Retreat From The Green Zone
Badger translates from AlQuds alArabi:
Reliable sources in the Green Zone said a large number of authorities have departed from the area, since it has been exposed to a large number of attacks, including deaths and injuries to a number of Americans and Iraqis, and the sources say the attacks are being carried out in a very accurate way, and this means that those carrying out the attacks, mostly armed Shiite groups, are in possession of precise details and maps of the Green Zone area.
The neurotic Iraqi wife, who works for the U.S. in the Green Zone, somewhat confirmed this as do other sources.
Where are the "western" media on all of this? Self censoring because the U.S. military demands such?
Via Cole we learn that Maliki fired several thousand of the official forces because they rebelled against orders to attack Sadr forces. He replaces these with loyal folks from the Badr brigades. This points to another round of inner Iraqi Shia conflict. I don't expect that results will be different from the last attempt.
Islam Online reports of a bad mood in the "Green-Reddish Zone" and on what is to come:
The fortified area has recently come under stronger, bolder rocket and mortar attacks.
...
A senior militant for Sadr militia seemed to claim credit."We are just making tests. Much more damage can be caused by our weapons," he said.
While Sadr called for inner Iraqi peace he asked his people to continue to attack "the greater enemy". But there may also be other groups involved in bashing the Green Zone.
Attacks on the Green Zone will continue and continue to get more precise from now on.
The recent days in Baghdad had dust storms that disabled the U.S. to counter-attack mortar firing positions from the air. But even if the weather allows helicopters to counter mortar positions, this always takes some time. Mortars can easily be set up, fired and moved elsewhere within a few minutes.
They can be only countered by denying the opponent all suitable firing locations. Aside from massive aerial bombing of densely inhabited civil neighborhoods, the U.S. has no way to achieve that within Baghdad. It will therefore do massive aerial bombing of densely inhabited civil neighborhoods.
Of course the resistance knows exactly where is what in the Green Zone. How many of the Iraqi Green Zone workers had relatives killed due to U.S. induced violence? Might they have marked some maps?
Ambassador Crocker will now likely be in the Al Faw palace next to the Baghdad airport. The U.S. has named that area Camp Victory. That will turn out to be a misnomer.
That place, like all other U.S. bases in Iraq, has been infiltrated and will come under precise mortar and rocket attacks when the resistence is ready for a bigger push.
This summer in Iraq will be quite hot for all sides of this conflict.
Posted by b on April 2, 2008 at 18:50 UTC | Permalink | Comments (35)
Yoo Discussion is the Wrong Track
The just released Yoo memo to the Pentagon allowed all kind of torture if there is a "necessity" or a "claim of self-defense" to be made.
The Washington Post headlines Memo: Laws Didn't Apply to Interrogators
The headline is wrong. That is not what Yoo claims. He claims that torture is not unlawful, because there is a superseding law, the constitution, that enshrines the President with certain rights or even duties to ignore statutes enacted by congress.
The Justice Department sent a legal memorandum to the Pentagon in 2003 asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives because the president's ultimate authority as commander in chief overrode such statutes.
Yoo says the law applies but the lawful law in this case is whatever the president says. The overwhelming legal opinion seems to be that Yoo is wrong in that argument.
But the discussion is already false when it is about the lawfulness or not-lawfulness of torture under the Yoo argument.
This is not about Youngstown. This is not about congressional versus presidential powers. Indeed I believe the argument is a trick to avert the real discussion.
The question that has to be asked is this: Is there a higher law than presidential power AND law enacted by Congress?
The modern philosophical opinion is that such law exist. The inalienable rights of each human are natural law that can not be breached by any men-enacted law. What Yoo really argues is legal positivism.
the idea that legal validity has no essential connection with morality or justice. A law is a valid law if posited, in the proper manner, by a recognized authority, regardless of its moral implications.
The U.S. declaration of independence refers to natural law:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, ...
Not to be tortured is an inalienable right. To push this down to a question of constitutional presidential authority versus congress enacted law is the wrong track.
The U.S. elite seems to want to avoid the real discussion. That is, I believe, the reason why congress never put much energy into getting the Yoo memos declassified.
To recognize a higher moral law for all people that also binds the U.S. would interfere with building the U.S. empire and questions its justification.
To bicker in this case about presidential versus congression power is a diversion from the real question. Does natural law and human rights restrict the imperial pursuit of American interests?
The answer is of course "Yes!" and that answer tells you why the question isn't asked.
Sidenote:
Interestingly, like many parts of modern "western" law, the concept of unalienable rights can be tracked back to early Sharia interpretation:
The concept of inalienable rights was found in early Islamic law and jurisprudence, which denied a ruler "the right to take away from his subjects certain rights which inhere in his or her person as a human being." Islamic rulers could not take away certain rights from their subjects on the basis that "they become rights by reason of the fact that they are given to a subject by a law and from a source which no ruler can question or alter."
Maybe that is another reason why Yoo and the Empire elite do not like to discuss this?
Posted by b on April 2, 2008 at 17:24 UTC | Permalink | Comments (33)
Big Day in the Shitpile Tale
A big day in the history of the big shitpile:
- Deutsche Bank loses $3.9 billion on shitpile 'assets'.
- UBS loses $19 billion and its chairman.
- Lehman managed to get $4 billion in new capital it urgently needed by offering a 7.25% interest rate, more than four times the rate available on 2-year Treasury notes (btw - what does this say about inflation?).
That's all good news Wall Street says: Stocks surge as banks rally despite losses.
Why? Oh, maybe because of this:
- The SEC tells owners of big shitpile 'assets' under its jurisdiction to ignore their market value and keep them in the books for whatever fictional price they like.
- The taxpayer will pay for up to $29 billion of Bear Stern losses on 'assets' which the Fed accepted as collateral for loans when JPMorgan bear-raided Bear Stearns:
CNBC's Steve Liesman reports on a letter from Treasury Secretary Paulson to New York Fed President Tim Geithner. In the letter, Treasury agrees that the Fed can bill Treasury for any losses from the Bear Stearns deal.
Question:
What budget or law did Congress pass that allows the Treasury to promise $150 or so from each U.S. taxpayer to Bear Stearns?
Who is next to be bailed out with your money?
Posted by b on April 1, 2008 at 18:50 UTC | Permalink | Comments (12)
NYT on Hamas Media Bias - Unbiased Media?
In a NYT front page piece, above the fold, its Jerusalem bureau chief Steven Erlanger muses on how Hamas’s Insults to Jews Complicate Peace Effort.
With that headline one might expect some analysis on how peace is somewhat influenced by 'insult'. Maybe starting with the reason of 'insults', a comparisson to insults from the other side and how this all stops both sides from talking with each other.
Not so - instead we get the most one sided view possible.
Its videos praise fighters and rocket-launching teams; its broadcasts insult the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, for talking to Israel and the United States; its children’s programs praise “martyrdom,” teach what it calls the perfidy of the Jews and the need to end Israeli occupation over Palestinian land, meaning any part of the state of Israel.
Such incitement against Israel and Jews was supposed to be banned under the 1993 Oslo accords and the 2003 “road map” peace plan. While the Palestinian Authority under Fatah has made significant, if imperfect efforts to end incitement, Hamas, no party to those agreements, feels no such restraint.
Hamas broadcasts "insult the Palestinian president"? Is Abbas a jew? Anyway, there are certainly insults coming from Hamas biased media. But Erlanger list those at lenghth without ever looking at the other side.
He could for example have mentioned the recent message from Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu:
In the newsletter, which was distributed to synagogues around the country, Eliyahu proposes "hanging the children of the terrorist who carried out the attack in the Mercaz Harav yeshiva from a tree."
Is such language allowed under the Oslo accords and the "road map" peace plan?
Sourced from the Israeli Palestine Media Watch of Itamar Marcus (unbiased?) Erlanger writes:
For example, in a column in the weekly Al Risalah, Sheik Yunus al-Astal, a Hamas legislator and imam, discussed a Koranic verse suggesting that “suffering by fire is the Jews’ destiny in this world and the next.”
“The reason for the punishment of burning is that it is fitting retribution for what they have done,” Mr. Astal wrote on March 13. “But the urgent question is, is it possible that they will have the punishment of burning in this world, before the great punishment” of hell? Many religious leaders believe so, he said, adding, “Therefore we are sure that the holocaust is still to come upon the Jews.”
Sure, it is disgusting to believe in another holocaust. Too bad Erlanger didn't find the space to add the recent quote from Matan Vilnai:
Israel's deputy defence minister yesterday warned his country was close to launching a huge military operation in Gaza and said Palestinians would bring on themselves a "bigger shoah," using the Hebrew word usually reserved for the Holocaust.
Indoctrination of children is also an issue Erlanger mentions:
Some Hamas videos, like one in March 2007, promote the participation of children in “resistance,” showing them training in uniform, holding rifles.
Again too bad his piece lacked the space to add a bit about the IDF's Marva and Gadna programs:
British 16 and 17 year olds have been able to take part in Gadna, the week-long course taken by Israeli schoolchildren in preparation for military service and which has recently come under fire for becoming increasingly militaristic. "Shooting an M16 gun… physically lying on the land of Israel, learning how to defend it, gave me an immense sense of pride" writes a breathless Aimee Riese, a London schoolgirl and recent participant, in the Jewish Chronicle.
Erlanger digs deep to find his impecible sources:
Along with Mr. Marcus’s group, the Middle East Media Research Institute, or Memri, also monitors the Arabic media. But no one disputes their translations ...
That would be no one but the Californian political science professor As'ad AbuKhalil, the CNN, ABC, Fox pundit and journalist Ali Alarabi or the Guardian journalist Brian Whitaker who, among others, have proven serious Memri mistranslations.
More Erlanger:
While the Palestinian Authority of Fatah also causes some concern — its textbooks, for example, rarely recognize the state of Israel — Yigal Carmon, who runs Memri, said Hamas and its media used “the kind of anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish language you don’t really hear any more from the Palestinian Authority, which hasn’t talked like that in a long time.”
Colonel Carmon spent 22 years in Israeli military intelligence and later served as counter-terrorism adviser to two Israeli prime ministers, Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin. Thanks to Erlanger for providing this very balanced voice.
And while we speak of school textbooks that don't include some recognization of borders, lets not forget Israeli school text books:
Recently, Minister of Education Yuli Tamir came out with a bombastic announcement saying that she intends to mark the Green Line in the schoolbooks, from which it was removed almost 40 years ago. The Right reacted angrily, and nothing more was heard about it.
Two bad Erlanger missed the space to provide that factoid.
Indeed Erlanger also lacked the space to provide what the headline promises. An analysis on if and how hate speech complicates peace efforts.
All he does is listing some bit of this or that uttering of Hamas related persons and media, seemingly all sourced from Memri, the Israeli Palestinian Media Watch and an Olmert spokesperson.
That the other side of the conflict uses just the same hate speech is missing.
Also missing is any relation of this to peace efforts. Has any conference or meeting been aborted because of such language? Has it influenced the various truce offers Hamas has made towards Israel? Is it really such language that prevents peace talks or are there other reasons?
Is the bias in Hamas media influencing peace efforts more than the bias in Erlanger's NYT reporting?
We'd like to know. Unfortunately Erlanger lacked the space or will to provide us with such knowledge.
Posted by b on April 1, 2008 at 12:03 UTC | Permalink | Comments (13)