Random News & Views Roundup

- The Bombing of Nagasaki August 9, 1945: The Untold Story

At 11:02 am, Nagasaki Christianity was boiled, evaporated and carbonized in a scorching, radioactive fireball. The persecuted, vibrant, faithful, surviving center of Japanese Christianity had become ground zero.

And what the Japanese Imperial government could not do in over 200 years of persecution, American Christians did in 9 seconds. The entire worshipping community of Nagasaki was wiped out.

Take a moment to remember all of the victims.

- Musharraf has called off declaring a state of emergency after getting his hand slapped by Bush and Condi.

- As the British prepare to leave Basra:

"Basra's residents and militiamen view this not as an orderly withdrawal but rather as an ignominious defeat," according to a report by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) on Basra published in June. "Today, the city is controlled by militias, seemingly more powerful and unconstrained than before."
[...]
The outlook for the two million people in Basra, Iraq's second largest city, is not good. According to the ICG report, violence in the city has little to do with sectarianism or anti-occupation resistance but involves "the systematic misuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighbourhood vigilantism... together with the rise of criminal mafias that increasingly intermingle with political actors."

- Bush...press conference...Iran...blah blah blah...yawn. This was the highlight:

Bush downplayed reports from Tehran that al-Maliki and Ahmadinejad appeared warm and friendly, including pictures of the two men smiling and holding hands as they appeared at a news conference.

"You want to be cordial with the person you're with. You don't want to be duking it out," said Bush, who jokingly posed in a boxing stance at his podium. "I'm not surprised there's a picture showing people smiling."

Just call him Boxer Guy

- Meanwhile, Darth Cheney has reportedly been pushing for "airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iraq run by the Quds force...according to two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy." Another handy WH leak to put more pressure on Iran, no doubt.

- How's that "spreading democracy" thing going for you, Bush?

The paradox of American policy in the Middle East — promoting democracy on the assumption it will bring countries closer to the West — is that almost everywhere there are free elections, the American-backed side tends to lose.

Lebanon’s voters in the Metn district, in other words, appeared to have joined the Palestinians, who voted for Hamas; the Iraqis, who voted for a government sympathetic to Iran; and the Egyptians, who have voted in growing numbers in recent elections for the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. “No politician can afford to identify with the West because poll after poll shows people don’t believe in the U.S. agenda,” said Mustafa Hamarneh, until recently the director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan. Mr. Hamarneh is running for a seat in Jordan’s Parliament in November, but he says he has made a point of keeping his campaign focused locally, and on bread-and-butter issues. “If somebody goes after you as pro-American he can hurt you,” he said.

- Simon Jenkins in The Guardian:

It takes inane optimism to see victory in Afghanistan

This war against the Taliban is part of a post-imperial spasm. The longer it is waged, the graver the consequences
[...]
Iraq is post-imperialism for fast learners, Afghanistan for slow ones.
[...]
In the provinces, the Americans are running a guerrilla army out of Bagram, trying to kill as many "Taliban" or "al-Qaida" as possible, while the British heroically re-enact the Zulu wars down in Helmand. Neither takes any notice of President Hamid Karzai, whose deals with warlords, druglords, Iranians and Taliban collaborators are probably the best hope of stabilising Afghanistan when the foreign occupation is over. But since that is claimed by Britain to be virtually never, the only certainty is a rising tempo of insurgency.

read the rest...

'UN investigator speaks out against torture, abuse'

That's the headline, but that doesn't exactly cover the whole story:

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Soldiers from countries whose armies are suspected of engaging in torture or other abuse should not be considered for peacekeeping duty, the UN's chief anti-torture investigator says.

UN special rapporteur Manfred Nowak said in an interview for Monday's editions of the Austrian news magazine Profil that the world body's standards for selecting peacekeepers are too low, and suggested it should reconsider forming its own professional standing army.

Concerns about the quality, training and ethics of soldiers are growing as developing countries with questionable human rights records increasingly are tapped for troops for international peacekeeping operations, Nowak said.

"The criteria are not very high," he told Profil, which released excerpts of the interview on Saturday. "The UN must impose stricter standards in recruiting soldiers."

Nowak did not mention past abuses by soldiers from the U.S., Britain and other Western countries who have formed the bulk of many peacekeeping operations worldwide.

George Bush tried to fool the public when he issued his recent executive order supposedly banning torture but that's not what it actually does. As long as Bush permits so-called "alternative", classified interrogation techniques there is no guarantee that torture will not continue.

And today, The Independent reports:

The British Army is facing new allegations that it was involved in "forced disappearances", hostage-taking and torture of Iraqi civilians after the fall of the regime of Saddam Hussein.

One of the claims is made by the former chairman of the Red Crescent in Basra, who alleges he was beaten unconscious by British soldiers after they accused him of being a senior official in Saddam's Baath party.

The family of another Iraqi civilian claims he was arrested and kidnapped by the British in order to secure the surrender of his brother, who was also accused of being a high-ranking member of the party. He was later found shot dead, still handcuffed and wearing a UK prisoner name tag.

Both cases are being prepared for hearings in the High Court in which the Government will be accused of war crimes while carrying out the arrest and detention of alleged senior members of the Baath party.

So, why is the UN's "chief anti-torture investigator" refusing to acknowledge reality especially when he said this during an interview this past January?

Kanishk Tharoor: In what ways has the Bush administration directly or indirectly allowed for torture?

Manfred Nowak: The Bush administration has done quite a lot to undermine the absolute prohibition of torture, for instance by interpreting torture in a very restrictive manner and claiming they are not really torturing. To them, torture is only really something after which you suffer long-term mental disorder or organ failure. Everything else is called "humanely-degrading treatment" which needs to be balanced against the threat of terrorism - it's a trade-off between security and human rights.

One can employ these harsher interrogation methods against suspected terrorists because the United States feels itself to be in a war on terror. It's breaking a taboo and since the US was always a champion of human rights and democracy, and one of the oldest countries to have a bill of rights in their constitution, this negative example has many negative consequences for the US and many other states. If even the US considers these means of detention, these flights lawful then, other countries feel that they can do the same.

Kanishk Tharoor: With US actions, new sources of torture have come into place, most specifically the outsourcing of torture to countries like Syria, Egypt and Jordan. Is there any precedent for this? How has the Bush administration been engaged in it in recent years?

Manfred Nowak: I do not know any precedent for what they call "extraordinary rendition". There is a precedent for "ordinary rendition", of suspected terrorists abducted by the CIA, Israeli or other intelligence services in another country to be tried domestically. This has also been illegal but was at least done for the legitimate purpose of bringing someone to justice.

Extraordinary abduction is the opposite - depriving individuals of liberty without any legal remedies in order to send them to countries that are known for torture. This violates the absolute prohibition of refoulement: countries are not only not allowed to torture, but also not allowed to send suspects to countries that will torture them.

This was a systematic practice, and I'm afraid, an ongoing practice.

Kanishk Tharoor: What kind of incentives were governments given to allow rendition and to conduct the torture? Should equal pressure be brought to bear on the US as well as the cooperating governments, be they in Cairo, Damascus or Amman?

Manfred Nowak: Of course, this is also the responsibility of countries like Egypt or Syria who are well known for systematic practice of torture. They are the first ones violating international human rights law, even though they have ratified the United Nations convention against torture. They are thus obligated to criminalise torture. But also every state which sends suspects to torturing countries violates the convention.

Countries like the United Kingdom have tried to circumvent this problem by getting "diplomatic assurances" in which they ask those countries to be kind enough not to torture - These diplomatic assurances are a clear attempt to circumvent the absolute prevention of refoulement.
[...]
...the prohibition of torture is an "absolute right", which means that there is no proportionality to be applied. A little bit of torture doesn't make us safer, it's the opposite. As soon as you undermine the prohibition of torture, and you start in the "ticking bomb scenario" to apply torture, it very quickly spreads and creates new terrorism. We now have more terrorists since we are fighting terrorism by violating our own standards and the international rule of law.

How to Insult Your Allies

We all remember when Bush forgot to mention Canada as one of the US's good friends in his SOTU speech...and when Rumsfeld gleefully used the phrase "Old Europe". And who doesn't have the term "freedom fries" scorched in their brain forever?

Well, there's nothing like calling the British military wimps to really make you the popular kid on the block:

A senior American commander in the Gulf has said his men would have fired on the Iranian Republican Guard rather than let themselves be taken hostage.

In a dramatic illustration of the different postures adopted by British and US forces working together in Iraq, Lt-Cdr Erik Horner - who has been working alongside the task force to which the 15 captured Britons belonged - said he was "surprised" the British marines and sailors had not been more aggressive.

Asked by The Independent whether the men under his command would have fired on the Iranians, he said: "Agreed. Yes. I don't want to second-guess the British after the fact but our rules of engagement allow a little more latitude. Our boarding team's training is a little bit more towards self-preservation."

The executive officer - second-in-command on USS Underwood, the frigate working in the British-controlled task force with HMS Cornwall - said: "The unique US Navy rules of engagement say we not only have a right to self-defence but also an obligation to self-defence. They [the British] had every right in my mind and every justification to defend themselves rather than allow themselves to be taken. Our reaction was, 'Why didn't your guys defend themselves?'"

And, as if that wasn't bad enough, the Brits are apparently taking the fall for a huge diplomatic blunder made by the yanks in Iraq:

His comments came as it was reported British intelligence had been warned by the CIA that Iran would seek revenge for the detention of five suspected Iranian intelligence officers in Iraq two months ago but refused to raise threat levels in line with their US counterparts.

Nevertheless, the Brits will gladly take the heat, apparently:

The capture of the eight sailors and seven marines - including one young mother - will undoubtedly renew accusations that Britain's determination to maintain a friendly face in the region has left its troops frequently under protected.

Even though...

Vastly outnumbered and out-gunned, the Royal Navy team from HMS Cornwall were seized on Friday after completing a UN-authorised inspection of a merchant dhow in what they insist were clearly Iraqi waters. The Iranian Republican Guard Corps Navy appeared in half a dozen attack speedboats mounted with machine guns..

On top of that, the Brits are obviously tea-sipping pacifists:

Yesterday, the former First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Alan West, said British rules of engagement were "very much de-escalatory, because we don't want wars starting ... Rather than roaring into action and sinking everything in sight we try to step back and that, of course, is why our chaps were, in effect, able to be captured and taken away."

I mean, really. With a title like "First Sea Lord", you know they were just asking for trouble.

Obviously, they don't show Rambo enough in Britain.

Dreadful pity.