Co-editors: Seán Mac Mathúna • John Heathcote
Consulting editor: Themistocles Hoetis
Field Correspondent: Allen Hougland
Israel:
Sharon Investigation Urged by Human Rights
Watch The
Man who would testify against Sharon is blown
up Israeli Peace
groups: Yesh
Gvul ("There is a limit !") The
Website of the Israeli Reservists Inside the US itself, the
suppression of dissent will be high on the Bush team's
agenda. So if George W is given the crown later
this year, watch the paranoia quotient rising. But not
too closely. While the population watches the bogeyman,
the rich rob the pockets of the poor. . . Flame
Editorial before the Bush - Gore Presidential
Campaign. Last night George W. Bush delivered
his State of the Union address to the Representatives of
American Government. The Pornography of War:
US Military corrupting culture Frightening in the banal
simplicities of it's 'us and them' rhetoric, the posturings
on freedom and morality, and its triumphant hubris in the
victory 'won' by the world's foremost techno-military
superpower against the poorest nation on earth. God help
them indeed, if they hadn't 'won'. They were fighting an
enemy with an air force comprising two working planes (one
of the pilots defected, to make matters worse); and whose
idea of mobile land forces was a fleet of second-hand Toyota
pick-up trucks filled with over-zealous, gun-toting youth;
many barely out of High School. It could have been some
Texas backwater, but it seems to have encouraged the
armchair strategists into thinking that the Afghanistan
campaign can be used as a model of the successful
application of American military power for any
problem. Western cinemas and TV is
saturated with the violent pornography of countless
Hollywierd movies; all the Chuck Norris and Black Hawk
Down travesties. The latter glosses over the brutal
truth of the US Somalia campaign, which cost the lives of at
least 5000 civilians during the operation featured in the
film. British-born director, Ridley Scott claimed his film
was 'anti-war but pro-military'. What a hypocrite. . . if
you make propaganda for the most destructive force on Earth,
at least be proud of it or stay quiet. Also deserving of a
future Oscar for deception and fraud is the future film
reported to be issuing from the Dreamworks Corporation.
showing the brave US commandos capturing the Greek island of
Symi during the Second World War. Obviously cashing in on
the (also historically inaccurate) 'Captain Corelli's
Mandolin', the film will apparently ignore the reality that
Symi was actually captured by British soldiers; and the
Americans did not arrive until on Symi until 1946, by which
time most history books record WWII as being over. The film
follows in the footsteps of previous great Hollywood war
epics; from last year's film U-Boat
571 which showed how
American naval divers captured the Enigma Cypher machine
from a Nazi submarine ( an operation in fact carried out
wholly by the British Navy, with the codes being deciphered
at Bletchley Park in England); to those 'classic' Westerns
re-writing the history of the genocide of the Native
American peoples. These films don't just aim to
produce a distorted, biased perception of history; resulting
in an awe and fear of US Forces both at home and abroad,
their technology, personnel and ethical values. This grand
illusion is maintained by an umbilical link between
Hollywood and the Pentagon. For the domestic (US) audience,
it helps to justify the billions of dollars poured into
destructive and surveillance technology; from the wage
packets of ordinary US citizens straight into the pockets of
a few political fixers and faceless corporate
sharks. The trouble is primarily that the US
Government seems so convinced by its own propaganda, that it
is now looking around for another war to fight. Despite the
great cinema, it has never been proved that the US is
capable of winning a war on its own. Even the War of
Independence was won with the help of the French. If the US
itself were attacked - and not just in an isolated incident
like 911, then no doubt its enemy would have a real fight on
its hands. People are far more determined defending their
homeland and families than any attacker can ever be. After
all, there is nowhere else to run. For us, the peoples of the Rest of
the World (as well as many concerned US citizens) the danger
in the near future is that the US Government will pick an
enemy that it cannot beat - could be any developed nation
with a post-medieval infra-structure (not Afghanistan or
Somalia)- and in frustration, start to use not just
disproportionate, but irreversible destructive force for the
purpose of claiming 'victory'. Now with George W's
simplistic rhetoric describing an 'evil' axis, and his
schoolyard politics of 'If you're not for us, you're against
us'; it feels like the term Rogue Nation can only be applied
to one contender; and we can only hope we are not all
bystanders at our own funeral. Sure as hell, we're all
paying for it so I'm sure we'll all be invited. The Phillipines is slowly being
drawn into the web of US military operations. Andrew Murray
(author of Flashpoint; World War III, pub.Pluto),
writing in The Guardian (30/01/02) noted that this is the
beginning of a strategy laid out in the Pentagon's
Quadrennial Defence Review which was published at the end of
2001. North-East Asia and the East Asian littoral were
described as the "critical areas" for American influence in
the forthcoming decade. Murray points out that the Abu
Sayyaf 'guerilla' group numbers no more than 500 badly
trained fighters; against the 600 US Special Forces and
British 'advisers'. They pose no real or substantial
threat to either the Phillipine Government, or international
order. However, this latest deployment should be seen in the
light of the 40,000 US troops in South Korea, the 40,000 in
Japan; the bases in Hawaii and it's client state of Taiwan;
along with the post 9.11 bases that have emerged in the
Cental Asian post-Soviet States. An opportunity for some
jungle training perhaps, before the main show begins. As
Russia pulls back its forces from Cuba to North Vietnam
(recently vacating their naval base at Cam Ranh Bay), the US
military -industrial establishment is preparing for the
emergence of a competitor it cannot ignore. As Murray points
out in his article, the Central Asian oil reserves are not
the only prize to be won. (Surprising omissions; No mention in
George W's speech of Enron , his father or Guatanomo Bay. No
mention either, amongst all the other victims of recent
tragedy, of US journalist Daniel Pearl recently taken
hostage in Pakistan. He wouldn't want the gloss wearing off
the New World Order.) Guantanomo Bay; Public
Face of a Brutal Nation Much wry amusement has been had in
Britain at the revelation that three of the five British
citizens being held in the cages of Guantonomo Bay are
residents of the insignificant Midlands suburb of Tipton.
Not traditionally included in the usual list of'recruiting
centres' for international terrorism; the obvious conclusion
is that the US, at the very least is holding a number of
very young men who, however misguided, are hardly the
Goldfingers or Bin-Ladens of any group,let alone the
nebulous Al-Quaida. They are being held in dehumanising and
many would say, barbaric conditions. If the US airmen captured by China
last year had been treated in such a way, there is no doubt
that the majority of US citizens would have been horrified.
The sad truth is that it will only be when US forces or
citizens experience captivity themselves, with no fallback
on the Geneva Convention Protocols on the treatment of
Prisoners of War, that their people may start to be less
complacent about the human rights of non-US
citizens. In a country which has 2 million of
its citizens in gaol, that is a quarter of the World's
prison population, often in the most clinically brutal
conditions, the detainees might indeed be thankful that they
are not incarcerated in a Supermax gaol, specialising in
bright-light solitary confinement over periods leading to
psychological fragmentation; or a regular US high security
establishment, where male rape and race gangs are used as a
way of controlling the prisoners. If any of them end up
there, with the murderers and kidnappers,gangsters and
psychopaths, they can expect to meet a fair number of
inmates doing life terms for non-violent petty crime under
the notorious 'three strikes' rule. Of the 6,700 prisoners incarcerated
for 25 year minimum terms in California, over half have no
record of violent offences. People will not see their
families until they are old, and their children have grown
up without a parent - no doubt providing future secure
income for the Prison Corporations -for such crimes as
possession of $10 of heroin (Chano Orozco) or stealing a
transistor radio from an unoccupied house (Derek Lawson).
(Information from FACTS - Families to Amend California's
Three Strikes). It is interesting to note the
astonishment shown by member's of the Bush Regime - notably
former Nixon aide Donald ( Duck! - here come the
Daisycutters) Rumsfeld - at the horror shown by
representatives of Human Rights organisations and national
governments, including the British Parliament, at the
treatment of prisoners being held at Guantanomo
Bay. The US Government has decided to
unilaterally exempt itself from the Geneva Convention
concerning the rights of prisoners of war. This follows the
Bush Regime's decision to withdraw from the Kyoto Treaty on
the Environment, the SALT 2 Treaty, the Geneva Convention on
Biological Weapons, the UN Conference on Racism, and various
near unanimous resolutions at the UN concerning the State of
Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. Leaving aside all
moral issues (I think that those arguments have no effect on
such people) it is perhaps more obvious to the Europeans,
who had far longer experience of Empire and Decline than the
USA, that how you treat people on the way up comes back to
haunt you on the way down. In fact; it has an immediate
affect on how your enemies percieve you; and what they, as
fellow human-beings, feel capable of inflicting on you. This
has been proved with immediate effect by the kidnapping of a
US journalist in Pakistan, who - despite the threat of
imminent execution by his captors - did not seem to deserve
a mention in the pResident's Address. It is perhaps not surprising that
someone who so deftly sidestepped military service in
Vietnam thanks to family connections, and whose
international travels were four jaunts to Mexico in the last
ten years previous to the 'election', should have little
concern for the future treatment of captured US service
personnel or citizens abroad. Colin Powell, as an
ex-soldier, raised his head above the parapet, perhaps more
conscious of the justified fears of servicemen. But sadly,
the majority of US media and citizen feedback seems to show
very little interest in what is seen in the rest of the
world as blatantly inhuman and illegal treatment of human
beings. Two points; Prisoners taken in war should be treated
as prisoners of war under the terms of the Geneva Convention
until a properly constituted court decides otherwise. At
this point, they can become subject to the common law of the
State which holds them, with the due protection that it
offers to its own citizens. This applies everywhere, in all
cases; not 'just to everyone but the victors'. It is a
safeguard that protects not just the captives from torture
and inhumane treatment, but the captors from becoming
barbaric themselves. Secondly, human rights are for human
beings; not just for those that a particular regime (in this
case the Bush Govt.) decide should be granted them. Oh, and
one more point. Rumsfeld seemed to find the journalists' use
of the word "cages" for the prisoners' pens in Cuba
offensive. Here is a definition of the word from the
dictionary, followed by a newspaper description of the
horror of Guantanomo Bay from a British tabloid (which
despite being fairly right-wing have nearly all expressed
horror with the conditions in Camp X-Ray). The Stanford Prison Experiment was
run by psychologist Phillip Zimbardo in 1971. A group of
volunteers were divided into prisoners and warders. Using
classic prison ploys aimed at dehumanising the prisoners,
the experiment soon degenerated to the extent that it had to
be abandoned. [For example] less
than 36 hours into the experiment. Prisoner no. 8612
began suffering from acute emotional disturbance,
disorganised thinking, uncontrollable cryring, and rage.
In spite of all of this, we had already come to think so
much like prison authorities that we thought he was
trying to con us -to fool us into releasing
him."..... Furthermore, the Zimbardo
"guards" were escalating their abuse of prisoners in the
middle of the night wben they thought no researchers were
watching and the experiment was off " said Zimbardo.
"Their boredom had driven them to ever more pornographic
and degrading abuse of the prisoners. This included
middle-of-the-night strip searches, making the prisoners
clean the toilets with their hands. and tripping them
when they walked past. It demoralised the volunteers so
thoroughly that they lost all sense of the artificiality
of the project." Extracts from The Guardian 16th
October 2001. The article above described how the
BBC were planning to re-run the SPE as a Big Brother type
game show called The Experiment. The article
continued: It was announced in the final week
of January 2002 that The Experiment had been called off, due
to the same reasons that had affected the original Stanford
trial. To conclude . . . LATE NEWS, On
Sunday 3rd February 2002, British TV's Channel 4 News shows
footage from Camp X-Ray of 'detainees' being transported
around the Camp on trolley stretchers. Camp Commandant
Oberstumbanfuhrer . . . sorry, wrong war . . . a senior US
Army officer from the camp, interviewed on the Channel 4
News report accompanying the footage, denied that any
mistreatment of the captives was taking place. He admitted
that all detainees, injured or otherwise, were being
transported to their 'interrogation' sessions on trolley
stretchers for their own convenience, as well as the
security of his troops. Aside from the obvious suspicion,
voiced by a British official of Amnesty International on the
same report, that the men might well have been drugged or
sedated before their interrogation, is the possibility that
the cages are so small, and the scope for movement in their
manacled shuffles to the shower so limited, that many of
them are suffering muscle wastage, as well as the quite
probable psychological breakdown that those conditions will
inevitably result from such conditions. You don't need the
moral high ground to say that this treatment is inhuman; or
the gift of prophecy to say that it will come back to haunt
those who enforce it. Conscripts' Petition against the
Occupation A petition issued by officers
of the Israeli forces calling on soldiers and reservists
to refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories,
originally published in the Israeli press on January 25.
For those who bear the
instruments of war - and we are among them, Some in
practice, Some by a hug of approval - Are sucked,
mumbling "necessity" and "vengeance", Into the domain of
war crimes. Nathan
Alterman, 1948 Unlike previous protests at the
policies of the Sharon regime from within Israel's Jewish
population, this one has struck at the core of his support;
and suggests that public opinion is becoming weary of the
spiralling descent into total violence. The first woman
suicide bomber from the Occupied Territories is a sign that
the desperation of the Palestinian people has reached a
stage where mutual annihilation seems like the only
possibility. Sharon meanwhile, claims that he is fighting
terrorism even as he reveals the true face of terror; his
wish that the political rapprochment of the last twenty
years had never happened, claiming in a recent interview
that he would have killed Arafat twenty years ago if he had
known what he does now. With the Bush regime replacing their
silent support of Sharon's aggression with more vocal
condemnations of Arafat, the destruction of the Palestinian
Authority and its relacement with Bantustan homelands
controlled by Israeli-sponsored gangsters or religious
fanatics is now more than a gleam in Sharons eye. However, as the brave fighters of
the Warsaw Ghetto proved, as long as people have the
strength to fight, they will resist the oppression that
treats them as sub-humans and threatens the life of their
children. Ironically, an Israeli army officer said that when
it came to putting down the Palestinian Intifada they should
learn from how the Nazi's crushed the resistance in the
Warsaw Ghetto. The following comes from a Gush
Shalom ad published in
Ha'aretz, February 1st, 2001: The following lines appeared
last Friday, Hanuary 25, 2002, in Haaretz, in an article
by the respected military correspondent Amir
Oren: If this officer believes that
the casbah of Nablus resembles the Warsaw ghetto, who, in
his mind, resemble the officers of the Israeli army ?
Sharon used fear to reach his
present heigh of political success; but it seems that the
mood in Israel may be changing. The intifada, or war, is
affecting everyday life for normal Israeli citizens that
must make them wonder what exactly is all the death and
violence achieving. Public opinion polls show that his
support has slipped from 57% to 48% since December. The poll
was done by the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv in January
2002. However, the greatest threat to his
determination to destroy the idea of a Palestinian State in
their homeland, and to turn their territories into large
impoverished concentration camps comes from within the
Israeli military itself. A petition, first published last
week in the Israeli press on January 25th,2001, by combat
reservists in the Israeli armed forces is attracting growing
support. An article in a British newspaper by Graharn Usher,
their reporter in Jerusalem wrote; Even the former head of the
Shin Bet intelligence service. Arm Ayalon, told Israeli
television that he felt "a lot of empathy for the reserve
officers" when they were asked to execute "blatantly
illegal" orders. "As far I'm concerned, too few soldiers
are refusing such orders.'To shoot an unarmed youth is a
blatantIv illegal order. I am very worried by the number
of Palestinian children shot in the last
year." . . . 50 more combat reservist
officers added their names to a petition calling on
soldiers to refuse to serve in the occupied territories.
There are now 101 signatories to the petition, which is
the most serious domestic challenge to his policies on
the Palestinians since he came to power. . .The
difference with the latest protest is its public
character, and the sympathetic hearing it has
received. Even the former head of the
Shin Bet intelligence service. Arm Ayalon, told Israeli
television that he felt "a lot of empathy for the reserve
officers" when they were asked to execute "blatantly
illegal" orders. "As far I'm concerned, too few soldiers
are refusing such orders.'To shoot an unarmed youth is a
blatantIv illegal order. I am very worried by the number
of Palestinian children shot in the last
year." The protest also resonates
with the predominant public mood of despair in Israel at
the continuing violent confrontation with the
Palestinians. The Guardian (02/02/2002). The article concluded with a quote
reminiscent of the last great misadventure that Sharon
dragged the State of Israel into - the invasion of Lebanon.
Avraham Burg, the Labour Speaker of the Israeli
parliament,who is due to speak to the Palestinian parliament
in Ramallah in the next few days said "The occupation
corrupts, or, more accurately, the occupation has already
corrupted." Sabra-Chatila Witnesses
assassinated An interesting footnote to Sharons
infamous career in Lebanon was the assassination in the
Lebanon of the man who could have provided damning evidence
against the Israeli PM had he lived. Elie Hobeika, a man
whose shifting allegiances had reflected the tragic history
of his country's recent past, was assassinated along with
three of his bodyguards in a massive car bomb blast on
January 24th 2002. Although he had become an unwelome
reminder of times most Lebanese would prefer to forget; and
had made countless enemies during the civil war, it was his
recent agreement to be a witness in any forthcoming trial
which concerns the massacre at Sabre- Chatila refugee camps
in 1982. Although primarily carried out by Phalangist
forces, the crimes occured within the Israeli Zone of
Control. A Belgian Court is currently deciding whether there
is enough evidence to mount a successful Human Rights
prosecution of Israel's then Defence Minister, Ariel
Sharon. His involvement in both the planning
and execution of the massacres has been alleged for years;
and inreasing amounts of evidence now seem to show that
Israeli intelligence and armed forces even used the terror
amongst the survivors to seperate remaining men from women,
and take them away to be interrogated (in many cases,
'disappeared') Hobeika was a warlord whose forces
were indisputably involved in the massacres, and who had
recently said that he was working under the orders of Mossad
at the time; and was prepared to give evidence in any
forthcoming trial. The bomb, apparently "the work of
professional assassins" according to the Lebanese police,
also killed a bystander and injured five others. Later
reports claimed that the car, although professionally
cleaned of any identification numbers was eventually traced,
with the help of its German manafacturers to a Lebanese
enclave known to still be a "hot-bed" of Israeli
intelligence activity. Another car crash killing a vital
witness to the massacre has raised the suspicion in The
Lebanon of possible Israeli cover-up, and thus involvement
in these two deaths. On 1st January 2002, just four days
before the death of Hobeika, Jean Ghanem died in a
"mysterious car crash" (Independent, 1/02/02). Ghanem, a
medical doctor who became a Phalangist party official and
served under Hobeika's ruthless command, was rumoured to
hold documents that his former boss intended to present to
Belgian lawyers in their attempt to indict Sharon for his
involvement in the massacre at Sabra and Chatila. However,
on New Years Day, Ghanem, who had no history of heart
problems, drove his car into a tree in a suburb of Hazimeh -
only a few hundred metres from the Hobeika was killed in a
massive car bomb four days later. Ghanem died two weeks
later after lying in a coma. His wife remains badly injured
by the attack. Hospital officials said he had a heart
attack, but now Lebanese authorities wish to exhume the body
for a second autopsy. Nabih Berri, the Speaker of the
Lebanese Parliament - who was also in command of Hobeika's
Al Waad Party - said the death may be linked to Hobeika's
murder. A third fromer militiaman with links
to the massacrewas shot dead in São Paulo, Brazil in
March 2002. Michael Nasser, who was a former associate of
Elie Hobeika was killed by a man firing a pistol equipped
with a silencer. His young wife, Marie, was shot down beside
him. Nasser, a nephew of the former general Antione Lahd,
grew wealthy from the Lebanese civil war and sold weapons
that formally belonged to Phalangists to Croatian militias
during the Balkans conflict. One of his ships carrying arms
was detained by the Yugoslav navy - which sent Nasser a
warehouse bill after the weapons were impounded. He fled The
Lebanon in 1997 after a court demanded he explain his
wealth, put at £70m. The reports came amid claims that
"dozens" of Palestinians who survived the massacre were
subsequently executed at a former barracks near Jounieh,
north of the capital. The prisoners As the unlucky executive at Enron
discovered, it doesn't pay to stick your head over the
parapet, for abstract concepts like the truth. But more of
that later. That's a story that will run and run; and Flame
eagerly awaits the next collapse of the capitalist castle;
one built on air and puffed up on the dreams of greedy
men.
. . . they hope to
reverse the last eight years of social legislation, and
at the same time discover some new - or old - enemies
that they can set up to frighten the US citizenry. Fear
is the greatest friend of reaction, and the enemy of
progress. The Cold War allowed the siphoning of billions
of dollars from the US Treasury. Unaccountable and
untraceable due to the firewalls of secrecy, Clinton's
ability to effect any meaningful redistribution of wealth
was hampered by the repayment of this debt, through the
taxes raised on working US citizens . . .
The speech announced the
largest increase in defence spending in 20 years, by
nearly $48bn (£33.9bn) to $379bn.The homeland
Security budget, which covers intelligence, border
patrols, police and emergency response teams, is to be
doubled to $38bn. (Guardian 30/01/02)
Adventures in the Orient; Jungle
Training in the Phillipinnes
Fortune magazine
published for the first time a ranking of China's 100
biggest corporations . . . Most of the biggest Chinese
companies on the Fortune list are in the same energy and
petrochemical sectors that appear to drive the Bush
administration's international agenda . . .
Three Strikes Supermax: The US
domestic prison business
Geneva Convention and Human
Rights
Cage n.,&
v.t. 1. n. Fixed or portable prison, of
wire or barred, esp. for birds or animals or prisoners of
war
p.128 The Concise Oxford DictionaryThe Stanford Prison Experiment and
Guantanomo Bay
"It wasn't until much
later that I realised how far in to my prison role I was"
Zimbardo observed in retrospect,"that I was thinking like
a prison superintendent rather than a research
psychologist.
None of this could
possibly happen in The Experiment, insist its
organisers. "Zimbardo set up his experiment rather
naively," says Holmes. "He didn't understand what he was
getting into. Some of the worst excesses happened because
there was inadequate supervision of what was going on
inside. We have been able to reap the benefit of what he
did, to design something that's a little more stable, a
little safer. We're certain it will be more controlled
and therefore more productive in terms of the science."-
So strip scarches have been ruled out ? " There are
limits to what we can do in terms of physical intrusions,
yes. But creating the psychological impression that they
have no privacy is important to us."
'We will not take part
in the war for the peace of the settlements We will not
fight beyond the Green Line [Israel's 1967 border
with the West Bank] in order to rule, expel, destroy,
blockade, assassinate, starve and humiliate an entire
people'.
LEARNING FROM THE
NAZIS?
"In order to prepare
properly for the next campaign, one of the Israeli
officers in the (occupied) territories said not long
ago, it's justified and in fact essential to learn
from every possible source. If the mission will be to
seize a densely populated refugee camp, or take over
the casbah in Nablus, and if the commander's
obligation is to try to execute the mission without
casualties on either side, then we must first analyze
and internalize the lessons of earlier battles - even,
however shocking it may sound, even how the German
army fought in the Warsaw ghetto."
This is incitement to
rebellion," the army's chief of staff, Shaul Mofaz, said
yesterday. Four petitioners have been suspended from
officer duties; the others are to face disciplinary
measures, the army said. The punishments follow prison
terms imposed on 49 reservists for refusing to serve in
the Occupied Territories since the intifada erupted 16
months ago.