The People's Record

Per requests, a rebloggable version: 

I like to follow the lead of the colonized and what they want when considering which solution may be best. What I’m able to read or watch on the internet could not possibly compare to the lived experiences of the oppressed & terrorized Palestinian people and I will be an ally for whatever solution they support, as that changes and evolves over time. 

Having said that, one secular democracy makes more sense strategically to me (see this Guardian article for an in-depth explanation).

Essentially, something like South Africa’s apartheid state and its transition to a democracy in which the controlling minority lost control to the oppressed majority when apartheid was reformed would be ideal to me. When people say that a one state solution would be an end to Israel, I have to agree.

Israel should have never colonized the region. Since it has colonized & controlled the region for several decades, Israelis (like white colonizing South Africans had to) should be forced to live as a minority in the region, protected by a democracy that treats minorities fairly. This would mean significantly less power as a voting bloc than they have right now as absolute tyrants of the region - but I can’t say I feel badly about that. Israel, like America, Australia, the white South African government  etc. does not have a right to control the region. So if I were king of the world for a day, I would dissolve the nation of Israel into a democratic Palestine that granted Israelis living in the region protection and full citizenship. 

This of course is fantasy. The West stands with Israel  because it serves our own imperial interests to have a strong military power in the Middle East. Western imperialism & colonialism continues across the Middle East, just like in previous decades it has across Africa, Asia & South America. For that reason, I doubt the possibility of a one-state solution, or any solution at the moment. But I still believe there is a great deal of value in fighting for a liberated Palestine & raising awareness about the devastating circumstances Palestinians are subjected to by Israel every single day. I believe Israel will not stop until it has ethnically cleansed the area to the point that they would not be the minority in a one-state scenario - until Palestinians are as impossibly powerless in an inclusive Israel as American Indians are in the United States. And I believe the United States and the West will continue to support Israel’s terror, sociocide, apartheid and genocide as the West continues to try to control the region for its own interests. 

The only way I can imagine a positive result for Palestine is if America (and the West along with it) loses significant power, either due to popular revolution and regime changes - the destruction of capitalism & imperialism along with it or through the rise of other world powers who would find it advantageous to diminish U.S./Western control in the Middle East. We’re a very long way off from either of those scenarios, but the former is certainly worth fighting for. 

I hope this answered your question. Thanks for following & for reaching out!

-Robert

Glenn Greenwald: Obama’s Libya response highlights his foreign policy mentality

October 4, 2012

Extreme secrecy, extrajudicial assassinations, and a self-perpetuating militarism are driving Benghazi responses.

Three new articles - one today from the New York Times, one today from Associated Press, and another on Tuesday from the Washington Post - describe the approach being planned by the Obama administration to the consulate attack in Benghazi. All three highlight the standard and now-familiar attributes of Obama’s approach to foreign policy.

The Times describes how the Pentagon and CIA are “laying the groundwork for operations to kill or capture militants implicated in the deadly attack on a diplomatic mission in Libya”, while “the top-secret Joint Special Operations Command is compiling so-called target packages of detailed information about the suspects.” That could “include drone strikes, Special Operations raids like the one that killed Osama bin Laden and joint missions with Libyan authorities.” The Post adds that “the White House has held a series of secret meetings in recent months to examine the threat posed by al-Qaida’s franchise in North Africa and consider for the first time whether to prepare for unilateral strikes.”

Meanwhile, AP - under the headline “White House Widening Covert War in North Africa” - describes how, even before the consulate attack, “small teams of special operations forces arrived at American embassies throughout North Africa” in order, among other things, to “set up a network that could quickly strike a terrorist target”. That is because “the administration has been worried for some time about a growing threat posed by al-Qaida and its offshoots in North Africa.” The Post similarly reports that this is all being driven by “concern that al-Qaida’s African affiliate has become more dangerous since gaining control of large pockets of territory in Mali and acquiring weapons from post-revolution Libya.”

Changing White House response

Last week, I wrote about the false, self-serving claims initially emanating from the White House about the Benghazi attack, and how much that tracked the process that produced similarly false claims from Obama officials about the bin Laden killing. On Monday, Jon Stewart mocked the inability of Obama officials to keep their story straight on these attacks, while today, Mother Jones’ Adam Serwer proposes five questions about Libya which Obama should be asked in tonight’s (last night’s) presidential debate.

Finish the article

Glenn Greenwald: Sweden detains Pirate Bay founder in oppressive conditions without charges

October 02, 2012

The case underscores the prime fear long expressed by Assange supporters about the Swedish justice system.

My very first week writing regularly at the Guardian generated intense conflict with numerous members of the British media because that happened to be the week when Ecuador granted asylum to Julian Assange (a decision I defended), and - for reasons that warrant sustained study by several academic fields of discipline - very few people generate intense contempt among the British commentariat like Assange does. One of the prime arguments I have always made about the Assange asylum case is that his particular fear of being extradited to Sweden is grounded in that country’s very unusual and quite oppressive pre-trial detention powers: ones that permit the state to act with an extreme degree of secrecy and which can even prohibit the accused from any communication with the outside world.

That is what has always led Assange to fear going to Sweden: that those detention procedures could be used to transfer him to the US without any public scrutiny (only the most willfully irrational, given evidence like this, would deny that this is a real threat). And that is the argument on behalf of Assange that has produced the greatest amount of anger: in part because some self-loving westerners find the suggestion inconceivable and offensive that a nice western nation (as opposed to some Muslim or Latin American country) could possibly be oppressive in any real way.

But now we have a case that confirms exactly those claims about Sweden’s justice system, and since it has nothing to do with the WikiLeaks founder, one hopes these issues can be viewed more rationally. Gottfrid Svartholm is the founder of the file-sharing Pirate Bay website who has been prosecuted by the Swedish government for enabling copyright infringements. At the behest of Sweden, he wasrecently arrested in Cambodia and then deported to Stockholm, where he has now also been accused (though not charged) with participating in the hacking of a Swedish company.

Svartholm is now being held under exactly the pretrial conditions that I’ve long argued (based on condemnations from human rights groups) prevail in Sweden:

“Gottfrid Svartholm will be kept in detention for at least two more weeks on suspicion of hacking into a Swedish IT company connected to the country’s tax authorities. According to Prosecutor Henry Olin the extended detention is needed ‘to prevent him from having contact with other people.’ The Pirate Bay co-founder is not allowed to have visitors and is even being denied access to newspapers and television… .

“Since he hasn’t been charged officially in the Logica case the Pirate Bay co-founder could only be detained for a few days.

“But, after a request from Prosecutor Henry Olin this term was extended for another two weeks mid-September, and last Friday the District Court decided that Gottfrid could be detained for another two weeks.

“To prevent Gottfrid from interfering with the investigation the Prosecutor believes it’s justified to detain him for more than a month without being charged. The Pirate Bay co-founder is not allowed to have visitors and is being refused access to newspapers and television… . The Prosecutor hasn’t ruled out a request for another extension of Gottfrid’s detainment in two weeks, if the investigation is still ongoing.”

The claim that produced the most vitriol was that Sweden vests remarkable power in prosecutors and courts to keep accused suspects completely hidden from public view, with no communication or other contact with the outside world, and that this power is exercised with some frequency. Now we have confirmation of that claim from, of all people, the Swedish prosecutor in this case, Henrik Olin, who said in an interview outside the courtroom:

“‘According to the Swedish system, when the preliminary investigation is finished, I as prosecutor will decide whether to prosecute him… . In the Swedish system it is quite usual for people to be detained on this legal ground, and it gives me the possibility to prevent him from having contact with other people.’”

Unlike in the British system, in which all proceedings, including extradition proceedings, relating to Assange would be publicly scrutinized and almost certainly conducted in open court, the unusual secrecy of Sweden’s pre-trial judicial process, particularly the ability to hold the accused incommunicado, poses a real danger that whatever happened to Assange could be effectuated without any public notice. That has always been, and remains, the prime fear for his being extradited to Sweden: a fear that could be, and should be, redressed by negotiations between Ecuador, Sweden and the UK to assure that he can go to Sweden while having his rights protected.

Source

Just how many bystanders did New York police shoot?

August 24, 2012

The Guardian is reporting that the nine bystanders who were shot (that didn’t include the shooter’s target) were all shot by police, and that Jeffrey Johnson never fired on police.

The most disturbing detail about Friday’s fatal shooting in Midtown Manhattan is the fact that the wounded included bystanders shot by police, and the latest news suggests stray police bullets may account for “most or all” of those wounded. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly confirmed that at least some of the injuries came from stray police bullets as cops opened fire on the gunman who aimed at them, but the police haven’t said how many. Rather, that detail comes from the math reporters are doing with the number of rounds police have confirmed were fired.

Fortunately, most of the injuries were minor. As one victim who as hit in the arm told The New York Times: “I guess, you know, stuff happens.”

The Times’ James Barron and David Halbfinger and William K. Rashbaum introduced the arithmetic reporting: “Some of those injured might have been shot by the two police officers, who fired 16 rounds at the gunman, Jeffrey Johnson 58, said Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly — based on the number of people shot and the fact that Mr. Johnson’s gun held only eight rounds.” The New York Times Metro twitter account followed up with this accounting: “Johnson had 8 bullets max. Shot 5 at [victim Steve] Ercolino, 2 left in gun, 1 unfired on ground,” suggesting that the only ones Johnson fired were at his intended victim — although that doesn’t necessarily mean all of them found their mark.

Reuters’ Lily Kuo is reporting eight bystanders were wounded in total, not nine. But if The Times’ figures about the bullets are accurate, the total number of injured wouldn’t affect the story that police bullets accounted for all injuries, because all of Johnson’s bullets would be accounted for. The problem is, the available information keeps changing. Earlier in the day, The Associated Press and others were reporting that Johnson only fired three shots at Ercolino, not five, which would have two of his rounds unaccounted for. The AP’s report now says five. Based on the latest information from The Times, however, and a little math, it looks like stray police bullets are to blame for most, if not all of the injured bystanders.

Source

US drone strikes target rescuers in Pakistan – and the west stays silent

August 20, 2012

The US government has long maintained, reasonably enough, that a defining tactic of terrorism is to launch a follow-up attack aimed at those who go to the scene of the original attack to rescue the wounded and remove the dead. Morally, such methods have also been widely condemned by the west as a hallmark of savagery. Yet, as was demonstrated yet again this weekend in Pakistan, this has become one of the favorite tactics of the very same US government.

A 2004 official alert from the FBI warned that “terrorists may use secondary explosive devices to kill and injure emergency personnel responding to an initial attack”; the bulletin advised that such terror devices “are generally detonated less than one hour after initial attack, targeting first responders as well as the general population”. Security experts have long noted that the evil of this tactic lies in its exploitation of the natural human tendency to go to the scene of an attack to provide aid to those who are injured, and is specifically potent for sowing terror by instilling in the population an expectation that attacks can, and likely will, occur again at any time and place:

“‘The problem is that once the initial explosion goes off, many people will believe that’s it, and will respond accordingly,’ [the Heritage Foundation’s Jack] Spencer said … The goal is to ‘incite more terror. If there’s an initial explosion and a second explosion, then we’re thinking about a third explosion,’ Spencer said.”

A 2007 report from the US department of homeland security christened the term “double tap” to refer to what it said was “a favorite tactic of Hamas: a device is set off, and when police and other first responders arrive, a second, larger device is set off to inflict more casualties and spread panic.” Similarly, the US justice department has highlighted this tactic in its prosecutions of some of the nation’s most notorious domestic terrorists. Eric Rudolph, convicted of bombing gay nightclubs and abortion clinics, was said to have “targeted federal agents by placing second bombs nearby set to detonate after police arrived to investigate the first explosion”.

In 2010, when WikiLeaks published a video of the incident in which an Apache helicopter in Baghdad killed two Reuters journalists, what sparked the greatest outrage was not the initial attack, which the US army claimed was aimed at armed insurgents, but rather the follow-up attack on those who arrived at the scene to rescue the wounded. From the Guardian’s initial report on the WikiLeaks video:

“A van draws up next to the wounded man and Iraqis climb out. They are unarmed and start to carry the victim to the vehicle in what would appear to be an attempt to get him to hospital. One of the helicopters opens fire with armour-piercing shells. ‘Look at that. Right through the windshield,’ says one of the crew. Another responds with a laugh.

“Sitting behind the windscreen were two children who were wounded.

“After ground forces arrive and the children are discovered, the American air crew blame the Iraqis. ‘Well it’s their fault for bringing kids in to a battle,’ says one. ‘That’s right,’ says another.

“Initially the US military said that all the dead were insurgents.”

In the wake of that video’s release, international condemnation focused on the shooting of the rescuers who subsequently arrived at the scene of the initial attack. The New Yorker’s Raffi Khatchadourian explained:

“On several occasions, the Apache gunner appears to fire rounds into people after there is evidence that they have either died or are suffering from debilitating wounds. The rules of engagement and the law of armed combat do not permit combatants to shoot at people who are surrendering or who no longer pose a threat because of their injuries. What about the people in the van who had come to assist the struggling man on the ground? The Geneva conventions state that protections must be afforded to people who ‘collect and care for the wounded, whether friend or foe.’”

He added that “A ‘positively identified’ combatant who provides medical aid to someone amid fighting does not automatically lose his status as a combatant, and may still be legally killed,” but – as is true for drone attacks – there is, manifestly, no way to know who is showing up at the scene of the initial attack, certainly not with “positive identification” (by official policy, the US targets people in Pakistan and elsewhere for death even without knowing who they are). Even commentators who defended the initial round of shooting by the Apache helicopter by claiming there was evidence that one of the targets was armed typically noted, “the shooting of the rescuers, however, is highly disturbing.”

Read the full Glenn Greenwald article