US Recognition of Opposition Syrian Coalition Contradicts Geneva Statement

Op-Ed: US-UK Genocide Against Iraq 1990-2012 Killed 3.3 Million-Including 750K Children

Denis Campbell's U.K. Progressive
Sherwood Ross

Approximately 3.3 million Iraqis, including 750,000 children, were “exterminated” by economic sanctions and/or illegal wars conducted by the U.S. and Great Britain between 1990 and 2012, an eminent international legal authority says.

The slaughter fits the classic definition of Genocide Convention Article II of, “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” says Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois, Champaign, and who in 1991 filed a class-action complaint with the UN against President George H.W. Bush.

The U.S. and U.K. “obstinately insisted” that their sanctions remain in place until after the “illegal” Gulf War II aggression perpetrated by President George W. Bush and UK’s Tony Blair in March, 2003, “not with a view to easing the over decade-long suffering of the Iraqi people and children” but “to better facilitate the U.S./U.K. unsupervised looting and plundering of the Iraqi economy and oil fields in violation of the international laws of war as well as to the grave detriment of the Iraqi people,” Boyle said.

In an address last Nov. 22 to The International Conference on War-affected Children in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Boyle tallied the death toll on Iraq by U.S.-U.K. actions as follows:

The slaughter of 200,000 Iraqis by President Bush in his illegal 1991 Gulf War I.
The deaths of 1.4 million Iraqis as a result of the illegal 2003 war of aggression ordered by President Bush Jr. and Prime Minister Blair.

The deaths of 1.7 million Iraqis “as a direct result” of the genocidal sanctions.
Boyle’s class-action complaint demanded an end to all economic sanctions against Iraq; criminal proceedings for genocide against President George H.W. Bush; monetary compensation to the children of Iraq and their families for deaths, physical and mental injury; and for shipping massive humanitarian relief supplies to that country.

The “grossly hypocritical” UN refused to terminate the sanctions, Boyle pointed out, even though its own Food and Agricultural Organization’s Report estimated that by 1995 the sanctions had killed 560,000 Iraqi children during the previous five years.

Boyle noted that then U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright was interviewed on CBS-TV on May 12, 1996, in response to a question by Leslie Stahl if the price of half a million dead children was worth it, and replied, “we (the U.S. government) think the price is worth it.”

Albright’s shocking response provides “proof positive of the genocidal intent by the U.S. government against Iraq” under the Genocide Convention, Boyle said, adding that the government of Iraq today could still bring legal action against the U.S. and the U.K. in the International Court of Justice. He said the U.S.-U.K. genocide also violated the municipal legal systems of all civilized nations in the world; the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child; and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and its Additional Protocol 1 of 1977.

Boyle, who was stirred to take action pro bono by Mothers in Iraq after the economic sanctions had been imposed upon them by the Security Council in August, 1990, in response to pressure from the Bush Senior Administration. He is the author of numerous books on international affairs, including “Destroying World Order” (Clarity Press.)

The Highway of Death

A short film about the atrocities that took place along the road from Mutlaa, Kuwait to Basra. Iraq on February 26th & 27th, 1991.

Syrian Rebels Commit War Crime by Executing Government Troops with Bullets of "Hope and Change"

A video taken on November 1st, 2012 shows captured soldiers on the ground in Saraqeb, in northern Syria, and later shows them being shot to death.

FSA are executing a group of captured government troops. Executing prisoners of war is in direct violation of the Geneva Convention.

The United Nations said on Friday that a new video from Syria circulating on the Internet that appears to show antigovernment fighters kicking and summarily executing a group of frightened captive soldiers or militiamen could, if verified, represent evidence of a war crime to prosecute the perpetrators.

Robert Gibbs Blames the Victim?

The Daily Bell

"A 16-year-old American boy killed in an Obama administration drone strike 'should have [had] a far more responsible father,' Obama campaign senior adviser Robert Gibbs says in a new video released by the group We Are Change. – Young Turks

Dominant Social Theme: If you don't hit them over there, they will come here.

Free-Market News: In this video, Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks comments on why the US killed a male US minor in Yemen – a young US citizen whose father, US officials claim, was a terrorist.

Robert Gibbs is a former spokesperson for the Obama administration and the initial YouTube posting was created by the alternative media group, We Are Change. While the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki (who was said by some to have actually been a CIA asset) was widely reported, the death of his young son, Abdulrahman, also a US citizen who lived in the United States, is not nearly so well known.

Al-Awlaki's death is justified by those who carried it out as a strike against someone who meant to harm US citizens. He was labeled a terrorist and put on an Obama death list. But his son wasn't on any such list and was killed anyway, two weeks after his father, in another drone strike. Neither individual received judicial due process.

In defending the killing, Gibbs says at one point: "I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children. I don't think becoming an al Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business."

Uygur calls this answer "a terrible one."

Apparently, Gibbs's response has been noted by the larger, "mainstream" US press. "The Atlantic suggests that if Gibbs is giving the genuine rationale for the killing, it's grounds for impeachment." And Esquire magazine wrote about the death of the son as follows:

He was a boy who hadn't seen his father in two years, since his father had gone into hiding. He was a boy who knew his father was on an American kill list and who snuck out of his family's home in the early morning hours of September 4, 2011, to try to find him. He was a boy who was still searching for his father when his father was killed, and who, on the night he himself was killed, was saying goodbye to the second cousin with whom he'd lived while on his search, and the friends he'd made. He was a boy among boys, then; a boy among boys eating dinner by an open fire along the side of a road when an American drone came out of the sky and fired the missiles that killed them all.

(Video from TYTNETWORK's YouTube user channel.)

Pakistan’s anti-drone campaigner Imran Khan removed from US airline for interrogation

Russia Today



US immigration authorities have taken Pakistan’s former cricket superstar-turned-politician Imran Khan off a flight to New York and interrogated. Khan is known for his anti-drone campaigning.

Khan, who is now a popular political figure in Pakistan and ahead of the Pakistan Movement for Justice party (PTI), was removed from an American Airlines flight heading from Canada to New York and interrogated. Immigration officials asked him whether he was planning to protest in the US, as well as demanding to know his views on drone strikes and jihad.

Earlier this month, the former cricket star led thousands of Pakistani protesters, together with some US anti-war advocates, on a march from Islamabad to the tribal region of South Waziristan in opposition to US drone strikes. About 15,000 of his supporters joined him in the high-profile march, which focused attention on the strikes that have killed large numbers of civilians. Islamabad recently said that 80 percent of drone-related deaths were civilians.

“I was taken off the plane and interrogated by US Immigration in Canada on my views on drones. My stance is known. Drone attacks must stop,” Khan wrote in a tweet after being questioned on Friday. Khan had been on his way to the US to give a speech and attend a fundraiser organized by his political party, which the delay caused him to miss.

“Missed flight and sad to miss the fundraising lunch in NY but nothing will change my stance,” he tweeted.

Furthermore, Khan said the official who was questioning him did not seem to understand drone warfare himself. He also expressed confusion over why he was granted a visa to visit the US given if his stance on drones was a problem.

Khan heads a political party that was founded in 1996 and ignored for years. The PTI was called “Pakistan’s one-man party” by the US Department of State. Today, it is rapidly growing, with electable officials joining. The Pakistani leader believes the War on Terror “has been devastating for Pakistan,” he said in an interview with Julian Assange in June.

“Basically, our army was killing our own people,” he said.

He is an avid opponent to US presence on Pakistani soil – even when it came down to the killing of Osama Bin Laden in May 2011. The US mission to kill the former terrorist leader in Pakistan shows that “our ally did not trust us,” the politician said. Rather than employ Pakistan as “a hired gun, being paid to kill America’s enemies,” Khan believes the US should trust that there will not be terrorism coming out of Pakistan.

Several Canadian commentators have suggested that groups protesting Khan’s entrance to the US may have influenced Immigration to pull him off the flight. The American Islamic Leadership Coalition last week requested that Hilary Clinton attempt to revoke his visa due to what they believe are sympathetic views towards the Taliban.

“The US Embassy made a significant error in granting this Islamist leader a visa,” the group said in a statement reported by the Sun. “Granting individuals like Khan access to the US to fundraise is against the interest of the people of Pakistan and the national security interests of the US.”

Ali Zaidi, a senior PTI party leader, demanded an apology from the US government for removing Khan from the plane. So far, no apologies have been made, and Immigration officials have only restated their policies.

“Our dual mission is to facilitate travel in the United States while we secure our borders, our people, and our visitors from those that would do us harm like terrorists and terrorist weapons, criminals, and contraband,” Customs and Border Protection spokesperson Joanne Ferreira told the Toronto Sun.

UK claims possible court hearing into CIA drone strikes in Pakistan would risk denting US ties

Washington Post

Ties between Britain, the U.S. and Pakistan could be jeopardized if a judge grants a request for a court inquiry into the possible role of U.K. spy agencies in aiding covert CIA drone strikes in Pakistan’s northwest tribal region, a government lawyer told Britain’s High Court on Thursday.

James Eadie, lawyer for Britain’s Foreign Office, insisted that intelligence sharing between Britain and the U.S. — already under strain by previous disclosures made in London courtrooms — and links between Washington and Pakistan would all potentially be cast into doubt.

Noor Khan, a 27-year-old whose father was killed by a drone strike in northwest Pakistan in March 2011, has asked Britain’s High Court to examine whether U.K. intelligence officials assisted the action and may be liable for prosecution.

His legal advisers want a judge to determine whether Britain’s secret eavesdropping agency, the Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, has passed location data to guide CIA drones, and whether the U.K. has agreed to a secret policy of assistance to the program of targeting militants.

“Adjudicating on the claim plainly would have significant impact on the conduct of the United Kingdom’s relations with both the United States and Pakistan,” Eadie told a three-day hearing at the High Court. “It would also be likely to have such an impact on relations between the United States and Pakistan. That impact would be felt in an acutely controversial, sensitive and important context.”

Since 2004, CIA drones have targeted suspected militants with missile strikes in the Pakistani tribal regions, killing hundreds of people. The program is controversial because of questions about its legality, the number of civilians it has killed and its impact on Pakistan’s sovereignty.

Khan’s father, Malik Daud Khan, was attending a meeting of local elders in Datta Khel, in North Waziristan, when it was hit by a missile fired from an unmanned drone, killing around 40 people.

British officials have not commented publicly on their policy toward CIA drone strikes. U.S. officials do not publicly acknowledge the covert program.

Pakistani officials have urged the U.S. to halt its program and to instead relay intelligence gathered by the pilotless aircraft to Pakistani jets and ground forces so that they can target militants themselves.

Kat Craig, legal director of the Reprieve charity, which is representing Khan, said that her client “merely wishes to know what role the British intelligence services play in this game of one-sided Russian roulette.”

“He is calling for the veil of secrecy around Britain’s drones policy to be lifted so that he can keep his community safe. We share his concerns about the lack of accountability, and the morality of the U.K. being dragged into an illegal attack on a country with whom we are not at war,” she said.

Last year, British spy agencies were accused of sharing sensitive information with Moammar Gadhafi’s regime in Libya, leading to the torture or rendition of two Libyan men and their families. The case is now the subject of an inquiry by British police.

Previously, intelligence sharing between Britain and the U.S. was put under strain after a London court made public details of abuse that ex-Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed alleges he suffered at the hands of U.S. intelligence officials. Mohamed had accused the British government of complicity in his alleged torture.

Britain’s Foreign Office said that a decision on whether to grant Khan a hearing is expected to be handed down by the High Court before the year’s end.

The Cost of Stupidity

UN to investigate civilian deaths from US drone strikes

Guardian
Owen Bowcott

Special rapporteur on counter-terror operations condemns Barack Obama's failure to establish effective monitoring process

Ben Emmerson QC called for effective investigations into US drone attacks.

The United Nations is to set up a dedicated investigations unit in Geneva early next year to examine the legality of drone attacks in cases where civilians are killed in so-called "targeted" counter-terrorism operations.

The announcement was made by Ben Emmerson QC, a UN special rapporteur, in a speech to Harvard law school in which he condemned secret rendition and waterboarding as crimes under international law. His forthright comments, directed at both US presidential candidates, will be seen as an explicit challenge to the prevailing US ideology of the global war on terror.

Earlier this summer, Emmerson, who monitors counter-terrorism for the UN, called for effective investigations into drone attacks. Some US drone strikes in Pakistan may amount to war crimes, Emmerson warned.

In his Harvard speech, he said: "If the relevant states are not willing to establish effective independent monitoring mechanisms … then it may in the last resort be necessary for the UN to act.

"Together with my colleague Christof Heyns, [the UN special rapporteur on extra-judicial killings], I will be launching an investigation unit within the special procedures of the [UN] Human Rights Council to inquire into individual drone attacks."

The investigation unit will also look at "other forms of targeted killing conducted in counter-terrorism operations, in which it is alleged that civilian casualties have been inflicted". Emmerson maintained that the US stance that it can conduct counter-terrorism operations against al-Qaida or other groups anywhere in the world because it is deemed to be an international conflict was indefensible.

"The global war paradigm has done immense damage to a previously shared international consensus on the legal framework underlying both international human rights law and international humanitarian law," he said. "It has also given a spurious justification to a range of serious human rights and humanitarian law violations.

"The [global] war paradigm was always based on the flimsiest of reasoning, and was not supported even by close allies of the US. The first-term Obama administration initially retreated from this approach, but over the past 18 months it has begun to rear its head once again, in briefings by administration officials seeking to provide a legal justification for the drone programme of targeted killing in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia …

"[It is] alleged that since President Obama took office at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims and more than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. Christof Heyns … has described such attacks, if they prove to have happened, as war crimes. I would endorse that view."

Emmerson singled out both President Obama and the Republican challenger Mitt Romney for criticism. "It is perhaps surprising that the position of the two candidates on this issue has not even featured during their presidential elections campaigns, and got no mention at all in Monday night's foreign policy debate.

"We now know that the two candidates are in agreement on the use of drones. But the issue of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques is an one which, according to the record, continues to divide them.

"I should make it absolutely clear that my mandate does not see to eye to eye with the Obama administration on a range of issues – not least the lack of transparency over the drone programme. But on this issue the president has been clear since he took office that water-boarding is torture that it is contrary to American values and that it would stop.

"... But Governor Romney has said that he does not believe that waterboarding is torture. He has said that he would allow enhanced interrogation techniques that go beyond those now permitted by the army field manual, and his security advisers have recommended that he rescind the existing restrictions."

The Cambodian dictator Pol Pot, he pointed out, used the technique. "Anyone who is in doubt about whether waterboarding is torture should visit Tuol Sleng, the infamous S-21 detention facility operated by the Khymer Rouge in Phnom Penh.

"Over a period of four years 14,000 people were systematically tortured and killed there. It is now a genocide museum. And right there, in the middle of the central torturing room, is the apparatus used by Pol Pot's security officials for waterboarding."

UK helps Israeli human rights abuses

PressTV

London is allowing British security giant G4S help the Israeli regime in its violation of the Geneva Conventions on the rights of the victims of war despite the government’s obligation to protect those rights.

According to corporate accountability campaigners, G4S has a contract with the Israeli Prison Authority to provide services to several Israeli detention facilities, including those keeping Palestinian prisoners transferred from the West Bank, British Labour MP Lisa Nandy wrote in an article for the New Statesman.

Nandy said the British government has confirmed that Tel Aviv’s policy of detaining Palestinian prisoners violates Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The regime’s military courts have imprisoned an estimated 730,000 Palestinian men, women and children since 1967.

Many of the inmates have been moved to the Palestinians’ Occupied Territories in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention while Tel Aviv has also breached article 37 of the convention by restricting children in conditions that leave them without family contacts.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Prison Service has acknowledged to holding at least 285 Palestinians in administrative detention without charge or trail.

This comes as G4S continues to operate in Israeli detention centers, including in Ofer Prison, where the company’s services are linked with military trial of Palestinian prisoners.

While the Geneva Conventions do not apply to companies, they do apply to governments and the British government can simply intervene in G4S’s services in the Israeli regime’s prisons but it refuses to do so.

G4S has promised to end its contracts in Israeli prisons but has not announced a deadline.

The British government seems as unwilling to end G4S’s contracts with Tel Aviv.

Nandy quoted Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt as saying "provision of services in [the Occupied Territories] is a matter for G4S" and not for the British government.

War crimes: Why should Bush, Blair and Obama be exempt?

FirstPost
R. Jagannathan

Should Bush and Blair face trial?

By any normal definition, they would fit the definition of terrorists. They can decide to attack whoever they choose and cause untold human suffering. They can bomb and bury hundreds of unnamed enemies that would be called genocide in any saner world. And they can even order assassinations of specific people, including their own countrymen.

But we are not talking al-Qaeda or LTTE or any such group that everyone considers beyond the pale. They are, in fact, the leaders of the free world – America and Britain.

Thus far, nobody beyond fringe Left groups has had the gumption to tell it like it is. Now, a widely-respected Nobel Peace Prize winner has done what no one else has: call George W Bush and Tony Blair to account for the sufferings of the people of Iraq and other countries they launched a war against.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa recently pulled out of a leadership summit in Johannesburg when he heard that Tony Blair would be addressing the meeting. His reason: Both Bush and Blair went to war in Iraq on the basis of a lie – that they had detected weapons of mass destruction in that country, which turned out to be false – and must thus answer for their crimes (Read what he wrote in The Observer here).

Tutu, a leading light of South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle and a key member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, appointed to investigate human rights abuses during the White racist regime, believes that there is a good case for trying both George Bush and Tony Blair before the International Court of Justice at The Hague.

If African despots and Eastern European ethnic cleansers can be hauled up before the international court, why not Blair and Bush?

Wrote Tutu: “On what grounds do we decide that Robert Mugabe should go to the International Criminal Court, Tony Blair should join the international speakers’ circuit, bin Laden should be assassinated, but Iraq should be invaded, not because it possesses weapons of mass destruction, as Mr Bush’s chief supporter, Mr Blair, confessed last week, but in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein?”

To be sure, the US can’t hauled up before The Hague because it is a superpower and hence makes it own rules. Moreover, the US has decided not to allow its nationals to be tried by any court outside the US for international crimes.

But Tutu is not one to pull his punches. Pointing out that over 110,000 Iraqis have been killed since Bush went to war in 2003, Tutu says that “on these grounds alone, in a consistent world, those responsible for this suffering and loss of life should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in The Hague.”

To which, Blair could only manage the usual arguments – that the decision to invade Iraq was based on information they had of weapons of mass destruction at that time, and which later turned out to be false.

The Guardian quotes him as saying that Tutu is “completely wrong” on Iraq. “I have a great respect for Archbishop Tutu’s fight against apartheid – where we were on the same side of the argument – but to repeat the old canard that we lied about the intelligence is completely wrong as every single independent analysis of the evidence has shown. And to say that the fact that Saddam massacred hundreds of thousands of his citizens is irrelevant to the morality of removing him is bizarre.”

But Blair was being disingenuous in pretending that Tutu was ignoring Saddam Hussein’s murderous side. What Tutu pointed out was that “the cost of the decision to rid Iraq of its by-all-accounts despotic and murderous leader has been staggering,”

The more important issue is this: can the powerful sit in judgment on the less powerful, when they will not play by the same rules they impose on others?

To date, the French and the Brits have paid no price for the depredations of their colonial enterprise, including many countries in Africa and Asia.

Even today, the US continues to believe it can order any assassination, and use any weapon, to strike at anyone it decides is a threat to the US.

Tutu is, in fact, being circumspect in singling out only Blair and Bush, when President Obama continues to tread the same path of unilateral killings in the name of tackling terror.

Apart from the well-known assassination of Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan, the US has over the last eight years killed possibly upto 3,000 people in Afghanistan through drone attacks on suspected militants, and as many as 15 percent of these killings may not even be terrorists or militants. That means 450 murders of possibly blameless people (read here)– collateral damage in this war on terror.

If Bush and Obama are not accountable for these wrongful deaths, who is?

The US also maintains a list of people who can be assassinated on the same ground – as a potential terror threats – and the list can include American citizens too.

The Washington Post reported in 2010 that the CIA had put Anwar al-Awlaki, an American al-Qaeda militant who is alleged to have attempted to bomb a Detroit-bound airline, on a “kill or capture” list.

Little wonder, al-Awlaki was assassinated in October 2011. Killing American citizens needs sanction directly from the US President, and Obama apparently sanctioned his killing.

When Obama gave the go-ahead a year earlier, the Post quoted CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano without irony: “This agency conducts its counter-terrorism operations in strict accord with the law.”

Anthony Gregory, writing for the Center for Research on Globalisation portal, quotes a Reuters report confirming the existence of a secret group that authorises such assassinations.

“American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials. There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.”

If there is no law establishing this assassination committee, one wonders why the CIA thinks it is operating within the four corners of the law. The only purpose of the group apparently is to generate the kill list, and the only safeguard is Obama’s signature, if the killing of an American citizen is involved. Killings of non-Americans can apparently be done by the committee, at will.

Archbishop Tutu’s comments may have jarred sensibilities in the US and Britain, where the powerful are used to sitting in judgment rather than being judged themselves, but it is clear that his call for trying Bush and Blair does not go far enough.

President Obama’s actions and assassination panels cannot be exempt from the world’s scrutiny and may not be some day.

Nothing, of course, is going to happen now. But Tutu’s truth cannot remain buried forever in the shifting sands of international power equations.

Why I had no choice but to spurn Tony Blair

I couldn't sit with someone who justified the invasion of Iraq with a lie

The Guardian
Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu: pulled out of a seminar which Tony Blair was scheduled to attend. 

The immorality of the United States and Great Britain's decision to invade Iraq in 2003, premised on the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, has destabilised and polarised the world to a greater extent than any other conflict in history.

Instead of recognising that the world we lived in, with increasingly sophisticated communications, transportations and weapons systems necessitated sophisticated leadership that would bring the global family together, the then-leaders of the US and UK fabricated the grounds to behave like playground bullies and drive us further apart. They have driven us to the edge of a precipice where we now stand – with the spectre of Syria and Iran before us.

If leaders may lie, then who should tell the truth? Days before George W Bush and Tony Blair ordered the invasion of Iraq, I called the White House and spoke to Condoleezza Rice, who was then national security adviser, to urge that United Nations weapons inspectors be given more time to confirm or deny the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Should they be able to confirm finding such weapons, I argued, dismantling the threat would have the support of virtually the entire world. Ms Rice demurred, saying there was too much risk and the president would not postpone any longer.

On what grounds do we decide that Robert Mugabe should go the International Criminal Court, Tony Blair should join the international speakers' circuit, bin Laden should be assassinated, but Iraq should be invaded, not because it possesses weapons of mass destruction, as Mr Bush's chief supporter, Mr Blair, confessed last week, but in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein?

The cost of the decision to rid Iraq of its by-all-accounts despotic and murderous leader has been staggering, beginning in Iraq itself. Last year, an average of 6.5 people died there each day in suicide attacks and vehicle bombs, according to the Iraqi Body Count project. More than 110,000 Iraqis have died in the conflict since 2003 and millions have been displaced. By the end of last year, nearly 4,500 American soldiers had been killed and more than 32,000 wounded.

On these grounds alone, in a consistent world, those responsible for this suffering and loss of life should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in the Hague.

But even greater costs have been exacted beyond the killing fields, in the hardened hearts and minds of members of the human family across the world.

Has the potential for terrorist attacks decreased? To what extent have we succeeded in bringing the so-called Muslim and Judeo-Christian worlds closer together, in sowing the seeds of understanding and hope?

Leadership and morality are indivisible. Good leaders are the custodians of morality. The question is not whether Saddam Hussein was good or bad or how many of his people he massacred. The point is that Mr Bush and Mr Blair should not have allowed themselves to stoop to his immoral level.

If it is acceptable for leaders to take drastic action on the basis of a lie, without an acknowledgement or an apology when they are found out, what should we teach our children?

My appeal to Mr Blair is not to talk about leadership, but to demonstrate it. You are a member of our family, God's family. You are made for goodness, for honesty, for morality, for love; so are our brothers and sisters in Iraq, in the US, in Syria, in Israel and Iran.

I did not deem it appropriate to have this discussion at the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit in Johannesburg last week. As the date drew nearer, I felt an increasingly profound sense of discomfort about attending a summit on "leadership" with Mr Blair. I extend my humblest and sincerest apologies to Discovery, the summit organisers, the speakers and delegates for the lateness of my decision not to attend.

Code Pink attempts citizen's arrest of Condoleezza Rice for war crimes

Examiner

Joe Newby

About a dozen members of the radical feminist group Code Pink took a break from dressing up as female body parts to attempt a citizen's arrest of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at an event connected with the RNC convention in Tampa, Politico reported Tuesday.

Protesters carried handcuffs and said they wanted to arrest Rice for "war crimes."

Rice was Bush's National Security Adviser when the Iraq War started in 2003.

"Officers told protesters to leave because they were on private property. They went back to the sidewalk and several lay down under sheets made to look like they were blood-splattered," Politico added.

"Arrest the war criminal Condi Rice," the grouptweeted.

Protesters, chanting “Arrest Condi Rice," held signs calling Rice a "war criminal," and blocked an entrance to the building Rice was in.

The group also said in a tweet that co-founder Medea Benjamin asked the police to arrest Rice.

"After today’s Code Pink vagina-capades, the bloody-sheet imagery really doesn’t sit well. Please pass the mind bleach," Twitchy added.

According to Politico, the group said that it will "try to arrest other members of the George W. Bush administration." They also claimed they would hold members of the Obama administration accountable during the Democratic convention.

BBC Censors Video Showing Syrian Rebels Forcing Prisoner to Become Suicide Bomber

Prison Planet
Paul Joseph Watson

The BBC has sensationally censored a news story and a video showing Syrian rebels forcing a prisoner to become a suicide bomber, a war crime under the Geneva Conventions, presumably because it reflected badly on establishment media efforts to portray the FSA as glorious freedom fighters.



The video, a copy of which can be viewed above (the original BBC version was deleted), shows Free Syrian Army rebels preparing a bomb that is loaded onto the back of a truck to be detonated at a government checkpoint in the city of Aleppo.

The clip explains how the rebels have commandeered an apartment belonging to a Syrian police captain. The rebels are seen sneering at photos of the police captain’s family while they proclaim, “Look at their freedom, look how good it is,” while hypocritically enjoying the luxury of the man’s swimming pool.

The video then shows a prisoner who the rebels claim belonged to a pro-government militia. Bruises from torture on the prisoner’s body are explained away as having been metered out by the man’s previous captors. The BBC commentary emphasizes how well the rebels are treating the man, showing them handing him a cigarette.

However, the man has been tricked into thinking he is part of a prisoner exchange program when in reality he is being set up as an unwitting suicide bomber. The prisoner is blindfolded and told to drive the truck towards a government checkpoint.

“What he doesn’t know is that the truck is the one that’s been rigged with a 300 kilo bomb,” states the narrator.

The clip then shows rebels returning disappointed after it’s revealed that the remote detonator failed and the bomb did not explode.

The BBC narrator admits that forcing prisoners to become suicide bombers “would certainly be considered a war crime.”

New York Times reporters who shot the video claim they had no knowledge of the plot. A longer version of the clip is posted on the New York Times You Tube channel. The title of the clip glorifies the rebel fighters as “The Lions of Tawhid”.

Within hours of the story being published, it was subsequently sent down the memory by the BBC. Attempts to reach the original article URL are greeted with a 404 Not Found page.

In addition, a You Tube version of the same video originally posted on the official BBC News 2012 channel was also removed. Although the You Tube page for the video states that it was removed after a “copyright claim by British Broadcasting Corporation” this is a bogus reason, because the video was not uploaded by a third party, it was posted on the official BBC channel, as the screenshot below proves.

US drone strikes target rescuers in Pakistan – and the west stays silent

Guardian
Glenn Greenwald

The US government has long maintained, reasonably enough, that a defining tactic of terrorism is to launch a follow-up attack aimed at those who go to the scene of the original attack to rescue the wounded and remove the dead. Morally, such methods have also been widely condemned by the west as a hallmark of savagery. Yet, as was demonstrated yet again this weekend in Pakistan, this has become one of the favorite tactics of the very same US government.

A 2004 official alert from the FBI warned that "terrorists may use secondary explosive devices to kill and injure emergency personnel responding to an initial attack"; the bulletin advised that such terror devices "are generally detonated less than one hour after initial attack, targeting first responders as well as the general population". Security experts have long noted that the evil of this tactic lies in its exploitation of the natural human tendency to go to the scene of an attack to provide aid to those who are injured, and is specifically potent for sowing terror by instilling in the population an expectation that attacks can, and likely will, occur again at any time and place:

"'The problem is that once the initial explosion goes off, many people will believe that's it, and will respond accordingly,' [the Heritage Foundation's Jack] Spencer said … The goal is to 'incite more terror. If there's an initial explosion and a second explosion, then we're thinking about a third explosion,' Spencer said."

A 2007 report from the US department of homeland security christened the term "double tap" to refer to what it said was "a favorite tactic of Hamas: a device is set off, and when police and other first responders arrive, a second, larger device is set off to inflict more casualties and spread panic." Similarly, the US justice department has highlighted this tactic in its prosecutions of some of the nation's most notorious domestic terrorists. Eric Rudolph, convicted of bombing gay nightclubs and abortion clinics, was said to have "targeted federal agents by placing second bombs nearby set to detonate after police arrived to investigate the first explosion".

In 2010, when WikiLeaks published a video of the incident in which an Apache helicopter in Baghdad killed two Reuters journalists, what sparked the greatest outrage was not the initial attack, which the US army claimed was aimed at armed insurgents, but rather the follow-up attack on those who arrived at the scene to rescue the wounded. Fromthe Guardian's initial report on the WikiLeaks video:

"A van draws up next to the wounded man and Iraqis climb out. They are unarmed and start to carry the victim to the vehicle in what would appear to be an attempt to get him to hospital. One of the helicopters opens fire with armour-piercing shells. 'Look at that. Right through the windshield,' says one of the crew. Another responds with a laugh.

"Sitting behind the windscreen were two children who were wounded. 

"After ground forces arrive and the children are discovered, the American air crew blame the Iraqis. 'Well it's their fault for bringing kids in to a battle,' says one. 'That's right,' says another. 

"Initially the US military said that all the dead were insurgents."

In the wake of that video's release, international condemnation focused on the shooting of the rescuers who subsequently arrived at the scene of the initial attack. The New Yorker's Raffi Khatchadourian explained:

"On several occasions, the Apache gunner appears to fire rounds into people after there is evidence that they have either died or are suffering from debilitating wounds. The rules of engagement and the law of armed combat do not permit combatants to shoot at people who are surrendering or who no longer pose a threat because of their injuries. What about the people in the van who had come to assist the struggling man on the ground? The Geneva conventions state that protections must be afforded to people who 'collect and care for the wounded, whether friend or foe.'"

He added that "A 'positively identified' combatant who provides medical aid to someone amid fighting does not automatically lose his status as a combatant, and may still be legally killed," but – as is true for drone attacks – there is, manifestly, no way to know who is showing up at the scene of the initial attack, certainly not with "positive identification" (by official policy, the US targets people in Pakistan and elsewhere for death even without knowing who they are). Even commentators who defendedthe initial round of shooting by the Apache helicopter by claiming there was evidence that one of the targets was armed typically noted, "the shooting of the rescuers, however, is highly disturbing."

But attacking rescuers (and arguably worse, bombing funerals of America's drone victims) is now a tactic routinely used by the US in Pakistan. In February, the Bureau of Investigative Journalismdocumented that "the CIA's drone campaign in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals." Specifically: "at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims." That initial TBIJ report detailed numerous civilians killed by such follow-up strikes on rescuers, and established precisely the terror effect which the US government has long warned are sown by such attacks:

"Yusufzai, who reported on the attack, says those killed in the follow-up strike 'were trying to pull out the bodies, to help clear the rubble, and take people to hospital.' The impact of drone attacks on rescuers has been to scare people off, he says: 'They've learnt that something will happen. No one wants to go close to these damaged building anymore.'"

Since that first bureau report, there have been numerous other documented cases of the use by the US of this tactic: "On [4 June], USdrones attacked rescuers in Waziristan in western Pakistan minutes after an initial strike, killing 16 people in total according to the BBC. On 28 May, drones were also reported to have returned to the attack in Khassokhel near Mir Ali." Moreover, "between May 2009 and June 2011, at least 15 attacks on rescuers were reported by credible news media, including the New York Times, CNN, ABC News and Al Jazeera."

In June, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns, said that if "there have been secondary drone strikes on rescuers who are helping (the injured) after an initial drone attack, those further attacks are a war crime." There is no doubt that there have been.

(A different UN official, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, Ben Emmerson, this weekend demanded that the US "must open itself to an independent investigation into its use of drone strikes or the United Nations will be forced to step in", and warned that the demand "will remain at the top of the UN political agenda until some consensus and transparency has been achieved". For many American progressives, caring about what the UN thinks is so very 2003.)

The frequency with which the US uses this tactic is reflected by this December 2011 report from ABC News on the drone killing of 16-year-old Tariq Khan and his 12-year-old cousin Waheed, just days after the older boy attended a meeting to protest US drones:

"Asked for documentation of Tariq and Waheed's deaths, Akbar did not provide pictures of the missile strike scene. Virtually none exist, since drones often target people who show up at the scene of an attack."

Not only does that tactic intimidate rescuers from helping the wounded and removing the dead, but it also ensures that journalists will be unwilling to go to the scene of a drone attack out of fear of a follow-up attack.

This has now happened yet again this weekend in Pakistan, which witnessed what Reuters calls "a flurry of drone attacks" that "pounded northern Pakistan over the weekend", "killing 13 people in three separate attacks". The attacks "came as Pakistanis celebrate the end of the holy month of Ramadan with the festival of Eid al-Fitr." At least one of these weekend strikes was the type of "double tap" explosion aimed at rescuers which, the US government says, is the hallmark of Hamas:

"At least six militants were killed when US drones fired missiles twice on Sunday in North Waziristan Agency. 

"In the first strike, four missiles were fired on two vehicles in the Mana Gurbaz area of district Shawal in North Waziristan Agency, while two missiles were fired in the second strike at the same site where militants were removing the wreckage of their destroyed vehicles."

An unnamed Pakistani official identically told Agence France-Presse that a second US drone "fired two missiles at the site of this morning's attack, where militants were removing the wreckage of their two destroyed vehicles". (Those killed by US drone attacks in Pakistan are more or less automatically deemed "militants" by unnamed "officials", and then uncritically called such by most of the western press – a practice that inexcusably continues despite revelations that the Obama administrationhas redefined "militants" to mean "all military-age males in a strike zone".)

It is telling indeed that the Obama administration now routinely uses tactics in Pakistan long denounced as terrorism when used by others, and does so with so little controversy. Just in the past several months, attacks on funerals of victims have taken place in Yemen (purportedly by al-Qaida) and in Syria (purportedly, though without evidence, by the Assad regime), and such attacks – understandably – sparked outrage. Yet, in the west, the silence about the Obama administration's attacks on funerals and rescuers is deafening.

But in the areas targeted by the US with these tactics, there is anything but silence. Pakistan's most popular politician, Imran Khan, has generated intense public support with his scathing denunciations of US drone attacks, and tweeted the following on Sunday:

As usual, US policies justified in the name of fighting terrorism – aside from being rather terroristic themselves – are precisely those which fuel the anti-American hatred that causes those attacks.

The reason for the silence about such matters, and the reason commentary of this sort sparks such anger and hostility, is two-fold: first, the US likes to think of terror as something only "others" engage in, not itself, and more so; second, supporters of Barack Obama, the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, simply do not want to think about him as someone who orders attacks on those rescuing his victims or funeral attendees gathered to mourn them.

That, however, is precisely what he is, as this mountain of evidence conclusively establishes.

Slouching Towards Nuremberg?

America's Descent Into Darkness

CounterPunch
Morris Berman

Strange things are happening in the United States these days, and every day seems to bring additional scary news.  The similarity to the erosion of civil liberties in Germany during the 1930s is a bit too close for comfort. Many will regard this statement as hyperbole, and, to some extent, it is. But let’s take a close look at what is going on before we dismiss the comparison out of hand.

In terms of the historical record for Germany, legal discrimination against Jews certainly existed before the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, and grew steadily over time. There was always a feeling in the Jewish community—most of whom regarded themselves as Germans, after all—that “OK, that’s the worst of it.” Hence, the decision to stay. Then came the next set of restrictions, and again the response: “This is as far as it will go.” It was like the classic experiment of turning up the heat on frogs placed in warm water. Gradually, they get boiled to death, because the increase of heat is incremental.  It was only toward the end of the thirties that the choice began to look like: jump or die. Finally, it became simply, die.

In 1933, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service banned “non-Aryans” from the civil service.

In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of German citizenship and prohibited marriage between Jews and “Aryans.”  They also prohibited sexual intercourse between Jews and “Aryans,” and the employment of “Aryan” females under forty-five years of age as domestic workers in Jewish households. In addition, Jews could not work as lawyers, doctors, or journalists; could not use state hospitals; and could not be educated by the state past the age of fourteen. They could not enter public parks, libraries, or beaches, and could not receive winnings from the national lottery.

In 1938, Jews with first names that were not characteristically Jewish had to adopt the middle name Sara (if female) or David (if male). Passports of German Jews were stamped with a “J”.

In 1939, Jews living in German-occupied Poland had to wear the yellow star. This was extended to all Jews living within Nazi-controlled areas in 1941.

By way of comparison, one thing that makes me particularly nervous is what has been called the “conspiracy of silence.” Almost nobody spoke up in Germany as this process was unfolding, and the American public has been similarly silent about the events documented below. Indeed, I would venture to say that 98% of the American public (maybe more) is unaware of events such as these, or of the passage of repressive legislation, and that they wouldn’t care even if they did know about it. (“Hey, I ain’t no Ay-rab!”) The classic quote that has come down to us is from Martin Niemoeller, a German pastor and theologian who wound up in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps (he was liberated by the Allies in 1945). It goes something like this:

“First they came for the communists, but I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, but I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, but I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for me, but by that time there was no one left to speak out.”

It is no accident that Chris Hedges entitled a recent article “First They Come for the Muslims” (see below, Item IV).  God forbid something like that might happen in the U.S., but the signs of a gradual slide towards Nuremberg, and concomitant citizen apathy, are very much present in the current political milieu. Let’s have a look at what has been going on in the decade since 9/11. I’m going to discuss the following topics:

I. The creation of a political climate in which the police are out of control, arbitrarily free to intimidate anyone for virtually anything

II. The persecution of whistleblowers, protesters, and dissenters

III. The dramatic expansion of the surveillance of American citizens on the part of the National Security Agency (NSA)

IV. The corruption of the judicial system by means of show trials of Muslim activists

V. The construction of political detention centers, also known as Communication Management Units (CMU’s)

VI. The shredding of the Bill of Rights by means of the National Defense Authorization Act

VII. Future scenarios: The “disappearing” of intellectual critics of the U.S. government?

I. The creation of a political climate in which the police are out of control, arbitrarily free to intimidate anyone for virtually anything

The evidence for this is perforce anecdotal, but events such as the ones discussed below are getting to be so common that we have to keep in mind that when you have accumulated enough anecdotes, the result is called “data.”

-In June 2011 the sheriff of Nelson County, North Dakota, called in a Predator B drone from the local Air Force base to capture three men who had stolen some cows. Once the unmanned aircraft located the suspects, police rushed in to make the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with the help of a Predator spy drone. It turns out that predator drones are frequently used for domestic investigations all over the U.S.—by the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and by state and local law enforcement officials.

-In July 2011 police in a small town in Georgia shut down a lemonade stand being run by three girls, ages 10-14, who were trying to save up for a trip to a local water park. The police said that they didn’t know what was in the lemonade; and in addition, that the girls needed a business license, a peddler’s permit, and a food permit in order to run the stand. The permits, by the way, cost $50 a day.

-In January 2012 the library system of Charlton, Massachusetts, called the police to collect some overdue books charged to Hailey Benoit—a five-year-old girl.

-Also in January 2012, a young couple was arrested in Baltimore for asking a police woman directions to highway I-95. They spent the night in jail.

-In April 2012 the Supreme Court ruled that jail authorities may strip search people arrested for minor offenses before they are jailed while awaiting a hearing. Individuals have been strip searched for offenses such as biking with an inaudible bell, walking a dog without a leash, and driving with a noisy muffler. The sexual humiliation involved in these searches, writes Naomi Wolf, is clearly a way of keeping the masses in line, politically docile. How long, she asks, before saying anything controversial online or on the phone (see Item III, below) will result in the “guilty” party facing arrest and sexual humiliation?  I think we need to pause a moment before we summarily dismiss this as paranoia.

II. The persecution of whistleblowers, protesters, and dissenters 

This has been going on throughout the past decade, first under President Bush, and then more aggressively under President Obama.  According to the New Yorker, “the Obama Administration has pursued leak prosecutions with a surprising relentlessness.” To which the New York Times added: “In 17 months in office, President Obama has already outdone every previous president in pursuing leak prosecutions.” In the famous case of Bradley Manning, who revealed government documents to Wikileaks, Mr. Obama publicly declared him guilty before he went to trial or was convicted of a crime. The overall result is that the government has basically criminalized public servants who speak out to expose waste or corruption or unethical behavior. Whistleblowing and dissent have, in themselves, become criminal activities.

US-Military Use of Privateers Circumvents Geneva Convention and sets Precedence for Institutionalized Neo-Fascism.

NSNBC

Christof Lehman

Interview with retired Lt. General of Russian Foreign Intelligence Service outlines serious problems with respect to International Law and Human Rights.In a recent interview for Voice of Russia, the retired Lt. General of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Gennady Yevstafiew, warns about the increasing use of outsourcing by US-Military and Intelligence Services. Yestafiew is drawing attention to a US-institutionalization of the systematic circumvention of the Geneva Convention, Military Codes of Conduct, Military Law as well as Human Rights.


Yevstafiew warns that the USA is increasingly outsourcing, and hiring local people for the most “dirty” operations and that the boundaries between violations of laws by US military and intelligence services vs. violations of national criminal laws become increasingly diffuse.

The personnel of these private military companies often consists of militarily trained or retired military personnel from both the USA and other countries. Thus, Yevstafiew exemplifies, the USA is unofficially participating with military personnel in maintaining the military supply lines of the Northern Distribution Network through Pakistan to Afghanistan.

The protection of the supply lines is outsourced to private military companies, and these private military companies; military companies which are playing an ever-increasing role in US military aggressions throughout the world.

The fact that these privateers are not on official military payrolls and that casualties among these troops are not counted in official military casualty figures is also playing a significant role in domestic US politics, and that even though a large number of the employees of these private military companies and casualties among them are citizens of the USA.

Thus, US Administrations are able to mask actual casualty figures in conflicts throughout the world. As example, Yevstafiew states, that the US has lost about 4000 troops in Afghanistan over the last ten years, while about 1000 privateers lost their lives in Afghanistan over the same period.

With respect to violations of the Geneva Convention, military law and the military code of conduct, Yevstafiew is drawing attention to the serious human rights violations at Abu Ghraib, Iraq. Yevstafiew reiterates that many of the most serious excesses of violence were committed by private paramilitary forces and not only by military personnel. In fact Yevstafiew states that employees of private paramilitary companies committ the most and the most serious violations of human rights.

Yevstafiew is emphasizing that many of these violations of human rights also were gross violations of the victims and occupied nations national religion and character or culture.

The former Lt. General of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service also warns that it is not only the US military that is outsourcing in order to circumvent international law, stating that various American institutions are using them to do their dirty work for them.

As example, Gennady Yevstafiew recalls the discussions about secret American prisons in European countries, including Eastern European countries, as well as secret US prisons in other parts of the world, especially in Asian and Arab countries. These prisons were kept by paramilitary forces, while those who were officially employed by the CIA only rendered the prisoners to the paramilitaries. Often these paramilitaries, who are doing the CIA´s dirty work, are citizens of the country in which the illegal prison is located. This practice diffuses the boundaries of both national and international law and constitute a signifficant problem with respect to human rights and international law.

Yevstafiew considers this development dangerous because it diffuses the American military and intelligence services responsibility for human rights violations and violations of the rights of Prisoners of War under the Geneva Convention.

While the American military should adhere to military manuals which are based on the principles that are enshrined in the Geneva Convention, which prescribe certain conducts, rights, privileges, and protections, so Yevstafiew, the privateers are not obliged to adhere to any of these norms. This enables the US Administrations and certain US representatives to carry out unprecedentedly dirty work with all kinds of violations of human rights.

Somehow, so Yevstafiew, this problem is not being sufficiently discussed, but the time would come when Americans would be forced to explain their use of private military forces as a means of circumventing international law.

“Let us wait for the time when the international community will touch on this very sensitive issue” the former Lt. General of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service said.

Yevstafiew also drew attention to the fact that the use of private military institutions has become an institutionalized part of US foreign policy. As example, he mentions that it has been announced that some private paramilitary institutions are going to participate in the training of Afghan and Iraqi military detachments, which allows President Obama to claim that he is withdrawing US troops.

While Obama is somewhat bound by his promises to withdraw troops from Afghanistan he can do so to a certain degree without anybody speaking about the fact that these troops will be substituted by private military companies. In particular these private troops are being used for the protection of very sensitive buildings, installations, and so on.

While, for example, a first glance may reveal that there are 10.000 Americans in Kabul, so Yevstafiew, a closer look reveals that there are thousands more in Kabul who are involved in, as it was recently announced, making Afghanistan as strategic ally.

While Gennady Yestafiew is diplomatic enough only to call some of the human rights abuses that are systematically being outsourced for unprecedentedly dirty work by the US military and intelligence services, the development is in fact indicative of what one could describe as the systematic implementation of institutionalized fascism in US politics, military and intelligence services.

The fusion of private corporations with institutions of government or corporatism are fascism in deed.

Taking the ongoing, illegal, US and NATO led subversion attempt in Syria into account, the fact that the USA and other NATO members overtly are providing political and material support to organizations which they themselves designate as terrorist organizations; taking into account that official US training circulars in unconventional warfare state that the USA in the foreseeable future mainly will wage unconventional wars; and taking the fact into account that NATO is aggressively waging unconventional wars under the guise of a fabled ”the responsibility to protect”, it would be high time to make this “very sensitive issue”, as Yestafiew describes it, an issue that will receive the appropriate coverage within the global political discourse.

Christof Lehmann

25.07.2012 

Notes:

1)US army share responsibility with mercenaries. http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_07_22/US-army-share-responsibility-with-mercenaries/

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Economic Sanctions portray West's Duplicity on Iran

Global Research
Kourosh Ziabari

As Iran refuses to bow down to the illegitimate demands of the United States, Israel and their European allies to abandon its peaceful nuclear program, the inhumane economic sanctions against Tehran are being intensified, putting an excessive and unjustifiable pressure on the ordinary Iranian citizens who are unquestionably the victims of the West's hostility and antagonism toward the Islamic Republic.

Since Iran ended its voluntary suspension of uranium enrichment in August 2005, the United States and its European allies have made several efforts to put huge economic and political pressure on Iran and force it into giving up its nuclear rights. Before August 2005, Iran for two years had temporarily suspended uranium enrichment as a confidence-building measure in return for assurances by the representatives of EU that it can keep up with its civilian nuclear program while the negotiations between the two sides were underway. But the EU three bloc members consisting of France, Germany and the UK retreated from their commitments and demanded that Iran should halt its uranium enrichment program permanently. In this juncture, Iran found out that the European negotiators have been insincere in their stance and that it should revise its cooperation with them.

Now, it has been more than seven years that Iran is under lethal international pressure to discard its nuclear program while no single page of evidence has been put forward indicating that Iran is after producing atomic weapons as the United States and EU members claim. Ironically, Israel, the sole possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, has not been asked even once to open its doors to the inspectors of UN's nuclear watchdog and allow them to monitor its underground, illicit nuclear facilities.

During the course of past seven years, the United Nations Security Council passed seven anti-Iranian resolutions and imposed four rounds of economic sanctions on Iran under the intimidation and coercion of the United States and its cronies. These sanctions range from ban on the sales of "dual-use" technologies to travel restriction for hundreds of individuals who are involved in Iran's nuclear program. These sanctions also penalize banks which transfer monies needed for the progress of Tehran's nuclear program. Interestingly, some of these sanctions also include a ban on the sale of medial equipments and pharmaceutical products to Iran.

The fact that Iran should fall victim to the unfair sanctions of the West over its nuclear program portrays the duplicity and dishonesty of the United States and its European allies. They have stated that they need guarantees showing Iran will never deviate from the peaceful path of its nuclear program. Iran has provided them with these guarantees again and again, but they have never taken any positive step to build trust and ease the tensions. They have stepped up their pressure, doubled the sanctions and caused more troubles.

Albeit it should be kept in mind that Iranian people are not unfamiliar with the tough economic sanctions and hostilities of the West. Since the Islamic Revolution toppled the U.S.-installed Shah of Iran in 1979, a number of Western states imposed a set of multifaceted sanctions on Iran, directly affecting the lives of innocent citizens and deteriorating their living conditions. These immoral sanctions, for example, targeted Iran's aviation industry as the U.S. and European states refused to sell newly-produced civilian aircrafts to Iran and the country's fleet set about to age gradually. Now that Iran is unable to buy first-hand, safe aircrafts as a result of the sanctions, tens of Iranians die every year in painful air crashes of the country's outdated, obsolete airplanes.

Unfortunately, the international human rights activists have never spoken a single word in condemnation of the restrictions surrounding the sale of civilian aircrafts to Iran which is directly related to the safety and lives of thousands of Iranians who use Iranian airlines' fleet. Only recently, the dexterous Iranian pilot and peace activist Captain Hooshang Shahbazi delivered a speech before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and called on the international community to pay attention to the cause of Iranian people and persuade the U.S. President and other Western officials to end the ban of civilian aircrafts for Iran. "Unfortunately sanctions imposed by the Western countries on civilian airlines in Iran have caused a considerable number of plane crashes and led to the death of hundreds of passengers, which according to the aviation statistics is above the average death toll from such unfortunate accidents in the world... Civil aviation and people's lives have nothing to do with military issues. The principle of using equal air transportation facilities and services all around the world is undoubtedly a right. It isn't fair for ordinary people to be victims of political tensions and lose their lives to such issues," said Capt. Shahbazi in parts of his speech.

At the end of his speech, Capt. Shahbazi addresses the U.S. President and challenged his sincerity in talking of friendship with the Iranian people: "Mr. Obama! How am I supposed to believe your sincerity when you send your message of fraternity and friendship to Iranian people during the Persian New Year, Nowrouz, yet the next day move to endanger the lives of my countrymen by extending the sanctions on selling civilian airplane spare parts?"

Now, after 33 years since the victory of Islamic Revolution, the sanctions remain in place and are even being strengthened. The foreign ministers of European Union have recently reached an agreement over imposing an inclusive oil embargo on Iran and cutting their imports from the country. They are also traveling to different Asian and African countries and lobbying to persuade the other trade partners of Iran such as Japan, India, South Korea and South Africa to join their sanctions regime. In their own calculation, they are intended to isolate Iran and convince the Iranian authorities that their nuclear program will be costly and damaging for them. However, they're most probably intentionally overlooking the fact that these sanctions and pressures first of all harm the very people for whom they express sympathy and toward whom they extend a fake hand of friendship.

They are the Iranian people who are facing trouble finding foreign medicine needed to cure their diseases as a result of the sanctions. They are the Iranian people who face discrimination and limitation in traveling to other countries as a result of the sanctions. They are the Iranian people who face problems in their industrial occupations and cannot import accouterments and devices needed for their work as a result of the sanctions. They are the Iranian people who should grapple with the inflation stemming from the sanctions which force the government to buy the goods and products with a tripled price from third parties.

The economic sanctions of the West against Iran clearly violate the principles of human rights and by no means can be justified. If the West is afraid of a nuclear Middle East, the disaster has already taken place. Israel possesses up to 200 nuclear warheads and can shoot them to wherever it wishes at any time. The problem with Iran, as Noam Chomsky once said, is that "Iran is too independent and disobedient."