Dave Lindorff: President Obama his key advisors plus Biden, Clinton and Panetta are all currently war criminals for threatening Iran with attack

so, is this why obama doesn't want to hold the war criminals from the bush administration accountable...?

President Obama and His Key Advisors are a Gang of War Criminals

Under the Nuremberg Principles, later incorporated into the United Nations Charter, to which the United States is a signatory, the planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, which is defined as a war started against another nation that does not pose an imminent threat of attack on the aggressor nation or nations, is the highest of war crimes, for which the perpetrators are liable for the death penalty. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of those above acts is an equally serious capital crime.

How then to explain the casual way that civilian and military leaders of the US and Israel are talking openly about plans and threats to attack Iran?

[...]

One would think that the magnitude of the unknown and dangerous potential consequences of a criminal attack on Iran by the US and its client state Israel would lead at least some news organizations to look into the very legality of such an attack.

But no. Apparently calling the leaders of this nation criminals is beyond the imagining of the so-called chattering class and its paymasters.

I’ll do it here though:

President Obama and his key advisors, as well as Vice President Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Panetta, are all currently war criminals for threatening Iran with attack. And if the US does attack Iran, either on its own or in support of an Israeli attack, they will be even worse war criminals, and will be deserving of the same fate met by Japan’s Imperial Army General and Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, and by Nazi Germany’s Foreign Minister Joachim Von Ribbentrop and Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel.

another perspective missing from our traditional news media...

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Obama's proclamation commemorating the 63rd anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

the opening paragraph...

With the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly affirmed the eternal truths that all people have the right to liberty, equality, and justice under the law. On Human Rights Day and during Human Rights Week, we celebrate our fundamental freedoms and renew our commitment to upholding and advancing human dignity.

take a moment and absorb the unbelievable and utterly bone-chilling hypocrisy...

then absorb this from jason leopold...

Apparently, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning president doesn't believe the extrajudicial killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen the administration asserted was a top leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula who was assassinated last summer by a drone strike Obama personally authorized, without being afforded the right to due process as guaranteed by the Constitution; or the indefinite detention of detainees at Guantanamo, especially those who have already been cleared for release; or the administration's refusal to allow prisoners detained and tortured by the US government in Afghanistan to challenge their detention, rises to the level of human rights abuses as outlined in his stunningly hypocritical proclamation.

Obama's proclamation also contained another embarrassing contradiction: it declared the week of December 10th as Human Rights Week, the same week Congress debated and is set to pass the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a controversial piece of legislation that would give the president the power to indefinitely imprison without charge or trial or a court hearing anyone suspected of terrorist activity in the US.

imho, we've entered a new phase of critical citizen action required in response to the on-going assault on domestic civil liberties...

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Of COURSE, Israel is willing to work with Washington

why wouldn't israel want to work with virtually its LAST uncritical ally in the world...?

Israel rejects UN call for international inquiry into flotilla raids

Ambassador to US dismisses Ban Ki-moon's suggestion but says Israel is willing to work with Washington

the cheese stands alone... well, almost...

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Today's LEAST surprising "news" story

i was digging through some of my more recent memorabilia this past week and came across a brochure that was being handed out by argentine immigration and customs officials last year during the height of the swine flu "pandemic"... i was flying to buenos aires from afghanistan via dubai and sao paulo... swine flu was little more than a side topic of discussion in kabul... i saw no more than 4 or 5 people in the very busy dubai international airport wearing face masks, quite a few more in sao paulo as i was changing planes, and, when i got to buenos aires, all the officials were wearing face masks along with a goodly number of the passengers... i was surprised and remember commenting to myself on what i believed, even at that time, to be an overblown fear tactic... well, guess what...?

Reports accuse WHO of exaggerating H1N1 threat, possible ties to drug makers

European criticism of the World Health Organization's handling of the H1N1 pandemic intensified Friday with the release of two reports that accused the agency of exaggerating the threat posed by the virus and failing to disclose possible influence by the pharmaceutical industry on its recommendations for how countries should respond.

The WHO's response caused widespread, unnecessary fear and prompted countries around the world to waste millions of dollars, according to one report. At the same time, the Geneva-based arm of the United Nations relied on advice from experts with ties to drug makers in developing the guidelines it used to encourage countries to stockpile millions of doses of antiviral medications, according to the second report.

along with the multiple things that annoy me about my fellow "liberals" and "progressives" is the way they pounced on anyone who dared to question the legitimacy of the flu "pandemic" in very much the same way they do with those who question any other item of the liberal/progressive orthodoxy...

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An internet "driver's license"...? Nothing good can come of THIS...

leave it to our super-rich elites in davos to come up with new ways to keep all us peasants in check...

those people really suck...

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The US has exported an economic model with the idea that everyone can organise themselves under that model

how horribly embarrassing when a united nations special rapporteur, banned from exercising her duties in the united states by the bush administration, finally gets to do her job and discovers that, under the capitalist rock, the rock at the centerpiece of the "shining city on the hill," are all sorts of creepy-crawlies...

Raquel Rolnik, the UN special rapporteur for the right to adequate housing, who has just completed a seven-city tour of America, said it was shameful that a country as wealthy as the US was not spending more money on lifting its citizens out of homelessness and substandard, overcrowded housing.

"The housing crisis is invisible for many in the US," she said. "I learned through this visit that real affordable housing and poverty is something that hasn't been dealt with as an issue. Even if we talk about the financial crisis and government stepping in in order to promote economic recovery, there is no such help for the homeless."

She added: "I think those who are suffering the most in this whole situation are the very poor, the low-income population. The burden is disproportionately on them and it's of course disproportionately on African-Americans, on Latinos and immigrant communities, and on Native Americans."

equally shameful is that the major media exposure on this story - no surprise, unfortunately - comes via the uk guardian...

and equally shocking - again, if not surprising - is this...

"One of the first meetings I had at the state department they clearly told me: here, adequate housing is not a human right," [Rolnik] said.

the mindset that has been assiduously fostered in the united states, through an endless stream of propaganda, is that if you're poor, it's your own goddam fault... by definition, you must be lazy and no damn good... and yet my country has taken this bogus philosophy and is pushing it down the throats of people around the world... it's people like rolnik, who is, after all only doing her job, that can blow the whistle on this patent bullshit...

rolnik's conclusion...

"The US has exported an economic model with the idea that everyone can organise themselves under that model. It's very important for the rest of the world to know who fits in to this model and who is excluded," she tells her audience.

damn straight...

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More details on how much torture was used and how people were kept alive so they could be tortured some more

as i sit here in kabul, the day after the mess at the un guesthouse across town and the horror just over the border in peshawar, and several days after the terrible carnage in baghdad, it's sickening to read about the atrocities perpetrated by my own people, the very people who were all over the news yesterday, decrying the bloody actions of terrorists...

According to human rights lawyer John Sifton, the CIA tortured some of its detainees in the War on Terror so severely that it had to take measures to keep them alive so they could continue being tortured.

Sifton, who the executive director of One World Research, told an interviewer for Russia Today that there was both a CIA detention program and a military detention program and that "The CIA program was by far the most secretive. ... That's the one that only had a few dozen detainees at any given time -- but it's the one that saw the biggest abuses, the most serious forms of torture."

"In the military, there was actually a larger number of deaths than with the CIA," Sifton continued. "The CIA engaged in some horrendous abuses, but they appear to have taken precautions to have actually prevented people from dying -- which might sound humanitarian, but in fact was kind of sickening."

"The military wasn't so careful," Sifton added. "The military subjected a lot of people to the same techniques, but without the precautions, and as a result a large number of detainees in military custody died. ... While they didn't use the worst forms of torture, like waterboarding, they often used sleep deprivation, forced standing, stress positions. ... When you combine these techniques ... they cause excruciating pain ... and the military used them on thousands and thousands of detainees."

Sifton commented that what he found most shocking was "the cold, clinical fashion in which they went about designing the program. They didn't want to commit outright physical torture ... so they went to psychologists and lawyers and they tried to design a program which was, in their minds, legal. ... They tried to make it legal and safe, but they just made it even more grotesque."

don't think for one second the afghans i work with aren't tuned in to what's happening in the world... they are just as horrified as you and i about the havoc their very own people are wreaking in their country but they're also very well aware of what we, the american people, are allowing to go on in our names...

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Firefight ongoing in Kabul [UPDATE 1, 2 & 3]

[BUMPED]



i came to the office early just as this was coming down... not a lot of details yet except to say it's still going on... we had to take an alternate route as the one we regularly use passes right through the middle of the area where it's all happening... the good news is that everybody else was told to stay home so i've pretty much got the office to myself... such peace and quiet...!

Heavy gunfire has erupted at a guest house used by U.N. staff in Kabul, and Afghan police said five people were killed. A U.N. spokesman said U.N. staff were believed to have fled the building and efforts were under way to determine if they were all safe.

The fighting broke out Monday after dawn. The crackle of automatic gunfire reverberated through the streets.

U.N. spokesman Adrian Edwards confirmed the guest house was used by U.N. staff but he believed all had fled the building. He didn't know how many international staff were living there.

sigh...

[UPDATE 1]

about 45 minutes ago, there were several mortar rounds that landed in the vicinity of the serena hotel in central kabul which isn't far from where i'm sitting here in the office... we had to go to the safe room for a while but evidently things have quieted down and i'm now back at my desk...

this is the latest news report i've been able to find...

Afghan forces exchanged gunfire with a group of militants holed up inside an international guest house in the centre of Kabul on Wednesday, police said.

The United Nations mission in Afghanistan said it was possible some of its staff and other foreigners were inside.

Intense automatic weapons fire and an explosion resounded in the capital, and plumes of black smoke rose above buildings.

A Reuters witness said a number of streets had been cordoned off by the police as the gunfire continued, and sirens reverberated across the city.

"There are five or six terrorists inside," said Waheed Sadiqi, a policeman at the scene.

double sigh...

[UPDATE 2]

here's more...

Gunmen with automatic weapons and suicide vests stormed a guest house used by U.N. staff in the heart of the Afghan capital early Wednesday, killing at least seven people including three U.N. staff, officials said. A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility, saying it was meant as an assault on the upcoming presidential election.

Heavy gunfire reverberated through the streets shortly after dawn and a large plume of smoke rose over the city following the attack on the hostel in the Shar-e-Naw district. Kabul police chief Abdul Rahman Rahman said seven people were killed, including some attackers.

U.N. spokesman Adrian Edwards confirmed that three U.N. staff were among the dead and one was seriously wounded. He said 20 U.N. staff were living at the guest house, some of them known to be registered there but he was unsure whether all were there at the time of the attack.

Flames could be seen on the roof of the guest house. Hours after the attack began, three explosions could be heard but it was unclear if they were from that location.

triple sigh...

[UPDATE 3]

this is the sight that greeted me this morning on my way to the office...


Smoke can be seen rising in central Kabul Wednesday Oct. 28, 2009.
Gunmen attacked a guest house used by U.N. staff in the Afghan capital
of Kabul early Wednesday, killing at least seven people including three
U.N. staff, officials said. A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility,
saying it was meant as an assault on the upcoming presidential election.
(AP Photo/Bob Reid)

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Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is not self-defence – it’s a war crime

from the london sunday times via juan cole...

Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is not self-defence – it’s a war crime

ISRAEL has sought to justify its military attacks on Gaza by stating that it amounts to an act of “self-defence” as recognised by Article 51, United Nations Charter. We categorically reject this contention.

The rocket attacks on Israel by Hamas deplorable as they are, do not, in terms of scale and effect amount to an armed attack entitling Israel to rely on self-defence. Under international law self-defence is an act of last resort and is subject to the customary rules of proportionality and necessity.

The killing of almost 800 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and more than 3,000 injuries, accompanied by the destruction of schools, mosques, houses, UN compounds and government buildings, which Israel has a responsibility to protect under the Fourth Geneva Convention, is not commensurate to the deaths caused by Hamas rocket fire.

For 18 months Israel had imposed an unlawful blockade on the coastal strip that brought Gazan society to the brink of collapse. In the three years after Israel’s redeployment from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. And yet in 2005-8, according to the UN, the Israeli army killed about 1,250 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children. Throughout this time the Gaza Strip remained occupied territory under international law because Israel maintained effective control over it.

Israel’s actions amount to aggression, not self-defence, not least because its assault on Gaza was unnecessary. Israel could have agreed to renew the truce with Hamas. Instead it killed 225 Palestinians on the first day of its attack. As things stand, its invasion and bombardment of Gaza amounts to collective punishment of Gaza’s 1.5m inhabitants contrary to international humanitarian and human rights law. In addition, the blockade of humanitarian relief, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and preventing access to basic necessities such as food and fuel, are prima facie war crimes.

We condemn the firing of rockets by Hamas into Israel and suicide bombings which are also contrary to international humanitarian law and are war crimes. Israel has a right to take reasonable and proportionate means to protect its civilian population from such attacks. However, the manner and scale of its operations in Gaza amount to an act of aggression and is contrary to international law, notwithstanding the rocket attacks by Hamas.

Ian Brownlie QC, Blackstone Chambers
Mark Muller QC, Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales
Michael Mansfield QC and Joel Bennathan QC, Tooks Chambers
Sir Geoffrey Bindman, University College, London
Professor Richard Falk, Princeton University
Professor M Cherif Bassiouni, DePaul University, Chicago
Professor Christine Chinkin, LSE
Professor John B Quigley, Ohio State University
Professor Iain Scobbie and Victor Kattan, School of Oriental and African Studies
Professor Vera Gowlland-Debbas, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva
Professor Said Mahmoudi, Stockholm University
Professor Max du Plessis, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban
Professor Bill Bowring, Birkbeck College
Professor Joshua Castellino, Middlesex University
Professor Thomas Skouteris and Professor Michael Kagan, American University of Cairo
Professor Javaid Rehman, Brunel University
Daniel Machover, Chairman, Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights
Dr Phoebe Okawa, Queen Mary University
John Strawson, University of East London
Dr Nisrine Abiad, British Institute of International and Comparative Law
Dr Michael Kearney, University of York
Dr Shane Darcy, National University of Ireland, Galway
Dr Michelle Burgis, University of St Andrews
Dr Niaz Shah, University of Hull
Liz Davies, Chair, Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyer
Prof Michael Lynk, The University of Western Ontario
Steve Kamlish QC and Michael Topolski QC, Tooks Chambers

since i happen to be sitting here, a mere 15 minutes from the israeli border, i am particularly interested in what's happening in gaza... the jordanians, i can tell you, are watching this with great interest, as well they should...

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The Israeli-inflicted horror in Gaza continues with the third strike on a UN school

but israel insists it is not targeting civilians... w/e...

The United Nations has called for an independent investigation after a third UN school has been has been hit by an Israeli strike, killing 40 people and injuring 45. It's the third strike on a UN school in the last 24 hours, as Al Jazeera's Roza Ibragimova reports.

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Well, I'll be dipped...! Colin's decided it's redemption time...!

son-of-a-gun... i'd heard it was a distinct possibility, but, as with most "distinct possibilities" these days, whether it actually happens is a whole 'nother question...

October 19, 2008, 9:21 am

Powell Endorses Obama

By Elisabeth Bumiller

Updated WASHINGTON—Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell endorsed Senator Barack Obama for president on Sunday morning as a candidate who was reaching out in a “more diverse and inclusive way across our society” and offering a “calm, patient, intellectual, steady approach” to the nation’s problems.

The endorsement, on the NBC public affairs program “Meet the Press,” was a major blow to Senator John McCain, who has been a good friend of Mr. Powell for decades. Mr. Powell, a Republican, has advised Mr. McCain in the past on foreign policy.

listen, colin... the memory of you sitting in front of the united nations brandishing a vial of saddam's supposed anthrax is indelibly burned into my mental landscape, but this latest move of yours does mitigate that somewhat...

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Three cheers for Paraguay's new president

Fernando Lugo

yes, there's definitely something to applaud here...

Paraguay President Fernando Lugo, while attending both the UN General Assembly meetings and the Clinton Global Initiative, shared with friends over dinner some of the other meetings he had been having in New York.

After enumerating the various heads of state he'd met with, the room went silent and then laughed a bit when he confided that he was approached about meeting with GOP Vice Presidential candidate and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

President Lugo said he turned the meeting down.

but, lemme tell ya, it was THIS that got me choked up...

The 57-year-old left-leaning former Catholic bishop known locally as "bishop of the poor," was elected to office in April. His swearing in marked the first time in Paraguay's history since the country gained independence that an opposition party turned over power peacefully to a candidate elected from the other party.

Lugo has also refused his presidential salary, saying it "belongs to more humble people." He joined the priesthood in 1977 and was ordained a bishop in 1994 before resigning in 2006 to run for office.

O.M.G...! a man of the PEOPLE...!?!? a PUBLIC SERVANT...!?!? what's this world coming to...!?!?

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What's going on here?

i'm not sure i believe any of these official stories... somethin's up... each one of these is big news all by itself but, in every one, the story is either being underplayed or the explanation seems fishy - or both...

why is gates firing top generals...? yeah, i know what it SAYS, but there's more to this than meets the eye...

Gates ousts Air Force leaders in historic shake-up

Defense Secretary Robert Gates ousted the Air Force's top military and civilian leaders Thursday, holding them to account in a historic Pentagon shake-up after embarrassing nuclear mix-ups.

Gates announced at a news conference that he had accepted the resignations of Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley and Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne — a highly unusual double firing.

Gates said his decision was based mainly on the damning conclusions of an internal report on the mistaken shipment to Taiwan of four Air Force electrical fuses for ballistic missile warheads. And he linked the underlying causes of that slip-up to another startling incident: the flight last August of a B-52 bomber that was mistakenly armed with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.

this next one is equally explosive and, natch, hasn't even been covered in u.s. news media...

US issues threat to Iraq's $50bn foreign reserves in military deal

The US is holding hostage some $50bn (£25bn) of Iraq's money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing an agreement seen by many Iraqis as prolonging the US occupation indefinitely, according to information leaked to The Independent.

US negotiators are using the existence of $20bn in outstanding court judgments against Iraq in the US, to pressure their Iraqi counterparts into accepting the terms of the military deal, details of which were reported for the first time in this newspaper yesterday.

Iraq's foreign reserves are currently protected by a presidential order giving them immunity from judicial attachment but the US side in the talks has suggested that if the UN mandate, under which the money is held, lapses and is not replaced by the new agreement, then Iraq's funds would lose this immunity. The cost to Iraq of this happening would be the immediate loss of $20bn. The US is able to threaten Iraq with the loss of 40 per cent of its foreign exchange reserves because Iraq's independence is still limited by the legacy of UN sanctions and restrictions imposed on Iraq since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in the 1990s. This means that Iraq is still considered a threat to international security and stability under Chapter Seven of the UN charter. The US negotiators say the price of Iraq escaping Chapter Seven is to sign up to a new "strategic alliance" with the United States.

The threat by the American side underlines the personal commitment of President George Bush to pushing the new pact through by 31 July. Although it is in reality a treaty between Iraq and the US, Mr Bush is describing it as an alliance so he does not have to submit it for approval to the US Senate.

Iraqi critics of the agreement say that it means Iraq will be a client state in which the US will keep more than 50 military bases. American forces will be able to carry out arrests of Iraqi citizens and conduct military campaigns without consultation with the Iraqi government. American soldiers and contractors will enjoy legal immunity.

The US had previously denied it wanted permanent bases in Iraq, but American negotiators argue that so long as there is an Iraqi perimeter fence, even if it is manned by only one Iraqi soldier, around a US installation, then Iraq and not the US is in charge.

The US has security agreements with many countries, but none are occupied by 151,000 US soldiers as is Iraq. The US is not even willing to tell the government in Baghdad what American forces are entering or leaving Iraq, apparently because it fears the government will inform the Iranians, said an Iraqi source.

then, there's this last one which only serves to tell me that the financial/economic collapse that seemed imminent only a couple of months ago hasn't gone away...

Banks fear new $5,000bn balance burden

Accounting changes could force US banks to take thousands of billions of dollars back on to their balance sheets in the coming months in a move that is likely to curb further their lending and could push them into new capital raisings, analysts have warned.

Analysts at Citigroup said a planned tightening of the rules regarding off-balance sheet vehicles would force banks to reconsider arrangements and could result in up to $5,000bn of assets coming back on to the books.

The off-balance sheet vehicles have been used by financial institutions to keep some assets off their balance sheets, thereby avoiding the need to hold regulatory capital against them.

i was hoping the article would give me some more information about these "accounting changes" other than broad general strokes... ('course, if it had, i probably wouldn't have understood it anyway...)

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Here's a story that would gag a maggot

oh, puh-l-e-e-e-e-eze...

President George W. Bush said on Tuesday he quit playing golf in 2003 out of respect for the families of Americans killed in the war in Iraq.

"I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf," Bush said in an interview with Yahoo and Politico.com.

"I feel I owe it to the families to be as -- to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal," he said.

Bush said his last round of golf was in August 2003 when he was informed that a truck bomb had wrecked the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, killing 22 people, including U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello.

"They pulled me off the golf course and I said, it's just not worth it anymore to do," Bush said.

if that's the truth - and i have my doubts - a bigger person would never have told anyone... what are we supposed to do...? give george a medal or a chest to pin it on...?

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What do Cyclone Nargis and Hurricane Katrina have in common...? A shitty government response...

- unprepared to non-existent emergency response on a national level

- using military force to control citizens inside national borders during a natural disaster

- refusing offers of aid from other countries

- a shocking disregard for the poorest and most vulnerable citizens

The United Nations suspended relief supplies to Myanmar on Friday after the military government seized the food and equipment it had already sent into the country.

Earlier, in a statement, Myanmar’s military junta said it was willing to receive disaster relief from the outside world but would not welcome outside relief workers. Nearly one week after a devastating cyclone, supplies into the country were still being delayed and aid experts were being turned back as they arrived at the airport.

In the statement, the government said it would distribute international relief supplies itself.

Paul Risley, a spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program, said, "all the food aid and equipment that we managed to get in has been confiscated." He said the World Food Program was suspending the few flights that the Myanmar authorities had so far allowed to enter the country until the matter was resolved.

[...]

One United Nations official said he had never seen delays like this before in delivering relief supplies and aid officials. In Indonesia after the tsunami in 2004, he said, an air bridge of daily flights was established within 48 hours.

"The frustration caused by what appears to be a paperwork delay is unprecedented in modern humanitarian relief efforts," said the official, Paul Risley, a spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program, in Bangkok. "It’s astonishing."

yes, the scale of human loss and devastation in myanmar is staggering and the cruel and authoritarian response of the myanmar military junta is appalling... but...

as brother tim was reminding me last night during our long chat, three years later, new orleans still looks almost as ragged as it did immediately post-hurricane katrina... my country has no room whatsoever to stake out a righteous position vis a vis myanmar...

god help the people of myanmar...

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Yangon, Myanmar, the Category 3 cyclone, and a death toll of over 100,000

look at the escalation of the headlines...

More than 200 dead in Myanmar cyclone

Cyclone kills over 350 in Myanmar

Hundreds feared dead in Myanmar cyclone

Cyclone kills nearly 4000 in Myanmar: state TV

Myanmar: Death toll more than 15000

this morning...

US envoy: Myanmar deaths may top 100000

i've been watching al jazeera's coverage of the horrific disaster... when they post the video clip, i will get it up here as an update...

from ap...

Hungry people swarmed the few open shops and fistfights broke out over food and water in Myanmar's swamped Irrawaddy delta Wednesday as a top U.S. diplomat warned that the death toll from a devastating cyclone could top 100,000.

The minutes of a U.N. aid meeting obtained by The Associated Press, meanwhile, revealed the military junta's visa restrictions were hampering international relief efforts.

Only a handful of U.N. aid workers had been let into the impoverished Southeast Asian country, which the government has kept isolated for five decades to maintain its iron-fisted control. The U.S. and other countries rushed supplies to the region, but most of it was being held outside Myanmar while awaiting the junta's permission to deliver it.

Entire villages in the Irrawaddy delta were still submerged from Saturday's storm, and bloated corpses could be seen stuck in the mangroves. Some survivors stripped clothes off the dead. People wailed as they described the horror of the torrent swept ashore by the cyclone.

"I don't know what happened to my wife and young children," said Phan Maung, 55, who held onto a coconut tree until the water level dropped. By then his family was gone.

i have a terrible feeling that the 100,000 death toll is going to go much higher...

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Parking a U.S. aircraft carrier right off your shores is only a "REMINDER"? Bollocks...!

yeah, yeah... "they" "say" a lot of things, but since when does what "they" "say" have anything to do with what "they" "do"...?

The U.S. Navy has temporarily added a second aircraft carrier in the Gulf as a "reminder" to Iran, but this was not an escalation of American forces in the region, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Tuesday.

Speaking to reporters during a trip to Mexico, Gates flatly denied a suggestion that the presence of two U.S. carriers in the Gulf could be a precursor to military action against Tehran.

"This deployment has been planned for a long time," Gates said. "I don't think we'll have two carriers there for a protracted period of time. So I don't see it as an escalation. I think it could be seen, though, as a reminder."

He declined to elaborate on his remarks and provided no details about the deployment.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said the second carrier arrived in the Gulf on Tuesday to replace one on duty that was expected to depart the region in two days.

for one thing, the gulf is a small area... even ONE carrier plus all the ships that comprise a carrier battle group parked in the gulf where there's an honest-to-god transit point that's so narrow that it doesn't even contain any international water* (see below), takes up one hell of a lot of space...

* Strait of Hormuz

Ships moving through the Strait follow a Traffic Separation Scheme (TSS), which separates inbound from outbound traffic to reduce the risk of collision. The traffic lane is six miles (10 km) wide, including two two-mile (3 km)-wide traffic lanes, one inbound and one outbound, separated by a two-mile (3 km) wide separation median.

To traverse the Strait, ships pass through the territorial waters of Iran and Oman under the transit passage provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.[1] Although not all states have ratified the convention,[4] most states, including the U.S.,[5] accept these customary navigation rules as codified in the Convention.

stop and think about this for just a minute... check out the google earth image of the bay of fundy below... now, imagine a russian aircraft carrier on station in the middle, complete with all the ships that make up a carrier battle group... got that...? what do you think the canadian government would think of it...? what do you think the u.s. government would think of it...? how about the residents of nova scotia...? of new brunswick...? of maine...? what do you think of the possibility that it could ever happen before the first snowfall in hell...?



what's endlessly fascinating to me is that we in the u.s. don't stop for a second to think about the over-the-top arrogance of our own country sending an aircraft carrier and an entire carrier battle group to park right in the middle of half a dozen other countries as though we owned the entire chunk of real estate ourselves... imagine the shoe on the other foot...

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Hugo Chávez on the world food crisis - a "massacre" of the poor

and it ain't by chance either... it's by design...

Soaring food prices are a "massacre" of the world's poor and are creating a global nutritional crisis, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday, calling it a sign that capitalism is in decline.

His comments came only hours after the United Nations' World Food Program called more expensive food a "silent tsunami" that threatens to plunge more than 100 million people on every continent into hunger.

"It is a true massacre what is happening in the world," Chavez said in a televised speech, citing U.N. statistics about deaths caused by hunger and malnourishment.

"The problem is not the production of food ... it is the economic, social and political model of the world. The capitalist model is in crisis."

[...]

Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage, visiting Caracas to meet with Chavez and other allied leaders on Wednesday, accused developed countries of spurring food prices through biofuels.

"Developed countries want to feed the cars of the rich with food -- this is the irrational world we live in today," Lage said, echoing Chavez's frequent accusations that Washington's promotion of biofuel is boosting prices of staples like corn.

don't think for one single second that this wasn't planned...

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Rewriting the history of the Iraq invasion

thanks to thom hartmann...



lest we forget...

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We're the United States... Obeying the law is for other people...

and we wonder why the rest of the world hates us...

US officials are dragooning Iraq into accepting immunity for US civilian contractors in new negotiations with the Iraqi government just months after a feud over a private defense contractor exploded into an international outcry.

The Bush administration insists that Baghdad give the US "broad authority to conduct combat operations and guarantee civilian contractors specific legal protections from Iraqi law, according to administration and military officials," a front page story in Friday's New York Times reports.

The Administration's proposed security agreement would replace the current United Nations mandate authorizing the US presence in Iraq, which is set to expire Dec. 31, 2008.

No other country working with the US military in Iraq is exempt from local laws.

hey... first of all, as colin powell said, we broke it and now it's OURS, so now we get to do what we want with it, right?... i mean, it's OUR country... in any case, we can't have OUR people subjected to the laws of some piss-ant little country we conquered... but, BECAUSE we can continue to keep up the charade that iraq is sovereign and is indeed foreign soil, OUR people don't have to obey u.s. laws there either... sick slick, eh...?

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