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October 25, 2014 - No. 38 Harper
Dictatorship's Self-Serving Anti-Terrorist Agenda When Does a
Group or an Individual
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In this regard, the greatest
danger to the society is not posed by individuals
who commit crimes, because all the mechanisms are in place to bring
them to
trial and hold them to account. The greatest danger is posed when
governments
pass laws and endorse practices which permit ministers and security
agencies
to act with impunity, on the basis of arbitrariness, not Rule of Law.
When
such laws and practices go against the standards achieved by human
beings
and their society and in fact constitute crimes, despite the opinion of
those
who enact such laws that they do not, then society faces a serious
problem.
Meanwhile, a similar piece
of legislation, Bill S-4, An
Act to amend
the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and to
make a consequential amendment to another Act (Short Title: Digital
Privacy
Act), was referred to second
reading in the House
of Commons on October 20. Bill S-4 purports to "enhance online privacy"
but
permits internet service providers/telecom companies to hand over
private
information to any organization investigating a possible breach of
contract. Bill
S-4 was introduced in the Senate on October 16, 2013.
Last June the Supreme Court declared that law
enforcement requires a
warrant to get even basic subscriber data.
For the second time this
year, a Canadian court has issued a judgement in
Omar Khadr's favour and a sharp rebuke to the Harper government. In Khadr
vs.
Canada,
October
23,
2014, a Federal
Court judge has upheld
Khadr's right to expand his civil lawsuit against the Canadian
government, first filed in 2004. Earlier Statements of Claim focused on
the
events surrounding Khadr's interrogation at the hands of Canadian
officials in
2003 and 2004 at Guantanamo. The new version examines the Canadian
government's role from the time Khadr was captured in 2002 through to
his
imprisonment at Bagram prison in Afghanistan and later at Guantanamo
Bay
up until his repatriation to Canada in 2012. Free Omar Khadr rally outside court hearing in Edmonton, September 23, 2013. |
The federal government immediately applied for an injunction to prevent Khadr's transfer to a provincial facility pending appeal of the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada. Lawyer Nathan Whitling explained that the decision means that Khadr can now ask a youth court judge to order his release from prison to serve the rest of his sentence in the community, rather than appearing before the parole board. An application will soon be made to a youth court judge, and for this reason Khadr has agreed to remain at the Bowden medium security federal institution to where he has been transferred from the Edmonton maximum security institution pending his application for parole.
In its finding that Khadr should not have been placed in
a federal prison,
the Alberta Court of Appeal issued a strong rebuke to the Harper
government,
noting, "While not explicitly stated, it appears that underlying
the
[Attorney-General of Canada's (AGC)] position on this appeal is the
view that
a
cumulative sentence of eight years for the five offences to which Khadr
pled
guilty is not sufficiently long to reflect the seriousness of the
offences." In
other words, the Harper government wants to substitute its own longer
sentence, despite the fact that it agreed to the transfer. Under the
terms of the ITOA,
as the
court
made clear, Canada cannot lengthen a sentence of the foreign power, but
only
reduce it if the sentence violates Canadian law -- for example if a
young
offender were given a sentence longer than permitted by Canadian law.
The court also pointed out that the Harper government is
in danger of
falling through the thin ice on which it stands if it continues
to try to
circumvent its legal obligations:
"Further, were it open to the [Attorney-General of Canada] to challenge the substance of the sentence imposed by the Convening Authority, this would then open up the possibility of Khadr's challenging the substance of the verdict. His counsel might well argue that Khadr made a deal. In exchange for receiving no more than eight years for all five offences, Khadr agreed to plead guilty and give up his legal rights, including the right to contest the admissibility of certain evidence against him. And if the AGC were able to treat the sentence agreed to in the plea agreement as five concurrent sentences of eight years each, then Khadr's counsel might seek to have Khadr's guilty pleas struck on the basis not only that the plea agreement was being contravened but that the evidence against Khadr would have been excluded in a Canadian court. The legal process under which Khadr was held and the evidence elicited from him have been found to have violated both the Charter and international human rights law: Khadr I, supra at paras 3, 6, 22 - 27; Khadr II, supra at paras 16 - 18, 24 - 26.
"To take another example, one of the offences for which Khadr was charged in 2007 and pled guilty, providing material support for terrorism, is not a crime under international laws of war: Hamdan v United States, 696 F3d 1238, 1248 - 1252 (DC Cir 2012) [Hamdan II]. Though it is now an offence under the MCA [Military Commissions Act], Guantanamo detainees whose offence date, like Khadr's, preceded 2006 have had their convictions in the United States vacated on the grounds that it was not until the 2006 MCA that this offence was criminalized and the MCA does not apply retroactively: Hamdan II supra."[2]
The court's warning fell on deaf ears as far as the Harper dictatorship is concerned. In announcing that the government would seek an injunction and appeal the decision, Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney stated on CHED radio news, "We do not agree that a youth sentence is appropriate for someone who is seen on video making the same type of improvised explosive devices that killed many of the 158 Canadian Armed Forces members who died in Afghanistan. That is why the Government of Canada will appeal this decision and seek a stay to ensure that he stays in federal prison where he belongs."
This statement only confirms what the court implied: the government is attempting to lengthen the sentence.
Omar Khadr has been imprisoned since his capture at the age of 15 in Afghanistan on July 27, 2002. Khadr is the only U.S. captive ever tried for murder in the death of a soldier fighting in the illegal U.S. invasions and wars against the people of Afghanistan or Iraq. He is the first juvenile prosecuted for war crimes in modern-day history, in violation of numerous international agreements and principles which offer children special protection and mandate rehabilitation and the reintegration of child soldiers into society, not punishment.
The Harper government has yet to take a single step to provide redress for the violation of Khadr's rights that has been confirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada. Instead it is pursuing a reckless course, disregarding the rule of law, including international agreements it has signed concerning child soldiers.It is a prime example of how the Harper dictatorship invokes the threat of terrorism to cover up its violation of Canadians' rights and its contempt for the rule of law, both at home and abroad.
The Harper government is not only trying to delay
Khadr's release as long
as possible, it is using this case to throw mud at the judicial
system to
cover up its own dictatorship and use of privilege to act with
impunity. The court acted to uphold a law enacted by Parliament. The
perverse logic of the
Harperites is that any challenge to its arbitrary and illegal decisions
means that
the courts are overstepping their bounds and interfering with
Parliament. The
Harperites are 
hell-bent on redefining
what a democracy looks like and
imposing a permanent state of exception, trying to
assert
once again that the law is what the Harper government declares it to be.
This spectacle of the Harper dictatorship doing everything it can to increase the sentence imposed by a kangaroo court in violation of international law and precedent regarding child soldiers and with total disregard for any conception of due process as Canadians have known it is further evidence of the extremism of the Harper dictatorship and the urgent necessity to defeat Harper.
Notes
1. Canderel Ltd. v.
Canada, Supreme
Court of Canada
judgement.
2. Khadr v Edmonton
Institution, 2014.
In the News
Obama Accuses Himself of Terrorism
Protest against U.S. drone strikes, Multan, Pakistan, October 8, 2014.
Nearly two years ago, in November, 2012, Barack Obama made some remarks that today would seem inconceivable coming from him. The President of the United States said that "there is no country on Earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders."
Obama's statements, of course, were designed
to act as
cover and
protection for the Zionist settler state of Israel as it launched and
continues to
launch violent campaigns of slaughter and extermination against the
Palestinians. Thus, Obama reiterated his position by stating that the
United
States supported Israel in its "right to defend itself" against
"missiles landing
on people's homes and potentially killing civilians." This referred to
the
Palestinian acts of protest against the occupation of their territories
by Israeli
settlers.
In an article published on the Activist Post website October 6, the prolific American writer on international political issues, Brandon Turbeville, noted that "even leaving the Israeli question aside, and while neglecting to point out that, at the time of the statement, Obama's own government was involved in the bombing of Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, and had just concluded the bombing of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, one might fast forward to 2014 as the United States rains down bombs on sovereign Syrian soil."
Following its illegal and immoral attacks on the Syrian people which have produced alarming amounts of civilian casualties within only a matter of days, the United States recently announced that it is "relaxing" its policy on civilian killings in Syria. Indeed, the White House is now backing away from claims that it will only use lethal force where there is a "certainty or near certainty" that no civilians will be killed.
The reports of significant civilian casualties as a result of U.S. airstrikes in the following days were the first indication that the Obama administration was ignoring its own rules in the war on terror."
"Yet the reality is that the United States has never been worried about civilian casualties, neither during the tenure of this President or that of the last. Any pretense to the contrary is naiveté at best," writes Turbeville.
Similarly, drones are touted for their surgical precision and laser-guided targeting system, yet they have killed civilians in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, and more notably in Pakistan, which has been the subject of over 390 covert drone strikes since 2008.
Although, according to independent investigative journalists' estimates, 710 civilians had been killed by drone attacks, Amnesty International claims the number of civilian casualties in Pakistan alone can be as high as 900. Arriving at an accurate number is extremely difficult, but when human rights groups are able to go into the affected areas and investigate individual strikes, the number of civilian casualties is always substantially higher than what was reported by the government, which counts all men of military age as enemy combatants and never identifies a single civilian among the dead men of that age range.
In other words, when civilian casualties become too obvious in the eyes of the public, or too politically damaging, the answer is to change your semantics and the wording of policy so that the casualties disappear from the radar screen of public opinion.
While any unintentional killing of Syrian civilians by the Assad government was presented to American audiences as premeditated slaughter against innocent people, American airstrikes continue to be presented as manna from heaven, designed to rid the world of Islamic terror and brutal dictators at the same time.
Palestinians, Syrians, Iraqis, Afghanis, Somalians, Yeminis, are acceptable casualties. Israelis are not. Palestinians, Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, Somalians, and Yemenis are required to accept "missiles landing on people's homes and potentially killing civilians" without resistance. Israel can act with impunity.
Thus, Barack Obama, while setting the international standard for response to bombing a sovereign nation and killing its civilians by his statement regarding Israel's so-called safety, in essence, openly stated that the United States is guilty of terrorism, a claim that few of its victims will argue with.
Obviously, this presidential statement means very little
in the way of actual
policy. Hypocritical proclamations and even outright lies serve only to
mask
the true agenda lurking underneath. Informed observers already know
this.
Those who take such statements seriously have much to learn," concludes
Turbeville.
Global Day of Action Against Drones, October 3, 2014.
Top to bottom: Berlin, Los Angeles, Washington, DC.
(A CubaNews translation. Edited by
Walter
Lippmann. Photos: Press TV, U. Hiksch, CodePink)
From Africa's Richest State Under Gaddafi,
to Failed
State After NATO
Intervention
This week marks the three-year anniversary of the Western-backed assassination of Libya's former president, Muammar Gaddafi, and the fall of one of Africa's greatest nations.
In 1967 Colonel Gaddafi inherited
one of the poorest
nations in Africa;
however, by the time he was assassinated, Gaddafi had turned Libya into
Africa's wealthiest nation. Libya had the highest GDP per capita and
life
expectancy on the continent. Less people lived below the poverty line
than in
the Netherlands.
After NATO's intervention in 2011, Libya is now a failed state and its economy is in shambles. As the government's control slips through their fingers and into the militia fighters' hands, oil production has all but stopped.
The militias, variously local, tribal, regional, Islamist or criminal, that have plagued Libya since NATO's intervention, have recently lined up into two warring factions. Libya now has two governments, both with their own Prime Minister, parliament and army.
On one side, in the West of the country, Islamist-allied militias took over control of the capital Tripoli and other cities and set up their own government, chasing away a parliament that was elected over the summer.
On the other side, in the East of the Country, the "legitimate" government dominated by anti-Islamist politicians, exiled 1,200 kilometers away in Tobruk, no longer governs anything.
The fall of Gaddafi's administration has created all of the country's worst-case scenarios: Western embassies have all left, the South of the country has become a haven for terrorists, and the Northern coast a center of migrant trafficking. Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia have all closed their borders with Libya. This all occurs amidst a backdrop of widespread rape, assassinations and torture that complete the picture of a state that is failed to the bone.
America is clearly fed up with the two inept governments in Libya and is now backing a third force: long-time CIA asset, General Khalifa Hifter, who aims to set himself up as Libya's new dictator. Hifter, who broke with Gaddafi in the 1980s and lived for years in Langley, Virginia, close to the CIA's headquarters, where he was trained by the CIA, has taken part in numerous American regime change efforts, including the aborted attempt to overthrow Gaddafi in 1996.
In 1991 the New York Times reported that Hifter may have been one of "600 Libyan soldiers trained by American intelligence officials in sabotage and other guerrilla skills; to fit in neatly into the Reagan Administration's eagerness to topple Colonel Qaddafi."
Hifter's forces are currently vying with the Al Qaeda group Ansar al-Sharia for control of Libya's second largest city, Benghazi. Ansar al-Sharia was armed by America during the NATO campaign against Colonel Gaddafi. In yet another example of the U.S. backing terrorists backfiring, Ansar al-Sharia has recently been blamed by America for the brutal assassination of U.S. Ambassador Stevens.
Hifter is currently receiving logistical and air support from the U.S. because his faction envision a mostly secular Libya open to Western financiers, speculators, and capital.
Perhaps, Gaddafi's greatest crime, in the eyes of NATO, was his desire to put the interests of local labour above foreign capital and his quest for a strong and truly United States of Africa. In fact, in August 2011, President Obama confiscated $30 billion from Libya's Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of the African IMF and African Central Bank.
In 2011, the West's objective was clearly not to help the Libyan people, who already had the highest standard of living in Africa, but to oust Gaddafi, install a puppet regime, and gain control of Libya's natural resources.
For over 40 years, Gaddafi promoted economic democracy and used the nationalized oil wealth to sustain progressive social welfare programs for all Libyans. Under Gaddafi's rule, Libyans enjoyed not only free health-care and free education, but also free electricity and interest-free loans. Now thanks to NATO's intervention the health-care sector is on the verge of collapse as thousands of Filipino health workers flee the country, institutions of higher education across the East of the country are shut down, and black outs are a common occurrence in once thriving Tripoli.
One group that has suffered immensely from NATO's bombing campaign is the nation's women. Unlike many other Arab nations, women in Gaddafi's Libya had the right to education, hold jobs, divorce, hold property and have an income. The United Nations Human Rights Council praised Gaddafi for his promotion of women's rights.
When the colonel seized power in 1969, few women went to university. Today, more than half of Libya's university students are women. One of the first laws Gaddafi passed in 1970 was an equal pay for equal work law.
Nowadays, the new "democratic"
Libyan regime is clamping
down on
women's rights. The new ruling tribes are tied to traditions that are
strongly
patriarchal. Also, the chaotic nature of post-intervention Libyan
politics has
allowed free rein to extremist Islamic forces that see gender equality
as a
Western perversion.
Three years ago, NATO declared that the mission in Libya had been "one of the most successful in NATO history." Truth is, Western interventions have produced nothing but colossal failures in Libya, Iraq, and Syria. Lest we forget, prior to western military involvement in these three nations, they were the most modern and secular states in the Middle East and North Africa with the highest regional women's rights and standards of living.
A decade of failed military expeditions in the Middle East has left the American people in trillions of dollars of debt. However, one group has benefited immensely from the costly and deadly wars: America's Military-Industrial-Complex.
Building new military bases means billions of dollars for America's military elite. As Will Blum has pointed out, following the bombing of Iraq, the United States built new bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Saudi Arabia.
Following the bombing of Afghanistan, the United States is now building military bases in Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
Following the recent bombing of Libya, the United States has built new military bases in the Seychelles, Kenya, South Sudan, Niger and Burkina Faso.
Given that Libya sits atop the strategic intersection of the African, Middle Eastern and European worlds, Western control of the nation, has always been a remarkably effective way to project power into these three regions and beyond.
NATO's military intervention may have been a resounding success for America's military elite and oil companies but for the ordinary Libyan, the military campaign may indeed go down in history as one of the greatest failures of the 21st century.
* Garikai Chengu is a
research scholar at Harvard
University. Contact him
on garikai.chengu@gmail.com. This item was originally published October
19, 2014 on GlobalResearch.ca.
Britain's Phantoms of the Past in Palestine
Demonstration in London, England, July 15, 2014, opposes Israeli aggression against Palestine.
It would be intellectually dishonest to reflect on the British House of Commons' vote of October 13 on a Palestinian state, without digging deeper into history. Regardless of the meaning of the non-binding motion, the parliamentary action cannot be brushed off as just another would-be country to recognize Palestine, as was the Swedish government's decision on October 3.
Unlike Sweden, and most of the 130-plus countries to effectively recognize Palestine, Britain is a party in the Middle East's most protracted conflict. In fact, if it were not for Britain, there would be no conflict, or even Israel, of which to speak. It is within this context that the British vote matters, and greatly so.
As I listened to the heated debate by British MPs that preceded the historic vote of 272 in favor and 12 against, phantoms of historic significance occupied my mind.
When my father was born in historic Palestine in 1936, he found himself in a world politically dominated by Britain. Born and raised in the now long-destroyed Palestinian village of Beit Daras - which, like the rest of historic Palestine has now become part of "Israel proper" -- he, along with his family -- were entrapped between two anomalies that greatly scarred the otherwise peaceful landscape of Palestine countryside. A Jewish colony called Tabiyya, along with a heavily fortified British police compound that was largely aimed at safeguarding the interests of the colony, subjugated Beit Daras.
The residents of the village, still unaware of the plan to dispossess them from their homeland, grew wary of the dual treachery with time. But by 1947-48, it was too late. The British-coordinated withdrawal from Palestine was aimed at creating space for a Jewish state, today's Israel. The Palestinians, for 66 years and counting, have suffered from more than homelessness and dispossession, but also a military occupation and countless massacres, ending with the most recent Israeli war on Gaza. In what Israel calls Operation Protective Edge, nearly 2,200 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed and five-fold more were wounded. Yet, Palestinians continue to resist, with greater ferocity than ever.
Because of this, and the fact that the British government remains a member of the ever-shrinking club of Israel's staunch supporters, the vote in the British parliament greatly matters. "Symbolic" and non-binding, it still matters. It matters because the Israeli arsenal is rife with British armaments; because the British government, despite strong protestation of its people, still behaves towards Israel as if the latter were a law-abiding state with a flawless human-rights records. It matters despite the dubious language of the motion, linking the recognition of Palestine alongside Israel to "securing a negotiated two-state solution."
But there can be no two states in a land that is already inhabited by two nations, who, despite the grossness of the occupation, are in fact interconnected geographically, demographically and in other ways as well. Israel has created irreversible realities in Palestine, and the respected MPs of the British parliament should know this.
The votes were motivated by different rationale and reasons. Some voted "yes" because they have been long-time supporters of Palestinians, others are simply fed up with Israel's behavior. But if the vote largely reflected an attempt at breathing more life into the obsolete "two-state solution" to a conflict created by the British themselves, then, the terrible British legacy in Palestine which has lasted for nearly a century will continue unabated.
British army boots walked on Palestinian soil as early as 1917, after the British army defeated Turkey, whose vast Ottoman Empire, that included Palestine, was quickly disintegrating under the combined pressure of European powers. As soon as Jerusalem was captured by British forces under the command of General Sir Edmund Allenby in December 1917, and the rest of the country by October 1918, the will of the Palestinian people fell hostage to the British Empire. The figures of how many Palestinian Arabs were killed, wounded, tortured, imprisoned and exiled by Britain since that date, until the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948, is beyond depressing.
However, Britain's integral role in the suffering of the Palestinians and the establishment of Israel was hardly a coincidental policy necessitated by the nature of its immediate colonial ambitions. It was calculated and rooted in political and diplomatic intrigues that go back to the 19th century. It was also predicated on an unmistakable element of racism, rampant in the colonial culture at the time. Its manifestations still bring shame to Britain today, which still refuses to fully and unconditionally reverse that early policy.
It is inexplicable that one century after the British involvement in Palestine, which has proved its astounding failure, the current British foreign policy is not far removed from the language and policies executed by the British Empire when Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour "promised" Palestine for a Jewish state. The Balfour Declaration is dated November 2, 1917, before Palestine was even occupied by the British, thus reflecting the sheer arrogance and disregard of Palestinians and their rights. In one of his letters at the time, Balfour so conceitedly wrote:
"For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country ... The four great powers are committed to Zionism, and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes of far profounder import than the desire and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land. In my opinion that is right."
Encouraged by the overwhelming recent vote in favor of Palestine at the parliament (although nearly half of the MPs didn't show up or abstained), one can hardly deny the signs that both the British public and many in the country's political establishment are simply disenchanted by Israel's continued war and occupation which are the main reason behind the destabilization of the region long before the Syrian civil war and other upheavals began. Many British MPs are furious over Israel's violent, expansionist and anti-peace conduct, including those who were once strong allies of Israel. That must not be denied.
But it is hardly enough. When the British government insists on maintaining its pro-Israeli policies, and when the general attitude of those who truly hold the reins of power in London remain committed to a farce vision of two states, defending Israel and disempowering Palestinians at every turn, the Balfour vision of old will remain the real guidelines for British policy regarding Palestine.
Sixty-six years after ending its "mandate" in Palestine, Britain remains a party in a bloody conflict, where Israel is still carrying the same policies of colonial expansion, using Western -- including British -- funds, arms and political support. Only when Britain fully and completely ends its support of Israel and financing of its occupation, and works diligently and actively towards correcting the injustice imposed on the Palestinians a century ago, can one consider that a real change in British policies is finally taking hold.
Without a clear course of action to help Palestinians
gain their freedom,
the British vote will remain another symbolic gesture in a conflict in
which
military occupation, war, siege, death and destruction are very much
real. And
when British leaders like conservative Prime Minister David Cameron
continue to parrot their unconditional support for Israel, even after
the Gaza
wars and massacres, one will also continue to seek even moderate proof
that
the Balfour legacy has truly and finally ended.
* Ramzy Baroud is a PhD
scholar in People's History at
the University of
Exeter. He is the Managing Editor of Middle East Eye. Baroud is an
internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author and
the
founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a
Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press, London). This item
was originally posted on PalestineChronicle.com October 22, 2014.
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