The leading weapons seller in the world creates more jobs by selling more weapons - 70% more than 2011

i think one of the most disgusting things - among many - that the united states does is to produce and sell massive amounts of weaponry and defense items to countries around the world... i've posted on it repeatedly and i continue to find it unconscionable... now, the u.s. is setting another record...

US Sets Another Record on Defense Sales, Already 

The United States is set to far surpass previous records for defence sales this year, according to U.S. officials.

"Despite the global economic strain, demand for U.S. defence products and services is stronger than ever," Andrew J. Shapiro, an assistant secretary in the U.S. State Department, said on Thursday.

He confirmed that the U.S., long the world's largest weapons exporter, has already seen more than 50 billion dollars in government-to-government military sales this fiscal year.

"This represents at least a 20-billion-dollar increase over fiscal year 2011, and we still have more than a quarter of the fiscal year left," Shapiro said, speaking with reporters. The current fiscal year will end in September.

"To put this in context, fiscal year 2011 was a record-setting year at just over 30 billion. This fiscal year will be at least 70 percent greater."

Observers noted the administration's evident pride at the high numbers.

"An Obama arms bazaar is going on – this is further evidence of that," Jeff Abramson, director of Control Arms, an international civil-society alliance based in Washington, told IPS.

"This administration has made defence trade an economic rather than just a security issue – part of the agenda in terms of keeping the U.S. economy going. I think human rights issues should trump those concerns. Selling to countries such as Saudi Arabia, people need to ask whether the U.S. is living up to its promises on rights obligations."

Shapiro, who noted that the U.S. only allows a sale "after we carefully examine issues like human rights", spoke a week after the launch of the newest edition of the 655 Report, an annual compilation of defence products and services authorised for export.

Many have cautioned that the U.S. defence trade is notoriously difficult to estimate, given the numerous ways available to calculate the figure. Several point to a lower number of 30 billion dollars worth of actual transfers, rather than the larger sales number, not all of which may ultimately take place.

[...]

In a major priority for the U.S. government today, Shapiro noted that the Saudi Arabia deal alone would support more than 50,000 jobs.

[...]

According to Amnesty International, a watchdog group, today it is easier to trade in weapons than in bananas.

like i said - disgusting...

 

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Manning's request for less harsh treatment denied; Amnesty Int'l calls for protests

glenn details the latest developments in the treatment of bradley manning at the marine corps facility in quantico, virginia...

Yesterday, the Quantico base commander denied Manning's formal request for less harsh treatment -- including an end to his forced nudity and 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement. That request -- which is really a formal complaint of mistreatment -- will now be forwarded to the Secretary of Navy, and if he also rejects it, then Manning's lawyer will file a Writ of Habeas Corpus with the Army Court of Criminal Appeals. Manning's counsel today released his rebuttal to the Commander's decision and it supplies much more detailed information about just how harsh and punitive is Manning's treatment; Marcy Wheeler documents how similar in language and content is this treatment to many of the core methods of degradation popularized during the Bush administration. But as we well know, caring about what Amnesty thinks is -- just like concerns over detainee abuse and indefinite detention -- so very 2005.

he also summarizes the call for protests being led by amnesty international...

Amnesty said that "the conditions inflicted on Bradley Manning . . . amount to inhumane treatment by the US authorities" and "appear to breach the USA’s human rights obligations." As a result, the group is encouraging as many Americans as possible to demand an end to these conditions (independent of Amnesty, there is a planned protest outside the Quantico brig on March 20, expected to be fairly large in size, with others being planned at military detention facilities around the country for later dates).

how can the united states, with a straight face, lecture gadhafi about his treatment of his fellow citizens when we are doing the very same thing...?

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Once upon a time, Americans would have had the stones to do something about the kidnapping of a former Congresswoman

no shit, professor cole...

US hostages held in foreign country on Fourth of July, including a former Congresswoman, after having been captured in a naked act of piracy in international waters after the Americans attempted to respond to a crisis provoked by crimes against humanity, as detailed by Amnesty International.

Once upon a time, Americans would have had the guts to mind such a thing.

Gazans and other Palestinians under Israeli occupation do not enjoy "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," and have not been able to "institute" a "government" of their own to secure those rights. The occupation authority that rules them does not derive its "powers" from the "consent of the government." The occupation government has become destructive to these ends. I think we know what the American Founding Fathers would say the Palestinians need.

not only do we no longer have the guts to do what should be done and more than enough "courage" to do things we absolutely SHOULDN'T do, we also don't even bother to give outrages like this any media attention...

muy, muy patético...

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Help tear down Guantánamo, stop torture and end illegal U.S. dententions

sign amnesty international's pledge here...

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Canada wussies out

as i posted the other day, canada placed both the u.s. and israel on a torture "watch list..." needless to say, it caused a lot of huffing and puffing in the rarefied air of the upper echelons of both governments, forcing canada to backpedal...

The Canadian foreign minister has apologised for including the US and Israel on a list of states where prisoners are at risk of torture.

Maxime Bernier said the list, which formed part of a manual on torture awareness given to diplomats, "wrongly includes some of our closest allies".

Mr Bernier insisted the manual was not a policy document and did not convey the official views of his government.

The listing was criticised by the US and Israel, who demanded it be changed.

"We find it to be offensive for us to be on the same list with countries like Iran and China. Quite frankly it's absurd," said the US ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins.

A spokesman for the Israeli embassy in Ottawa, Michael Mendel, said the Israeli Supreme Court was "on record as expressly prohibiting any type of torture".

"If Israel is included in the list in question, the ambassador of Israel would expect its removal," he added.

yeah, maxime, we can plainly see you're trying to save face, but, the fact is, the u.s. and israel weren't put on that list by mistake and we all know it... furthermore, i suspect that we were put on the list with a full understanding of the consequences, and an official policy prepared for when the shit hit the fan, as everyone knew it would... regardless of the underlying motivation, mr. foreign minister, i greatly appreciate the service that your country has done for mine by calling worldwide attention to just how criminal our official behavior and that of our "closest ally," israel, has become...

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When Canada puts its southern neighbor on a torture watch list, we've sunk pretty low

this is shameful...

[Canada] has put the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on a watch list for torture.

[...]

The list includes Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, and China. But surprisingly, it also included the United States, Guantánamo, and Israel.

It notes specific "U.S. interrogation techniques," which include "forced nudity, isolation, and sleep deprivation." The U.S. has repeatedly denied allegations by international groups that it tortures prisoners captured in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. However, U.S. officials have refused to comment on the Canadian list.

But international observers say they are heartened by the specificity of the Canadian list. Alex Neve of Amnesty International says he is surprised that Canada would risk offending allies by naming countries that potentially torture prisoners.

"These are countries where, sadly, the record is clear -- torture and ill treatment happens," said Neve.

But it appears that Ottawa may have had second thoughts about being so explicit. After the documents were released as evidence in a court case relating to Afghan detainees, the government tried to get them back. Sources say that Ottawa apparently wanted to black out sensitive parts that may anger allies.

tough noogies, canada... the cat's out of the bag, and i have to say, i'm heartened that you folks in the great white north have enough integrity to put us on the list in the first place...

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On October 17, 2006, the United States Constitution was bound , gagged, and detained indefinitely

amnesty international is looking for support to run this ad once again... it ran originally on october 17 in usa today, and now they're looking to re-run it in the nyt...

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"America is not made safer by making the Constitution weaker"

an ad in usa today [PDF] sponsored by amnesty international...

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"On October 17, 2006, the U.S. Constitution was bound, gagged, and detained indefinitely"

amnesty international is requesting help to place this ad, commemorating the shameful passage of the military commissions act nearly a year ago, in as many media outlets as possible...

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Where are the 39 "ghost prisoners"?

bad, bad, bad business...

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, said they filed a U.S. federal lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act seeking information about the 39 people it terms "ghost prisoners" in the U.S. "war on terror."

Reuters

Six human rights groups urged the U.S. government on Thursday to name and explain the whereabouts of 39 people they said were believed to have been held in U.S. custody and "disappeared."

"Since the end of Latin America's dirty wars, the world has rejected the use of 'disappearances' as a fundamental violation of international law," Professor Meg Satterthwaite of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University's School of Law said in a statement.

The report said suspects' relatives, including children as young as seven, had been held in secret detention on occasion.

sometimes i have to stop and remind myself that i'm reading about my own country, not el salvador, chile, honduras, or argentina...

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More on human rights in Colombia

a commenter responded to yesterday's posts (here and here) on the wapo op-ed defending colombia's president, álvaro uribe, and my follow-up post attempting to provide some context via amnesty usa...

You didn't answer the questions of whether or not Uribe has any ties to the paramilitary groups. This is the argument that WaPo is making, and if you don't dispel this argument you haven't convinced me. Please help me out here.
Anonymous | 05.07.07 - 9:39 am | #

i responded...

i'm not trying to convince you of anything and it's certainly not in my power to determine whether or not uribe has ties to paramilitary groups... one, i'm pointing out that the wapo has, purposely or not, left out a major chunk of context in their op-ed... two, ties to paramilitary groups notwithstanding, it is reasonably clear that uribe's government campaign to take back control of the country has done so at great cost to human rights, as bad or worse than the abuses caused by the paramilitary forces...
profmarcus | Homepage | 05.07.07 - 11:10 am | #

as i was looking for something that might provide some additional perspective, i ran across this from ips, a news outlet i consider to be pretty reliable...

When a murder occurs in a Colombian community, the locals know who committed it: far-right paramilitaries, leftwing guerrillas, or the security forces. They also know if fighting really took place, or if the "enemy" bodies displayed on television as "trophies" by army officers were in fact dead civilians.

A large proportion of the casualties in Colombia's decades-long armed conflict are civilians. The violence between leftist rebel groups on one hand and rightwing paramilitary militias and government forces on the other is further fuelled by drug trafficking, corruption and impunity. Amid the chaos and pressure from all sides, local people are in the best position to know precisely what happened.

i think this sums up what i believe is a fair picture... there are three groups, all of whom are killing people, and that is further aggravated by this...

Javier Giraldo, founder of the Inter-Church Justice and Peace Commission ... spends his time with communities in the most violent regions of the country, provides them with legal advice and gives voice to their accusations [and] runs the Human Rights and Political Violence Databank of the Centre for Popular Research and Education (CINEP), which has been keeping a tally of the killings for 19 years.

[...]

[Giraldo says], "The problem in Colombia is that there is no right to information. The right to information means that people can have access to the truth, and that most people, or at least organised sectors of society, can communicate what is happening and their own reading of it to the general public. That is not possible in Colombia."

it's a rather complicated situation to say the least, but certainly nothing like the flag-waving, democrat-excoriating, uribe-as-america's-best-friend, context-free wapo op-ed would have you believe...

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Rebutting the WaPo op-ed on Colombia by adding context

ok, i promised earlier that i would post more on colombia and here it is... first, take a look at this animated video from amnesty usa...



(click image to go to amnesty's web site and play video)

then read this...

Amnesty International today made public for the first time a list of more than 100 cases of serious human rights abuses, including massacres and enforced "disappearances" implicating Colombian security forces and paramilitary groups, and urged the U.S. Congress to review the cases ahead of President Alvaro Uribe's visit to Washington May 2-4. Amnesty International is calling on Congress to withhold U.S. military funding to Colombia until these cases are investigated and those responsible are brought to justice.

The cases are excerpted from documents containing details of more than 150 cases of human rights violations that Amnesty International presented to the U.S. State Department in 2006 during consultations in which human rights organizations urged Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice not to certify that the Colombian government and armed forces were making sufficient progress on human rights. The victims named in the list were either killed or forcibly "disappeared" between January 2005 and June 2006.

look, i'm not saying who has the handle on the absolute truth here, i just want to demonstrate the total lack of relevant context that newspapers like the washington post consistently and, i believe, purposefully omit... and, like in today's op-ed that i posted on earlier, when they DO include some context, as in the reference to human rights watch, it's often a mere mention and offered in a not-quite-but-almost derogatory tone...

Human Rights Watch, which has joined the Democratic campaign against Mr. Uribe, claimed that "today Colombia presents the worst human rights and humanitarian crisis in the Western hemisphere" -- never mind Venezuela or Cuba or Haiti.

we deserve better... a LOT better...

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Guantánamo inmates: dangerously close to full-blown mental and physical breakdown

this is holy week (semana santa in the spanish-speaking world), historically a christian time of forgiveness and redemption... meanwhile, the self-proclaimed "devout christians" who run my country are still engaging in atrocities worthy of the most despicable of history's bloody regimes...

Conditions for detainees at the US military jail at Guantanamo Bay are deteriorating, with the majority held in solitary confinement, a report says.

Amnesty International said the often harsh and inhumane conditions at the camp were "pushing people to the edge".

It called for the facility to be closed and for plans for "unfair" military commission trials to be abandoned.

Many of the 385 inmates have been held for five years or more, unable to mount a legal challenge to their detention.

"While the United States has an obligation to protect its citizens... that does not relieve the United States from its responsibilities to comply with human rights," the report said.

"Statements by the Bush administration that these men are 'enemy combatants,' 'terrorists' or 'very bad people' do not justify the complete lack of due process rights," the group said.

Amnesty reiterated its call for detainees at the prison camp in Cuba - many of whom are suspected Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters - to be released or charged and sent to trial.

The report, published on Thursday, said about 300 detainees are now being held at a new facility - known as Camp 5, Camp 6 and Camp Echo - comparable to "super-max" high security units in the US.

The group said the facility had "created even harsher and apparently more permanent conditions of extreme isolation and sensory deprivation".

It said the detainees were reportedly confined to windowless cells for 22 hours a day, only allowed to exercise at night and could go for days without seeing daylight.

and their future looks bleak...

The US has said it plans to use the military tribunal system to prosecute about 80 of 385 prisoners remaining at the camp.

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