Two Guantanamo detainees face terror charges

A Canadian who was 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan and a Yemeni accused of chauffeuring Osama bin Laden confront terrorism charges Monday under a reconfigured military tribunal system that critics say remains unconstitutional.

Omar Khadr, now 20, and Salim Ahmed Hamdan are among the first three Guantanamo detainees charged with war crimes under the new system. The third, Australian David Hicks, pleaded guilty in March to providing material support to al-Qaida and is serving out a nine-month sentence in Australia.

But even as the U.S. military revs up its prosecutions of Guantanamo detainees — with the Pentagon saying it expects to eventually charge about 80 of the 380 prisoners held at this isolated base — questions remain about the legitimacy of the process.

The Supreme Court, ruling in favor of a lawsuit brought by Hamdan, last June threw out a previous military tribunal system that was set up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, calling it unconstitutional. Congress responded with new guidelines for war-crimes trials and President Bush signed them into law.

Hamdan’s attorney, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, told The Associated Press that during the trial here he will challenge the new system, insisting it also is unconstitutional.

For one, the Military Commissions Act retroactively made certain acts such as conspiracy a crime, Swift said.

”This case raises significant questions” about the separation of powers, Swift said. ”Congress cannot violate the Constitution to fix things … but they are backdating anything and making it a crime.”

Hamdan is charged with conspiracy — centered on his alleged membership in al-Qaida and purported role in plotting to attack civilians and civilian targets — and with providing material support for terrorism. As part of the second charge, Hamdan is accused of transporting at least one SA-7 surface-to-air missile to shoot down U.S. and coalition military aircraft in Afghanistan in November 2001.

Hamdan’s alleged war crimes were committed between February 1996 and November 2001, according to the charge sheet. Swift, in the interview, said some acts predate the start of the Bush administration’s war against terrorism, saying it generally is considered to be Sept. 11, 2001.

But Army Lt. Col. William Britt, the chief prosecutor in the Hamdan case, told the AP there is no established date when hostilities commenced and that the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center could be construed as the war’s opening shot.

In an interview Sunday at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington — as prosecutors, defense attorneys, human rights monitors and journalists waited to board a plane to Guantanamo for the arraignments — Britt said he expects a courtroom battle over the matters Swift raised.

”These are novel issues,” Britt said. ”We’re talking about new legislation, with the Military Commissions Act of 2006. We, the government, are looking forward to litigating (them).”

Khadr is charged with murder in violation of the law of war, attempted murder in violation of the law of war, conspiracy, providing material support for terrorism and spying.

The son of an alleged al-Qaida financier, Khadr is accused of killing U.S. Army Sgt. Christopher Speer with a grenade during a firefight in Afghanistan on July 27, 2002.

Khadr’s attorneys have decried the charges against him, saying he was a child soldier and should be rehabilitated, not imprisoned.

”The U.S. will be the first country in modern history to try an individual who was a child at the time of the alleged war crimes,” the attorneys said in a joint statement in April.

Khadr fired his American attorneys last week, leaving only two Canadian lawyers in his corner. Because they are classified as foreign attorney consultants, they will not be at the defense table in the hilltop courthouse here.

Under the new trial rules, Khadr has the right to represent himself, said Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.

Source: MuslimNews.co.uk

P.S. The above article says that David Hicks, the Australian detainee pleaded guilty in March. Well, if we go back in time, David Hicks pleaded guilty just to escape the torture in the inhumane Guantanamo Bay gulag.

Blair engages with ‘moderate Muslims’ – but excludes the Muslim Council of Britain?

Tony Blair will address a high-level conference on Islam in London today as part of the Government’s strategy to engage with moderate Muslims and isolate religious extremists.

Politicians and religious leaders from more than 30 Muslim countries will attend the event. It will be addressed by Islamic scholars from Britain and overseas. In a sign of the importance attached to the event, it will open with a video message from the Prince of Wales, and this evening Gordon Brown will host a reception.

David Cameron will speak at the conference tomorrow, having been asked to do so by Mr Blair, as will the Bishop of London, Dr Richard Chartres.

There has been some criticism because the programme includes no speakers from the Muslim Council of Britain.

We know that Tony Blair intends to create a global foundation to foster “greater understanding” between the three “Abrahamic faiths” of Christianity, Judaism and Islam after he leaves Downing Street.

Well, Mr.Blair, excluding the Muslim Council of your own country isn`t going to promote the “greater understanding”.

One word Mr.Blair,

       PHONY

US media ignore ‘Christian terrorists’

It seems the corporate media can sanitize and white-wash even the most putrid bigot. Evangelist hit-man Jerry Falwell’s career as a racist propagandist was excised from the record, following his death last week. The man who called the Civil Rights Act a “civil wrong” and preached that African Americans were the cursed descendants of Ham, is resurrected as a benign theologian. The pattern fits nicely with the national practice of demonizing all things non-Christian (or Judeo-Christian), while sanctifying the unspeakable crimes of Bible-holders.

“The true Negro does not want integration…. He realizes his potential is far better among his own race.” – Rev. Jerry Falwell

The late Rev. Jerry Falwell was one of the most powerful men in American religious and political life. He was also an avowed segregationist, contending that Africans were the cursed descendants of Ham, and worthy only of subservience to white people. He was an adamant opponent of civil rights legislation, calling the Civil Rights Act a “civil wrong.”

His segregationist ardor became inconvenient when he sought a national audience. He removed many of his sermons from the 1950s and 1960s from his Liberty University archive. His lies paid off as the media made Falwell the Christian spokesman for all issues related to religion and politics. They soft-pedaled or even ignored his attacks on the civil rights movement. Yet Falwell’s followers were under no misapprehension. They knew what their man wanted and followed in his foot steps.

Mark Uhl, a student at Liberty University, was in possession of homemade bombs when he was arrested at Falwell’s funeral. He reportedly planned to use them against any protesters who might disrupt the festivities. Uhl had this to say on the social networking website My Space. “Christians, fear of death, fear of death. The fear of death shows you don’t believe.” He added this eye opening statement as well. “God needs soldiers to fight so his children may live free. Are you afraid??? I’m not. SEND ME!!!” Uhl sounds an awful lot like Osama bin Laden, who exhorts Muslims not to fear death when fighting in the name of their religion.

While Americans have been told to fear Islam and all things Muslim, Christians are riding around with home made bombs. The Uhl story was mentioned by the media for only a day or two. The threat from Christians who publicly express a willingness to die for their faith goes unreported.

Recently members of that same group had a collective hissy fit about Muslims. A Pew poll indicated that a small number of American Muslims, a minority of only 8%, considered suicide bombing acceptable under certain circumstances. The vast majority, 78%, said suicide bombing against civilian targets was never acceptable.

The selective outrage was immediate, but few commentators pointed out what Christians tell pollsters about their urge to maim and kill. Most Christians, 65% of Protestants and 72% of Catholics, believe that torture is justifiable under certain circumstances. Nearly half of Americans, 46%, believe that it may be acceptable to deliberately target civilian populations in war time. An average of 75% of Muslims in Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia and Morocco believe that such attacks are never acceptable.

Just as it is unfair to smear all Muslims with the legacy of bin Laden, it would be unfair to smear all Christians as disciples of Jerry Falwell. Muslims are constantly asked to denounce their members who are terrorists. Why is there no similar demand of Christians? Will the good Christians, the peaceful ones, ever speak out against their co-religionists who carry bombs in their cars or drop them on civilians in Iraq?

The public reaction to Falwell’s death showed how ineffectual the supposedly good Christians have become. Few were willing to point out the numerous examples of his hate speech. An opportunity was lost because of ridiculous prohibitions against speaking ill of the dead. The good Christian soldiers don’t know how to fight.

“Will the good Christians, the peaceful ones, ever speak out against their co-religionists?”

Christians perpetrated the crusades, the inquisition, the slave trade and imperial adventures too numerous to mention. It may be comforting to pat ourselves on the back and consign those behaviors to past centuries. We are living in the 21^st century after all. Who would use the name of the Christian God to justify mass killing? A majority of modern day American Christians, that’s who.

Perhaps the argument used against Muslims should be applied to Christians instead. Their religion has been hijacked by fundamentalist fanatics while the non-fanatics remain silent. The term clash of civilizations is definitely a misnomer. There can be no clash unless both sides are in fact civilized. Any assertion of American civilization is clearly open to question.

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.Com. Ms. Kimberley’ maintains an edifying and frequently updated blog at freedomrider.blogspot.com.  More of her work is also available at her Black Agenda Report archive page.

Putin threatens to target Europe with missiles

 

In an interview with the Globe and Mail, Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened to target Europe with missiles, including potentially nuclear weapons, in a dramatic escalation of his Cold War-style showdown with the United States.

Mr. Putin, in an interview at his country residence outside Moscow, said he considers U.S. plans to build an eastern European anti-missile site to shoot down Iranian missiles a provocation aimed at Russia.

Asked what he might do to retaliate, he said he would return Russia to the Cold War status where missiles were aimed at European targets.

“It is obvious that if part of the strategic nuclear potential of the United States is located in Europe, and according to our military experts will be threatening us, we will have to respond,” he said.

“What kind of steps are we going to take in response? Of course, we are going to get new targets in Europe.”

He suggested that this could include powerful nuclear-capable weapons.

“What kind of means will be used to hit the targets that our military believe are potential threats to the Russian federation? This is a purely technical issue, be it ballistic missiles or cruise missiles, or some kinds of novel weapons systems – this is a purely technical issue.”

Mr. Putin held a three-hour dinner interview with the Globe and Mail along with one newspaper from each of the G-8 nations. He defended his nation’s economic policies and tough restrictions on political dissent, repeatedly criticized the U.S. as dangerous and hypocritical, and acknowledged that Russia needs to rid itself of corruption.

Read the full interview with the Russian President in Monday’s Globe and Mail

Israel: A Country Without Defined borders

The BBC News website is publishing a series of articles about the attempts to achieve peace in the Middle East and the main obstacles. Martin Asser looks at the question of Israel’s borders and settlements.

The modern Israeli state was forged in the fires of the first Middle East war in 1948-1949, but from the beginning it was a state without clear borders.The fact that complete, permanent borders still haven’t been drawn 60 years later is testimony to the rancour of Israel’s relations with neighbouring Arab states.Peace talks have taken place – Jordan and Egypt signed treaties with Israel turning 1949 ceasefire lines into state borders.But the absence of a final settlement with Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians mean Israel’s borders and the state itself remain inherently unstable.

In 1948, when British rule of Palestine ended, Israeli forces managed to push most of the Arab forces that joined the war to the former Mandate boundaries, which became temporary ceasefire lines.

The exceptions were what we now know as the West Bank, which remained under Jordanian control, and the Gaza Strip, which was controlled by Egypt.

Thus Israel came into being on 78% of the former Palestine, rather than the 55% allocated under the UN partition plan.

Parts of Israel’s central region were just 15km (9 miles) wide, and strategic Jordanian-held territory overlooked the whole coastal region.

Exceptions

Fast forward to 1967, when Israel captured both the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as Syria’s Golan Heights and Egypt’s Sinai peninsula.

STABLE AND UNSTABLE BORDERS Egypt-Israel treaty, 1979 Article II of peace treaty defines border along Egypt-Mandate frontier Jordan-Israel treaty, 1994 Annex I: Border along Yarmouk and Jordan river; Demarcation of frontier from Dead Sea to Gulf of Aqaba

Israeli-controlled land now stretched from the Jordan Valley in the east and the Suez Canal to the west; it completely enclosed the Sea of Galilee in the north, and gave it a foothold on the Straits of Tiran in the Red Sea.

The Sinai was exchanged for peace with Egypt in the early 1980s (at about the time Israel occupied south Lebanon, where it remained until withdrawing unilaterally in May 2000).

So it was more than 30 years after the foundation of Jewish state that it acquired its first recognised international border with an Arab neighbour.

Jordan became the second treaty holder with Israel, agreeing river borders in the north and a demarcated desert border south of the Dead Sea.

The boundary between Jordan and the occupied West Bank was agreed, but “without prejudice to the status of the territory”.

But such deals are the exception, and the state of Israel and its neighbours have had to live with the insecurity of moveable boundaries and an assortment of different coloured lines (“green”, “purple” and “blue”).

Consolidation

Politically, the most important of the Green Lines – as the 1949 ceasefire lines were called – is the one dividing Israel from the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Occupying the West Bank in 1967 was an important strategic gain in Israeli eyes, and successive governments have ignored the Green Line and built numerous Jewish settlements on the territory.

The settlements are illegal under international law, but Israel disputes this and has pressed ahead with its activity despite signing agreements to limit settlement growth.

Today, about 400,000 settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The land is strategically significant, but in Judaism is also religiously and historically so.

The first settlers were religious Jews who remained in Hebron after celebrating Passover there in 1968.

The settlement movement has become closely affiliated to Jewish religious nationalism, which claims boundaries of modern Israel based on Genesis 15:18: “God made a covenant with Abram and said, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates’.”

On both political and religious grounds, therefore, it is extremely risky for any Israeli politician to dabble in land-for-peace deals or unilateral pullbacks from occupied territory.

This is especially true after the 2006 war over Lebanon, when Hezbollah militants showed the effectives of rocket attacks as a terror weapon from the north, given Israel’s vulnerability at the centre.

State solutions

From the Arab viewpoint, the acceptable territorial solution for a Palestinian-Israeli settlement is withdrawal from all the 1967 land.

Saudi Arabia has proposed such a formula in return for Israel gaining normal diplomatic relations with all Arab countries.

Israel has sought to ring-fence East Jerusalem from any territorial retreat, and it hopes to annex the largest settlement blocs on the east side of the Green Line, which house a large majority of settlers.

This would involve adjustments to the Green Line, perhaps involving Israel swapping its territory for the settlements Ariel, Modiin Illit, Maale Adumim, Gush Etzion, etc.

Removing thousands of hardline settlers from other smaller, more isolated outposts would be a difficult task, however, even for the most secure of Israeli governments.

Further territorial compromises by the Palestinians (having already been squeezed into 22% of pre-1948 Palestine) could be a bitter pill for their leadership to swallow as well.

Then a Palestinian state could be established in the West Bank and Gaza, from which Israel pulled troops and settlers in 2005.

Not all Palestinians, however, want a two-state solution.

Hamas, which won the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary election, wants at all costs to avoid a peace deal with Israel that involves drawing permanent borders, because its wider aim is to establish a single, Islamic state within the borders of pre-1948 Palestine.

They argue that such a state, with the return of 1948 refugees, would have an impregnable and growing Arab, Muslim majority, spelling the end of Israel as a Jewish state.

In the long term, therefore, Israel’s reluctance to accept the existing Green Line in many ways plays into the hands of militant Islamist groups such as Hamas.

More related links:

http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1948to1967_land_1948.php

http://middleeastfacts.com/Articles/how-did-israel-get-its-current-borders.php

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/fellows/israel/intro.html

Countdown to Israel’s destruction has begun, says Ahmadinejad

Iranian president says Israel’s disappearance imminent, ‘Zionist regime’ will have to bow down to Palestinians. Iranian FM meets with Hamas, Jihad, leader in Damascus, urging them to continue struggle against Jewish state

The countdown to Israel’s destruction has begun, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a speech commemorating the death of Iranian revolution leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on Sunday.“The arrogant superpowers and the Zionist regime invested all their efforts during the 33-day war, but after 60 years, their pride has been trampled and the countdown to the destruction of this regime has been started by Hizbullah fighters,” the president was quoted as saying by Iranian news agency Mehr.

Ahmadinejad added that “with the help of all the Lebanese and Palestinian fighters, we will witness the destruction of this regime in the near future… Anyone who works for God and believes in the power of the people will prevail.”

Israel is not the only nation about to collapse, according to the Iranian president. The other corrupt nations will also give in to the Islamic republic’s strength and suffer the same fate.

“We are already witnessing the repercussions of the surrender. The people of Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan and all over the world are joining this river that will soon be linked to the ocean of truth and justice,” he said.

Discussing the resistance of suppressed nations, Ahmadinejad said that according to Khomeini’s teachings, “no power can stand in the way of a people’s will for independence.”

He pointed out the Palestinians as an example of a people who draw encouragement from the ways of the Iranian people. “The Palestinian people have begun their movement out of oppression and the world’s nations and the Zionist regime will be forced to bow down to the Palestinians and officially acknowledge this people.”

Not commenting on the nuclear problem directly, the president hinted that “Khomeini believed that when a nation reaches a point where it makes a decision, no power can tackle it and this is the road Iran is taking.”

Ahmadinejaed ended his speech by urging the nations of the world to believe in God, saying, “The final victory, the power of the people, and the destruction of tryants is near.”

Tehran urges Hamas, Jihad to fight Israel 

On Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki urged Hamas and the Islamic Jihad to carry on with their armed struggle against Israel during meetings with leaders of the Palestinian groups in Damascus Saturday.

According to the London-based al-Hayat daily, Mottaki met with Hamas’ politburo head Khaled Mashaal and a delegation of Islamic Jihad leaders in the framework an official visit to Syria.

“The Palestinian people are a mighty people and there is a need to continue with the resistance,” al-Hayat quoted Mottaki as saying.

Mottaki also called on rival Palestinian factions to end internal strife which has threatened to ignite a civil war in the Gaza Strip.

“It is forbidden for any group to resort to violence in order to end the political deadlock,” he said.

Hamas and Fatah have been locked in a bloody power struggle since the Islamic group rose to power last year.

Mashaal for his part accused Israel of seeking to force Hamas to surrender through military force and intimidation, the newspaper said.

“The Israelis have tried in the past to force Hamas to surrender and to fail us, and now they are trying to do the same through the arrest of legislators and ministers,” he said.

Last week, Israel nabbed a handful of Hamas lawmakers and ministers in the West Bank in response to the group’s decision a week earlier to intensify rocket fire towards towns and kibbutzim near the Gaza Strip.

The move came parallel to a stepped-up military offensive that left 50 Palestinians, mostly gunmen, killed in airstrikes on rocket cells and terror facilities in the coastal territory.

Al-Hayat also reported that Mottaki met with a top political advisor to Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah as well as a delegation of the pro-Syrian Lebanese Amal faction.

Source: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3407915,00.html

Israel declares there was no Holocaust Extermination

 

In the year 2000 Israel said there were one million holocaust survivors still alive and many are in financial need. That number is corroborated close enough[3] by other Jewish sources. Survivor implies something escapes by the skin of one’s teeth and it certainly is terrible that so many are in financial need. Cue the extortion music. [urls to official claims of this number]

As we know the average life expectancy giving a number of people alive in a year is the same as giving the percentage alive in that year to a first order approximation. In giving a number Israel also gave the percent.

The problem is the average life span in 2000 for Europeans was about 75 years.[1] The year 2000 was 55 years after the end of it.[2] So if all ages from newborn to the elderly were among the survivors then 55/75th have died since 1945 and the number alive in 2000 equals 20/75th of the number in 1945, a bit less than 1/3 of them.

Elementary algebra[4] says if there were one million alive in the year 2000 then there were 3.75 million holocaust survivors alive in 1945. That is a huge number.

But wait! There’s more! [Cue Popiel slice and dice logo]

If the Nazis killed those unable to work it gets worse. Lets assume 13 years old is old enough to work. So in 1945 the youngest survivor was 13. That means it is as though there were one million survivors in the year 2012. As that is 67 years after it ended then 67/75ths have died and one million represents 8/75ths of the survivors in 1945. That means there were roughly 9.375 million holocaust survivors in 1945.

Pick any unable-to-work age you want down to newborn and still we are left with 3.5 million in 1945 as the minimum number of holocaust survivors. But if we have newborns surviving then we have a good fraction of women taking care of the children and thus not working. That weighs against the trademarked Pure Nazi Evil. Not working everyone to death stains the trademark of Pure Nazi Evil.

We must conclude the official number asserted for purposes of claiming compensation is either a lie for the purpose of extortion or there was no extermination in the holy holocaust. And if the former is a lie, lying in one leads to a reasonable assumption of lying in all and it is up to the liar to show he is not lying this time.

OTOH we can look at the 1945 Red Cross numbers for all concentration camp survivors as 120,000. That means there should be 33,000 survivors today assuming no extermination of those unable to work. Assuming extermination of those unable to work as under 13 we have roughly 10,000 survivors. If we expand camp survivors to those who survived by hiding either their identity or physically perhaps the number can be doubled or even tripled before one cannot keep a straight face saying it.

Norman Finkelstein quotes his mother as asking, If all of these people are survivors, who did Hitler kill?

I can add to her consternation. Every conceivable modification to the data short of a fountain of youth for holocaust survivors, short of increasing their life expectancy, increases the number of survivors in 1945. Evan a million survivors in 1945 (no one died in 55 years) begs the question of what does holocaust mean.

In a larger context we can look at the distribution of Jews in Europe during WWII and at its maximum expansion only 3 to 4 million Jews lived under Nazi rule. Taking the official number of one million without extermination of those unable to work we have every Jew who was at any time under Nazi rule claiming to be a holocaust survivor. So again, who did Hitler kill? [url to jewish 1938 population figures produced by Jews not knowing the later mythology was coming]

---

[1] Life expectancy in 1945 was on the order of 67 years overall for Europe but included unsanitary eastern Europe of about 10 years shorter where most of this holocaust is supposed to have happened. However this changes nothing as those who had the poor lifestyle as young adults in eastern Europe would be dead before 2000 even if they had a 75 year life expectancy in 1945. This 75 year life expectancy applies mainly to the youngest in 1945. On average it applies to those 20 and younger in 1945.[2] The first approximation rule of demographics is there an equal number in all age groups. To make it easy, say the population is 75 million. That would mean 1 million aged 0-1, 1 million age 1-2 and so forth up to 1 million aged 74-75. Of course no population is a first order approximation. But all the interesting aspects of demographics are departures from this ideal. For purposes of this discussion the only interest is the Z-shaped curve around the average life expectancy. These days the Z-curve has a large number living much longer than the average but in fact there is an equally large number dying before the average age. If it were otherwise the average life expectancy would increase so the same considerations are always true. They are kept true by moving the baseline. It is also true that 75 is not good for all European countries but it is close enough for this exercise.[3] In this case “close enough” means there is no official source of the number rather there is a ballpark range of numbers that different groups adopt as the true number.

[4] 

 20
 – X population-in-1945 = 1,000,000 
 75

                                                              75
population-in-1945 = 1,000,000 X –
                                                              20

Source: http://www.giwersworld.org/holo3/holo-survivors.phtml