zondag 16 maart 2014

Global War

Accounting for a Decade of Global War

Thursday, 13 March 2014 00:00By Vincent Warren, Truthout | Op-Ed

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(Photo: Staff Sgt. Stacy L. Pearsall / Flickr)The United Nations will be reviewing US compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights today and tomorrow. US arguments to the contrary, its record includes violations that must be sanctioned.

Organizers in Iraq have been gathering reports from areas exposed to US weapons containing depleted uranium. In Fallujah, the levels of highly toxic materials are reportedly so high that Iraqi parliamentarians debated in 2011 whether such attacks with these lasting effects constituted genocide. A doctor at a Fallujah maternity hospital reported last year that the rate of deformities is so high that up to a dozen babies or fetuses die every month because of missing organs. In Basra alone, the estimated volume of scraps of depleted uranium from the 1991 and 2003 invasions combined was 46,000 tons, with warnings that the metal and contamination have spread.

Today and tomorrow, the United Nations will review the United States' compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which requires signatories to respect individual rights to (among others) life, due process and fair trials. The review comes as the Obama administration weighs its options for winding down the war in Afghanistan and in the long wake of the president's acknowledgmentlast spring that "a perpetual war [will] alter our country in troubling ways." The truth is, the United States has already changed in profound ways as a result of a decade-plus of global war, and US war-making has profoundly altered the lives of those outside of our country. We cannot simply end the "war on terror"; we must grapple with the world it has created.

The Center for Constitutional Rights reported to the UN Human Rights Committee on US compliance with the ICCPR in key areas that relate to our work, urging the committee to hold the United States accountable for its failures. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has yet to address the far-reaching and multi-generational public health crisis resulting from toxic weaponry and waste; it has failed to accurately calculate the number of casualties, both civilian and combatant, that independent estimates suggest are approximately 1 million; and it has ignored the heightened effects of war on children, including the fact that 60 percent of casualties caused by unexploded submunitions in Iraq were children under 15. And yet, the United States insists the ICCPR does not apply outside its territory - a position the UN Committee previously rejected. It would be an anemic covenant that required a self-proclaimed superpower to respect individual rights only within its own borders.

The post-9/11 crimes committed by the United States did not occur only in recognized war zones, such as Iraq and Afghanistan; US policy now treats anywhere and everywhere in the world as a potential battlefield. Nasser Al-Aulaqi lost his 16-year-old grandson, Abdulrahman, to a US drone as a result of President Obama's targeted killing program, just as thousands of families in Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere have similarly lost their loved ones. One hundred fifty-five men remain arbitrarily detained at Guantanamo, 77 of whom have been cleared for release for years and many of whom continue to be subjected to solitary confinement, force-feeding and other degrading treatment, such as genital searches before and after being moved for attorney meetings and family phone calls. Guantanamo persists, despite Obama's recommitment in May 2013 to closing it. And, despite lifting his self-imposed ban on transfers to Yemen more than eight months ago, Obama has yet to transfer anyone from Guantanamo to Yemen. Nearly two-thirds of the remaining detainees are Yemeni citizens; the prison is devolving into a detention facility that exclusively holds men of Yemeni descent.

Here at home, the United States essentially has abandoned its veterans to post-deployment psychological trauma and service-related illnesses. If that weren't enough, the United States is replicating some of the same abuses found at Guantanamo and abroad when prosecuting Muslim defendants under its domestic criminal justice system.

This post-9/11 global war paradigm flouts the ICCPR and other international laws designed to protect against the worst human rights abuses. By claiming that it is not bound to respect basic human rights when acting abroad, while simultaneously claiming it is wartime anywhere and everywhere in the world where it targets terrorism, the United States attempts to render torture, crimes against humanity and war crimes untouchable.

If we are ever to move beyond perpetual global war, we cannot simply declare it over. Nor can we limit ourselves to ending current abuses. We must grapple with - and provide accountability for - past abuses. The ICCPR hearings this week are a chance to do that, and the US likely will be asked some very tough questions. The ICCRP has reprimanded the United States before, and yet Iraqis and Afghanis continue to suffer from the fallouts of battle; veterans have yet to receive what they need to heal from multiple traumas; Guantanamo is still open for business; and the president remains committed to targeted killing wherever he deems fit. If we are ever to end this war and fulfill our human rights obligations, the United States must begin to take its international obligations seriously, and the international community must begin insisting that it does.

VINCENT WARREN

Vincent Warren is executive director for the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Severe Droughts

The West's Coming Tragedy of the Commons

Friday, 14 March 2014 10:33By Sheila D Collins, Truthout | Op-Ed

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(Photo: Al_HikesAZ / Flickr)The severe droughts now affecting California and the Colorado River basin suggest that we may be at a tipping point in our ability to continue to manage the water systems that are needed to power agriculture and support Western development. According to The New York Times, many experts believe the current drought that is drying up the Colorado River "is only the harbinger of a new drier era in which the Colorado's flow will be substantially and permanently diminished." Already, the drought in California is threatening the state's water supply - a harbinger of the enormous conflicts that are now on the horizon - conflicts between states and regions, urban residents and farmers, developers, farmers and environmentalists. With global warming now reducing the Sierra snowpacks, whose runoff has been irrigating the country's breadbasket, we could be facing rising food prices and even food shortages into the future. It is within the realm of possibility that we could see - even in the United States - the kinds of conflicts that are roiling parts of the developing world.

How is it that we have allowed a significant proportion of the nation's food supply to be located in a region that is part semi-desert and dependent on irrigation? Why have we allowed one of the fastest-growing regions of the country to depend on a water source - the Colorado - that historically received little rainfall and for whose use there has been little coordinated planning?

It is not as if we were not forewarned. As early as 1878, John Wesley Powell, the one-armed geologist and Western explorer and the second director of the US Geological Survey, submitted a Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States to Congress. The report contained a careful survey of the rainfall patterns of all the land from the middle of the Great Plains to the Pacific Ocean, the land Powell termed the "Arid Region." Powell concluded that only a minority of this land received enough rainfall each year to support agriculture and warned that "many droughts will occur; many seasons in a long series will be fruitless; and it may be doubted whether, on the whole, agriculture will prove remunerative." If these lands were to be cultivated, they would have to be irrigated. Such irrigation, he proposed, would require enormous amounts of capital and would have to be carefully managed to prevent the kinds of conflicts over scarce water that are now becoming apparent - the classic dilemma of the "tragedy of the commons." Powell's revolutionary proposal was that the irrigable lands be divided into semi-autonomous hydrological districts, structured around local water sources. Communities sharing a common water source were to be entrusted with the responsibility of its use and were to set up cooperatively managed and funded governing systems. Powell was also concerned that forests be managed cooperatively. "If they permit the forests to be destroyed, he said, "the source of their water supply is injured and the timber values are wiped out."

The role of the federal and state governments in Powell's scheme were to be supportive of these locally managed water and forest systems. States would provide courts for the adjudication of disputes between districts as well as inspection systems, while the federal government would "allocate land to the watershed districts; classify its use, and retain ownership only of non-irrigable lands."

Powell's scheme resonates with the bioregional proposals of some modern environmentalists and his governance scheme with the democratically managed common pool resource projects that the late Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues at Indiana University promoted in developing countries. Prescient as Powell was, his proposal did not resonate with the lobbyists for the railroad industry or the land speculators who turned the "arid region" into a frenzy of chaotic development that would later result in the Dust Bowl. Nor did it resonate with the timber barons who would strip the country's forests, leading to the floods that devastated the country in the 1920s and 1930s.

If Powell's development plan had been implemented, as shown in a map he created, state boundaries yet to be drawn would have resembled the boundaries of watersheds instead of the arbitrary boundaries that exist today. According to Donald Worster,Powell's biographer, if Powell's ideas had been adopted, "We would not have, any of our huge federal water projects. And we certainly would not have had anything like the massive urban growth that's taken place in the West." Worster's certainty has been challenged by John Lavey, who thinks that our human penchant for growth and technological development would probably not have resulted in the limits to growth Powell's proposal implied. Yet it is helpful to think of how our country might have developed had we heeded this knowledgeable Cassandra, if only as a means of encouraging us to imagine how we might do things differently.

Limiting agriculture to cooperatively managed water districts might have led to retention of the small family farms that once dotted the greener parts of the country, producing food for local use. We would certainly not have committed a major portion of the nation's breadbasket to a single region like the Central Valley of California that has a historically weak rainfall pattern. Nor would we have developed the giant agribusinesses that dominate the Great Plains and are dependent on huge irrigation systems that are rapidly depleting the Oglalla Acquifer. As our breadbasket dries up, the call of locavores for locally produced and consumed food becomes more pressing.

In the 1930s, as the country began to suffer from the cumulative effects of failing to heed Powell's warning, a similar concern with watershed-centered development re-emerged. This time it was the president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who carried the banner. In a campaign speech in 1932, Roosevelt recognized that the country suffered from the lack of planning. "We cannot review carefully the history of our industrial advance without being struck with its haphazardness, the gigantic waste with which it has been accomplished, the superfluous duplication of productive facilities ... the profligate waste of natural resources." Faced as president with floods of biblical proportions, the loss of one-sixth of the country's topsoil and the decimation of seven-eighths of the country's forests, Roosevelt argued that planning for sustainability was a national problem and that it would have to involve the federal government in ways that even Powell had not envisioned. To that end, he proposed the creation of a series of watershed districts throughout the country whose development would integrate water power, flood control, forestry, conservation, reclamation, agriculture and industry. The Tennessee Valley Authority was to have been the first of seven such projects. Also recognizing that the country had achieved a level of development and scientific knowledge more complex than that which Powell had confronted, FDR suggested that there would have to be multiple intersecting planning jurisdictions based on both the developmental needs of the human population and the mix of environmental issues that characterized different areas of the country.

The urgency of moving in this direction had been undergirded by a report of the Great Plains Committee on the Future of the Great Plains that was issued in August 1936 and was to be the basis of legislation for the new Congress. In an admission that the country had failed to heed John Wesley Powell's findings, the Report stated

A trip through the drought area, supplementing data already on record, makes it evident that we are not confronted merely with a short term problem of relief, already being dealt with by several agencies of the Federal Government, but with a long term problem of readjustment and reorganization. ... A new economy based on conservation and effective use of all the water available is called for. Intelligent adjustment to the ways of Nature must take the place of attempts to "conquer" her.

In a related matter, on January 12, 1937, Roosevelt sent to Congress the report of the President's Committee on Administrative Management, which he had appointed the year before to consider means to improve the administration of the executive branch. Among other things, the report recommended the establishment of a permanent national resources planning board to plan the development and use of the country's resources, and the creation of a department of conservation to administer the public lands and parks and the conservation laws. To prepare the necessary legislation, the Congress appointed the Joint Committee on Government Organization and on June 23, 1937, Senate Bill 2700 was introduced, embodying some of the committee's recommendations.

Roosevelt urged the Congress to "get on with it." Alas, Congress did not get on with any of it. As a nation we seem prone to ignore the lessons of history or to learn from those who have most to teach us. John Wesley Powell's proposal for a United Watershed States of America went nowhere, as did FDR's call for national resource planning. Despite enthusiastic support from the AFL, the CIO, farmers' groups and Congressional liberals, Roosevelt's National Resources Planning Board did not become a vehicle for the coordination of sustainable resource planning districts. Areport issued by the board in January 1943, though, focused more heavily on planning for post-war economic security, called for a program of conservation and improvement of agricultural, range, forest, recreational and wildlife lands as a "substantial part of a post-war program of public and private construction." The NRPB, however, was abolished by Congressional conservatives in August 1943, just five months after it had issued its report. No department of conservation was ever established. The logical successor - the Environmental Protection Agency - was only recently elevated to "Cabinet level" status, a somewhat ambiguous designation, and there has been scant attention to planning ever since. We are now beginning to reap the whirlwind.

SHEILA D COLLINS

Sheila D. Collins is professor emerita at William Paterson University and editor and author, with Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg, of When Government Helped: Learning from the Successes and Failures of the New Deal(Oxford University Press, 2013). She is the author of six books and numerous book chapters and articles on American politics and public policy. Her blogs have appeared in the Huffington Post, Truthout, Oxford University Press and New Politics.

Osama bin Laden

U.S. Troops Unloaded 'Over A Hundred Bullets' Into Osama Bin Laden's Dead Body, Sources Claim

The Huffington Post | by Nick Wing

Posted: 03/13/2014 2:32 pm EDT Updated: 03/13/2014 2:59 pm EDT

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Osama Bin Laden DeathOsama Bin Laden Death PhotosBin Laden DeathBin LadenUS Troops Osama Bin LadenOsama Bin Laden ShootingOsama Bin LadenWorldPost News

A new report at SOFREP, a website for U.S. special operations forces, claims to shed light on the issue of why photos of slain al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's body were never released to the public. According to unnamed sources within the special ops community, the images would have been excessively gory, because contrary to reports from officials and those involved in the operation, U.S. troops fired countless rounds into bin Laden's body after killing him.

In his book, "No Easy Day," Matt Bissonnette, a member of SEAL Team Six involved in the bin Laden raid, writes that he and another SEAL fired "several" rounds into bin Laden to make sure he was dead. But sources tell SOFREP the shooting was far more excessive:

But this is perhaps the most measured and polite description that one could give of how operator after operator took turns dumping magazines-worth of ammunition into Bin Laden’s body, two confidential sources within the community have told us. When all was said and done, UBL had over a hundred bullets in him, by the most conservative estimate.

Initial reports claimed two shots were fired to kill bin Laden. While that number climbed in later reports, the claims of "over a hundred bullets" would suggest a level of savagery and, as SOFREP puts it, "self-indulgence" not admitted in prior accounts of the operation. SOFREP notes these actions would violate the Laws of Land Warfareand build on a disturbing trend of alarmingly brutal military behavior that includes graphic evidence of U.S. troops burning and urinating on slain enemy combatants.

But an extreme degree of violence would explain why U.S. President Barack Obama's administration was so resistant to release a set of photos, for fear of a possible backlash against U.S. interests.

Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, sued the administration for access to the photos last year, claiming there was "no apparent nexus" between U.S. intelligence activities and the images of bin Laden's burial or preparation for burial at sea. A federal appeals court ultimately ruled the CIA did not have to release any of the photos.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/13/osama-bin-laden-death-shooting_n_4958147.html

De NOS

Waarom we de NOS niet meer serieus kunnen nemen

Geschreven door Meneer Teun op 10 maart 2014. Geplaatst in Economisch, Media, Politiek, Werkloosheid

Het gaat de goede kant op. CPB cijfers zijn positief voor het kabinet. Een sterke groei van de wereldhandel. Bedrijven gaan meer investeren. Overheidsfinanciën komen op orde. Geen extra bezuinigingen. Economische groei niet verder onder druk. Voor het eerst in jaren zal de consumptie van Nederlandse huishoudens weer gaan groeien. Dit waren aantal uitspraken samengevat in een 1,5 minuut durend filmpje van de NOS. Het komt dus allemaal weer goed met de economie… Nu mijn bevindingen van de afgelopen weken op economisch vlak.

Mondiale staatsschuld: 100 biljoen

De schulden van alle landen tezamen zijn in zes jaar tijd van 70 biljoen dollar naar 100 biljoen gestegen, aldus de Bank for International Settlements. Een plus van 40% in slechts 72 maanden, dat is een stijging van 416 miljard dollar geleend geld per maand. De effecten van de stijgende rentelasten hiervan is moeilijk te bepalen, maar zal ongetwijfeld reden zijn van de bezuinigingen in onder meer ons land. En nooit een woord over aan wie onze overheden dit geld dan verschuldigd zijn.

Enkele Europese werkloosheidscijfers

Hoe mooi de berichtgeving over groeicijfers in sommige landen ook zijn, de werkloosheidscijfers schetsen een heel ander beeld. Griekenland: 28% werkloos en 64,1% jeugdwerkloosheid. Frankrijk: 3,3 miljoen mensen zonder werk, dat is 11,1% van de beroepsbevoling, een absoluut record. Spanje: 26% werkloos, waarvan 55% de jeugd betreft. Portugal: ook al is dit cijfer minder geworden, nog steeds een immens percentage: 15,3% werkloos. Ook in Nederland is het niet best gesteld, 678.000 personen zitten volgens de officiële cijfers zonder werk. Dat is 8,6 procent van de beroepsbevolking. In de werkelijkheid weet iedereen dat dit percentage natuurlijk nog wat hoger ligt. Het aantal werklozen in Nederland stijgt momenteel met 700 personen per dag!

Populisme is weer even helemaal terug

Verkiezingen op komst! In Den Haag kan men wel roepen dat het weer goed gaat komen met de Nederlandse economie en dat we weer vooruit kunnen kijken, maar ik zie dat toch echt anders. De beurzen zijn mijn inziens de afgelopen jaren alleen maar gestegen door het praktisch gratis weggegeven geld van de ECB en de Fed en is daarmee allang geen afspiegeling meer van de reële economie. Op naar eentweederangs welvaartsstaat. Er zijn in 2013 zo’n 10% meer faillissementen uitgesproken dan in 2012 en er zijn meer dan 100.000 werklozen bijgekomen afgelopen jaar. De trend van de economie bevindt zich overduidelijk nog in een neergaande beweging. Hoe kun je dan zeggen dat het beter gaat? En daarbij, elk jaar roepen ze dat het volgend jaar echt weer beter wordt… We kennen dit trucje inmiddels wel (lees ook: Volgens de NVM en de NOS is de huizenmarkt al 6 jaar herstellende) en ondertussen gebeurt er helemaal niks.

Gespuis in Den Haag

Kijkend naar de afgelopen maanden, jaren naar de gang van zaken in ons kabinet en onze overheid kan ik alleen maar de conclusie trekken dat we geregeerd worden door een clubje mensen dat achter de tralies hoort. Beloften zijn voor de buhne, eerlijkheid en oprechtheid zijn niet meer te vinden in Den Haag. De door onze strot geduwde bezuinigingen worden nooit meer terug gedraaid en banken staan boven de wet. Het criminele gedrag loopt de spuigaten uit en niemand die er iets aan doet. Ik heb het al vaker geroepen, maar juist nu blijkt eens te meer dat een oprechte democratie nooit kan werken in een kapitalistisch systeem. En misschien geheel onterecht om het op Biflatie.nl te noemen, maar alleen al het feit dat de totale Tweede Kamer zo`n Joris Demmink de hand boven zijn hoofd houdt zegt mij genoeg. Wat als inderdaad blijkt dat deze man en al die andere verdachte namen beschuldigd worden van al die misdaden? Wat zegt dat dan over onze regering?

Een climax lijkt op komst

Ondertussen nemen de spanningen toe in Europa en de rest van de wereld. Zo`n zeventig jaar geleden mocht “de oorlog” nooit meer gebeuren en kijk waar we nu staan… Als een stel kleuters lopen onze leiders heen en weer te toeteren wat wel en wat niet mag met het zogenaamde mandaat van zijn burger onder de arm. Vraag elk mens op deze planeet of men in een oorlog terecht wil komen en 99% zal “nee” aanvinken. Behalve die ene procent, diegene die alles bepalen, de zogenaamde democratie beschermende NATO, NAVO of welke instelling je ook noemt, die paar mensen die wij “Overheid” noemen, zij lijken er alles aan te doen om het toch te laten escaleren.

http://biflatie.nl/artikelen/economisch/waarom-de-nos-niet-meer-serieus-kunnen-nemen/

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