Deep Blade Journal

Canadians choose force behind their Medicare system as greatest

During his 42 years in politics, Tommy Douglas was largely responsible for establishment of central banking, old age pensions, unemployment insurance, and universal Medicare.

Tommy Douglas (1904–1986) was chosen in mass voting sponsored by the CBC to be the Greatest Canadian. The competition was rough, including hockey great Wayne Gretzky and the late inspirational folk hero Terry Fox. Fox came in second. Click here to read all about the finalists and the months-long series of programs leading up to last night’s final selection.

As President Bush visits Ottawa today, he should take note of the message ordinary Canadians have sent through this selection. First, public social benefits make for a strong country, even one in the shadow of a behemoth. It is asinine for a conservative even to suggest Canadians would prefer our health-care-for-the-rich system over their own. Also, all of the finalists in this process represented some sort of caring, inspiration, betterment of mass politics, and/or “going against the grain” of conventional wisdom or entrenched interests.

We appreciate the fine opportunity we have here in Bangor, Maine to watch Canadian television (CBC). It can be very refreshing. Thanks to Adelphia for providing it over the last 1 1/2 or so years.

Assume anything that is said by US military spokesmen, Ayad Allawi included, is false until independently proven true. Likelihood is it isn’t.

Here are some of the civilians the Americans didn’t see, but who were put out of their home in Fallujah nonetheless.

Shrapnel from an American grenade thrown into his home tore through this insurgent.

Do not look at the man behind the curtain! Instead see how commendable efforts by some of our soldiers mean “…all Americans can take heart in the proud traditions our military upholds every day, traditions that speak to the core of this nation’s values: reaching out to people in need, regardless of where they call home.” (Dennis McCafferty, “Above and Beyond”, USA Weekend, November 26–28, 2004)

The media environment concerning the recent US-led attacks on Sunni cites and towns — and even the whole situation in Iraq — is outrageous and dishonest. Twenty years from now students will be studying this propaganda environment in an effort to figure out how so many good people remained so quiet during such an intense program of atrocities committed in our name.

This Kim Sengupta story from the Independent and posted on Counterpunch sums up actual reports from people who managed to flee the attacks:

Allegations of widespread abuse by US forces in Fallujah, including the killing of unarmed civilians and the targeting of a hospital in an attack, have been made by people who have escaped from the city.

They said, in interviews with The Independent, that as well as deaths from bombs and artillery shells, a large number of people including children were killed by American snipers. US forces refused repeated calls for medical aid for injured civilians, they said.

Contrast that to the media ear-pulling our military spokespeople are doing while the scribes from the steno pool busily copy every word:

GEN. SATTLER on Nov. 12: we have one group of 30 civilians who came out who were taken and moved to a humanitarian assistance area. And the only other civilians — we had one civilian who was injured, a family of three who was picked up by Iraqi security forces and brought out, and then the approximately 300 that I mentioned earlier that are a combination, we feel, of civilians from Fallujah and possibly some fighters embedded with them. And that is the only families — the only civilians we’ve come across.

GEN. SATTLER on Nov. 18: The only people who are out moving around — we’ll see them walk out with a white flag — and I’m sure you’ve seen those — who will come in to pick up water and food, and then we follow them back to where they’re going to make sure they’re not taking that water and food back to a number of insurgents who are destitute and running out of both luck and food and water. If they take it back to a family, then we ensure that we provide proper assistance to that family.

Contrast again to more reports from the ground:

DAHR JAMAIL on Nov. 23: Doctors in Fallujah are reporting there are patients in the hospital there who were forced out by the Americans,” said Mehdi Abdulla, a 33 year-old ambulance driver at a hospital in Baghdad, “Some doctors there told me they had a major operation going, but the soldiers took the doctors away and left the patient to die.” He looks at the ground, then away to the distance.

DAHR JAMAIL on Nov. 28:…most Fallujans have been unable to reach the main hospital due to ongoing fighting and most being too afraid of detainment by soldiers or Iraqi National Guardsmen to seek medical help. The ambulances returned to Baghdad.

The rest of Dahr’s posts often are so sickening — reports of use of poisonous gas, artillery against moving persons, soldiers dumping bodies in the river, and an utterly terrified population afraid to even light a candle at night — sometimes I can barely read them.

Below are a few more references. If young American soldiers can be convinced they are battling “Satan”, the dehumanization process is complete.

US denies need for Falluja aid convoy

The Guardian; Rory McCarthy, Baghdad; Monday, November 15, 2004

“US military chiefs said yesterday that they saw no need for the Iraqi Red Crescent to deliver aid inside Falluja because they did not think any Iraqi civilians were trapped there. ‘There is no need to bring [Red Crescent] supplies in because we have supplies of our own for the people,” said Colonel Mike Shupp of the marines…’”

Hunting ‘Satan’ in Falluja hell

BBC News; Paul Wood, Falluja; Tuesday, November 23, 2004

“Lt Malcolm was a good chess player. He looked like any other young marines officer: skinny, shaven-headed, although with a quite beaky nose. ‘A lot of the marines that I’ve had wounded and killed over the past five months have been by a faceless enemy. But the enemy has got a face. ‘He’s called Satan. He’s in Falluja. And we’re going to destroy him’. But to his officers in the briefing he said: ‘There’s nothing out there that will defeat us’”.

ICRC decries humanitarian situation

The following is an extraordinary release from the International Committee of the Red Cross. It displays balance, but the blatant violation of the 1st Geneva Convention — prevention of treatment of sick and injured by US-led forces — must not be escaping notice.

Iraq: Civilians must be spared and the sick and wounded treated

Geneva (ICRC)

The ICRC reminds all those involved in the armed confrontations in Iraq that international humanitarian law prohibits the killing or harming of civilians who are not directly taking part in the hostilities.

It calls upon all fighters to take every feasible precaution to spare civilians and civilian property and to respect the principles of distinction and proportionality in all military operations.

Deeply concerned about reports that the injured cannot receive adequate medical care, the ICRC urges the belligerents to ensure that all those in need of such care – whether friend or foe – be given access to medical facilities and that medical personnel and vehicles can function without hindrance at all times.

Thousands of Iraqi civilians, including women, children and elderly persons, have fled the fighting in Falluja and taken refuge in the surrounding areas. Many of these displaced people need assistance in the form of food, water, shelter and medical care. They should be allowed to return home safely as soon as possible.

The ICRC remains committed to pursuing its humanitarian work in Iraq and urges all parties to facilitate the passage of its aid convoys and the delivery of its neutral assistance to civilians affected by the conflict.

Time to pray.

StopWar.ca has organized protests against Bush’s November 30 visit to Ottawa

This is a short excerpt of a letter sent to Citizenship and Immigration Minister Sgro by a Canadian group called Lawyers Against the War:

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

The Honourable Judy Sgro, P.C., M.P.

Minister of Citizenship and Immigration

Ottawa Canada K1A 1L1

Tel: 1 613 954 1064

Fax: 1 613 957 2688

Minister@cic.gc.ca

sgro.j@parl.gc.ca

Dear Minister Sgro;

Re: President George W. Bush proposed November 30th 2004 visit to Canada.

We wrote to Prime Minister Martin on November 19 2004 protesting the invitation of President Bush to Canada on the grounds of the PresidentÂ’s flagrant commission of the most serious crimes against international law…As that letter indicates, many of the crimes of which President Bush stands accused are crimes under Canadian law, specifically under the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act.

We are writing to you now to remind you that these crimes render President Bush inadmissible to Canada under our immigration laws. Because responsibility for the operation and enforcement of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act lies with you and your Ministry, we are calling on you to advise the Prime Minister of this fact and to insist that he rescind this invitation out of respect for our laws….

Maybe Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales has produced a secret memo explaining how the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act do not render President Bush “inadmissible” to Canada.

You know the Republicans are feeling budget trouble when Congress won’t rubber stamp Bush’s nukes

The Robust Earth Penetrator (illustration) and related programs were deleted in the massive budget bill passed by Congress over the weekend.

Our Congressional representatives have acted in accordance with our pleas of August 6 for them to stop the Administration’s determined pursuit of new “usable” nuclear weapons. Walter Pincus reported Tuesday in the Washington Post that

…it was a Republican, Rep. David L. Hobson of Ohio, who lead the successful effort to keep the programs out of the omnibus appropriations bill adopted Saturday. Hobson, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on energy and water development, oversaw dropping the money from an appropriations bill in June, and House-Senate conferees accepted that action in Saturday’s bill.

It should be noted that during our August 6 action, we thanked members of Congress who courageously supported deleting the bunker buster funds. Please see a pdf-format copy of the handout we distributed that day. At that time we wrote the we applauded “action in June where the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee courageously removed all the funds for new nuclear weapons in the House version of the energy and water appropriations bill (HR 4614)”.

We again give the same thanks to Representative Hobson and those members who now have made the deletion stick.

Pincus does go on to quote the positive reaction of arms control advocates, and gives the rationale for opposing these dangerous and unnecessary weapons, writing, “the existence of lower-yield weapons — sometimes called “mini-nukes” — would ultimately increase the likelihood of war”.

A victory perhaps even bigger than the elimination of the bunker busters in this budget action is the cold stop of the effort to build a new facility for production of plutonium pits for bombmaking. Although this deletion was small ($7 million), it stops dead in its tracks the proposed $4 billion Cold-War-throw-back construction program.

This remark of Hobson’s was also in the Pincus story:

[Hobson] said that the $9 million Bush request to study ideas for new low-yield weapons had been redirected into studies of “current technologies to make existing warheads more robust and easier to maintain without more testing.” Hobson added he had been against developing smaller-yield weapons “that someone might use,” and instead wants the nuclear labs to employ modern technology to make “more reliable replacements” for the current warheads.

While we clearly agree with the remark that nukes that someone might use should not be built, it seems some equivalent money will be spent in other sanctums of nuclear horror. Our work to prevent nuclear war can hardly be considered over.

At least some parts of the Energy Bill will poke through in 2005

President Bush and Veep Cheney promise that scenes like these will be more common in the Alaskan arctic

With peak oil descending on America like a ton of bricks, the 2004 election appears to have tipped the balance against the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Wampum has a detailed political analysis specifically on the ANWR issue. The writer’s Democratic strategy conclusion near the end of this piece is quite interesting:

Democrats need to decide what they want to do about ANWAR. One option is to stand, fight, and lose on the narrow issue of ANWAR. Another option is to try to add provisions that will make the inevitable drilling more environmentally friendly.

My preferred option is to present a comprehensive energy plan as an alternative to the Republican bill and then allow the Republican majority to pass what it will.

The comprehensive plan should set out a road to energy independence for the United States. It should reject the false choice between economic growth and environmental protection and find ways to do both by creating new industries concerned with environmental protection and clean up.

It should be forward looking by calling for investment in new energy technologies such as hydrogen. It should combine new sources of energy with more efficiency and conservation. It should be practical and easily explained.

If any plan can meet those goals, I, for one, am fully prepared to compromise within the party on any specific item (ANWAR, nuclear power, CAFE standards, Gulf drilling, or whatever) to be able to agree on a comprehensive alternative to the Republican plan.

If we take that route, Democrats will not only win elections when the public tires of ineffective Republican policies, but will also have a mandate to enact a set of policies upon attaining power.

My own gut feeling is that the energy picture is going to blow wide open. Political resistance to oil drilling will pretty much vanish. Saving ANWR from greedy, Cheney-connected interests will not be possible. So I agree with the Wampum writer — compromise with an aim to ameliorate environmental damage while limiting the theft and corruption normally associated with energy extraction seems wise at this juncture.

See also: this analysis posted by Bob at Howlings. ANWR’s best friend may be the water-polluting chemical MTBE, as it has so far gummed the works for the Energy Bill.

Tax-return-privacy-gate has Republicans in retreat

Ernest Istook (R-OK): “I didn’t write it; I didn’t approve it; I wasn’t even consulted. My name shouldn’t be associated with it, because I had nothing to do with it, and didn’t even know about it until after the bill was done and was filed.”

This thing is just delicious. With all of the power and glory of their new perceived voter mandate, Republicans in both the House and Senate of the United States Congress are running away from their own taxpayer anti-privacy provision like a herd of elephants with their tails between their legs.

According to a story in the New York Times, Representative Ernest Istook, the Republican from Oklahoma who occupies the Chairmanship of the House Appropriations Committee, “was responsible for the insertion of the tax provision in the 3,000-page, $388 billion legislation that provides financing for most of the government”.

Read that story, then read the actual language they passed along with the massive bill, as quoted by Josh Marshall. See if you think the “tempest in a teapot” denials by those responsible for the lawmaking process are credible:

Hereinafter, notwithstanding any other provision of law governing the disclosure of income tax returns or return information, upon written request of the Chairman of the House or Senate Committee on Appropriations, the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service shall allow agents designated by such Chairman access to Internal Revenue Service facilities and any tax returns or return information contained therein. (emphasis added)

Marshall has an extensive thread going on this issue, of which the latest posting is here.

The Washington Post has a page A1 story today. This is fun to watch!

What’s the first thing the Republicans want to do post-election? Buy back the presidential yacht, of course!

USS Sequoia: “When President Carter announced that Sequoia would be sold, crew members said they were devastated. ‘We cried, it was as though a member of the family died.’”

The taxpayers will be asked to cough up $2 million to buy the USS Sequoia in the spending bill now before the lame-duck Congress. However the current owners say this symbol of wealth and privilege is “not for sale”.

Taxpayer privacy under attack

Not only do the Republicans want to spend on luxury, they want to give their staffers the right to pour over our tax returns. Here is an exchange from Meet the Press this morning between Tim Russert and Senator John McCain:

MR. RUSSERT: In the House version of this spending bill, there was a provision which said that the Appropriations Committee should have access to taxpayers’ tax returns. How did that happen?

SEN. McCAIN: What happens here is that they slap these omnibus bills together–as you mentioned, this one’s nine bills that we should have passed separately–nobody sees them or reads them. It was a 1,630- page document yesterday that was presented to us sometime in the morning, and we voted on it in the evening. The system is broken, and everybody, of course, wanted to get out of town, understandably.

MR. RUSSERT: Why should Congress have access to citizens’ tax returns?

SEN. McCAIN: According to–Senator Stevens’ explanation on the floor last night was that two staffers put in this provision and no one knew about it until another Senator Conrad staffer discovered it.

MR. RUSSERT: What was their motive?

SEN. McCAIN: That should–you know, I don’t know. I can’t imagine. But the fact that our system is such that that would ever be inserted and passed by the House of Representatives–if there’s ever a graphic example of the broken system that we now have, that certainly has to be it.

Gee, nobody now knows how or why this could’ve happened. Unnamed “staffers” are to blame. It’ll require a separate measure to delete it, which Senator Frist promised to “take care” of.

Update: More on tax return privacy here.

Intelligence Bill

This is in some ways an enjoyable spectacle. The 911 reforms, being shepherded by Maine’s puppy-dog Senator Susan Collins, can’t be passed because of a deep anti-immigration split on Bush’s right side. Seems the “moderate” Republicans are quite in favor of illegal immigrants having the legal right to a driver’s license.

Promises of nonpartisanship were lies and there will be no more telling the public the truth about anything else

Michael Scheuer is the senior intelligence analyst who created and advised a secret CIA unit for tracking and eliminating bin Laden since 1996. He wrote the book Imperial Hubris under the pseudonym “Anonymous”.

Newly minted DCI Porter Goss, now ratified by the election result, has revealed his tool set for disciplining his CIA subordinates. Contrary to promises of non-partisanship sworn before Chairman Pat Roberts and the rest of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Goss has staffed up his office with Republican hatchetmen. And the first to pay the price will be those agency employees who spoke in public about the disasters befalling this country due to manipulation of intelligence, like Michael Scheuer who is already out.

“There will be no more ‘Imperial Hubris’ books,” said an intelligence official quoted in the article linked above. “The word is out: The place is under lockdown.”

The bloodletting since last weekend has included two senior spook managers.

Call the latest shakeup “perception management“, where Bush will now “hear even fewer contradictions to his judgments”.

See also this story and these comments by former intelligence officer and agency critic, Mel Goodman.

In a recent piece on truthout.org, Aggressive War: Supreme International Crime, Marjorie Cohn argues forcefully that the United States has committed a variety of war crimes in the recent attack on Fallujah. She writes, “The Americans destroyed the Nazzal Emergency Hospital in the center of town. They stormed and occupied the Fallujah General Hospital, and have not agreed to allow doctors and ambulances go inside the main part of the city to help the wounded, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions”.

Ms. Cohn describes this basic tenet of international law:

The only two situations where the UN Charter permits the use of armed force against another state is in self-defense, or when authorized by the Security Council. Iraq had not invaded the U.S., or any other country, Iraq did not constitute an imminent threat to any country, and the Security Council never sanctioned Bush’s war. Bush and the officials in his administration are committing the crime of aggression.

I generally agree with Ms. Cohn’s conclusion that the March 2003 US attack on Iraq was a breach of international law. Furthermore, like Noam Chomsky, I believe that according to the Nuremberg Principles, acts subsequent to the initial Aggression also are war crimes “…when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.”

But I want to bring up for discussion one, two postings by Juan Cole.

The first of these refers to the horrific killing of a wounded Iraqi by a US Marine, in a mosque. Intense reaction has occurred throughout the Arab world, with much of the coverage underlining outrage over the “war crime” represented by this incident.

Cole points out, however, that UN Security Council resolutions were passed unanimously since the March 2003 invasion and conquest of Iraq. Most important is UNSCR 1546, recognizing the interim government of Iraq. I’m left wondering how to interpret the legality of “subsequent acts” under Nuremberg given post facto resolutions that seemingly legitimate the activities of the US military.

Professor Cole is a blogger I admire and respect greatly. His point is that the “legitimacy” of US forces operating in Iraq, flows from the authority conferred by UNSCR 1546. Cole writes:

Let me just clarify my comments. First of all, I did not say that the Iraq war was a legitimate war. It was not. It violated the charter of the United Nations. What I said was that the role of the US military and other multinational forces in Iraq is now legitimate because it was explicitly sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council. This is true. Many readers appear to have forgotten all about UN SC Resolution 1546 (2004), which was adopted unanimously. Here is what the Security Council said about the issue at hand:

9. Notes that the presence of the multinational force in Iraq is at the request of the incoming Interim Government of Iraq and therefore reaffirms the authorization for the multinational force under unified command established under resolution 1511 (2003), having regard to the letters annexed to this resolution;

10. Decides that the multinational force shall have the authority to take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq in accordance with the letters annexed to this resolution expressing, interalia, the Iraqi request for the continued presence of the multinational force and setting out its tasks, including by preventing and deterring terrorism, so that, interalia, the United Nations can fulfill its role in assisting the Iraqi people as outlined in paragraph seven above and the Iraqi people can implement freely and without intimidation the timetable and program for the political process and benefit from reconstruction and rehabilitation activities;

11. Welcomes, in this regard, the letters annexed to this resolution stating, interalia, that arrangements are being put in place to establish a security partnership between the sovereign Government of Iraq and the multinational force and to ensure coordination between the two, and notes also in this regard that Iraqi security forces are responsible to appropriate Iraqi ministers, that the Government of Iraq has authority to commit Iraqi security forces to the multinational force to engage in operations with it, and that the security structures described in the letters will serve as the for a for the Government of Iraq and the multinational force to reach agreement on the full range of fundamental security and policy issues, including policy on sensitive offensive operations, and will ensure full partnership between Iraqi security forces and the multinational force, through close coordination and consultation…

So, the Marines at Fallujah are operating in accordance with a UNSC Resolution and have all the legitimacy in international law that flows from that. The Allawi government asked them to undertake this Fallujah mission.

To compare them to the murderous thugs who kidnapped CARE worker Margaret Hassan, held her hostage, terrified her, and then picked up a butcher knife, grabbed her by the hair, held her head back, and cut her throat completely through the spinal cord as she screamed with increasing difficulty, is frankly monstrous. The multinational forces are soldiers fighting a war in which they are targeting combatants and sometimes accidentally killing innocents. The hostage-takers are terrorists deliberately killing innocents. It is simply not the same thing.

Cole qualifies his sense that the US Marines are a “legitimate” force in Iraq with the notion that the initial invasion violated the UN Charter. I do not accept that UNSCR 1546 sweeps away the illegality of the initial UN Charter violation. This doesn’t seem to be the Professor’s exact point and I do not think he wants to absolve the US of bona fide war crimes. However, I’m just not sure you can separate activities “legal” under UNSCR 1546 from those illegal because the invasion was illegal. Perhaps 1546 is itself illegal.

Margaret Hassan

Furthermore, on the sickening Margaret Hassan matter, I don’t think we know exactly who killed her. I fully agree with Juan Cole that this act was monstrous. However, take a look at this story by Robert Fisk. Fisk writes,

…when it percolated through to Fallujah and Ramadi that the mere act of kidnapping Hassan was close to heresy, the combined resistance groups of Fallujah — and the message genuinely came from them — demanded her release.

So, incredibly, did Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaeda man whom the Americans falsely claimed was leading the Iraqi insurrection, but who has definitely been involved in the kidnappings and beheadings. Other abducted women were freed when their captors recognised their innocence.

But not Margaret Hassan, even though she spoke fluent Arabic and could explain her work to her captors in their own language. If anyone doubted the murderous nature of the insurgents, what better way to prove their viciousness than to produce evidence of Margaret Hassan’s murder?

What more ruthless way could there be of demonstrating to the world that the US and Interim Prime Minister Iyad Alawi’s tinpot army were fighting “evil” in Fallujah and the other Iraqi cities?

The situation unleashed by the United States in Iraq is so murky that it is not hard to imagine Ms. Hassan’s death came at the hands of people wishing to de-legitimate resistance to US aggression while building an image of white-hatted Marines riding in to clean up these horrible people. Professor Cole may have fallen into a bit of a trap here.

Update 23:20: As’ad AbuKhalil has posted today bewildered by the Fisk piece I just cited. The Angry Arab appears to be in full concurrence with Professor Cole on the likely Al-Qa`idah/Zarqawi pedigree of the killers. “They are defaming her on their websites already? And it would not be the first time that they would kill an innocent person). Zarqawi and Al-Qa`idah by the way found ways to justify not only their killing of innocent civilians, but also of innocent civilian Muslims”, writes As’ad.