PEW Research Center reports this: Only 44% of American women approve of drone strikes but 40% don’t give a hoot or holler whether they endanger civilian lives. Their concern is whether such strikes will lead to retaliation and/or damage America’s reputation. Men love drone strikes – only 21% disapprove and 11% are bored out of…
International Law
OBAMA’S LAW
Very quietly on December 30, the President reauthorized ‘Fisa Amendments Act Reauthorization Act of 2012′, which provides a five-year extension of Title VII of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Big Brother will watch you. Worse yet, Obama has agreed to a provision preventing the construction of any new facility for transfer of prisoners from Guantanamo…
AN EXCHANGE BETWEEN SIDNEY GENDIN AND NOAM CHOMSKY
August 24, 2007. SG: Is it true that Nasrallah and several other important Middle East persons maintain that Israel has no right to exist? Is this only a mischaracterization by pro-Israeli press? NC: No state claims a right to exist (except Israel). There is no such concept in international law. States are recognized, but not…
KILL ‘EM BEFORE THEY KILL YOU
Also printed in today’s www.Gendin’s Journal Barracks O’bama and his henchman, Eric Holder, believe war justifies everything. In a NY Review of Books article this week, David Cole writes: “The President of the United States can order the killing of US citizens, far from any battlefield, without charges, a trial, or any form of advance…
GARZON CLEARED
From BBC Spain’s Supreme Court has cleared high-profile judge Baltasar Garzon of violating a 1977 amnesty law with his investigation of Franco-era crimes. Two right-wing groups had accused Mr Garzon of overstepping his powers by trying to prosecute crimes committed between 1936 and 1975. Mr Garzon said crimes against humanity should not be subject to…
NOT THAT YOU CARE – NOR SHOULD YOU
The Siasat Daily 2011-11-24: Washington, November 24: The United States plans to keep its arsenal of chemical weapons for many years to come, as it seeks to extend the deadline set by the international Chemical Weapons Convention. The US has asked for a decade-long extension to the convention deadline which obliges signatory-states to dismantle their…
KILLING THEM HARSHLY WITH OUR DRONES
The following is an excerpt from an article in The Economist. Readers who want more can link here. THE killing in Yemen of Anwar al-Awlaki and three al-Qaeda associates by a drone on September 30th has caused far more fuss in America than previous drone attacks. The reason is that al-Awlaki and one of his…
LET GOD AND BARACK OBAMA SORT THEM OUT
The alleged purpose of UN Security Council resolution 1973, passed on 17 March, was to seek to protect Libyan civilians from violent attacks by both sides. It doesn’t work that way. It has rapidly mutated into an overt bid to destroy Gaddafi’s regime, specifically to murder Gaddafi, by missile or bombardment with land-based teams of…
DEATH IN ABBOTTABAD
Normally, when 99% of the world disagrees with me, I find that invigorating and a sure fire indication that I am right. For once, I am not so sure. The assassination of Son of Laden, ordered by President Obama, fills my head with many doubts but proceed I must for better or worse. In the…
A Time to Love, A Time to THINK
1917- Robert LaFollette: “Every nation has its war party. It is not the party of democracy. It is the party of autocracy. It seeks to dominate absolutely. It is commercial, imperialistic, ruthless. … If there is no sufficient reason for war, the war party will make war on one pretext, then invent another.” 1917 –…
RWANDA VERSUS LIBYA/TWO TAKES
Here is Atlantic magazine’s take on the so-called genocide in Libya that is so driving Barack Obama to fury. Rwanda was genocide. Libya is a civil war. The Rwandan genocide was a premeditated, orchestrated campaign. The Libyan civil war is a sudden, unplanned outburst of fighting. The Rwandan genocide was targeted against an entire, clearly…
…TO THE SHORES OF TRIPOLI
Why is Obama so intent upon killing Libyans? Enough of TV pap. Gendin will give you the LONG ANSWER. Why bother with pictures or a few words when an essay is always better? We [a euphemism for the U.S. government under the pretext that it is for, by, and of the people] began our campaign…
OBAMA’S WAR
The International Court of Justice may have to consider Barack Hussein Obama’s Pakistan policy as a crime against humanity. On January 24, 2009, an article in the Washington Post said, “Two remote U.S. missile strikes that killed at least 20 people at suspected terrorist hideouts in northwestern Pakistan yesterday offered the first tangible sign of…
ONE MAN’S SPEEDY TRIAL IS ANOTHER MAN’S SLOW BOAT TO CHINA
Ahmad Khaifan Ghailani spent five years in prison waiting for his trial. No big deal according to Southern District of New York Judge Lewis A. Kaplan. Kaplan, obviously not the father of Ghailani, said “The government is entitled to attempt to hold Ghailani accountable in a court of law for his alleged complicity in the…
IN DEFENSE OF ISRAEL
While watchingpolitics.com is sympathetic to the Israeli cause, it takes no particular position about the “flottilla” incident. It welcomes any submission from any reader who wishes to present an alternative point of view. The following article by the former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar was published in the British newspaper ‘The Times of London’…
THOSE DAMNABLE FLOTILLAS AND THE NON-NEUTRALITY OF THE U.N.
The NY Times weighs in with an unenlightening editorial. Israel’s government has decided to tough out the criticism of its attack this week on a six-ship flotilla trying to run the Gaza blockade. The story, and the anger, aren’t going away…..Israel’s charges that its commandos were attacked and shot at by some of the ship’s…
ALL ABOARD.
A flotilla here, a flotilla there. Good guys and bad guys. Why don’t you decide? HELSINKI PRINCIPLES ON THE LAW OF MARITIME NEUTRALITY 5.1.2(3) Merchant ships flying the flag of a neutral State may be attacked if they are believed on reasonable grounds to be carrying contraband or breaching a blockade, and after prior warning…
PRISONER ABUSE
The following is a very brief excerpt from A MAJOR PUBLICATION contained within The National Security Archive. The whole of it is well worth reading but is terribly long and you should probably skim through it. Here is the LINK to the document. Here is the excerpt: PRISONER ABUSE: PATTERNS FROM THE PAST National Security…
DON’T LET INNOCENCE GET IN THE WAY
The Obama Administration is committed to three principals: good ends justify any old means; presumption of innocence is a damn nuisance when you know in your heart of hearts you are imprisoning bad guys; the right to speedy trials applies only when it is not an inconvenience. These three principals converge nicely in the case…
DON’T MESS WITH THE RUSSIANS IF YOU ARE A PIRATE
This report just in from a U.S. Army colonel. Subject: Russian Navy captures Somalian pirates. http://true-turtle.livejournal.com/85315.html This is part of the videotape showing the Russian Navy commandos on the Somalian pirate ship. You may remember that the pirates captured a Russian oil tanker. The EuroUnion navy that patrols these waters could not interfere because there…
AMERICAN AGENTS OF TERROR
This is an excerpt with slight editing of a letter appearing in the NY Review of Books by David Cole on April 8, 2010. “US officials strip suspects naked, deprive them of sleep for up to eleven days straight, hit them, slam them into walls, force them into painful stress positions, and waterboard them. These…
THE MISSION OF THE CIA AND NIGHTMARES OF OBAMA
MISSION STATEMENT – The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is an independent US Government agency responsible for providing national security intelligence to senior US policymakers. HISTORY OF THE CIA – President Truman recognized the need for a postwar, centralized intelligence organization. To make a fully functional intelligence office, Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947…
OBAMA – OUR WORST NIGHTMARE?
Barack Hussein Obama has already authorized unmanned drone attacks in areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan where the risk of killing civilians is very high. In fact, killings have occurred, occasionally followed by apologies but sometimes not. The attacks are not even by our military forces but by the CIA, which has no authority to conduct…
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL WARNS HAMAS ABUT USING THE DEATH PENALTY
Amnesty International has urged the Hamas de facto administration in Gaza not to carry out several pending death sentences, after high-ranking officials signalled their intention to execute those convicted of “collaboration” with Israel and “murder”. It is feared that these executions, which would be the first to be carried out in Gaza since 2005, may…
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