THE HANDSTAND

FEBRUARY-MARCH2010

 

 

Tackling America´s Toughest Questions

The war against Afghanistan is illegal, affirms Francis A. Boyle, law professor at the University of Illinios in Champaign. The author belongs to the peace camp in the United States and is one of most outspoken and prolific critics of George W. Bush´s presidency. He is one of the few defenders of the rule of law against the numerous apologists of the "law of the jungle" in the so-called war on terror.

In his newest book, Boyle provides a compilation of interviews he had accorded to alternative media, where he tackled America´s thorniest questions. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration initiated many policies that impinged on the rule of law. The author criticizes not only „the global war on terrorism“ but also US-President Bush´s massive assaults on international law, human and civil rights, civil liberties, and the United States Constitution, as well as the detention center in Guantanamo Bay and its kangaroo courts, torture scandals, „extraordinary renditions“, the attack on Iraq, spying on the American people, and the threatened war against Iran. Together with Ramsey Clark, Francis Boyle tried to rally support to impeach President Bush because the „Bushists“ have turned the sacred rule of law topsy-turvy. This attempt finally failed due to lack of support of the Democartic party in Congress.

Beside interviews the book also contains articles in which Boyle clarifies his position concerning the war against Afghanistan and the concept of humanitarian intervention. In the first article the author demonstrates the illegality of the war against Afghanistan. He points out that Bush did not get a clear legal mandate for this war. He failed to get a formal declaration of war from the US Congress. The U. N. Security Council did not authorize the use of force against Afghanistan. NATO's invocation of article 5 of the Nato Treaty was totally bogus because Afghanistan did not attack the US. According to Boyle, the war against that country is „an armed aggression“ according to international law, and thus there is no „basis in law" for the war against Afghanistan.

In his second article on the question of "humanitarian intervention" the author deconstructs this allegedly charitable endeavor by the international community as a „pretext for aggression“. One of the hallmarks of the Clinton administration, so Boyle, was "its manipulation of the doctrine of ´humanitarian intervention` and of ´humanitarianism`in order to justify its illegal, aggressive, and imperialist interventions around the world.“ This doctrine, says Boyle, „is a fraud and a joke“ because it is used to intervene in and occupy poor states of the South in order „to steal their natural resources“. For the author, the US and the Nato alliance „have been behind the most of the major atrocities and catastophes in the modern world“. They constitue an „Axis of Genocide“, so Boyle. Thus „humanity bears a ´responsibility to protect` the very future existence of the world from the United States and Nato.“

The many interviews and the articles give the readers an insight into the unlawful undertakings of the United States under George W. Bush. Almost all of these illegal policies have been continued by the Obama administration. Readers should not be surprised that Obama´s policy appears as a Bush-light version. The book offers a devastating but substantiated critique of American domestic and foreign policy which affects all the countries of the world. For the European peace camp it should be a must read.

Francis A. Boyle

Law Building

504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.

Champaign, IL 61820 USA

217-333-7954 (Voice)

217-244-1478 (Fax)

(personal comments only)

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Dozens killed in Afghanistan avalanches Tue, 09 Feb 2010

Avalanche has killed dozens of people in Hindu Kush mountainous regions of Afghanistan while hundreds of people are still trapped in freezing cold temperatures.

On Tuesday, avalanches swept over a mountain highway and closed a landmark alpine tunnel in Afghanistan.

Several passengers trapped in the Salang pass, the main route across the Hindu Kush Mountains, said on the phone that they were freezing to death and being suffocated by car fumes, and had seen cars filled with dead bodies after remaining stuck through the night.

Days of heavy snow triggered avalanches blocking the 2.6 km (1.6 mile) long Soviet-built Salang tunnel, a historic engineering feat that links Kabul to northern Afghanistan, connecting the Indian subcontinent to Central Asia through the treacherous mountain pass at 3,400 meters (11,000 feet).

Authorities have announced an official death toll of 28. Soldiers have dug a footpath through the snow along miles of blocked cars. Passengers who could escape on foot were walking out as Afghan troops carried the injured and the elderly on their backs to waiting ambulances. Rescue workers pulled frozen corpses out of cars.

Heavy snowfall and rain also caused floods in the south of the country. Zalmay Ayoubi, spokesman for the governor of southern Kandahar Province, said six people have been killed and 10 were missing as the result of the flooding.

HSH/MB


AFGHANISTAN
more confirmation on resource hunt....

Afghan 'geological reserves worth a trillion dollars'

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100131/wl_sthasia_afp/afghanistaneconomyenergymineral

Afghan 'geological reserves worth a trillion dollars' AFP/File – Afghan miners in an emerald mine in the Panjshir Valley in May 2007. Afghanistan, one of the world's …

Sun Jan 31, 7:48 am ET

KABUL (AFP) – Afghanistan, one of the world's poorest countries, is sitting on mineral and petroleum reserves worth an estimated one trillion dollars, President Hamid Karzai said Sunday.

The war-ravaged nation could become one of the richest in the world if helped to tap its geological deposits, Karzai told reporters.

"I have very good news for Afghans," Karzai said.

"The initial figures we have obtained show that our mineral deposits are worth a thousand billion dollars -- not a thousand million dollars but a thousand billion," he said.

He based his assertion, he said, on a survey being carried out by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), due to be completed in "a couple of months".

The USGS, the US government's scientific agency, has been working on the 17-million dollar survey for a number of years, Karzai said.

While Afghanistan is not renowned as a resource-rich country, it has a wide range of deposits, including copper, iron ore, gold and chromite, as well as natural gas, oil and precious and semi-precious stones.

Little has been exploited because the country has been mired in conflict for 30 years, and is embroiled in a vicious insurgency by Islamist rebels led by the Taliban.

More than 100,000 foreign troops under US and NATO command are battling the insurgents, with another 40,000 due for deployment this year.

China and India have bid for contracts to develop mines, with the Chinese winning a copper contract. An iron ore contract is due to be awarded later this year.

In 2007, China's state-owned metals giant Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) signed a three-billion-dollar contract to develop the Aynak copper mine -- one of the world's biggest -- over the next 30 years.

First discovered in 1974, the site, 30 kilometres (20 miles) south of Kabul in Logar, is estimated to contain 11.3 million tonnes of copper.

The Hajigak iron ore mine in Bamiyan province, north of Kabul, is currently under tender, with one Chinese and half a dozen Indian firms bidding.

The contract is for exploitation of almost two billion tonnes of high-grade ore, involving processing, smelting, steel production and electricity production.


corruption investigation

The Afghanistan war is a breeding ground for corruption, and today McClatchy Newspapers reports that it’s not just the corrupt Afghan government that’s feeding at the trough. The Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) says about three-quarters of its active corruption investigations involved Westerners.

The Associated Press breaks down the numbers:

The U.S. agency overseeing the multibillion dollar Afghanistan reconstruction effort is investigating 38 criminal cases ranging from contract fraud to theft – most involving non-Afghans, officials said Tuesday…Just 10 of the criminal cases under the microscope involve Afghans only, while the rest involve U.S. and other foreigners, according to Raymond DiNunzio, the agency’s assistant inspector general for inspections.

As Ahmed Rashid points out in Brave New Foundation’s Rethink Afghanistan documentary, U.S. and allied-nation official and private corruption helped set the stage for the venality of the Kabul government:

[A]fter 9/11, American and western aid actually perpetrated this kind of corruption. Because this kind of subcontracting that went on, the wastage of aid, the fact that there was this concentration on the security sector rather than on winning hearts and minds in the social sector, all this created a climate of corruption which people in the Afghan govt. immediately latched onto and were the beneficiaries of. And they then perpetuated their own corruption. So you can’t just blame the corruption in Pakistan or Afghanistan on local people and local issues. A lot of it is to do with the very corrupt aid system that provided money and corrupted the local people on the ground. http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog/?p=1266

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Kai Eide, UN Representative to Afghanistan confirmed the Afghan government’s investigative conclusions that US troops handcuffed and then executed eight students enrolled in grades 6 through 10 in a night raid on December 27, 2009. The US military and NATO responded the troops involved were non-official. The most likely source of para-military “non-official” troops in Afghanistan is Blackwater/Xe.

President Hamid Karzai demanded arrest of the US troops engaged in the break-in and mafia-style execution of their children. The US responded to the Afghan demand of January 1 by rejecting the findings of the Afghan government and UN with a vague promise of their own self-investigation at some later date.
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WERE AFGHAN CHILDREN EXECUTED BY U.S.-LED FORCES? AND WHY AREN'T THE MEDIA INTERESTED?

Media Lens
January 11, 2010

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/10/100111_were_afghan_children.php


Ignoring or downplaying Western crimes is a standard feature of the corporate Western media.  On rare occasions when a broadcaster or newspaper breaks ranks and reports 'our' crimes honestly, it is instructive to observe the response from the rest of the media.  Do they follow suit, perhaps digging deeper for details, devoting space to profiles of the victims and interviews with grieving relatives, humanizing all concerned?  Do they put the crimes in perspective as the inevitable consequence of rapacious Western power?  Or do they look away?

One such case is a report that American-led troops dragged Afghan children from their beds and shot them during a night raid on December 27 last year, leaving ten people dead.  Afghan government investigators said that eight of the dead were schoolchildren, and that some of them had been handcuffed before being killed.  Kabul-based Times correspondent Jerome Starkey reported the shocking accusations about the joint U.S.-Afghan operation.  But the rest of the U.K. news media have buried the report.

After details of the massacre first emerged, Afghan President Karzai sent a team of investigators to the alleged scene of the atrocity in the village of Ghazi Kang in eastern Kunar province.  Assadullah Wafa, a former governor of Helmand province, led the investigation.  He told the Times that U.S. soldiers flew to Kunar from Kabul, implying that they were part of a special forces unit:  "At around 1:00 a.m., three nights ago, some American troops with helicopters left Kabul and landed around 2 kilometers away from the village.  The troops walked from the helicopters to the houses and, according to my investigation, they gathered all the students from two rooms, into one room, and opened fire" (Jerome Starkey, "Western troops accused of executing 10 Afghan civilians, including children," Times, December 31, 2009).

Wafa continued:  "I spoke to the local headmaster.  It's impossible they were al-Qaeda.  They were children, they were civilians, they were innocent.  I condemn this attack."

The Times reporter interviewed the headmaster who told him that the victims were asleep in three rooms when the troops arrived:

"Seven students were in one room.  A student and one guest were in another room, a guest room, and a farmer was asleep with his wife in a third building.

"First the foreign troops entered the guest room and shot two of them.  Then they entered another room and handcuffed the seven students.  Then they killed them.  Abdul Khaliq [the farmer] heard shooting and came outside.  When they saw him they shot him as well.  He was outside.  That's why his wife wasn't killed."

A local elder told the Times reporter:  "I saw their school books covered in blood."

The dead children were aged from 11 to 17.

In Kabul, the massacre sparked demonstrations with protesters holding up banners showing photographs of dead children alongside placards demanding "Foreign troops leave Afghanistan" and "Stop killing us."

NATO's International Security Assistance Force told the Times that there was "no direct evidence to substantiate" Wafa's claims that unarmed civilians were harmed in what it described as a "joint coalition and Afghan security force" operation.  The spokesperson claimed:  "As the joint assault force entered the village they came under fire from several buildings and in returning fire killed nine individuals."

The slippery military response did not even get the number of victims right:  it was ten, not nine.

Jerome Starkey published a follow-up report, recounting President Karzai's vain plea for the gunmen to face justice.  ('Karzai demands that U.S. hands over raiders accused of village atrocity', Times, January 1, 2010).

But the rest of the British media appear to have shown virtually zero interest in either refuting or confirming the report of schoolchildren being executed.  As far as our media searches can determine, there were only three press reports in major U.K. newspapers that mentioned it; and even then, only in passing.

In a brief weekly news digest, the Sunday Telegraph devoted 45 words to accusations of the atrocity, repeating the propaganda version of it as "a raid in which U.S. forces shot dead 10 people at a suspected bomb factory."  (Walter Hemmens and Alex Singleton, "The Week; that was," Sunday Telegraph, January 3, 2010).

A 136-word item in the *Mirror* led, not with accusations of the execution of schoolchildren, but with the deaths of American civilians killed elsewhere in a suicide attack at a military base in Afghanistan (Stephen White, "Base blast kills Eight U.S. civilians," Mirror, January 2, 2010).

The Guardian spared 28 words at the end of a report on the death of a British bomb disposal expert to note that:  "The Afghan government says that 10 people were killed, including eight schoolchildren, in a village in eastern Kunar province in a night raid by international forces last weekend."  (Adam Gabbatt, "British bomb disposal expert dies after Afghan blast: 'His sacrifice and courage will not be forgotten': Death brings the total toll to 245 since war began" Guardian, January 2, 2009).  As ever, the headline summed up the priorities precisely:  British lives count; Afghan lives are of lesser importance.

To the corporate media's shame, it was left to the U.S.-based journalist Amy Goodman to interview Times correspondent Jerome Starkey on her excellent independent news program, Democracy Now!  The program reported that a preliminary investigation by the United Nations reinforced Afghan claims that most of the dead were schoolboys (Jerome Starkey interviewed by Amy Goodman, "U.S.-Led Forces Accused of Executing Schoolchildren in Afghanistan," Democracy Now!, January 6, 2010).

Goodman asked Starkey what had been the response of NATO forces to the allegations.  He said:  "Well, initially, U.S. and NATO forces here were very slow to say anything at all, and that possibly reflects the most secret nature of this raid.  The fact that, according to Afghan investigators, these troops appear to have flown to the scene from Kabul appears to confirm speculation that this was an operation carried out by some sort of Special Forces unit, possibly even by some sort of paramilitary unit attached to one of the intelligence agencies, the foreign intelligence agencies, which operate occasionally out of the capital."

Starkey emphasized again that he had spoken to the headmaster who had given him the names and school registration numbers of all of the dead pupils.  An additional tragic detail was that the headmaster was an uncle of the eight children.

The Times correspondent was candid that it had not proven possible to verify all of the details of the reported massacre:  "Given the nature of the environment, we haven't been able to travel there ourselves, and we've been relying on telephone interviews with people who are there and people who've visited the scene."

But he also made it clear that the U.S.-led occupation authorities were giving out very little information, and had refused Afghan requests to provide details of the gunmen or to hand the men over.

The reported events are sickening.  But we have been unable to find a single mention of the alleged atrocity on the BBC website.  We emailed news editors at the BBC, ITN, and Channel 4 News, asking why they had not reported these serious allegations of schoolchildren being executed in a U.S.-led operation.  None of them have replied.  The lack of interest shown by the British news media in pursuing this story is damning indeed.

The famous maxim of the three wise monkeys who 'See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil' is an apt description of the corporate media's response to evidence for Western atrocities.