Ed Pearl
Thu, 22 Jan 2009 23:27:23 -0800
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21794.htm So, I asked the UN secretary general, isn't it time for a war crimes tribunal? Mr Ban said it would not be up to him to launch a war crimes tribunal. It was pathetic By Robert Fisk: January 19, 2009 "The Independent" -- -- - It's a wrap, a doddle, an Israeli ceasefire just in time for Barack Obama to have a squeaky-clean inauguration with all the world looking at the streets of Washington rather than the rubble of Gaza. Condi and Ms Livni thought their new arms-monitoring agreement - reached without a single Arab being involved - would work. Ban Ki-moon welcomed the unilateral truce. The great and the good gathered for a Sharm el-Sheikh summit. Only Hamas itself was not consulted. Which led, of course, to a few wrinkles in the plan. First, before declaring its own ceasefire, Hamas fired off more rockets at Israel, proving that Israel's primary war aim - to stop the missiles - had failed. Then Cairo shrugged off the deal because no one was going to set up electronic surveillance equipment on Egyptian soil. And not one European leader travelling to the region suggested the survivors might be helped if Israel, the EU and the US ended the food and fuel siege of Gaza. After killing hundreds of women and children, Israel was the good guy again, by declaring a unilateral ceasefire that Hamas was certain to break. But Obama will be smiling on Tuesday. Was not this the reason, after all, why Israel suddenly wanted a truce? Egypt's objections may be theatre - the US spent £18m last year training Egyptian security men to stop arms smuggling into Gaza and since the US bails out Egypt's economy, ignores the corruption of its regime and goes on backing Hosni Mubarak, there's sure to be a "compromise" very soon. And Hamas has had its claws cut. Israel's informers in Gaza handed over the locations of its homes and hideouts and the government of Gaza must be wondering if they can ever close down the spy rings. Hamas thought its militia was the Hizbollah - a serious error - and that the world would eventually come to its aid. The world (although not its pompous leaders) felt enormous pity for the Palestinians, but not for the cynical men of Hamas who staged a coup in Gaza in 2007 which killed 151 Palestinians. As usual, the European statesmen appeared hopelessly out of touch with what their own electorates thought. And history was quite forgotten. The Hamas rockets were the result of the food and fuel siege; Israel broke Hamas's own truce on 4 and 17 November. Forgotten is the fact Hamas won the 2006 elections, although Israel has killed a clutch of the victors. And there'll be little time for the peacemakers of Sharm el-Sheikh to reflect on the three UN schools targeted by the Israelis and the slaughter of the civilians inside. Poor old Ban Ki-moon. He tried to make his voice heard just before the ceasefire, saying Israel's troops had acted "outrageously" and should be "punished" for the third school killing. Some hope. At a Beirut press conference, he admitted he had failed to get a call through to Israel's Foreign Minister to complain. It was pathetic. When I asked Mr Ban if he would consider a UN war crimes tribunal in Gaza, he said this would not be for him to "determine". But only a few journalists bothered to listen to him and his officials were quickly folding up the UN flag on the table. About time too. Bring back the League of Nations. All is forgiven. What no one noticed yesterday - not the Arabs nor the Israelis nor the portentous men from Europe - was that the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting last night was opening on the 90th anniversary - to the day - of the opening of the 1919 Paris peace conference which created the modern Middle East. One of its main topics was "the borders of Palestine". There followed the Versailles Treaty. And we know what happened then. The rest really is history. Bring on the ghosts. Copyright The Independent" -- *** http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/012209.html Obama Frees Bush Historical Records By Robert Parry ConsortiumNews: January 22, 2009 When authoritarian forces seize control of a government, they typically move first against the public's access to information, under the theory that a confused populace can be more easily manipulated. They take aim at the radio stations, TV and newspapers. In the case of George W. Bush in 2001, he also took aim at historical records, giving himself and his family indefinite control over documents covering the 12 years of his father's terms as President and Vice President. It was, therefore, significant that one of Barack Obama's first acts as President was to revoke the Bush Family's power over that history and to replace it with an easier set of regulations for accessing the records. Just as George W. Bush upon taking office in January 2001 immediately delayed the scheduled release of documents from the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, Obama wasted no time in reversing that policy by signing a new executive order on his first working day in office. Eight years earlier, George W. Bush initially postponed the document release and then - after the 9/11 attacks - sought to extend the cloak of secrecy over those documents virtually forever. Bush signed Executive Order 13233 on Nov. 1, 2001, granting the sitting President as well as former Presidents or ex-Vice Presidents - or their heirs - veto power over release of many documents. In other words, Bush was giving himself and his family effective control over key chapters of 20 years of American history (his father's eight years as Vice President and four years as President, and his own eight years as President). Presumably at some point, that power would have passed to George W. Bush's daughters, Jenna and Barbara, and to their progeny, giving the family a kind of dynastic control over how Americans would understand key events of an important national era. Self-serving myths could become a substitute for accurate history - all the better to protect the Bush Family's interests. Frustrations In a real-life sense, what Bush's order did was frustrate the ability of journalists and historians to file Freedom of Information Act requests for even routine information from the 12 years of the Reagan-Bush-41 era. Information that once was quickly available - like calendars of senior officials - became subject to multiple layers of approvals, stretching out a process from days or weeks to months or to a year or more. First, the government archivists examined the material to excise any classified or personal information. That essentially was the extent of the old process for opening up routine documents in a brief period of time. Under the Bush rules, however, even routine documents were referred to designees of both the sitting and former Presidents (or ex-Vice Presidents) for a decision on asserting some privilege. Even if no privilege was asserted, the process was stretched out by months, sometimes more than a year. And once some routine document finally got released - if the information required a follow-up request to clarify something - the cumbersome process would start all over again. Anyone with a deadline was either forced to write with limited (and possibly misleading) information or had to forego writing altogether. The delays were an effective means of killing stories that might embarrass the Bush Family. A Gates Question Sometimes the stories weren't just about history either. For instance, I encountered frustrations from Bush's executive order over the past two years as I sought documents pertaining to the credibility of Bush's choice for Defense Secretary, Robert Gates. Gates had been deputy national security adviser under Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, and nailing down Gates's whereabouts on a specific day in April 1989 would have supported or undermined his credibility in relation to allegations implicating Gates's in Reagan-Bush-41 era scandals. So, on Nov. 15, 2006, a week after Gates's Pentagon nomination, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request for Gates's calendars from 1989. Based on my (pre-Bush-43) experience, I thought the information might be available before Gates's confirmation hearings in December. However, it took until late March 2007 for the George H.W. Bush Library to send me the calendar entries. Initially, when I examined the calendar entries, they appeared to support Gates's claim that he was at work at the White House on the day in question. Still, I checked on a couple of entries that he had listed for public events, and it turned out that he had skipped them. Because of those discrepancies, it became necessary to check on the non-public events listed on Gates's calendar, such as meetings with other officials. I filed two additional FOIA requests on April 5, 2007. The two requests cleared the initial review by the archivists in mid-to-late summer 2007. But then, the requests got hung up in the Bush Family clearance process, requiring approval from representatives of both the senior George Bush and the junior George Bush. One request wasn't released until May 2008, more than a year after my FOIA; the second request wasn't sent out until September 2008, more than a year after the archivists had removed any sensitive information. The additional information clarified a few points for me but did not conclusively establish Gates's whereabouts on the day in question. That would have required another follow-up or two, but the interminable delays had left little time before Election 2008. Assuming that Gates would be out of his senior position by the time any new FOIAs could be processed under Bush's rules, I decided that it made little sense to continue pursuing this question. Ironically, President Obama has renewed the timeliness of this Gates credibility question in two ways: first, by keeping him on as Defense Secretary and now, by revoking the Bush Family's power to delay and obstruct. In his first full day in office, Obama revived hope that historical records might become available in a reasonable length of time. Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com. ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:la...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/la...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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