Rep. Alcee L. Hastings, D-Fla., has introduced to the House of
Representatives a new bill, H.R. 645, calling for the secretary of
homeland security to establish no fewer than six national emergency
centers for corralling civilians on military installations.


The proposed bill, which has received little mainstream media
attention, appears designed to create the type of detention center that
those concerned about use of the military in domestic affairs fear
could be used as concentration camps for political dissidents, such as
occurred in Nazi Germany.


The bill also appears to expand the president's emergency power, much
as the executive order signed by President Bush on May 9, 2007, that,
as WND
reported, gave the president the authority to declare an emergency and
take over the direction of all federal, state, local, territorial and
tribal governments without even consulting Congress.

According to the text of the proposed bill, the
purpose of the National Emergency Centers is "to provide temporary
housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and
families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster."



Three additional purposes are specified in the text of the proposed legislation:

To provide centralized locations for the purposes of training and
ensuring the coordination of federal, state and local first responders;


To provide centralized locations to improve the coordination
of preparedness, response and recovery efforts of government, private,
not-for-profit entities and faith-based organizations;



To meet other appropriate needs, as defined by the secretary of homeland security.

The broad specifications of the bill's language, however,
contribute to concern that the "national emergency" purpose could be
utilized by the secretary of homeland security to include any kind of situation the government wants to contain or otherwise control.
Rep. Hastings created controversy during the 2008 presidential campaign
with his provocative comments concerning Republican vice presidential
candidate Sarah Palin.


"If Sarah Palin isn't enough of a reason for you to get over whatever
your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay
attention," Hastings said, as reported by ABC News. "Anybody toting
guns and stripping moose don't care too much about what they do with
Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through."


H.R. 645, which seeks to allocate $360 million for developing the
emergency centers, has been referred to the House Committee on
Transportation and Infrastructure and to the Committee on Armed
Services.

We call on the EU to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement until Israel respects human rights and International Law.

The EU is Israel's biggest importer of goods, and its second biggest exporter. In 2006 the total traded between the EU and Israel amounted to 23.5 BILLION Euros.

The EU-Israel Association Agreement forms the legal basis for this relationship which gives Israel preferential trade terms with EU countries.

Article 2 of the Agreement states that these relations shall be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles which must guide internal and international policy.

The EU is therefore obligated under this Article to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement whilst Israel is in breach of human rights.

The Peace Cycle has travelled to the Occupied Palestinian Territories and witnessed first hand the many abuses of human rights by the Israeli Authorities, including:

Loss of freedom of movement of the Palestinian people by the placement of checkpoints and earth mounds at strategic locations within the Occupied Territories, making travel between villages and towns often impossible and inhibiting the movement of trade across the territories.

Israeli-only roads that prohibit use by Palestinian cars and passengers thereby making their journeys far longer than necessary, and often impossible.

Demolition of Palestinian houses by the Israeli authorities resulting in the heartbreaking loss of family homes and possessions, and destroying their sense of security and belonging.

Theft of Palestinian land in order to build the separation wall; a barrier deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice, and which has served to further limit freedom of movement and cause loss of trade, resulting in high unemployment and extreme poverty levels.

Refugee camps where families have been waiting for sixty years to return to their lost homes or to have compensation addressed.

The uprooting of millions of olive trees, a symbol of Palestinian life, to make way for continuous Israeli settlement building on stolen Palestinian lands, despite the settlements having been deemed illegal and even though cessation of this activity is clearly defined in the latest peace initiative at Annapolis.

Countless more acts of Israeli aggression towards the Palestinian people, which continue daily, and remain unchallenged on the pretext of security.

What the Peace Cycle has witnessed illustrates the abuses of human rights that at different times over many years have been judged to be illegal by international courts across the world. Yet the EU does nothing visible to bring Israel to account. Whilst this abuse goes on, the EU-Israel Association Agreement has allowed trade with Israel to flourish, with the addition of the EU-Israel Action Plan in 2005-2008 that has allowed for even closer partnerships to develop.

We call for an immediate suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement and any further trade between Israel and EU Member States in protest against Israel's continued violation of human rights of the Palestinian people.

This measure of protest should be maintained until Israel ends the illegal occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the siege of Gaza and fully complies with international human rights law.

Much has already been written about the eight-day-long running massacre of Palestinians that is taking place in Gaza. Indeed, what more can be said when it is clear that the Israeli government is intent on blithely ignoring all petitions, both the ambivalent and the unequivocal, to stop the indiscriminate murder.

At least 450 dead so far (other reports put the figure closer to 500), many of them civilians, women, children, old and young, the rest policemen or Hamas officials. At least 2000 injured, many too seriously to survive or be treated in Gaza's severely blockaded hospitals. In short, in the last eight days the state of Israel has murdered approximately 500 innocent Palestinians and seriously injured 2000, and the representatives of the world's leading democracies sit virtually silent. Make no mistake and do not be fooled by the mainstream media reporting, every single Palestinian that has died or been injured as a result of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza is innocent. When a people that have been dispossessed of their land, livelihoods and homes, occupied, periodically murdered and regularly starved take action to resist and defend themselves, they are guilty of nothing but standing up for their human rights and their rights under international law.

Israel government ministers and their lackeys in the mainstream press are however eager to muddy the waters of this plain truth. They try to present the Gaza turkey shoot in much more vague terms. Reference is repeatedly made to the "violence" in Gaza and the toll it is taking. Consider this CNN headline and summary from the first day of the bombardment:

Obama, Rice discuss Gaza strikes

President-elect Barack Obama spoke with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Saturday about the violence in Gaza, which has left as many as 225 people dead, two transition aides told CNN.

You see? It's the "violence in Gaza" that has been killing Palestinians, not Israeli government policy and war planes.

A Reuters report of the same day at least made reference to "Israel" and "kill" in the title:

Israel kills scores in Gaza air strikes

But the 229 people that had been killed by Israel was for some reason translated into "scores" for the title. You had to read the article to find out that "scores" actually means "hundreds" in Reuters-speak.

GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli warplanes pounded the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Saturday, killing at least 229 people in one of the bloodiest days for the Palestinians in 60 years of conflict with the Jewish state.

Taken in the context of the current deplorable state of our world, the fact that Palestinians are being indiscriminately murdered may not seem so important to the average Westerner. After all, over the past few weeks thousands of Ugandans have been killed by DRC rebels (for but one example of the bloodletting going on around the world). Is the suffering of Ugandans any less significant to the average Western citizen than that of the Palestinians? Yes and no. From a humanitarian point of view it is no less significant, but from a political and social point of view the crimes against humanity in Gaza are more significant. As a member of a first world democracy, you are being asked to believe by your political leaders and the mainstream press that Israel and its armies are acting justifiably and that even as they drop one ton bombs on Palestinian homes, the state of Israel remains, in the recent words of George Bush, "a light onto the nations" and a fellow democratic nation. You are not being asked to believe that the DRC rebels are anything but murderous psychopaths (albeit secretly supported by Western governments). At stake then (other than the lives of innocent Palestinians) is your conscience and your ability to recognise blatant and murderous lies when you read or hear them. Also at stake is, perhaps, a final chance to understand the true nature of Western democratic government.

I have already noted that most of what can be said (by alternative news sites like Sott.net) about Israels flattening of Gaza and its inhabitants has already been said. Most of what you need to know to discern the reality of the situation in Gaza is available in the articles below this one - most, but not all. There is one detail that has not yet (to my knowledge) been exposed, but which is crucial if we are to understand the true depth of Israeli state mendacity.

The Israeli government claims that Hamas broke a ceasefire recently and began firing rockets into Israel and that the bombing of Gaza by the Israel air force is to stop the firing of these rockets by Hamas.

The truth is that Israel broke a five-month-long ceasefire with Hamas on November 4th, 2008 by assassinating six Hamas officials in Gaza. Please note the date that was chosen to do so (election day in the US). As reported recently in Haaretz, the attack on Gaza was planned six months ago. The Israel government has also flagrantly violated the terms of an agreement that it signed in November 2005 which stipulated that 400 truckloads a day of exports should have been leaving Gaza by the end of 2006. No goods have been allowed to leave Gaza and vital medical and food supplies have been regularly cut off over the past 4 years leaving much of Gaza's 1.5 million people malnourished.

Israel claims that the homemade, sugar-fueled rockets that wobble their way from Gaza towards the vicinity of nearby Israeli towns and which generally land harmlessly far and wide of their targets are its causus belli. These rockets are clearly primitive and by now every Palestinian must realise that they are useless as a weapon against the Israeli occupation of Palestine. More than that, every Palestinian must realise that the surest way to increase the chance that they or several members of their family will be dismembered by an Israeli missile is to keep firing impotent rockets into Israel. The REAL value of such rockets therefore is as justification to the Israel government to continue massacring and generally brutalizing the Palestinian people.

The logical deduction therefore is that it is not Hamas that has been firing rockets into Israel from the Gaza strip but the state of Israel itself. Back in October a senior Hamas leader said as much:

Hamas blames 'Israeli collaborators' for launching rockets

Albawaba.com
Sun, 12 Oct 2008

The Hamas rulers of Gaza Strip on Tuesday lashed out at gunners who fire rockets at Israel from the Palestinian territory in violation of a seven-week-old calm, calling them Israeli collaborators. "About the rocket-firing, I think those who are responsible are those who collaborate with Israel because there is a consensus by all Palestinian groups to respect the truce," said Dr. Mahmud Zahar, a senior leader of the Hamas movement.

On Monday, a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip landed in an empty field outside the southern Israeli city of Sderot, causing no casualty or damage.

According to AFP, Zahar told a Gaza radio station that the party which fired the rocket was "linked to Israel as they provide a pretext to exercise pressure on the Palestinian people."

After the latest incident, Israel on Tuesday closed the Nahal Oz crossing to Gaza Strip that is used to ferry in fuel and the Sufa passage for food deliveries to the impoverished and blockaded territory. On his part, MP Jamal Al-Khudari, the head of the popular committee against the siege, strongly denounced Tuesday the Israeli decision to close the crossings, noting that the Gaza commercial crossings are already paralyzed despite the calm.

In June 2008, in an admission that he did not know who was firing rockets from Gaza into Israel, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh appealed for "factions" to maintain the cease fire.

That agents of the state of Israel are behind much if not all of the "Hamas rockets" is a reasonable conclusion and backed up by the Israeli governments long term penchant for fabricating Muslim terrorism.

For example:

Yemen seizes Israel-linked cell

BBC News
Oct 7th 2008

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has said the security forces have arrested a group of alleged Islamist militants linked to Israeli intelligence.

Mr Saleh did not say what evidence had been found to show the group's links with Israel, a regional enemy of Yemen.

The arrests were connected with an attack on the US embassy in Sanaa last month which killed at least 18 people, official sources were quoted saying.

Israel's foreign ministry has rejected the accusation as "totally ridiculous".

"A terrorist cell was arrested and will be referred to the judicial authorities for its links with the Israeli intelligence services," Mr Saleh told a gathering at al-Mukalla University in Hadramawt province.

And from the Yemen Observer:

President Saleh revealed on Monday that security forces in Yemen caught an espionage network for Israel made up of Arab nationals. This announcement came during his speech in front of MP's, Shura Council members, local council members, scholars and military and security leaders at Hadhramout University.

According to the president the suspected spies will be brought before the courts shortly in a public trial after investigations are complete.

The network was comprised of 40 people from different Arab nationalities spying for Mossad, the Israeli international intelligence said sources from National and Political Security Units. The members of the espionage network entered Yemen on the premise of conducting business, tourism and even for preaching in mosques. Saleh said that the suspected spies form a terrorism cell that uses also Islam to reach their targets.

Or this from the Sydney Morning Herald in 2002:

Palestinians arrest al-Qaeda 'poseurs'

December 8 2002

Palestinian security forces have arrested a group of Palestinians for collaborating with Israel and posing as operatives of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network, a senior official said yesterday.

The arrests come two days after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon charged al-Qaeda militants were operating in Gaza and in Lebanon.

"The Palestinian Authority arrested a group of collaborators who confessed they were working for Israel, posing as al-Qaeda operatives in the Palestinian territories," said the official, on condition of anonymity.

He said the alleged collaborators sought to "discredit the Palestinian people, justify every Israeli crime and provide reasons to carry out a new (military) aggression in the Gaza Strip."

Or these:

Lebanon's Army captures Israeli Mossad 'Terrorist Ring'

Wednesday, 14 June, 2006

Beirut - The Lebanese army has said it had captured members of a terrorist network allegedly working for the Israeli Mossad and that a suspect confessed to his role in assassinating Hezbollah and Palestinian officials.

Last Saturday, the army said it had arrested Mahmoud Rafeh, a 59-year-old Lebanese citizen and retired police officer, for a May 26 car bombing that killed Mahmoud Majzoub, a senior Islamic Jihad official, and his brother in front of their home in the southern city of Sidon. Rafeh "had links to Israeli intelligence," a statement said.

On Tuesday, the army said that Rafeh ( left) had confessed to his role in killing the Majzoub brothers, and to other operations ... including bombings that killed two Hezbollah officials; Ali Hassan Dib in 1999 and Ali Saleh in 2003 and the 2002 killing of Jihad Jibril, the son of Ahmed Jibril, leader of the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), which based in Syria with bases in Lebanon.

Rafeh was part of a "terror network working for the Israeli Mossad," and its members took "training courses in and outside Israel," the statement said.

Investigators found Israeli computers, cameras, ammunition, military uniforms and forged identity cards in ring members' hideouts ( shown below), it added.

The ring smuggled the booby-trapped door of the Mercedes car that killed the Majzoub brothers from Israel, the army said.

An investigation was underway to arrest remaining collaborators, it concluded.

As Safir newspaper said a manhunt is currently underway to catch another suspect whom it identified as Hussein Khattab, a Palestinian official in the PFLP-GC. Lebanese police and the security apparatus of the PFLP-GC had believed he was involved in Jibril's murder but he was later cleared of the crime, the paper said.

An Nahar newspaper reported that Rafeh had been working for the Mossad since 1994. It said the army found in his house forged Lebanese papers that female Mossad agents used to enter the country as the alleged wives of the ring members.

Israeli intelligence agents stayed at the flat Rafeh had rented in Sidon near the residence of the Majzoub brothers to monitor their movements, the paper said.

Six ring members have already been arrested and another two are believed to have fled to Israel, An Nahar added.

President Emile Lahoud praised Lebanese forces for breaking up the terrorist network, saying "solidarity is the real power that can stand in the face of Israel and prevent sectarian conflicts," according to a statement released by his office.

Hezbollah's deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Qassem, called the arrest and confession "a message" to all Lebanese that their country was not immune from "direct Israeli influence" -- despite Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000.

"Israel still sees Lebanon as a field to achieve political and future gains," Kassem told Hezbollah's Al Manar television late Tuesday.

Many people have previously been arrested in Lebanon on suspicion of spying for Israel. In 2004, a Tunisian woman of Palestinian origin and four accomplices were indicted on charges of plotting with Israel to assassinate Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.

Lebanese Army praised

Ahmad Yasseen a local political observer told Ya Libnan, "the fact that the Lebanese army captured the Mossad terrorist ring is proof that it should be the only authority that should be responsible for Lebanon's security "

Yasseen added: "It is time all Lebanese and Palestinian armed militia put their faith in the Lebanese army, instead of acting as 'state inside a state', which is destabilizing the country".

Commenting on the statements of Lahoud and Hezbollah Yasseen told Ya Libnan" they both should have praised the army instead of trying to justify the existence of the resistance groups".

..tr>..table>
Arafat: Israel Behind Suicide Bombings

August 25, 1995

Jerusalem Post

The complex Israeli-Palestinian relationship has given birth to a nasty new myth which began, like many such myths, with a lie so egregious that it could only be considered laughable. Now it threatens to become conventional wisdom.

Soon after the Beit Lid massacre, in which 21 Israeli soldiers were killed by two Islamic Jihad suicide bombers, Palestinian Authority chief Yasser Arafat told a group of visiting dignitaries that right-wing Israelis had collaborated with the killers. Otherwise, he said, the killers could not have passed through several army check posts without being stopped.

The implications were mind-boggling: not only was Arafat implying that Israelis would participate in the mass murder of Israeli soldiers. He was saying that the Israeli conspirators were so powerful that they could exercise control over the army units all along the route the killers took from Gaza to Beit Lid.

The visitors who heard the story, knowing that it could only be interpreted as the ravings of a lunatic, kept it mostly to themselves.

Being supporters of the peace process, they thought reporting it would embarrass Arafat and harm his credibility. But at least one listener divulged its contents privately, and it became known. To the amazement of many, Arafat kept repeating it both before visitors from abroad and to visiting Israelis.

On Tuesday, the day after the bus bombing in Jerusalem, Arafat decided to come out publicly with these "revelations." He not only announced in Gaza that there was collaboration between what he called "Israeli and Palestinian extremists," but that he had documents proving it.

One of his lieutenants, Secretary-General of the Palestinian Authority Tayeb Raheem, went into details. He said that the Israeli army and other security services contained secret organizations like the French OAS during Algeria's war of independence. They and the Islamic fanatics have a common interest to defeat the Oslo agreement, he said, repeating that the PLO has documents to prove the allegation.

Portraits of Palestinian Resistance

Electronic Intifada
Rima Merriman
8 June 2006

Palestinian resistance to the occupation comes in many shapes and forms, some of which involves armed resistance undertaken by organized groups with various ideologies. These groups are composed of barely trained young men who pit their meager and crude resources against one of the best trained and best equipped military body in the world, the Israeli Occupation Forces. Of the 76 Israeli soldiers who died in 2005, only six were killed as a result of Palestinian attacks. The rest died of illness or accidents. Thirty of them committed suicide.

The imbalance in the resources between the two sides of the conflict predictably yields a steady mowing down on the part of the Israelis of one young Palestinian martyr after another. Most Palestinian deaths, however, are of civilians (and children) simply going about their daily lives, getting caught up in Israeli ground and air attacks, Israeli indiscriminate fire and Israeli raids.

Israel's control of and entrenchment in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, its continual attempts to stamp out Palestinian resistance to the occupation at any cost, relies heavily on intelligence gathered by Shabak, the 5,000-strong Internal General Security Service of Israel, whose motto is "Defender who shall not be seen".

With a cadre of well-trained, Arabic-speaking Israeli informants who are indistinguishable physically from the Palestinian population, Shabak has little problem gathering intelligence on a people whose every movement is regulated by hundreds of check points and by total Israeli control on their borders. These infiltrators prey on Arab innate hospitality and friendliness. The Palestinians call them "musta'ribeen", i.e., "those who appear to be Arabs". Palestinians are not surprised when someone, somewhere comes up to them and says: Got you!

PA police fire on undercover IDF unit in Bethlehem

Ha'aretz
11/30/2005

Palestinian policemen opened fire at undercover Israel Defense Forces soldiers during an operation in Bethlehem yesterday. No soldiers were hurt during the incident, and the IDF said its inquiry revealed that no policemen were hurt. However, the Palestinians said one policeman was wounded. According to the army's initial inquiry, the Palestinian police had not been informed about the army operation. Thus, when the soldiers, who were disguised to look like Arabs, came to arrest a wanted man not far from City Hall, the policemen took them for members of an armed Palestinian gang.

Confusion in PA: Who launched Qassam?

Ynet
27/11/2006

There has been general confusion in the Palestinian Authority after a Qassam rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip into the western Negev. One of the cells of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Fatah's military arm, has taken responsibility for the firing.

However, Abu Ahmad, one of the group's senior officials in the northern Gaza Strip, said to Ynet that he had no knowledge that his people carried out the shooting.

"As of now, we continue to be committed to the truce, but are reserving our right to respond to Israeli infractions," said Abu Ahmad.

Israeli agents accused of creating fake al-Qaeda cell

Sophie Claudet in Gaza City
AFP
December 9 2002

A senior Palestinian security official says his services have uncovered an Israeli plot to create a fake al-Qaeda cell in the Gaza Strip, a charge Israel has dismissed as absurd. The head of preventive security in Gaza, Rashid Abu Shbak, said Israeli agents posing as operatives of al-Qaeda recruited Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. "Over the past nine months we've been investigating eight [such] cases," Mr Abu Shbak said.

His claims came after the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, said al-Qaeda militants were operating in the Gaza Strip and in Lebanon, raising fears of an intensification of Israeli military occupations. How much evidence is required before we accept the fact that Israel's existence, in its current form, is predicated on a "threat to its existence" from its Arab neighbors and that the Israeli government will do whatever it takes to maintain that threat? How many times will the Israeli government be allowed to dismiss as "absurd" the repeated allegations and evidence that it is behind much of the major "Muslim terrorism" to which it so enthusiastically responds?

The Israeli air force is currently bombing Palestinian civilian homes, universities, mosques.

The work of Bush's "light unto the nations" - Five Palestinian sisters, brutally murdered as they slept in their beds by Israeli forces

It is using massive GBU-39 "bunker buster" missiles recently acquired from and with the blessing of the US government. It is firing missiles at carloads of civilians and then posting videos on Youtube claiming that the cars were carrying rockets. Two days ago the state of Israel murdered five young girls, all sisters aged four to 17, while they slept in their beds. Even Palestinian donkeys and carts carrying children are fair game to Yahweh's storm troopers. Yesterday an "pin point accurate" Israeli missile decapitated a Palestinian child and dismembered her two brothers, all of whom were playing in the street. The Israeli government is urging you, the Western public, to not only condone these atrocities but to accept them as being carried out in your name.

Sixty some years ago very similar scenes to those in Gaza today were playing out in Germany and Poland, and the then Nazi government urged Western citizens to accept it all as necessary and justified. Many people then accepted and condoned the Nazi atrocities, and many more turned a blind eye.

The Nazis 1942 war on Poland's "terrorists"

Israel's 2009 war on Palestine's "terrorists"

You are probably bored of being reminded that those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, or that history really does repeat itself. But you should remember that history only repeats itself when we the people sit back and wishfully think that this time things will be different. The Nazis massacred millions of people over a twelve year period from 1933 to 1945. WWII (which claimed the lives of 65 million people) was ignited by an act of brutality very similar in nature to the Israeli actions in Palestine. The ideological descendants of the bankers, political leaders, military men and global geopolitical strategists that financed, pursued and profited from that last "great" war are today sitting in Tel Aviv, Washington and London with mass murder and mayhem once again on their minds.

So let us not allow history to repeat itself, yet again, by permitting the clearly psychopathic morality of our political leaders to be passed off as "freedom and democracy" or a "just fight" against some manufactured foe. Let us, if only with our collective conscious awareness, resist the blatant crimes against humanity and massacring of the innocent that is taking place in Gaza. And let us remember the core issue and injustice that must be addressed before Israel's right to exist can ever be recognised:

5:59 PM 

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On this day, Veteran's Day, we would like to express to the American public why we, veterans of the Global War on Terror, have chosen to refuse orders to reactivate into military service. We are direct witnesses to the horrors of this war, having experienced its atrocities at their source, and we have decided that we can no longer carry out these illegal and immoral policies.

We believe that veterans and active-duty GIs are in a key position to stop illegal and unjust war, and we are inspired by the resistance of troops who stood against the war in Vietnam. One of the preeminent reasons for the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam was increasing dissent among the active-duty troops stationed abroad and at home. By the end of the war, there were entire units refusing to participate in combat, many going as far as outright mutiny.

The United States learned a lesson from the Vietnam War: that it is unlikely, except in the event of self-defense, that regular civilians will execute the life-threatening orders that are given to them by military authority. The solution of policy makers was to create an all-volunteer force that negated the need for a draft. This translates into a mercenary force composed of America's disadvantaged: a sector of the U.S. demographic that is particularly susceptible to military recruitment for lack of other options and finding themselves with deployment orders again and again.

To compensate for huge pitfalls in recruitment since the invasion of Iraq, the military has resorted to recalling former service members. This policy is known as "involuntary activation" and utilizes deactivated service members who still have time on their contracts in the Individual Ready Reserves (IRR) to fill shortcomings in specific job specialties. The abuse and misuse of this policy has escalated under the current administration to such a degree that it can now only be viewed as a "backdoor draft" that targets the same disadvantaged individuals the military sought out for enlistment, namely because they are better at not questioning orders.

However, we have now begun to question these orders. We are veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and members of the IRR who have refused or will refuse any activation orders that would lead to us serving an unjust and imperial U.S. foreign policy. It is a prevailing notion that this refusal is unpatriotic, but we consider our actions the only choice. Not only did the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan do great harm to the people of those countries, but it undermined the ostensible goal with which the wars were begun: Instead of stopping terrorism, it has proliferated terrorism, an expectation that was predicted well before the war started.

By refusing activation, we are refusing to participate in wars that serve the purposes of furthering the careers of politicians and high-ranking officers. We openly support other IRR members who follow in these footsteps. The military is a force that rules through fear of retribution for disobeying its will. In reality, more than a third of IRRs simply refuse to report to duty. Most of the rest report out of fear that the military will change their discharge status or prosecute them for desertion, but up to this point, prosecution has been rare. Members of the IRR are not under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), and thus far, the military has had a practice of not prosecuting them with criminal charges unless they report in some form or function to activate. Very few willingly volunteer for activation.

There can be no promise that President-Elect Barack Obama will stop the stressful and unfair techniques of back-to-back deployments, "stop-loss" or the "backdoor draft" that are damaging the psychology of veterans in irreparable ways. Nor that he will stop encouraging global violence by unlawful uses of force. It is in this vein that we turn to organizations like Courage to Resist, Iraq Veterans Against the War and many other large-scale and grassroots organizations to solicit change in a largely unrepresentative democracy, and to allow the voices of the people to ring through the halls of the Capital.

Benjamin Lewis, former Marine Corps mortarman, Iraq veteran, IRR recall resister, peace activist

Brandon Neely, former U.S. Army Military police officer, Iraq veteran, IRR recall refuser

Since it invaded Iraq in 2003, the U.S. has detained thousands of juveniles - some of whom were tortured and sexually abused, according to published reports. Figures of the number of children behind bars vary. Some estimates put the number as high as 6,000.

While the criminal abuse of male prisoners at Abu Ghraib is well known, child and women prisoners held there have also been tortured and raped, according to Neil Mackay of Glasgow's "Sunday Herald." Abu Ghraib prison is located about 20 miles west of Baghdad.

Iraqi lawyer Sahar Yasiri, representing the Federation of Prisoners and Political Prisoners, said in a published interview there are more than 400,000 detainees in Iraq being held in 36 prisons and camps and that 95 percent of the 10,000 women among them have been raped. Children, he said, "suffer from torture, rape, (and) starvation" and do not know why they have been arrested. He added the children have been victims of "random" arrests "not based on any legal text."

Former prisoner Thaar Salman Dawod in a witness statement said, "(I saw) two boys naked and they were cuffed together face to face and (a US soldier) was beating them and a group of guards were watching and taking pictures and there was three female soldiers laughing at the prisoners."

Iraqi TV reporter, Suhaib Badr-Addin al-Baz, arrested while making a documentary and thrown into Abu Ghraib for 74 days, told Mackay he saw "hundreds" of children there. Al-Baz said he heard one 12-year-old girl crying, "They have undressed me. They have poured water over me." He said he heard her whimpering daily.

Al-Baz also told of a 15-year-old boy "who was soaked repeatedly with hoses until he collapsed." Amnesty International said ex-detainees reported boys as young as 10 are held at Abu Ghraib.

German TV reporter Thomas Reutter of "Report Mainz" quoted U.S. Army Sgt. Samuel Provance that interrogation specialists "poured water" over one 16-year-old Iraqi boy, drove him throughout a cold night, "smeared him with mud" and then showed him to his father, who was also in custody. Apparently, one tactic employed by the Bush regime is to elicit confessions from adults by dragging their abused children in front of them.

The Los Angeles Times as far back as August 26, 2004, reported U.S. military police at Abu Ghraib "used Army dogs to play a bizarre game in which they scared teenage detainees into defecating and urinating on themselves."

And reporter Hersh told the American Civil Liberties Union convention he has seen videotapes of Iraqi boys that were sodomized, "and the worst part is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking."

Jonathan Steele, wrote in the British "The Guardian" this past Sept. 9th, "Hundreds of children, some as young as nine, are being held in appalling conditions in Baghdad's prisons, sleeping in sweltering temperatures in overcrowded cells, without working fans, no daily access to showers, and subject to frequent sexual abuse by guards, current and former prisoners say." Sixteen-year-old Omar Ali told the "Guardian" he spent more than three years at Karkh juvenile prison sleeping with 75 boys to a cell that is just five by 10 meters, some of them on the floor. Omar told the paper guards often take boys to a separate room in the prison and rape them.

As the occupying authority in Iraq, the Bush administration cannot escape legal responsibility for the torture crimes of Iraqi jailers or for the deplorable conditions in the prisons they operate.

Raad Jamal, age 17, was taken from his Doura home by U.S. troops and turned over to the Iraqi Army's Second regiment where Jamal said he was hung from the ceiling by ropes and beaten with electric cables.

Human Rights Watch(HRW) last June put the number of juveniles detained at 513. The grounds: they pose "imperative security risks." In all, HRW estimates, since 2003, the U.S. has detained 2,400 children in Iraq, some as young as ten.

HRW said the children "are subject to interrogations, have no access to lawyers, and sometimes are held for more than a year without charge, in violation of the United States' own regulations." It said children "have very limited contact with their families." HRW called upon the U.S. to "ensure that children it takes into custody are treated according to their status as children, and given prompt judicial review and access to independent monitors." Apparently, this has not been the case.

Clarisa Bencomo, of HRW's Children's Rights Division said, "The vast majority of children detained in Iraq languish for months in U.S. military custody. The U.S. should provide these children with immediate access to lawyers and an independent judicial review of their detention."

IRIN, the humanitarian news service, last year quoted Khalid Rabia of the Iraqi NGO Prisoners' Association for Justice(PAJ), stating: "Children are being treated as adults in Iraqi prisons and our investigations have shown that they are being abused and tortured." IRIN was refused permission to visit child prisoners.

Five boys between 13 and 17 accused of supporting insurgents and detained by the Iraqi army "showed signs of torture all over their bodies," such as "cigarette burns over their legs," she said.
One boy of 13 arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 was held in solitary for more than a year at Bagram and Guantanamo and made to stand in stress position and deprived of sleep. And 15-year-old Omar Khadr, a Canadian, was held in Guantanamo for two years without being allowed to see a lawyer or have contact with his family. Khadr has been held for a total of six years. According to the current "Catholic Worker," Mohammed Jawad was 17 when captured in Afghanistan and was subjected to sleep deprivation at Gitmo day and night for two weeks. Every three hours jailers shackled and transfered him to another cell under a "frequent flier" program, forcing him to change cells 112 times.
Jawad's defense lawyer Air Force Major David J.R. Frakt said the most likely reason Gitmo authorities tortured the youth (who had attempted suicide five months earlier) was "for sport, to teach him a lesson, perhaps to make an example of him to others."

Officials from UNAMI, the United Nations Assistance Mission to Iran, said that children awaiting trial at severely overcrowded Tobchi prison, Baghdad, said they had been tortured and sexually abused while in custody in adult facilities prior to their transfer to Tobchi, and showed the marks to prove it. And at Karkh juvenile prison, children showed skin sores from lying on soggy mattresses in temperatures that average 112 during the day.

Former President Jimmy Carter wrote in "Our Endangered Values" (Simon & Schuster) that the Red Cross found after visiting six U.S. prisons "107 detainees under eighteen, some as young as eight years old." And reporter Hersh, (who broke the Abu Ghraib torture scandal,) reported 800-900 Pakistani boys aged 13 to 15 in custody. President Carter wrote that the Red Cross, Amnesty International and the Pentagon "have gathered substantial testimony of torture of children, confirmed by soldiers who witnessed or participated in the abuse."

In an effort to conceal conditions in its Iraqi compounds, the U.S. has closed them to human rights monitors such as AI, HRW, and the International Federation of Human Rights, says Ciara Gilmartin, the Security Council Program Coordinator at Global Policy Forum(GPF), a New York-based organization that seeks to strengthen international law.

GPF called for opening the Iraqi detention facilities "to national and international observers" and for establishing clear accountability for U.S. officers and contractors in charge of the prisons.

"The whole abusive system must be thoroughly overhauled or closed down," Gilmartin said. "U.S. military and civilian leaders are not the only ones complicit in the abuse and lack of due process of Iraqi detainees. All who stay silent in the face of the Iraq gulag allow it to continue."

In 2005, the AP reported from Geneva that UNICEF was "profoundly disturbed" by reports of abuse of children in Iraq prisons. "Any mistreatment, sexual abuse, exploitation or torture of children in detention is a violation of international law," UNICEF spokesman Damien Peronnaz said.

According to a report by Felicity Arbuthnot published last June 9th in Global Research, the UN Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomarswarmy, said children are not allowed any outside lawyers and may be held hostage to force an adult family male to give himself up.

HRW said that as of February of this year the length of detention for children was more than 130 days and "some children have been detained for more than a year without charge or trial, in violation of the Coalition Provisional Authority memorandum on criminal procedures. Not surprisingly, "One of the biggest complaints (by Iraqis) is that the vast majority of (U.S.) detainees have not been charged with any crime," David Enders writes in the October 27 issue of The Nation.

Although President Bush says he reads the Bible, the words about children Matthew ascribes to Jesus may not have sunk in and so are worthy of repeating: "Who so shall offend one of these little ones...it were better that a millstone was hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."

The old assumptions and paradigms about capitalism and free markets are dead. A new, virulent populism, still inchoate, is slowly and painfully rising to take their place. This populism will determine the future of the country. It is as likely to be right-wing as left-wing.


I watched these competing populisms flicker Thursday night at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., when I moderated a debate between independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader and Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin. The two candidates come from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Nader, in essence, is a democratic socialist in the mold of Eugene Debs or Norman Thomas. Baldwin, a founder and minister at the Crossroad Baptist Church in Pensacola, Fla., is an evangelical, right-wing populist.

Baldwin, like Nader, rails against corporatism and our involvement in foreign wars, wants to repeal NAFTA and denounces the curtailment of civil liberties. But Baldwin goes on to support the abolishment of whole departments of the federal government, such as the Department of Education. He calls for U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations and NATO, the elimination of the Food and Drug Administration, the outlawing of abortion and removing all restrictions on the purchasing of firearms. One of his catchier campaign slogans is: "To help keep your family safe and your country free, go buy a gun." He wants to seal our borders, deny amnesty and social services to illegal immigrants and end birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants. He calls for dismantling the Federal Reserve and the Internal Revenue Service, overturning the 16th Amendment and the personal income tax, and returning the American monetary system to hard assets: gold and silver.

These candidates, while marginal figures in the current election, express the two forms of populism that will soon find a wide political currency. The anger toward our elites will morph into rage. These new populisms may not be articulated by Nader and Baldwin, but they will be articulated by people like Nader and Baldwin.

The ideological foundations of free-market economics and a consumer society have collapsed. This collapse is hard for us to fathom. We are still in shock and denial. We cling to old structures of meaning and outdated words to describe them. We have yet to realize that all our political science and economic textbooks have become junk. We have yet to formulate a vocabulary to describe our altered reality. We grasp, on a subliminal level, that laissez-faire capitalism is gone, but we have not viewed the corpse, scheduled the funeral and read the last rites.

"People get very clearly that Washington found hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out rich people in a way the government does not usually intervene," said Anthony Pollina, The Progressive Party candidate for governor in Vermont. "They understand that the government came up with all this money to support the wrong group of people. People get that in their gut. There is anger. It is not rage yet. There is still a little bit of disbelief. I may be running for governor, but all people want to talk about is how did we come up with all this money to give to rich people on Wall Street and why didn't they let them pay their mortgage off."

Millions of people will lose their homes. Jobs and savings will vanish. The government will continue to lurch from crisis to crisis. The greed of huge corporations, especially as they continue to cannibalize the country, will see them, and our elites, become the enemy. Exxon, to give one example, made $40.61 billion in profits last year while we struggled to fill the tanks of our automobiles and trucks. Oil and gas corporations, despite these profits, ruthlessly refuse to fill furnaces in winter when people cannot pay the bills. AIG, the insurance giant, after being saved with an infusion of $85 billion in taxpayer money, squandered $440,000 on an executive visit to a California spa. It spent $86,000 for its executives to hunt partridges in the English countryside and then blithely asked the U.S. government for an additional $38 billion.

Elites, when they confuse the artificial court life of Versailles with the real world, die. These capitalist entities, grossly out of touch, incompetent, blinded by greed and power and morally and intellectually bankrupt, are committing collective suicide.

"People are beginning to understand that when the economy is weak you have to put people to work," Pollina, who is now outpolling the Democratic candidate, said. "We have a crumbling infrastructure in the state and a need for affordable housing. I have put forward three or four different ways to raise revenue to put people to work, including closing a loophole in our capital gains tax. I think people are attracted to me because they are realizing that this is now the most important thing we can do. We have to put people to work. We cannot continue to abandon them."

The flagrant corruption of our political system - hostage to the hundreds of millions of dollars handed out by the corporations and elites to Democratic and Republican candidates - will become clearer as our initial shock wears off. The new American will be about the basics - jobs, food, health care and a place to live. We will discard the old vocabulary, the one still used by the Democratic and Republic parties, and learn to speak in the fiery language of populism. We will turn with a vengeance on the 1 percent that has amassed more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. The populist conflict will see a battle between a frightened and dispossessed majority and the corporations and elites who seek to ruthlessly cling to power and wealth.

"Over the years people became disengaged," Pollina said. "They stopped paying attention. This crisis has forced them to pay attention. It directly affects their economic future and ability to put food on the table. Outrage will lead to more involvement. This outrage could, however, fuel a right-wing populism around the country, although not in Vermont. Here I think people will move more to the left. In Vermont they have somewhere else to turn - I am here, Bernie Sanders is here, the Progressive Party is here - but on the national level this could see people turn to the right wing."

A victory by Barack Obama may embolden right-wing populists. They will be able to use Obama and "liberal Democrats" as a lightning rod for the failings, growing poverty and incompetence of the state. The elite, as happens in all such moments of confusion, revolt and social chaos, will probably be forced to make an uncomfortable alliance with right-wing populists if they want to survive. The center of the political spectrum will melt.

"A lot of people feel the two parties have reached a consensus that all they have to do is support rich people to protect their hides," Pollina said. "The two parties have come together to throw money at people who do not need it. People are beginning to understand they are no better off and probably their grandkids will pay for this. There is a great deal of resentment over the fact that Republicans and Democrats will risk everything to prop up rich people."

We have begun a socialist experiment. George W. Bush and John McCain, in stunning repudiations of all they claimed to believe, call for massive state intervention in the financial markets and the use of billions in government funds to buy major stakes in banks. The question is not whether we will build state socialism. This process has already begun. The only question left is whether this will be right-wing or left-wing socialism.

The left, with a few exceptions, like the Progressive Party in Vermont, has largely thrown in its lot with the Democratic Party. Right-wing populists, as is evidenced by the acrimonious split in the McCain campaign, remain clustered around the fiefdoms of large megachurches that stoke hatred and frightening totalitarian visions of a Christian state. The left has no correlating centers of activism, organization or mass support, especially with the decline of labor unions. If left-wing populists do not rapidly build local organizations, as was done in Vermont, to compete with the right-wing populism of the Christian right, the most dangerous mass movement in American history, they will be easily swept aside.

There is not much time left. A Democratic victory in November may signal not a reversal of our fading fortunes but the start of a precipitous slide toward the Christian dystopia peddled by people like Baldwin.

Naomi Wolf is one of the brave voices. She warns in this video that a coup has taken place and that we have a small window of time within which to reverse things.

I agree with Ms. Wolf in most particulars but do see things in some respects quite differently. I will get to those differences at the end - I encourage you to read the links within this post as they elaborate much further on what's going on and why - but first, a short list of what I would describe as critical points along this sliding path to a police state.

As Wolf has pointed out in her book, The End of America, the initial stages of a "shift" contain fascist elements side-by-side with liberal democratic elements. This stage of co-existence can go on for some time, but sooner or later the fascist elements eat up the democratic ones. For those who aren't paying proper attention, in other words, day-to-day life can appear quite normal while the horrors build and build in the background.

Paying proper attention in our conditions means going outside of what the Democratic Party and the mass media are directing our attention to. Most people in this country aren't accustomed to doing this as they largely take their cues about what's going on and what they can and should do about it from the political leadership class.

But this is a terrible mistake in our case. Millions of people have got to step outside of the customary and into doing things that are outside their comfort zones. Being comfortable in one's political actions in times such as these will prove fatal.

1) The coup might be properly described as a rolling coup in that there have been distinct nodal points along the way, a description that I think Naomi would agree with (she has spoken of a "fascist shift.") The first nodal point was the surrender by Al Gore and the mass media in 2000 to Bush and Cheney's stealing the election. Gore could have, should have, and didn't, call for his supporters to march on the Supreme Court to demand that all the votes be counted. Once this election was allowed to be stolen in the open through the machinations of the Supremes, the die was cast for everything else that has followed.

2) The second nodal point was the USA PATRIOT Act's passage after 9/11 that gave unprecedented powers to the government to snoop and overrule core elements of civil liberties under the rubric of the unending "war on terror." The acceptance by the rest of the political leadership class of the "GWOT" has been absolutely critical to allowing the rampage of the Bush regime and their followers. It represents the foundation for a police state under any future president.

3) The third nodal point was the 2004 election being stolen - again in plain sight - with the Democratic Party and the mass media again permitting this to happen and refusing to investigate, let alone even mention, the mountains of evidence of fraud.

4) The fourth nodal point was the 2006 Military Commissions Act that abrogated habeas corpus and legalized torture.

5) The fifth nodal point was the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 that gave the president emergency powers.

6) The sixth nodal point was the Democrats' failure to defund the Iraq War and their withdrawal of language from a resolution that would have prevented an attack on Iran by Bush. In addition, in 2007 the Democratic majority in Congress also declared that they would not do anything about the eminently hackable voting machines until at least 2010, thus making a stolen election in 2008 a real possibility, indeed, a likelihood.

7) The seventh nodal point was the issuance of NSPD-51 and HSPD-20 that provided secret policies for the continuity of government (i.e., emergency powers/martial law). When Representative DeFazio was denied access to these procedures in July 2007 and the story wasn't covered by the mainstream press, the story was allowed to pass unremarked upon.

8) The eighth nodal point was on and after April 8, 2008 when Bush admitted approving torture and the rest of the US leadership class said nothing and did nothing when they should have called for and moved immediately for his removal from office.

9) The ninth nodal point was the surrender by the all-progressives' Minneapolis City Council to the police state by their green lighting in advance the fascistic measures seen in the streets of St. Paul and Minneapolis during the RNC and the failure of the mass media to give proper coverage to this clear evidence that free assembly and free speech were no longer to be respected. It reflected the coming home of "shock and awe," the use of the bogus claim of terror to crack down in pre-emptive attacks on American protestors, and the use of torture-lite on at least one protestor.

10) The tenth nodal point was the October 2008 knuckling under of Congress to the "sky is falling" claims by the White House demanding the $700 Billion bailout and the warnings to certain unnamed reluctant Representatives of martial law if they didn't vote for the bailout.

11) The eleventh nodal point was October 2008 Bush's ordering the day-to-day control by U.S. Army North, the Army component of Northern Command (NorthCom), of the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team who could and will be used to quell U.S. "civil disturbances."

Naomi Wolf speaks clearly and specifically to the last two items on this list in the video below.

* * *

Ms. Wolf calls for the coup conspirators' arrests by District Attorneys. While I would and do support such an action, I think that we need to be clear here on what exactly it's going to take to stem this ugly tide and turn things around. What force will it take to do this? It will take the collective actions of the masses of people in this country. Such a massive action of millions will not materialize as a single act. It is something that must be built for and our efforts need to be aimed at bringing this into being as soon as possible.

The first thing we have to realize, and I know that this is a hard truth for many to face, is that elections don't mean a damn thing in this context. Even if you believe that electing Obama is critical, the chances that the 2008 election will be stolen, as have the last two, is very real and very likely. The grounds for "explaining" such an outcome, "proving" the pre-elections' polls "wrong" again are already with us: the surreptitious white racist vote and the energized Christian fascist vote. How many times do we have to be slammed in the head with the hard reality that votes are easy to steal before we realize that putting all of your hopes into your vote isn't the way to go? Money donated to the Democrats is wasted money. Supporting Obama (or any other third-party candidate) at this point is not only a waste, it takes away from the desperately needed real work to mobilize millions as an independent political force to fundamentally alter the balance of forces in the society. Funneling people, energy and resources into the electoral arena when yet another stolen election is probable and when the Democrats have repeatedly, blatantly, and criminally colluded with the Bush Regime on all fronts is a crime. You don't fight against fascists by supporting the enablers of fascists.

Our energies need to go - on the level of everyday life - into mobilizing the independent actions of the people. This is what the spreading of orange ribbons and other forms of orange in everyday life means: the public declaration that we stand against torture and against imperialist wars and that we call for others to also publicly declare themselves until millions are doing this.

Some might say, what will having a lot of orange do? The gendarmes will just round up the orange people. What this view fails to understand is that politics is determined by a combination of what is in people's heads and the use of coercion. Coercion only works if those who are using the force aren't losing the battle for public opinion. If enough people - who DO represent the large majority - are acting in open and public ways that manifest the PEOPLE's sentiments and that DO reflect truth and justice, then clampdowns with police state actions will not bury the movement but will expose the fundamentally monstrous nature of those using it and spur on others to step forward and further isolate the relatively small numbers who are the enemies of the people. This is a dynamic that has characterized every revolution.

Rolling back the fascist assault must and can happen. We don't have a great deal of time. Forcing war criminal John Yoo out of his UC Berkeley Law Professorship is an important battle. It will be an important victory and open the door to turning the tide against the war criminals who run this country now. Shutting down military recruiters preying on our youth is another important battlefront in this fight to change the future that we see unfolding in real time before us. Support and defend the RNC-8. Donate your money and your time to an organization that has consistently fought for the necessity to rely upon and mobilize the people - the World Can't Wait.

Finally, I agree with Wolf's sense of urgency here. But it is crucial to understand that mobilization can occur under varying conditions and we are not doomed if we do not mobilize sufficient numbers in a certain time frame. If the coup conspirators aren't arrested within three months or so, in other words, they don't necessarily win. The sooner we mobilize the forces necessary, the better, and we don't have anytime to waste because Wolf is right about fascism in the making. But even after fascism is officially and openly in power, should this come to pass, this doesn't mean that the rebellion is doomed. We need to be on the one hand alarmed at what's going on, but we also have to guard against getting freaked out and then becoming paralyzed into inaction.