From: Mazin Qumsiyeh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [AM] War crimes and Zio-Nazi crimes 1) "LEARNING FROM THE NAZIS?": Gush Shalom ad published in Haaretz, February 1, 2002 2) Haaretz: High Court rejects appeals against assassination policy (i.e. Israel's high court approves contravening the Fourth Geneva Convention and other applicable conventions on war crimes) 3) San Francisco Bay Guardian: Voce President Cheney Made Millions Off Oil Deals with Saddam Hussein (An old article but relevant considering the Enron and other debacles and the rush to tackle Iraq). Web address worth checking: Media Monitors Network (MMN) http://mediamonitors.net or http://216.71.207.129/mmn/ Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD ___________________________ LEARNING FROM THE NAZIS? The following lines appeared last Friday, January 25, 2002, in Haaretz, in an article by the respected military correspondent Amir Oren: "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." If this officer believes that the casbah of Nablus resembles the Warsaw ghetto, who, in his mind, resemble the officers of the Israeli army? Peres: You Bear Responsibility for War Crimes! Today, at 2.30 pm, we shall hold a vigil at the home of the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister in Ramat-Aviv: Short is the Way from Oslo to The Hague! Gush Shalom ad published in Haaretz February 1, 2002 ___________________________________ High Court rejects appeals against assassination policy By Moshe Reinfeld Haaretz January 30, 2002 The High Court of Justice yesterday rejected three petitions seeking to stop the government's policy of assassinating Palestinian militants on grounds that the court does not usually render rulings on security matters. The petitions were submitted by the chairman of the Hadash faction, MK Mohammed Barakeh; Siham Thabet, widow of Dr. Thabet Thabet who was assassinated in the West Bank in December 2000; the Public Committee Against Torture and the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment. The petitioners asked the court for a temporary restraining order to bar the government from authorizing "executions without trial" of Palestinians, arguing that an assassination policy was blatantly illegal. In a sharp exchange with Barakeh's lawyer, Justice Eliyahu Mazza said, "There is such a thing called terror, which is the enemy of all of humanity." "Who is to determine who is a terrorist?" retorted lawyer Naila Atiya. "Certainly not the High Court. There has to be cause for us to intervene," he replied. "But there is also a right to life," pressed the lawyer. "Tell that to all those who send terrorists to pedestrian malls and to the Dolphinarium," interjected Justice Mishael Cheshin, while Mazza added: "What do you want, that the defense minister receive authorization from the High Court before every targeted elimination? This matter is not justiciable." The decision not to intervene is in keeping with the traditional stance of the High Court over security matters. The petitioners argued that all those participating in the assassinations are breaking international legal norms and that this policy could rapidly lead to war crimes. They added that the assassinations are carried out based on intelligence information of questionable credibility that is not subject to judicial review. The petitioners added that, as there is no death penalty in Israel, if the Palestinians had been brought to trial in Israel, they would not have been killed, even if convicted of the worst offenses. They also argued that the assassination policy only escalates the level of violence. Barakeh noted that after the killing of Thabet a group of Palestinians decided to seek revenge and shot dead two Israeli civilians. Israel has acknowledged carrying out 21 assassinations. _______________ Redux: Cheney Made Millions Off Oil Deals with Hussein http://www.sfbg.com/reality/04.html San Francisco Bay Guardian November 13, 2000 by Martin A. Lee Here's a whopper of a story you may have missed amid the cacophony of campaign ads and stump speeches in the run- up to the elections. During former defense secretary Richard Cheney's five-year tenure as chief executive of Halliburton, Inc., his oil services firm raked in big bucks from dubious commercial dealings with Iraq. Cheney left Halliburton with a $34 million retirement package last July when he became the GOP's vice-presidential candidate. Of course, U.S. firms aren't generally supposed to do business with Saddam Hussein. But thanks to legal loopholes large enough to steer an oil tanker through, Halliburton profited big-time from deals with the Iraqi dictatorship. Conducted discreetly through several Halliburton subsidiaries in Europe, these greasy transactions helped Saddam Hussein retain his grip on power while lining the pockets of Cheney and company. According to the Financial Times of London, between September 1988 and last winter, Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton, oversaw $23.8 million of business contracts for the sale of oil-industry equipment and services to Iraq through two of its subsidiaries, Dresser Rand and Ingersoll-Dresser Pump, which helped rebuild Iraq's war-damaged petroleum-production infrastructure. The combined value of these contracts exceeded those of any other U.S. company doing business with Baghdad. Halliburton was among more than a dozen American firms that supplied Iraq's petroleum industry with spare parts and retooled its oil rigs when U.N. sanctions were eased in 1998. Cheney's company utilized subsidiaries in France, Italy, Germany, and Austria so as not to draw undue attention to controversial business arrangements that might embarrass Washington and jeopardize lucrative ties to Iraq, which will pump $24 billion of petrol under the U.N.-administered oil-for-food program this year. Assisted by Halliburton, Hussein's government will earn another $1 billion by illegally exporting oil through black-market channels. With Cheney at the helm since 1995, Halliburton quickly grew into America's number-one oil-services company, the fifth-largest military contractor, and the biggest nonunion employer in the nation. Although Cheney claimed that the U.S. government "had absolutely nothing to do" with his firm's meteoric financial success, State Department documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times indicate that U.S. officials helped Halliburton secure major contracts in Asia and Africa. Halliburton now does business in 130 countries and employs more than 100,000 workers worldwide. Its 1999 income was a cool $15 billion. In addition to Iraq, Halliburton counts among its business partners several brutal dictatorships that have committed egregious human rights abuses, including the hated military regime in Burma (Myanmar). EarthRights, a Washington, D.C.-based human rights watchdog, condemned Halliburton for two energy-pipeline projects in Burma that led to the forced relocation of villages, rape, murder, indentured labor, and other crimes against humanity. A full report (this is a 45 page pdf file - there is also a brief summary) on the Burma connection, "Halliburton's Destructive Engagement," can be accessed on EarthRights' Web site Human rights activists have also criticized Cheney's company for its questionable role in Algeria, Angola, Bosnia, Croatia, Haiti, Rwanda, Somalia, Indonesia, and other volatile trouble spots. In Russia, Halliburton's partner, Tyumen Oil, has been accused of committing massive fraud to gain control of a Siberian oil field. And in oil-rich Nigeria, Halliburton worked with Shell and Chevron, which were implicated in gross human rights violations and environmental calamities in that country. Indeed, Cheney's firm increased its involvement in the Niger Delta after the military government executed several ecology activists and crushed popular protests against the oil industry. Halliburton also had business dealings in Iran and Libya, which remain on the State Department's list of terrorist states. Brown and Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, was fined $3.8 million for reexporting U.S. goods to Libya in violation of U.S. sanctions. But in terms of sheer hypocrisy, Halliburton's relationship with Saddam Hussein is hard to top. What's more, Cheney lied about his company's activities in Iraq when journalists fleetingly raised the issue during the campaign. Questioned by Sam Donaldson on ABC's This Week program in August, Cheney bluntly asserted that Halliburton had no dealings with the Iraqi regime while he was on board. Donaldson: I'm told, and correct me if I'm wrong, that Halliburton, through subsidiaries, was actually trying to do business in Iraq? Cheney: No. No. I had a firm policy that I wouldn't do anything in Iraq even arrangements that were supposedly legal. And that was it! ABC News and the other U.S. networks dropped the issue like a hot potato. As damning information about Halliburton surfaced in the European press, American reporters stuck to old routines and took their cues on how to cover the campaign from the two main political parties, both of which had very little to say about official U.S. support for abusive corporate policies at home and abroad. But why, in this instance, didn't the Democrats stomp and scream about Cheney's Iraq connection? The Gore campaign undoubtedly knew of Halliburton's smarmy business dealings from the get-go. Gore and Lieberman could have made hay about how the wannabe GOP veep had been in cahoots with Saddam. Such explosive revelations may well have swayed voters and boosted Gore's chances in what was shaping up to be a close electoral contest. The Democratic standard-bearers dropped the ball in part because Halliburton's conduct was generally in accordance with the foreign policy of the Clinton administration. Cheney is certainly not the only Washington mover and shaker to have been affiliated with a company trading in Iraq. Former CIA Director John Deutsch, who served in a Democratic administration, is a member of the board of directors of Schlumberger, the second-largest U.S. oil-services company, which also does business through subsidiaries in Iraq. Despite occasional rhetorical skirmishes, a bipartisan foreign-policy consensus prevails on Capital Hill, where the commitment to human rights, with a few notable exceptions, is about as deep as an oil slick. Truth be told, trading with the enemy is a time-honored American corporate practice or perhaps "malpractice" would be a more appropriate description of big-business ties to repressive regimes. Given that Saddam Hussein, the pariah du jour, has often been compared to Hitler, it's worth pointing out that several blue-chip U.S. firms profited from extensive commercial dealings with Nazi Germany. Shockingly, some American companies =96 including Standard Oil, Ford, ITT, GM, and General Electric secretly kept trading with the Nazi enemy while American soldiers fought and died during World War II. Today General Electric is among the companies that are back in business with Saddam Hussein, even as American jets and battleships attack Iraq on a weekly basis using weapons made by G.E. But the United Nations sanctions committee, dominated by U.S. officials, has routinely blocked medicines and other essential items from being delivered to Iraq through the oil-for-food program, claiming they have a potential military "dual use." These sanctions have taken a terrible toll on ordinary Iraqis, and on children in particular, while the likes of Halliburton and G.E. continue to lubricate their coffers. _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
