Politics Plus

Even in time of war, allowances must be made to care for the personal needs of people on opposing sides.  Sadly that does not always allowed.

While the Israeli army’s crossings into Gaza have gone into near-lockdown mode since Hamas wrested control of the coastal strip more than two years ago, Israeli human rights organizations have regularly stepped in to intervene, with some success.

That is, until last week. On Sunday, a group of the most active human rights groups here were informed that the government-run body that controls access to and from Gaza will no longer deal with them.

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) sent an official letter on Sept. 13 to three human rights groups informing them that they would no longer be able to act on behalf of Palestinians with urgent requests to leave Gaza – generally for medical care, to visit a sick family member, or to attend a funeral. They must instead refer such requests to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee, in accordance with the Interim Agreement – the basis of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation established in 1995 under the Oslo peace process.

The letter notes that the "longstanding" policy of carrying out such appeals in conjunction with Palestinian authorities has been approved by Israel’s High Court of Justice. But the organizations say it is part of the military’s increasing resistance to working with human rights groups in the wake of the Gaza war.

The organizations include Gisha: the Legal Center for the Freedom of Movement, Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, and HaMoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual. They say they have increasingly had their appeals ignored since the war in January. This latest step, the groups complain, takes away one of the few avenues of recourse available to desperate Palestinians.

"Gaza residents have no direct access to the [Israeli] military officials who decide their fates, and up until now they had a chance to have an advocate bring their case before the military and get some sense of due process," says Sari Bashi, the director of Gisha, based in Tel Aviv.

Ms. Bashi, a lawyer, says Gisha and other groups only pick up cases where Palestinians who applied for permits – which they are told to do through the Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee – either had their applications rejected or were never given an answer.

"The new procedure means that Palestinians no longer have a right to have an advocate that they chose to help them, and everyone has a right to an advocate," Bashi says. [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Christian Science Monitor>

Whether or not people can receive medical care, visit sick family members, or attend funerals has nothing whatsoever to do with the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  To deprive people of these humanitarian needs is cruel.  However, I think the real reason is that allowing human rights groups advocate for people, whose requests Israel’s Palestinian Affairs Committee had rejected, put Israel in the position of granting reasonable requests or having the knowledge of their refusal to do so publically known.  The Netanyahu government wants to maintain cruelty in secret.  I find this hateful, and think The US should stand against this change.

Our President had a busy day yesterday, taking on two major issues.  The first is climate change.

"In a historic address to the world today at the U. N. Climate Summit, President Barack Obama acknowledged what no other U.S. president has acknowledged before: That the United States has not been living up to its historical responsibility to respond to climate change: “It is true that for too many years, mankind has been slow to respond to or even recognize the magnitude of the climate threat. It is true of my own country as well. We recognize that. But this is a new day.” In another first he acknowledged that developed countries like the United States “caused much of the damage to our climate” and “have a responsibility to lead.”

This was welcome news to the assembled delegates who received the clearest statement yet of America’s return to the global discussion on addressing our world’s biggest challenge.

Two new announcements stand out from the address.

First, that the United States will embark on a first ever program to track the amount of greenhouse gas pollution emitted throughout the country. The president made this announcement just moments prior to the EPA announcing a new reporting rule to establish an economy-wide program to monitor emissions covering approximately 13,000 large facilities accounting for 85 to 90 percent of U.S. emissions. This program would establish a critical baseline necessary to measure future success for domestic emission reduction programs. It would also go further to demonstrate to the rest of the world that we will have the capacity to measure, report, and verify our reductions, just as we expect developing countries to do eventually.

Second, that the United States will propose a phase out of fossil fuel subsidies at the G-20 meeting later this week in Pittsburgh, PA. This idea was originally floated in a letter to colleagues by White House G-20 leader Michael Froman on September 3 arguing that moving to an elimination of fossil fuel and electricity subsidies would “help energy markets work better and improve our energy efficiency.” While this letter was made public in the press last week the president’s speech today was the first official acknowledgment of this move. Though no details of this proposal are yet public suggestions are for eliminating non-needs based subsidies as well as providing assistance to non G-20 countries who take complimentary steps to reduce their subsidies as well. Both the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the International Energy Agency estimate that eliminating fossil fuel subsidies would reduce global emissions in 2050 by 10 percent. Raising this proposal at a forum that includes Saudi Arabia is a bold and unexpected move."

Read transcript of President Obama’s speech here. [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Center for American Progress>

Obama demonstrated bold leadership for which I commend him.  Sadly, the Senate’s decision to put off climate change until next year sends a weak signal to other nations, who will question whether they can depend on the US to follow Obama’s plan.

The second issue is Middle East peace.

President Barack Obama may be laying the groundwork to abandon his quest for an immediate Israeli settlement freeze and instead try to get Israel and the Palestinians directly into peace negotiations.

Obama emerged from talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials on Tuesday without the orchestrated set of steps that he had hoped would allow him to announce a resumption of peace negotiations, which have been on ice since December.

Instead, he was reduced to stressing the urgency of ending the six-decade conflict and exhorting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to show "flexibility and common sense and sense of compromise."

The outcome, analysts said, suggested the limitations of trying to secure confidence-building steps in advance and may presage a drive to go directly to full-blown negotiations even though neither side yet seems ready for them.

"It’s clearly a lost cause," Daniel Kurtzer, a retired U.S. diplomat who now teaches at Princeton University, said of Obama’s effort to get Israel, the Palestinians and Arab states to make reciprocal gestures before the resumption of talks.

Washington wanted Israel to halt all building of Jewish settlements on the West Bank, which it has occupied since the 1967 Middle East War. It also wanted the Palestinians to do more to prevent violence against Israelis and Arab nations to take steps toward normalizing relations with the Jewish state.

None of these were in place as Obama met Netanyahu and Abbas first separately and then in a trilateral meeting, the highest-level talks between the two sides in nearly a year.

Both sides are at odds over a starting point for any future negotiations on core issues such as the borders and the future of Jerusalem and a Palestinian state.

Inserted from <Reuters>

I think Obama is correct to try to bet  them talking without preconditions.  It’s better than not talking at all.  However, I still see no chance of peace unless Israel stops building settlements in Palestinian territory.  I don’t see Israel doing that without a very hard line from Obama.  If the situation continues, eventually the takeover of Palestinian territory by Israel will eventually become a fait accompli.   I think that’s exactly what Israel wants.  Obama must make settlement building so costly to Israel that ceasing the construction and negotiating in good faith becomes attractive.

A Texas death row inmate won’t be able to argue for a new trial, despite admissions of an affair between his trial judge and the prosecutor, a court announced Wednesday.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled 6-3 that convicted murderer Charles Dean Hood should have raised concerns about the affair between the now retired court officials in earlier appeals. The ruling overturned a lower court’s recommendation that Hood be able to make his case for a new trial based on the affair.

"Our argument is that they had this information and should have raised it in the earlier writ," said current prosecutor John Rolater, the chief of Collin County’s appellate division. "We consider this a significant success for the state."

Hood’s attorneys said in a statement that the affair led to a tainted trial and "obvious and outrageous violations" of Hood’s constitutional rights. The ruling will "only add to the perception that justice is skewed in Texas," said Andrea Keilen, of the Texas Defender Service.

The rejection from the state’s highest criminal appeals court means a future appeal on the same grounds must go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"No one would want to be prosecuted for a parking violation — let alone for capital murder — by a district attorney who is sleeping with the judge," another Hood attorney Greg Wiercioch said. "We are outraged by this breakdown in the integrity of the justice system. … Mr. Hood is entitled to a new trial before an impartial judge and a fair prosecutor."

Hood’s attorneys have said they could not raise the issue of the affair until last year, because it wasn’t yet a known fact… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <AP/Google>

What a mess!  Now I have no idea whether or not the guy is actually guilty.  He denies it.  But the ruling by the appeals court is horrific!

Apparently there is some question about where the Taliban got the weapons they are using to kill our troops in Afghanistan.

In support of the official United States assertion that Iran is arming its sworn enemy, the Taliban, the head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Dennis Blair, has cited a statement by a Taliban commander last year attributing military success against North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces to Iranian military assistance.

But the Taliban commander’s claim is contradicted by evidence from the US Defense Department, Canadian forces in Afghanistan and the Taliban themselves that the increased damage to NATO tanks by Taliban forces has come from anti-tank mines provided by the United States to the jihadi movement against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s…

Inserted from <Asia Times>

The Reagan Administration provided substantial aid the Afghan rebels.  They even gave Osama bin Laden $300 million taxpayer dollars to help finance the formation of Al Qaeda, which was intended to commit terrorists acts against the Russians.  That came back to bite us in the arse, didn’t it?  Were it not or the GOP’s willingness to invest in terrorism, 9/11 would nave never happened, and we would not be in this mess today.  And this is not an isolated incident GHW Bush gave Iran arms for hostages at the same time that he was financing Saddam’s war against Iran.  Donald Rumsfeld brokered the deal whereby Saddam first acquired chemical weapons, and GW Bush, aka Crawford Caligula, installed the corrupt Karzai regime in Afghanistan.  I hope that Obama will do better and realize that there is no way to sleep with dogs without getting fleas.

Elsewhere Human Rights Watch has issued a call or the investigation of Rumsfeld and Tenet for torture.

The United States should name a special prosecutor to investigate the culpability of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and ex-CIA Director George Tenet in cases of detainee torture and abuse, Human Rights Watch said in releasing a new report today.

The report, Getting Away with Torture? Command Responsibility for the U.S. Abuse of Detainees, is issued on the eve of the first anniversary of the publication of the Abu Ghraib photos (April 28). It presents substantial evidence warranting criminal investigations of Rumsfeld and Tenet, as well as Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, formerly the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Gen. Geoffrey Miller the former commander of the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

“The soldiers at the bottom of the chain are taking the heat for Abu Ghraib and torture around the world, while the guys at the top who made the policies are going scot free,” said Reed Brody, special counsel for Human Rights Watch. “That’s simply not right.”

Human Rights Watch said that there was now overwhelming evidence that U.S. mistreatment and torture of Muslim prisoners took place not merely at Abu Ghraib but at facilities throughout Afghanistan and Iraq as well as at Guantánamo and at “secret locations” around the world, in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the laws against torture…

Inserted from <Salem News>

In my opinion, the US should name a special prosecutor to investigate Bush, Cheney and at least a dozen other top officials in their regime.  US Law requires it.  How can re ever regain credibility in the eyes of the world, if we ignore our own law to protect the perpetrators of some of the most outrageous crimes in our nation’s history?