Mary Shaw

Canadian citizen Omar Khadr is now facing trial via a U.S. military commission at Guantanamo Bay. Khadr is accused of throwing a hand grenade which killed a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan in 2002 and injured two others. His is the first trial before a military commission under the Obama administration. The trial began during the week of August 9, but is now on hold for 30 days as the defense attorney recovers from a sudden illness.

Khadr was only 15 years old when he was detained and sent to Gitmo, where he was allegedly subjected to harsh interrogations, beatings, and other ill-treatment. Interrogators allegedly threatened to kill Khadr's family if he didn't cooperate. According to IPS News, "there seems to be little or no evidence that Khadr actually threw the grenade that killed the soldier, other than 'confessions' allegedly obtained under suspicious circumstances."

And, notes IPS, "Patrick Parish, the military judge working on the case in Guantanamo, has decided to admit the statements extrapolated during these interrogations into court." This is despite the fact that information obtained under torture and other forms of coercion is known to be unreliable. So the deck is already stacked against him.

Human Rights First (HRF) has identified some additional problems with the case. "The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and international juvenile justice standards require prompt determination of juvenile cases and discourage detainment of juveniles at all except as a last resort," says HRF on its website. "Such standards have not been heeded by the U.S. government in the case of Khadr. Khadr was held for two years prior to being given access to an attorney, waited more than three years prior to being charged before the first military commission, and is now in his eighth year in U.S. custody. During Khadr's time in detainment, he has been held both in solitary confinement as well as with adult detainees, contrary to international standards requiring that children be treated in accordance with their age and segregated from adult detainees."

Additionally, says HRF, "In 2002, the U.S. ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, which prohibits the use of children under 18 in armed conflict and requires signatories to criminalize such conduct and rehabilitate former child soldiers as well as provide 'all appropriate assistance for their physical and psychological recovery and their social reintegration.' The U.S. has failed to heed these legal obligations in the case of Khadr."

But, of course, it's been a while since the U.S. government has cared about complying with international law and human rights standards.

And today that remains another unkept promise of the Obama administration.

In a statement to the military judge in a pre-trial hearing in July, Khadr had asked, "How can I ask for justice from a process that does not have it?"

That is a very good question.

Unfortunately, the answer is probably not so good.

Mary Shaw is a Philadelphia-based writer and activist. She is a former Philadelphia Area Coordinator for the Nobel-Prize-winning human rights group Amnesty International, and her views on politics, human rights, and social justice issues have appeared in numerous online forums and in newspapers and magazines worldwide. Note that the ideas expressed here are the author's own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Amnesty International or any other organization with which she may be associated. E-mail: mary@maryshawonline.com

Michael Collins

A revealing article appeared in Voice of America (VOA) on August 12. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made the following statement:

"I think we have an agreement with the Iraqis that both governments have agreed to, that we will be out of Iraq at the end of 2011," he (Gates) said. "If a new government is formed there and they want to talk about beyond 2011, we're obviously open to that discussion. But that initiative will have to come from the Iraqis." Robert Gates in "US Military Prepares to Leave Iraq, But May Stay If Asked", Voice of America (VOA), Aug 12

At the time of this post, if you do a Google "News" search for the sentence underlined, you will find it only at the VOA source. The article notes that Gates made the statement, "to reporters on his aircraft during a domestic trip on Wednesday." Apparently, it wasn't newsworthy except to the official news agency for the United States government.

President Obama's withdrawal promise has been treated with some skepticism. Now we've got Robert Gates adding a cynical codicil: "if they want to talk … we're obviously open to discussion."

Who's in charge here?

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Joel S. Hirschhorn

If the United States is not kaput it is certainly withering away even as a rich upper class enjoys all the things that money buys. There is massive, widespread economic pain inflicting a huge fraction of Americans who are unemployed, underemployed, relying on food stamps, losing their homes, and who are feeling totally insecure financially. This maintains sluggish consumer spending that makes necessary economic growth impossible.

The corporate bigwigs meanwhile are essentially using economic blackmail as they sit on trillions of dollars in cash, refusing to invest their capital and making great profits because they have cut workers and increased productivity. They want even more benefits from government that they think Republicans will give them.

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By Khalid Amayreh, Occupied Jerusalem

Khalid Amayreh

It is one of the paradoxes of Israel that the Jewish state has a lot of support amongst right-wing and fascist groups in the West. The common factor appears to be hostility towards Islam and Muslims; in short, Islamophobia. Israel's belligerence against the Palestinians (the Christians amongst whom are overlooked by the extreme right) is championed.

However, a closer examination suggests that extreme right-wing ideology and extreme interpretations of Zionism go hand in hand. As the government coalition in Israel moves ever more to the right, it is worth considering the residual influence of the Kach Party, banned in Israel in 1988 for its extreme racist views.

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by Stephen Lendman

The well-established universal jurisdiction principle (UJ) holds that certain crimes are too grave to ignore, including genocide, crimes of war and against humanity.

Thus, under UJ, nations may investigate and prosecute foreign nationals when their country of residence or origin won't, can't, or hasn't for any reason. Israel used it to convict and execute Adolph Eichmann. A US court sentenced Chuckie Taylor, son of the former Liberian president, to 97 years in prison for torture.

In March 2003, the Special Court for Sierre Leone (SCSL) indicted his father, Charles Taylor, for crimes of war and against humanity. His trial at The Hague's International Court of Justice (ICC) remains ongoing.

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By Timothy V. Gatto

I was on the Michael Medved show yesterday and we got into a discussion of wealth. I told him that a University of Southern California study by Professor G. William Dumhoff made in 2007 and revised in 2010 showed that 80% of Americans retain only 7% of America’s wealth. He then asked me if we should “steal money away from the rich and give it to the poor”. I replied in the affirmative saying that taxes should be levied on the super-rich, after all, how much do people actually need to live a good life? In the preamble of our Constitution it says;

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

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Kourosh Ziabari

The trilateral summit of the presidents of three Persian-speaking countries of Iran, Tajikistan and Afghanistan wrapped up on August 5 in Tehran and recorded another unforgettable event in the memory of the three brother nations. With innumerable cultural, religious, social, lingual and strategic commonalities, the three countries of Iran, Tajikistan and Afghanistan have demonstrated their potentiality to build one of the strongest diplomatic partnerships in the region and benefit the world nations through a unique, fruitful and constructive cooperation.

The people of Afghanistan and Tajikistan, whose countries were parts of the Greater Persia in ancient times, consider Iran as their cultural homeland and believe that the Iranian nation is the inheritor of their paternal legacy, the Persian civilization.

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James Petras

While progressives and leftists write about the “crises of capitalism”, manufacturers, petroleum companies, bankers and most other major corporations on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific coast are chuckling all the way to the bank.

From the first quarter of this year, corporate profits have shot up between twenty to over a hundred percent, (Financial Times August 10, 2010, p. 7). In fact, corporate profits have risen higher than they were before the onset of the recession in 2008 (Money Morning March 31, 2010). Contrary to progressive bloggers the rates of profits are rising not falling, particularly among the biggest corporations (Consensus Economics, August 12, 2010). The buoyancy of corporate profits is directly a result of the deepening crises of the working class, public and private employees and small and medium size enterprises.

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by Stephen Lendman

This article follows an August 6 one discussing Palestinians Denied Access to Water, found through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com

It explained how Israel exploits Palestinian water resources, using most of it, forcing them to find ways to get by. Water, of course, is essential to life, rights to it natural and usufructuary. Belonging to everyone as part of the commons, it must be used, not owned or abused, an essential truth Israel corrupts. On August 5, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) published the latest in its "Narratives Under Siege" series, titled "There's Something in the Water: The Poisoning of Life in the Gaza Strip."

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Michael Collins
(Satire)

White House Press Secretary, Robert "the mole" Gibbs, was outed last night for his lead role in throwing the 2010 congressional election to the Republican Party. The White House refused to return calls to comment on the charge or verify the outline of the carefully orchestrated plot. But a variety of off the record sources spoke as one - the plot is real and has been going on long before the 2008 general election. The scope of the plot goes well beyond the upcoming congressional contests.

In a recent interview for The Hill newspaper, Gibbs used an entirely new technique in election tactics - offend and humiliate a key element of your voting block right before a critical election. Gibbs ridiculed progressives as part of the "Professional Left" and said, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian health care and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.” Research indicates that this approach has never been used within 90 days of a general election.

But the story goes much deeper than simple electoral politics. The planned outburst has a short term benefit for Republicans but, as we will see, Gibbs is reporting to a higher authority.

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