates: in Basra (southeastern Iraq, the country’s principal port); in Irbil (Arbil, an ancient town in northern Iraq, 48 miles east of Mosul in the foothills of the mountains that rise to the east, also links by roads to Turkey, Syria, and Iran); and in Kirkuk (northeastern Iraq, 145 miles north of Baghdad).

Today “more than 100 U.S. military personnel” are deployed in Iraq “in a section of the U.S. Embassy that coordinates U.S. foreign military sales to Iraq.” Scores of U.S. Marines, “more than 100 …provide security at the embassy.”

Sending further U.S. military for training Iraqis was officially curtailed when “Baghdad rejected Washington’s insistence that [U.S.] troops be granted immunity from prosecution [impunity] while in the country.” However, a fairly large training mission was based at the air base in Balad, about an hour northwest of Baghdad, from which “three planeloads of Americans were evacuated” this past week.

U.S. Mercenaries

Also in Iraq are former “Pentagon contractors” [Americans] turned “Iraqi government” contractors who “have been providing a range of military sales support and training” related to “weapons and other military equipment purchased [by Iraq] from the United States.”

U.S.-armed against Iraq’s own people

Iraq is reportedly scheduled to purchase 36 Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter planes priced tagged at “$3 billion.” Together with these, the United States “has recently sold a variety of high-end equipment, including hundreds of Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, tank ammunition, grenades, rifles and other weaponry [ and] the Pentagon recently notified Congress of plans to sell an additional $1 billion in military equipment to Iraq.”

 

U.S. death toll (estimate)

The United States (its people, government, military) fought an eight-year war [actually more than eight years of U.S. presidencies extending to the George H.W. Bush administration] against the Iraqi people and ousted their president, Saddam Hussein. Monetary Cost estimate in the 8-year period: “hundreds of billions of dollars.” U.S. deaths estimate: exceeding “4,400.” 

U

.S. in Iraq 2003-2009-2012 (estimates, incomplete toll)

Wikipedia notes, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

U.S.-led multinational coalition death toll: 4,486 U.S. service members killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2012; information on Iraqi military and civilian casualties less precise, less consistent.

Lancet Study figures based on household survey data:

654,965 excess deaths through the end of June 2006. Estimate is for all excess violent and nonviolent deaths including deaths due to increased lawlessness, degraded infrastructure, poorer healthcare, etc.; 601,027 deaths (range of 426,369 to 793,663 using a 95 percent confidence interval) were estimated to be due to violence: 31 percent of those were attributed to the Coalition, 24 percent to others, 46 percent unknown. The causes of violent deaths were gunshot (56 percent), car bomb (13 percent), other explosion/ordnance (14 percent), airstrike (13 percent), accident (2 percent), unknown (2 percent). A copy of a death certificate was available for a high proportion of the reported deaths (92 percent of those households asked to produce one). 

Body counts: 

Associated Press

110,600 violent deaths

March 2003-April 2009  

Iraq Body Count project

112,667–123,284 civilian deaths from violence; 174,000 civilian and combatant deaths
March 2003-March 2013 

Classified Iraq War Logs 

109,032 deaths, including 66,081 civilian deaths
January 2004-December 2009 

Classified U.S. military documents released by WikiLeaks in October 2010 

Iraqi and Coalition military deaths ● January 2004 - December 2009
109,032 deaths: “Civilian” 66,081 deaths; “Host Nation” 15,196 deaths; “Enemy” 23,984 deaths; “Friendly” 3,771 deaths

With all the pain and suffering U.S. officials have brought to the land and people of Iraq, they and their  “partners,” who comprise a lethal cabal in America's relations with the world, still haven't had enough blood. They are resuming their belligerent threats and lectures with a view toward compounding the residual harm of post-war, expanding a hostile occupation, and deepening Iraq’s pain with even more violent aggression. 

Some Americans want this cruelty to stop. I'm one of them.  

Anti-war Push-back

T

he A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition calls the nation to attend NO NEW U.S. WAR ON IRAQ

Nationwide demonstrations Friday and Saturday June 20 and 21 ── Included in this call to action, in addition to ANSWER, are Code Pink, World Can't Wait, and others.

T

he anti-war movement must mobilize “to tell the Obama administration that the people of the United States absolutely oppose any new war on Iraq. We cannot sit by idly when the Pentagon may be about to open a new chapter in its history of death and destruction.”

No New U.S. War on Iraq! Initial posts

http://www.answercoalition.org/national/news/emergency-actions-no-new.html

Washington, D.C.
Monday, June 16, 5 p.m.
White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave
Initiated by Code Pink and other organizations
Sat., June 21, 1 p.m.
White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave

Los Angeles, CA
Sat., June 21, 1 p.m.
Pershing Square
(Corner of 5th & Hill)
Downtown LA

San Francisco, CA
Sat., June 21, Noon
Corner of Powell and Market Sts

Sacramento, CA
Sat., June 21, 1 p.m.
16th & J Sts

Eureka, CA
Sat. June 21, Noon
County Courthouse, 5th & I Sts

Fresno, CA
Saturday, June 21st, 10 a.m. – 1 p.m.
Peace Corner - Blackstone & Shaw

Tallahassee, FL
Sat., June 21, 12:30 p.m.
Florida State Capitol
400 South Monroe Street

Chicago, IL
Sat., June 21, Noon
Federal Plaza
(Adams and Dearborn)

Twin Cities, MN
Wednesday, June 18, 5 p.m.
Lake Street/Marshall Ave., bridge between Minneapolis & St. Paul
More information at 612-522-1861 or 612-827-5364

Albuquerque, NM
Fri., June 20, 6 p.m.
UNM Bookstore
(Intersection of Central & Cornell)

New York, NY
Tuesday, June 17, 5:30 p.m.
Outside Democratic Party where Obama is speaking
Gotham Hall, 1356 Broadway, between 36th and 37th Sts
Initiated by World Can't Wait
Friday, June 20, 6 p.m.
Harlem Armed Forces Recruitment Center
76 W. 125th St (2/3 trains)

Philadelphia, PA
Thursday, June 19, 4:30 p.m.
15th and Market Sts

Sources and notes

“A look at the U.S. presence in Iraq,” Robert Burns, Associated Press, June 14, 2014

Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor and Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/look-us-presence-iraq-075331501.html;_ylt=AwrBJR7WKp9TOzsAO.zQtDMD

“NO NEW U.S. WAR ON IRAQ: Actions at the White House in D.C., in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Albuquerque, Sacramento and many more cities on June 20 and 21!,”

http://www.answercoalition.org/

Emergency Actions Nationwide: NO NEW U.S. WAR ON IRAQ, June 13, 2014, post

http://www.answercoalition.org/national/news/emergency-actions-no-new.html

_______________________________________

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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U.S. government, government-sanctioned corporations shadow, surveil, threaten global citizens

Icelandic leader speaks for freedom 
Re-reporting, editing end comment by
Carolyn Bennett

Birgitta Jónsdóttir

She is a Member of Iceland’s Parliament as well as a poet, writer, artist, editor, publisher and activist. Birgitta Jónsdóttir organized “Art against war” where a number of Icelandic artists and poets came out to protest the war in Iraq. 

She set up the first Icelandic online art gallery in 1996 for the Apple Shop in Iceland and has participated in several international projects related to writing and activism including “Poets against the War”, “Dialogue among Nations through Poetry”, and “Poets for Human Rights”. She also edited and published the international books The World Healing Book and The Book of Hope. She is founder of Beyond Borders Press and Radical Creations and part of the International Network of Parliamentarians for Tibet (INPaT)

B

irgitta Jónsdóttir was an active volunteer for WikiLeaks and had an important role in the making and

Member of  Icelandic Parliament
Birgitta Jónsdóttir

production of the “Collateral Murder” (a U.S. airstrike in Iraq) video. She is the chief sponsor of the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative and has advocated making her homeland a haven for press freedom.

On January 7, 2011, she announced on her Twitter page that she had been notified by Twitter that it had been served with a subpoena by the U. S. Department of Justice demanding information about all her tweets and more since November 1, 2009. [Greenwald, Salon]

In the Icelandic Parliament Birgitta Jónsdóttir is Member of the Parliamentary Review Committee on the SIC [Report of the Special Investigation Commission (SIC): The Special Investigation Commission (SIC) delivered to Althingi on April 12, 2010 had been established by Act No. 142/2008 by Althingi, the Icelandic Parliament, in December 2008, “to investigate and analyze the processes leading to the collapse of the three main banks in Iceland.”] report since 2009; Member of the Committee on the Environment since 2009; Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs since 2009; Member of the Icelandic delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly since 2009.

She was elected to the Icelandic parliament in April 2009, her district Reykjavík South Constituency, to serve on behalf of a movement aiming for democratic reform beyond left and right party politics. Formerly representing the Citizens’ Movement and The Movement, Birgitta Jónsdóttir now represents the Pirate Party. She calls herself an “activist inside and outside the system” and is quoted saying, 

Being political is having opinions. 

Every person has the opportunity to change the world.

T

oday on Democracy Now, she said, before the Iraq War started, she had participated in antiwar demonstrations “with millions of people from around the world in an attempt to stop the war from happening. I knew that this would happen.”

Video “Collateral Murder”

“To have it actually in my living room in front of my eyes, the true horror of war and all these war crimes that I had heard of but I’d never seen felt to me as important enough to take a little bit of a risk,” Birgitta Jónsdóttir said; “so I did a lot of the background investigation. I organized the Icelandic volunteer team. I pulled out the photos that we put on the website. And I was the coordinator for the YouTube account.”

Wikipedia note: Baghdad airstrikes of July 12, 2007, were a series of air-to-ground attacks conducted by a team of two United States Army AH-64 Apache helicopters in Al-Amin al-Thaniyah (the district of New Baghdad in Baghdad) during the Iraqi insurgency and U.S. military occupation of Iraq. The attacks received worldwide coverage in 2010 following the release of 39 minutes [13 minutes were onboard footage from one of the two AH-64 Apache helicopters involved in the incident] of classified cockpit gunsight footage. 

Reuters had unsuccessfully requested the footage of the airstrikes under the Freedom of Information Act in 2007. 

The footage was acquired from an undisclosed source in 2009 by the Internet leak website WikiLeaks, which released the footage on April 5, 2010, under the name “Collateral Murder.” Recorded from the gunsight Target Acquisition and Designation System of one of the attacking helicopters, the video shows three incidents and the radio chatter between the aircrews and ground units involved. An anonymous U.S. military official confirmed the authenticity of the footage.

 

Long train of abuses

U.S. threat to freedom of expression

“I think it is time,” she said, “to stop the witch hunt on people who are involved with journalism and whistle blowing. It is of deep concern to me considering that this country, the United States of America, had one of the most significant trials in the world in relation to freedom of expression and speech when [American publisher, poet, painter, liberal activist] Lawrence Ferlinghetti went on trial a long time ago to defend just these values.”

Call government to account

In light of the constant abuse of rights and persecution of reporters and whistle blowers by U.S. government officials and related agents and as she and other global and U.S. citizens have been (are being) threatened by this government and agents, Birgitta Jonsdottir asks, “…Why isn’t the U.S. government itself held accountable for probing into the lives of people …?” It is “very serious,” she says, “that they probed into my life. They … went into my home, through the Internet door, and I’m a Member of Parliament.”

S

uch actions amount to international incidents. The International Parliamentary Union has put forward a very harsh, unanimously adopted parliamentary proposal in which “parliamentarians are encouraged all the time to work across nations. …” And a Member of Parliament subjected to the U.S. tactic of persecution and probing surveillance means, she says, that “Everybody who writes to me is now on the desk of the FBI.… What is the difference between what [hacker] Jeremy Hammond did and what the U.S. government did? 

Remember truth teller
Journalist
Anna Polikovskaya

“… I am not the subject of a criminal investigation,” she says, “so what gives them the right to go into my personal stuff?”

“What gives [the global intelligence company] Stratfor the right to go into Julian Assange’s personal stuff or anybody that’s associated with WikiLeaks?” she asks.

O

nce rights are taken away or by an indifferent people relinquished to an oppressive regime, it is hard to impossible to get them back. Rights taken today are lives taken today for exposing the truth of events about which we have the right to know and on which to act as citizens in a representative democracy. This isn't fashion or celebrity stuff. This is, as MP Birgitta Jonsdottir says, very serious indeed. 

Sources and notes

“Icelandic Lawmaker Birgitta Jónsdóttir on Challenging Gov’t Secrecy from Twitter to Bradley Manning,” April 8, 2013, http://www.democracynow.org/2013/4/8/icelandic_lawmaker_birgitta_jonsdottir_on_challenging

The Official Website of Birgitta Jonsdottir, “Her political views are not expressed on this website since she does not think of politics as something beyond her everyday life,” http://this.is/birgitta/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birgitta_J%C3%B3nsd%C3%B3ttir

“Collateral Murder,” http://www.collateralmurder.com/

“Collateral Murder,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_murder#Leaked_video_footage

WikiLeaks obtained the video as well as supporting documents from a number of military whistleblowers. “WikiLeaks goes to great lengths to verify the authenticity of the information it receives. We have analyzed the information about this incident from a variety of source material. We have spoken to witnesses and journalists directly involved in the incident. WikiLeaks wants to ensure that all the leaked information it receives gets the attention it deserves. In this particular case, some of the people killed were journalists that were simply doing their jobs: putting their lives at risk in order to report on war. Iraq is a very dangerous place for journalists: from 2003- 2009, 139 journalists were killed while doing their work.”

Jeremy Hammond and Judge Preska

Jeremy Hammond is a political activist and convicted felon from Chicago charged in a criminal complaint with crimes relating to the December 2011 hack of Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (Stratfor).

Wikipedia: In November 2012, after being held eight months without trial, Jeremy Hammond was denied bail by Judge Loretta A. Preska (Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York) who warned that Hammond could face life imprisonment for a Stratfor leak. Judge Preska’s husband worked for a client of Stratfor and his emails were among the leaks as well as the password to his email account.

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

Stratfor

Wikipedia note: Stratfor: ‘The Shadow CIA’ ─ Barron’s once referred to it as ‘The Shadow CIA.’ Strategic Forecasting, Inc or Stratfor is a global intelligence company founded in 1996 in Austin, Texas, that has published a daily intelligence briefing since 1996. Stratfor’s rise occurred with the release of its “Kosovo Crisis Center” during the 1999 NATO airstrikes over Kosovo. Time magazine, Texas Monthly, and other publications promoted it. It enhanced its visibility with the tragedies of September 11, 2011. Its subscriber list was confidential and the company’s publicity list includes Fortune 500 companies and international government agencies. Media outlets CNN, Bloomberg, the Associated Press, Reuters, The New York Times and the BBC used the company as an authority on strategic and tactical intelligence issues. Barron’s once referred to it as ‘The Shadow CIA.’

In early 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing over 5 million of the company’s email messages.

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

_________________________________ 

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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Blood-stained, cheapened Medal of Freedom 2012

Blood-stained rain
Iraq

Holding to deadly precedent, Peace-Prize War maker pays the pipers

Re-reporting by Carolyn Bennett

Blood-stained

 PERES

Shimon Peres (original name Shimon Perski) was born in Poland in 1923, immigrated with his family to Palestine in 1934; joined the Haganah movement, a Zionist military organization under the direction of David Ben-Gurion, in 1947. Ben-Gurion became political mentor to Peres.

Cowardice camouflaged 

More than 65 years one of Israel’s most influential politicians, Shimon Peres was a hawk turned “un-hawk” and claimed to support Israeli engagement with people in territories occupied by Israel. But he went along with the status quo, stopping far short of fulfilling his claim, as evidenced by current deplorable conditions in the Occupied Territories, West Bank, the Gaza Strip. So it is questionable that Peres was ever serious or had the courage to act on his claim.   

This protégé of Ben-Gurion, the Zionist statesman (original name David Gruen) and political leader, Israel’s first prime minister (1948–53, 1955–63) and defense minister (1948–53; 1955–63), Peres stood against engagement with the Palestinian Authority Organization in the 1970s and early 1980s. Though he pretended to distance himself from Israeli settlement expansion and claimed interest in a “territorial compromise” concerning Israel and the West Bank and Gaza, Peres apparently lacked courage to use his considerable political stature to achieve the ends he claimed to support.  Reference sources report Peres ultimately “avoided making an outright commitment” to policy positions he claimed to support.

Palestinians protest occupation

Rewarded

For his failure, Simon Peres has been rewarded handsomely with long entrenchment, 66 years, in Israeli governance and foreign relations. His high level diplomatic and military posts extend from the 1940s to the present day. Twice he has held Israel’s premiership, once Israel’s interim prime minister; he has been a member of 12 cabinets, having been elected to the Knesset in November 1959 and, except for a three-month break in early 2006, he held a seat continuously until 2007, when he assumed the presidency.  Shimon Peres is the ninth and current president of Israel.

U.S. war on Iraq

Blood-stained ALBRIGHT

Confronted with the report of half a million deaths of children caused by U.S.-supported sanctions against Iraq, deaths exceeding the number of children killed in the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima, Madeleine Albright infamously said, “We think the price is worth it.”

Albright later complained she had been trapped and she regretted coming “across as cold-blooded and cruel.” At least she seemed to see the blood on her hands.

Two years later, in 1998, when there was a U.S. threat of war on Iraq, Albright drew boos from U.S. citizens opposed to that invasion of Iraq.

President William Jefferson Clinton ordered a four-day bombing campaign against Iraq in December 1998; the bombing coincided with the start of full congressional debate on Clinton’s impeachment. In 1999 U.S.-led forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) conducted a three-month bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.

Blood lust

Serbian physician, author, and politician Radovan Karadžić reportedly divulged information at his trial for war crimes before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia saying, “Albright offered him a chance to relocate to Russia, Greece, or Serbia and open a private clinic, or to go to the Bosnian town of Bijeljina. Karadžić reportedly claimed fear for his life (from then- Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke or Secretary of State Madeleine Albright), saying he “[did] not know how long the arm of Mr. Holbrooke or Mrs. Albright is ... or whether that arm can reach me here.”

Madeleine Albright was born Marie Jana Korbel to a Jewish family (1937) in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic), and fled with her family to England.

Rewarded

Albright, not unlike Peres, has been rewarded lavishly by officials of the U.S. Government. She was President William (Bill) Jefferson Clinton’s ambassador to the United Nations in 1993 and his secretary of state confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate in 1997.

Iraqi child in war

In 2008, this friend of the Clintons endorsed and supported Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign for the U.S. presidency and reportedly became Mrs. Clinton’s “top informal advisor on foreign policy matters.” The president-elect, Barack Obama, in late 2008 nominated then-Senator Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state; and later Albright reportedly became a “top advisor to U.S. President Barack Obama (with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) in a working group on national security.”

A professor at a leading university in Washington, D.C., and director of the Council on Foreign Relations Board, Madame Albright also heads a Washington-based consulting firm, the Albright Group.

In May 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Madeleine Albright née Marie Jana Korbel.

On June 13, 2012, at a White House dinner in the East Room, President Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Shimon Peres née Shimon Perski.

Sources and notes

2012 Presidential Medal of Freedom Ceremony, May 29, 2012,  President Obama presents exceptional individuals with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2012/05/29/2012-presidential-medal-freedom-ceremony; http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2012/06/13/president-obama-awards-shimon-peres-presidential-medal-freedom

Background notes

Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimon_Peres;

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

Britannica

Images

An Iraqi boy walks past a blood-stained rainwater puddle the day after a ..., thewe.cc

Iraqi child in war, http://linjensen.com/

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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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Middle East, Africa, U.S. reeling

Under U.S. Occupation, Threat, War

Compiled and Edited by Carolyn Bennett

U.S.-led

WAR DEAD

Casualty sites reporting June 26, 2011

(Accurate totals unknown)

Anti-war dot com Casualties in Iraq since March 19, 2003

[U.S. war dead since the Obama inauguration January 20,

2009: 237] Information out of date

•

Wounded 33,080-100,000

U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000

Suicides estimated: 18 a day

Latest update on this site: June 26, 2011

http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

•

Iraq Body Count

The worldwide update on civilians killed in the Iraq war and occupation

Documented civilian deaths from violence

101,426 – 110,810

Full analysis of the WikiLeaks’ Iraq War Logs may add 15,000 civilian deaths.  http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

•

ICasualties figures:

AFGHANISTAN:

1,637 United States

2,552 Coalition

IRAQ:

4,463 United States

4,781 Coalition

http://icasualties.org/

OCCUPIED PALESTINE, U.S. Threatened

Following major delays in deliveries of medical supplies from the West Bank, a medical crisis is unfolding, health authorities in the Gaza Strip are warning. Medical shortages, says Al Jazeera’s Nadim Baba in Gaza, “have increased calls for an end to Israel’s blockade and Palestinian disunity.”

Freedom ships, Free press

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has branded freedom ships to Gaza a  ‘provoking act’— “‘We do not believe that the flotilla is a necessary or useful effort to try to assist the people of Gaza.’”

Press TV reports, “Israel and the United States have threatened journalists and human rights campaigners against taking part in a Gaza Strip-bound aid mission.”

Reuters reported the director of Israel’s Government Press Office today saying that joining the Freedom Flotilla II convoy could “‘lead to participants being denied entry into…Israel for ten years, to the impounding of their equipment and to additional sanctions.’”

The Foreign Press Association responded, saying, “The government’s threat to punish journalists covering the Gaza flotilla sends a chilling message to the international media and raises serious questions about Israel’s commitment to freedom of the press.”

Nevertheless, the second Freedom Flotilla — ten ships carrying 1,000 activists from 20 countries — readies sail for the besieged Gaza Strip; and, Israeli daily Haaretz, has “revealed that the Israeli military held a large drill for special commandos and snipers to prepare to intercept the flotilla.”

A statement issued by the Rumbo a Gaza [trans. Sailing to Gaza] Spanish civil society initiative says, “Israel has warned foreign diplomats in Tel Aviv to get ready to ‘face the consequences.’”

Thousands of personalities from around the world are supporting the second flotilla and calling on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to urge governments to take necessary measures to guarantee the safety of people taking part in the mission.

Among the prominent peace and human rights activists calling on the UN secretary general are Nobel Peace Prize-winners Rigoberta Menchú of Guatemala, Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland, Jody Williams of the United States, and Shirin Ebadi of Iran.

U.S.-War, Occupied AFGHANISTAN

Six (est.) Afghan police died Wednesday in an assault at a checkpoint. Another four officers died when a roadside bomb exploded as the officers travelled to the scene in Ghazni province’s Qarabagh district, about 120km southwest of Kabul.

The deputy governor of Ghazni, Mohammad Ali Ahmadi, is reported to have said, “‘Probably one of the police officers at the checkpoint had a previous deal with the insurgents and cooperated with and facilitated the assault.’”

In a similar attack on their checkpoint in that district earlier this month, three more police officers died.

Around 130,000 international troops occupy Afghanistan under the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. Among them are an estimated 90,000 forces from the United States.

U.S.-War PAKISTAN

Displaced by conflict, war, occupation

More people have been displaced by recent operations in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area. The route via Afghanistan [and the border region where foreign forces transport materiel into Afghanistan] has been closed, limiting the flow of food, medicine and other supplies to civilians.

Pakistan’s tribal northwest is said to be under siege. The only road connecting the Parachinar district bordering Afghanistan to the rest of Pakistan has been blocked by Taliban fighters since 2007.

In March, more than 40 people traveling on the Thal-Parachinar road were kidnapped. Women and children were freed, seven men died, 30 remained in captivity for nearly three months. After negotiations involving tribal elders, the Pakistani government, and varying Taliban factions, 22 of the captives were set free on June 21.

Of $6.6 billion in U.S. military aid to Pakistan during 2003-2009 for ‘counter-terrorism’ measures, “only $500 million had been used for that purpose,” this according to two Pakistani generals’ statements to the Associated Press in 2009. “The rest of the funds went to Pakistan’s ‘defense against India.’”

U.S. War LIBYA

A speaker for NATO again has denied civilian killings or that the alliance “[targeted] buildings in an abandoned area of Brega.” However, “Libyan state TV reported that at least 15 people were killed in strikes on civilian sites in this eastern city.”

Witnesses reportedly heard loud explosions in the Libyan capital Tripoli as jets flew over the city. On Saturday, a Reuters correspondent reportedly heard four explosions in Tripoli as jets flew overhead on two occasions. The blasts appeared to have come from the eastern suburb of Tajura. Libya’s state TV “referred to a NATO ‘war of extermination’ and ‘crimes against humanity.’”

U.S.-Occupied Iraq

More than a million Iraqis have died as a result of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, according to a study conducted by the prestigious British polling group, Opinion Research Business.

Currently about 50,000 U.S. soldiers are stationed in Iraq. This month has been the deadliest month for U.S. forces in this country since May 2009.

Today two U.S. soldiers reportedly died in northern Iraq. The soldiers were said to have been “conducting operations.”Since the start of June, approximately 11 U.S. soldiers have died. “Sunday’s casualties,” according to icasualties.org, “raise the death toll for U.S. forces in Iraq since March 2003 to 4,465.

Earlier in the day, there had been an attack on Kirkuk. No casualties or damage was reported but the report said unidentified gunmen had launched a mortar attack on a U.S. military airbase in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

Sources and notes

OCCUPIED PALESTINE, U.S. Threatened

“Blockaded Gaza Strip nears ‘medical crisis’— Territory running out of medical supplies due to major delays in West Bank deliveries,” June 24, 2011,  

http://english.aljazeera.net/video/middleeast/2011/06/20116248514672596.html

“Israel, U.S. declare war on flotilla,” June 26, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/186351.html

“Flotilla II prepares to sail for Gaza — Freedom Flotilla II, comprising ten ships carrying 1,000 activists from 20 countries prepares to sail to Gaza,” 24, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/2011623152134419503.html

U.S.-War, Occupied AFGHANISTAN

“Police killed at Afghanistan checkpoint — Taliban claims responsibility for attack killing six officers, as the US prepares for a troop withdrawal,” June 22, 2011,

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/06/201162216912642382.html

U.S.-War PAKISTAN

“A community under siege in tribal Pakistan — As U.S. prepares troop withdrawal, Taliban’s strong hold on border regions reveals Pakistan's vulnerability, June 25, 2011,

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/2011622182410260797.html

U.S. War LIBYA

“NATO denies killing civilians in Libya strike  — Capital Tripoli hit in fresh raid as state TV reports that 15 people were killed in Brega,” June 25, 2011,

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/06/201162513183844244.html

U.S.-Occupied Iraq

“Two U.S. soldiers killed in northern Iraq,” June 26, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/186379.html

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Bennett's books 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]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, 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]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]

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Global Commission on Drug Policy articulates the known

U.S. DEATH POLICIES

 “War on drugs” fails nations, kills people

Re-reporting, editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett 

Looking to protect its global interests, the United States, in a way, “has imposed this war against narco-trafficking on [the people of Mexico]. That was how it was born even though it has since acquired the tone of a war against organized crime. 

 “It was a war against narco-trafficking that they forced on us — since the U.S. has the highest number of drug users. They also have something more terrible than drugs…. They have guns, which are overwhelming and widespread. In four and a half years, those weapons have legally armed the military and the police, but they have also illegally armed traffickers and the cartels. … 

“This has left citizens in a state of total defenselessness. Those weapons are killing us. Those guns are wiping us out.” [English translation at Democracy Now, poet Javier Sicilia whose son in Cuernavaca, Mexico, was murdered and tortured]

David Heath has done extensive coverage of “Operation Fast and Furious” and gun trafficking on the U.S.-Mexico border. A senior reporter at the Center for Public Integrity, Heath, said Tuesday on Democracy Now, “In the past two years there were roughly 30,000 guns that Mexican authorities asked the ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] to trace. Often, these guns come with incomplete serial numbers or they are entered incorrectly into the database so there are many times when they cannot do a match. However, of those that they were able to trace, 70 percent of the weapons — about 20,000 weapons — were traced back to the United States. There are 8,500 gun dealers along the U.S.-Mexico border and a person can buy assault weapons very easily at any of these gun shops.”

In the past four years, Heath said, “there have been about 34,000 drug-related deaths caused by firearms in Mexico; 15,000 just last year.” There has been, he said, “an explosion of violence in Mexico” related to lifting the ban on assault weapons. The drug cartels “are multibillion-dollar organizations equipped like armies. They have helicopters and grenades and military-style weapons — all being funded by America’s appetite for illegal drugs.… If you could stop the flow of drugs, then you would also simultaneously be stopping the flow of guns.”

A report released this month by the Global Commission on Drug Policy made up of leading global citizens who have served as heads of nations and with the United Nations, entrepreneurs, financiers, economists, and champions of human rights said —

“The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world.”

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is reported saying, “Every year we continue with the current approach billions of dollars are wasted on ineffective programs. Millions of citizens are imprisoned unnecessarily and millions more suffer from the drug dependence of loved ones who cannot access health and social care services. Hundreds of thousands of people die from preventable overdoses and diseases contracted through unsafe drug use.”

Fifty years after the initiation of the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs — 40 years after U.S. President Richard M. Nixon launched the U.S. government’s war on drugs — fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed, the Global Commission reported.

Criminalization packs prisons, fails people

“Vast expenditures on criminalization and repressive measures directed at producers, traffickers and consumers of illegal drugs have clearly failed to effectively curtail supply or consumption. Apparent victories in eliminating one source or one trafficking organization are negated almost instantly by the emergence of other sources and traffickers. Repressive efforts directed at consumers impede public health measures in reducing HIV/AIDS, overdose fatalities and other harmful consequences of drug use. Government expenditures on futile supply reduction strategies and incarceration displace more cost-effective and evidence-based investments in demand and harm reduction. …

“While national governments have considerable discretion to move away from repressive policies.… For most of the past century, the U.S. government has led calls for the development and maintenance of repressive drug policies.

“The United Nations system must provide leadership in the reform of global drug policy. This means promoting an effective approach based on evidence, supporting countries to develop drug policies that suit their context and meet their needs, and ensuring coherence among various UN agencies, policies and conventions.”

The Commission recommends health measures over harm and simplistic slogans

“In all societies and cultures, a proportion of individuals will develop problematic or dependent patterns of drug use, regardless of the preferred substances in that society or their legal status,” the report said. “Drug dependence can be a tragic loss of potential for the individual involved, but is also extremely damaging for their family, their community, and, in aggregate, for the entire society. Preventing and treating drug dependence is therefore a key responsibility of governments – and a valuable investment, since effective treatment can deliver significant savings in terms of reductions in crime and improvements in health and social functioning.” 

Offer a wide and easily accessible range of options for treatment and care for drug dependence, including substitution and heroin-assisted treatment, with special attention to those most at risk, including those in prisons and other custodial settings.

“The most valuable investment would be in activities that stop young people from using drugs in the first place and prevent experimental users from becoming problematic or dependent users. Prevention of initiation or escalation is clearly preferable to responding to the problems after they occur.

“Most early attempts at reducing overall rates of drug use through mass prevention campaigns were poorly planned and implemented. While the presentation of good (and credible) information on the risks of drug use is worthwhile, the experience of universal prevention (such as media campaigns, or school-based drug prevention programs) has been mixed. Simplistic ‘just say no’ messages have no significant impact.”

Invest more resources in evidence-based prevention, with a special focus on youth.

The majority of people arrested for small-scale drug selling are not gangsters or organized criminals. They are young people who are exploited to do the risky work of street selling, dependent drug users trying to raise money for their own supply, or couriers coerced or intimidated into taking drugs across borders. These people are generally prosecuted under the same legal provisions as the violent and organized criminals who control the market, resulting in the indiscriminate application of severe penalties.

While the idea of decriminalization has mainly been discussed in terms of its application to people who use drugs or who are struggling with drug dependence, we propose that the same approach be considered for those at the bottom of the drug selling chain. 

Promote alternative sentences for small-scale and first-time drug dealers.

The United Nations conservatively estimates that there are currently 250 million illicit drug users in the world and that there are millions more involved in cultivation, production and distribution. We cannot treat them all as criminals.

Many policymakers currently reinforce the idea that all people who use drugs are ‘amoral addicts’ and that all those involved in drug markets are ruthless criminal masterminds. The reality is much more complex. To some extent, policymakers’ reluctance to acknowledge this complexity is rooted in their understanding of public opinion on these issues. 

Challenge instead of reinforcing common misconceptions about drug markets, drug use and drug dependence.

The current system of measuring success in the drug policy field is fundamentally flawed.

Currently the impact of most drug strategies is assessed by the levels of crops eradicated and arrests made, seizures from and punishments of users, growers and dealers.

The demonstrable fact is that arrests and punishment of drug users do little to reduce levels of drug use. Taking out low-level dealers simply creates a market opportunity for others. Even the largest and most successful operations against organized criminals (that take years to plan and implement) have been shown to have, at best, a marginal and short-lived impact on drug prices and availability. Eradication of opium, cannabis or coca crops merely displaces illicit cultivation to other areas.

A new set of indicators is needed to truly show the outcomes of drug policies, according to their harms or benefits for individuals and communities. Policymakers can and should articulate and measure outcomes related to victims of drug market-related violence and intimidation and levels of corruption generated by drug markets; petty crime committed by dependent users; social and economic development in communities where drug production, selling or consumption are concentrated; drug dependence in communities; overdose deaths; and HIV or hepatitis C infection among drug users.  Expenditure of public resources should focus on activities that can be shown to have a positive impact. In the current circumstances in most countries, this means increasing investment in health and social programs and improving targeting of law enforcement resources to address the violence and corruption associated with drug markets. 

Establish better metrics, indicators and goals to measure progress.

If national governments or local administrations feel that decriminalization policies will save money and deliver better health and social outcomes for their communities or that the creation of a regulated market may reduce the power of organized crime and improve the security of their citizens — the international community should support and facilitate such policy experiments and learn from their application.

The debate on alternative models of drug market regulation has too often been constrained by false dichotomies — tough or soft, repressive or liberal. In fact, we are all seeking the same objective: a set of drug policies and programs that minimize health and social harms, and maximize individual and national security.

It is unhelpful to ignore those who argue for a taxed and regulated market for currently illicit drugs. This policy option should be explored with the same rigor as any other. 

Encourage governments’ experimentation with models of legal regulation of drugs (cannabis, for example) designed to undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens.

A key idea behind the ‘war on drugs’ approach was that the threat of arrest and harsh punishment would deter people from using drugs.

In practice, this hypothesis has been disproved. Many countries that have enacted harsh laws and implemented widespread arrest and imprisonment of drug users and low-level dealers have higher levels of drug use and related problems than countries with more tolerant approaches.

Similarly, countries that have introduced decriminalization or other forms of reduction in arrest or punishment have not seen the rises in drug use or dependence rates that had been feared. 

Replace the criminalization and punishment of people who use drugs with the offer of health and treatment services to those who need them.

Political leaders and public figures must have the courage to articulate publicly what many of them acknowledge privately: that the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that repressive strategies will not solve the drug problem and that the ‘war on drugs’ has not been won — and cannot be won.

Governments have the power to pursue a mix of policies that are appropriate to their own situation and to manage the problems caused by drug markets and drug use in a way that has a much more positive impact on the level of related crime as well as social and health harms. 

Break the taboo. Pursue an open debate and promote policies that effectively reduce consumption, and that prevent and reduce harms related to drug use and drug control policies. Increase investment in research and analysis into the impact of different policies and programs.

In a connected policy disaster, Isabel Garcia has pointed out that “Immigration policy has been a total failure and needs to be changed. It has not prevented people from attempting to cross the border but has put the lives of thousands of men, women, and children in serious danger. Their deaths are the direct result of U.S. policy.”

Today on KPFA’s “Letters and Politics” program, lawyer and activist Isabel Garcia characterized the current situation created and executed by officials in Washington and individual U.S. states as “Death by Policy.”

The crisis, indeed the crises we face domestically and globally are the direct result of a persistent failure in governmental leadership. Therefore, Garcia astutely concludes — 

The time has come to “put forward what is right, to build a movement based on real education, a movement for basic human rights, a movement simply for what is just.”

Sources and notes

“Mexican Peace Caravan Arrives in U.S. to Call for End to Deadly Drug War Policy — Mexican Peace Caravan Arrives in U.S. to Call for End to Deadly Drug War Policy: A caravan of Mexican anti-violence protesters arrived in the United States over the weekend calling for a massive shift in U.S. drug policy. Mexican poet Javier Sicilia led the Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity following the brutal murder of his 24-year-old son by drug traffickers earlier this year. The caravan’s demands include an end to the Merida Initiative, in which the United States provides training and support for the Mexican army in its ‘war on drugs.’” Democracy Now spoke with Laura Carlsen, director of the Americas Policy Program of the Center for International Policy, and played an excerpt from Carlsen's interview with poet Javier Sicilia as she traveled with him to document the caravan’s journey, June 15, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/6/15/mexican_peace_caravan_arrives_in_us

REPORT OF THE GLOBAL COMMISSION ON DRUG POLICY JUNE 2011, WAR ON DRUGS, http://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/Report

COMMISSIONERS: Asma Jahangir, human rights activist, former UN Special Rapporteur on Arbitrary, Extrajudicial and Summary Executions, Pakistan; Carlos Fuentes, writer and public intellectual, Mexico; César Gaviria, former President of Colombia; Ernesto Zedillo, former President of Mexico; Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former President of Brazil (chair); George Papandreou, Prime Minister of Greece; George P. Shultz, former Secretary of State, United States (honorary chair); Javier Solana, former European Union High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Spain; John Whitehead, banker and civil servant, chair of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, United States; Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the United Nations, Ghana; Louise Arbour, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, President of the International Crisis Group, Canada; Maria Cattaui, Petroplus Holdings Board member, former Secretary-General of the International Chamber of Commerce, Switzerland; Mario Vargas Llosa, writer and public intellectual, Peru; Marion Caspers-Merk, former State Secretary at the German Federal Ministry of Health; Michel Kazatchkine, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, France; Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the United States; Federal Reserve and of the Economic Recovery Board; Richard Branson, entrepreneur, advocate for social causes, founder of the Virgin Group, co-founder of The Elders, United Kingdom; Ruth Dreifuss, former President of Switzerland and Minister of Home Affairs; Thorvald Stoltenberg, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Norway

Global Commission on Drug Policy, http://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/Report

www.globalcommissionondrugs.org

Isabel Garcia

Isabel Garcia is the co-chair of the Coalición de Derechos Humanos, a Tucson, Arizona-based grassroots organization promoting “respect for human and civil rights and fighting the militarization of the border region in the American Southwest.”

Garcia is legal defender of Pima County, Arizona, and since 1976 has been at the forefront of immigrant and refugee rights. As a lead speaker on behalf of Derechos Humanos, she holds press conferences and interviews, hosts media crews, leads demonstrations, weekly vigils, symposiums, and marches to draw attention to the unjust policies and inhumane treatment of immigrants.

She works to counter anti-immigrant hysteria and to change stereotypes and misinformation about immigrants.

Garcia has received many awards for her work, including the 2006 National Human Rights Award from the Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos de México. http://www.lannan.org/lf/bios/detail/isabel-garcia/

http://www.derechoshumanosaz.net/

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Bennett's books 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]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, 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]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]
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