Another socialist blog

The Iraqi government apparently thinks that the security agreement between the U.S. and Iraq must respect Iraqi sovereignty. A letter to Congress about the treaty, signed by a majority of the parliament, insists that:

The majority of Iraqi representatives strongly reject any military-security, economic, commercial, agricultural, investment or political agreement with the United States that is not linked to clear mechanisms that obligate the occupying American military forces to fully withdraw from Iraq.

Ouch.  Did no one explain it to them?  Are they missing the last few pages of the script?  The U.S. doesn’t recognize Iraqi sovereignty.  That much was clear as soon as Bush invaded.  Since then there have been some half-hearted efforts to create the pretense of Iraqi sovereignty, but really, what sovereignty does a country have that is under military occupation by a foreign power?  The U.S. appointed collaborators to run the government, exerted complete physical control of the 2005 election (U.S. troops handled all the ballot boxes and decided which districts would get ballot boxes at all), and operates beyond the reach of Iraqi law.  What part of the word “colony” do they not understand?

The Human Rights Tribune is reporting that the United States has apparently quit the Human Rights Council, an international body within the United Nations System whose purpose is to address human rights violations.  The U.S. had only observer status to begin with, by its own choice, but now has apparently withdrawn completely as a gesture of opposition to the policy of the Council.

This is a departure even for the Bush administration, which usually offers lip service to human rights while ignoring them in practice.  Perhaps they didn’t want any embarrassing questions about human rights violations at Guantanamo?  More likely, they don’t want to do anything to legitimize U.N. involvement in the enforcement of human rights, at a time when the pro-torture policy of the administration will be getting increasing public scrutiny.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will get the death penalty as sure as the sun will come up on January 20. The alleged mastermind of September 11th was arraigned in a military tribunal at Guantanamo today. As of yesterday his lawyers still hadn’t seen the evidence against him, which may be forever classified Top Secret. No matter; this tribunal isn’t going to be about actual due process, only the pretense of due process.

The defendant has supposedly confessed. At least his captors/torturers, who have shown zero regard for the rule of law so far, say so. Jonathan Stein made an interesting comment about Mohammed back in 2007:

The two questions I have are:

(1) Were these admissions the product of torture? I mean torture in the immediate sense and in the “KSM has been through the black site prison system for three years and has probably been tortured dozens of times, creating a lasting psychological effect that might impair his ability to think, judge, and communicate.” If KSM were to be tried in a court of law, would his confessions hold up?

(2) Should we be suspicious of the timing? Who knows when these admissions were actually made. All we do know — as Josh Marshall points out — is that their release is timed to knock Alberto Gonzales and the Attorney General flap off the front pages. Remember when Jose Padilla’s arrest was announced? John Ashcroft interrupted a trip to Russia to declare that the U.S. had arrested a domestic terrorist and heroically stopped his “dirty bomb” attack. As it turned out, Padilla had been arrested a month before and Ashcroft’s announcement was timed to knock a bunch of bad news out of the headlines. And the government could never prove the “dirty bomb” charge.

It’s a true shame that even when a really nasty guy is caught and proven guilty, alert citizens have to be suspicious and skeptical of the Administration’s behavior. But it poisoned the well from which we all drink.

Stein makes a good point about the timing. Here Mohammed is, being arraigned on the exact day when the news would otherwise be dominated by the first ever nomination of a person of color to be President of the United States. The so-called trial is scheduled for September, ensuring that we will have a steady diet of September 11th all that month and clear through to election day.

Barack Obama, now the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party, lost no time assuring the Israel lobby that it has his unquestioning support. Pandering to the supporters of Israel is nothing new in American politics, of course, but for a guy who claims to be all about change, Obama is looking an awful lot like reheated Bush.

Like George Bush, he continues to beat the drum of the supposed Iranian threat. Like George Bush, he is willing to threaten military action to stop Iran from exercising its sovereignty by building nuclear weapons. (Of course they shouldn’t build nukes, but they don’t have less right to do so than Israel and the U.S., both of which have recently started wars in the Middle East.) Like George Bush, he supports full funding of military assistance to Israel. Like George Bush, he supports enforcement of U.N. resolutions against Israel’s enemies, while ignoring U.N. resolutions against the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Like George Bush, Obama believes in one-sided preconditions for negotiations with Hamas, e.g., Hamas must renounce violence while Israel does not. Obama even says Jerusalem must remain the capital of Israel, going beyond even Republican policy.

With Obama in the White House we can forget about a one-state solution in which Palestinians can exercise their right to return to their homes in Israel. And we can forget about U.S. helping to dismantle the Berlin Wall that Israel is building deep inside Palestinian territory. Justice for the victims of Israeli war crimes? Forget about it. An end of the occupation? Oh please, we’ll be paying to maintain it.

Meet the new boss.

If former Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellan isn’t going to Hell, nobody’s going.  He helped the Bush administration use big-lie tactics to sell a war that has killed over six hundred thousand people.  Now he’s written a memoir in which he simultaneously accuses the Bush administration of dishonesty, and denies that he himself was an enthusiastic part of the conspiracy.

He must think we’ve all got short memories.  McClellan claimed to possess proof that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons.  He claimed Iraq supported terrorists.  He claimed that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program.  (These are documented at the excellent searchable database on Bush administration lies at http://www.publicintegrity.org.)  He strongarmed reporters who dared ask embarrassing questions about the war.  He lied for Bush about the Valerie Plame Wilson affair and then refused even to stand by his own remarks about the subject.

These lies, told with his very own lips, he spins as “It’s just the way the game’s become played in Washington….”  You’ve heard this argument before, usually from fourteen-year-olds, and usually phrased as “Everybody’s doing it.”  Bullshit.  He’s a liar.  He knew he was lying.  He could have refused to lie, but he didn’t because he knew he’d get fired.  Simple as that.  And he’s still lying now.  Because “I was deceived” sells more books than “I’m a lying scumbag.”

Charter Communications has announced that it will soon begin wiretapping its customers.

Well. They don’t call it wiretapping of course, they call it…”enhanced user experience.” By which they mean they will be looking at your web browser activity in detail, and inserting their own targeted ads based on whatever you happened to be doing at the time. Which, you might have imagined, was your own business.

I hardly know where to begin. Far from a paragon of virtue to start with, Charter proposes to invade the privacy of your private communications. Trust them, they promise they aren’t stealing credit card numbers or checking to see who’s been naughty and who’s been nice. Come on, if you can’t trust a big corporation who can you trust?

Surely they’ve got a good reason to demand you give up your rights, not to mention your peace of mind. Be assured, they do. But it’s not to protect you from terrorism, nor to protect your children from pedophiles, nor to stop spam or viruses from getting to your computer. They want to do it so you can enjoy more ads. That is, after all what you use the Internet for, right? Looking at commercials?