On Elections, Prisoner Releases, and False Positives in Colombia
April 12th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Caricature of Uribe suggesting that "false positives" instead be interpreted as a method of birth control.
By Ken Kelley
As Colombians prepare to vote in presidential elections on May 30, opinion polls show former Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos of President Alvaro Uribe’s National Unity Party (Partido de la U) with a commanding lead to replace his former boss, who was barred from seeking a third term earlier this year. A poll released by the National Consulting Center on April 8 shows Santos with 37 percent of the vote, Green Party candidate Antanas Mockus with 22 percent—surprising given the party’s formation just last year—and Conservative Party candidate Noemí Sanín with 20 percent.
To boost his campaign, Santos has pointed to government victories over the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) during his tenure as Defense Minister, such as the killing of No. 2 commander Raúl Reyes during a cross-border raid into Ecuador in 2008 and the rescue from FARC captivity of former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and others the same year. As for the infamous “false positives” scandal in which Colombian soldiers—on possibly thousands of different occasions—murdered innocent civilians and dressed them up as guerrillas, Santos has admitted that the Prosecutor General is currently investigating nearly 1300 such cases. He maintains, however, that “there are people who want to inflate the numbers, make the problem bigger, without taking into account how it is hurting the institutions”, something the military might have taken into account before engaging in the murder of innocents.
Ill Fares The Land
April 12th, 2010 § 1 Comment
By Tony Judt
—This essay is drawn from the opening chapter of Tony Judt’s new book, Ill Fares the Land (Penguin), first excerpted at NY Review of Books. A review of the book will follow shortly.
On the left, Marxism was attractive to generations of young people if only because it offered a way to take one’s distance from the status quo. Much the same was true of classical conservatism: a well-grounded distaste for over-hasty change gave a home to those reluctant to abandon long-established routines. Today, neither left nor right can find their footing.
For thirty years students have been complaining to me that “it was easy for you”: your generation had ideals and ideas, you believed in something, you were able to change things. “We” (the children of the Eighties, the Nineties, the “Aughts”) have nothing. In many respects my students are right. It was easy for us—just as it was easy, at least in this sense, for the generations who came before us. The last time a cohort of young people expressed comparable frustration at the emptiness of their lives and the dispiriting purposelessness of their world was in the 1920s: it is not by chance that historians speak of a “lost generation.”
If young people today are at a loss, it is not for want of targets. Any conversation with students or schoolchildren will produce a startling checklist of anxieties. Indeed, the rising generation is acutely worried about the world it is to inherit. But accompanying these fears there is a general sentiment of frustration: “we” know something is wrong and there are many things we don’t like. But what can we believe in? What should we do?
The Sudan Debate
April 11th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
As Sudan holds its first multi-party election since 1986, Al Jazeera’s Hassan Ibrahim hosts this one-hour roundtable discussion with Sudanese politicians from the government and leading opposition groups.
Google Anat Kam, but Don’t Forget the Palestinians
April 11th, 2010 § 1 Comment
"Google Anat Kam" Sprayed in my neighborhood two days before the story erupted in Israel.
A few weeks ago the tiny activist circuit in Israel was abuzz about news of a gossip journalist that was under secret house arrest for revealing secret army documents that incriminate the most high-ranking army officials, including Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi.
We were all on the verge of making a huge ruckus, when word came from her and her lawyers that they don’t want the media attention at this time. Last I heard this was still the request, but if Fox News is reporting it, I think it’s time for me to stop respecting her erroneous wishes.
The Real Scoop – Institutionalized Murder
Let’s begin by stating a simple fact: Anat Kam isn’t the scoop. Kam’s story is very important, in respect to our local, deteriorating non-existent-democracy, and I’ll get to it in a moment. But first let’s talk about Kam’s findings, which have bearing on the lives of Palestinians, Israelis and international community as a whole- should it choose to allow such flagrant breaches of international law.
Our story begins in the edges of journalism, where only activists reside. The main scoop, can be found in the breaking news Ha’aretz article, by Uri Blau, titled Secret IDF Documents: The Chief of Staff and the IDF Elite Authorized the Termination of Wanted People and Innocents:
Until Justice is Done
April 10th, 2010 § 3 Comments
by Haifa Zangana
Namir Noor-Eldeen, the photographer murdered by the American helicopter crew (Khalid Mohammed/AP)
I know the area where this massacre was committed. It is a crowded working-class area, a place where it is safe for children to play outdoors. It is near where my two aunts and their extended families lived, where I played as a child with my cousins Ali, Khalid, Ferial and Mohammed. Their offspring still live there.
The Reuters photographer we see being killed so casually in the film, Namir Noor-Eldeen, did not live there, but went to cover a story, risking his life at a time when most western journalists were imbedded with the military. Noor-Eldeen was 22 (he must have felt extremely proud to be working for Reuters) and single. His driver Saeed Chmagh, who is also seen being killed, was 40 and married. He left behind a widow and four children, adding to the millions of Iraqi widows and orphans.
Witnesses to the slaughter reported the harrowing details in 2007, but they had to wait for a western whistleblower to hand over a video before anyone listened. Watching the video, my first impression was, I have no impression. But the total numbness gradually grows into a now familiar anger. I listen to the excited voices of death coming from the sky, enjoying the chase and killing. I whisper: do they think they are God?
Mexican Soldiers Murder Two Children, U.S. Media Covers Up the Crime
April 10th, 2010 § 1 Comment
"New Federal Government Slogan: So drugs don't fall into your children's hands, we are killing them for you."
By Kristin Bricker
Mexicans returning home after Easter vacation were greeted with horrifying news: Mexican soldiers opened fire on a vehicle full of children as their family headed to the beach for Easter Sunday.
According to Mexican press, the soldiers indiscriminately opened fire on the vehicle, and even threw fragmentation grenades. La Jornada reports:
According to the victims’ complaint, the seven children and four adults were traveling in a Tahoe truck, driven by Carlos Alfredo Rangel, early Sunday morning. When the vehicle passed the military checkpoint, Rangel observed that the soldiers were alongside the highway. Rangel slowed down, but the soldiers did not signal for him to stop.
After passing the checkpoint, the soldiers began to shoot indiscriminately at the vehicle; the adults say that they even threw multiple fragmentation grenades.
They recount that they experienced moments of terror and confusion as they got out of the truck and tried to run for the brush. Martín Almanza carried his sons Bryan and Michel, but at that moment he felt a bullet graze him. His son Bryan was covered in blood. He died in his arms. Despite the fact that the civilians were screaming at the soldiers to stop shooting at them because there were children present, the soldiers ignored them and injured the other youngster, who died at the scene.”
Jeff Blankfort: Whither the Israel Lobby?
April 10th, 2010 § 1 Comment
George Kenney interviews Jeff Blankfort on the Israel Lobby at Electric Politics. We’ve only slightly truncated the talk here which you can listen to in full at EP. Jeff is always worth a listen and also comments on the recent developments involving General Petraeus and his report to Admiral Mullen, with this proposition for bringing down the Lobby:
If, flanked by General Petraeus and Admiral Mike Mullen, Obama went before the American people, and told them in so many words what Petraeus told Mullen what Petraeus said in his testiomony – his prepared testimony — to the Senate Armed Services Committee, that the failure of israel to step up to the plate and withdraw from the Occupied [Palestinian] Territories and continue to build [illegal] settlements is against US national interests and is endangering our soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. If he did that … the Lobby, if not collapse, it would be a major defeat for them … it would change American politics.
Scotland strikes twice against Apartheid
April 9th, 2010 § 1 Comment
Given their history Scots know a little about colonialism: It is unsurprising then that they should have little tolerance for it. This has been demonstrated yet again in two striking developments in the past few days. From the Jewish Chronicle:
Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, has called for legal action and a review of trading relationships with Israel after David Miliband announced that Britain formally blamed the country for cloning UK passports during the Dubai operation…
Mr Salmond said that Mr Miliband’s actions were “not enough”…
“Stealing peoples’ passports – and indeed the assassination – must be a criminal offence. Surely, if the Foreign Secretary has now identified to his satisfaction that Israel is responsible, then he should be thinking of legal action.
“In terms of the relationship with the Israeli government, it should be more than expelling a diplomat, there should be implications, for example in trading relationships.
“You can’t have normal relationships if you believe another country has been involved in what Israel has been involved in, according to the Foreign Secretary…whatever measures you take, it cannot just be a diplomatic dance.”
In another groundbreaking development, which has implications for solidarity activist around the world at a time when the Israel lobby is using its power to skew Western legal systems against any dissent or protest against its actions, the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign have won a major victory against this criminalization of dissent. Here’s the SPSC’s full press release:
‘RACISM’ CHARGE DROPPED AGAINST ISRAEL PROTESTORS
Five Palestine campaigners who contested the relevancy of a ‘racially aggravated conduct’ charge in relation to their protest against Israel’s blockade of Gaza had all charges against them dropped today.
The campaigners, all members of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC), had interrupted the August 2008 Edinburgh Festival concert by the Jerusalem Quartet. Tours by the classical musicians are regularly sponsored by the Israeli Government, which the campaign group claims makes them a legitimate target for protest.
Whatever Happened to the Pursuit of Happiness?
April 9th, 2010 § 1 Comment
When I visited the US last year I saw signs outside apartment buildings in Florida offering 2 months free rent if tenants signed on to a one year lease. Brand new office buildings had entire floors empty, and some were completely unoccupied, the emptiness revealed by sunlight highlighting non-existent office furniture through the windows. In another state, hundreds of homes in one suburban area were empty due to foreclosure, while lines outside food banks and homeless shelters seemed longer than ever. Of course, empty buildings don’t only signify lost capital, they are a burning reminder of the incredible loss suffered by millions of Americans over the past few years and the increasing degradation of the American way of life. While the US government spends hundreds of billions of dollars on wars that will never benefit the average American citizen , and on bailing out corporations run by the same people that got the US and much of the rest of the world into this mess in the first place, American families are struggling to live a normal life in a ruthless market. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are considered unalienable rights in the US, but the reality on the ground makes these rights look more like a corporate advertisement than a staple of the United States Declaration of Independence.
Iraqi family demands justice for US attack death
April 9th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
The US military says it has no reason to doubt the authenticity of a video leaked through the whistleblower website WikiLeaks showing a US military attack on a group of civilians in Iraq.
In the 2007 attack, a US military helicopter fired on a group of Iraqis, killing 12 civilians, according to the website, including two employees of the Reuters news agency.
The footage from a helicopter cockpit also shows a man stopping to help the injured, but he too is shot dead.
In an Al Jazeera exclusive, Omar al-Saleh reports on the man’s children, who were injured but survived the attack. (Apr 07, 2010)
