Month: April 2012

Bahraini security forces are beating and torturing men, women, and children for resisting repression and despotism.

Human Rights Watch heard numerous consistent accounts from victims that the police were taking detained protesters to informal detention facilities or isolated outdoor areas for between 30 minutes and two hours and beating them before transferring them to police stations. Human Rights Watch collected detailed information about two such informal facilities: a youth hostel in Sanabis and an equestrian school for police members, locally referred to as Khayyala, near the police station in Budaiya.

Such abuse is systematic, as was the torture investigated by an international probe late last year. Support from the Nobel Peace laureate is ongoing. See some of my previous posts on these beatings.

In the age of Obomba, there is nary a peacenik to be found among the Democrats. They are eagerly following Obama into the dark and odious swamp of “humanitarian” imperialism. So what’s an anti-interventionist (and civil libertarian) to do in this electoral season? Not much choice but to head for the libertarian wing of the Grand Old Party.

And there this antiwarrior found himself last Saturday morning, at the Republican Caucus in Massachusetts Congressional District 5. In Massachusetts, delegates to the Republican National Convention (RNC) are chosen by vote in these District caucuses, three delegates in each CD. The delegates are bound by oath to vote for the winner of the state primary, Mitt Romney this year, but only on the first ballot for President. After the first ballot they are free to vote their conscience. And they are also free to vote as they see fit for the VP, the platform and sundry other matters, great and small. So the caucuses matter; potentially they matter a lot. Any registered Republican can vote, but attendance is usually slender partly because media coverage is slight.

The Paulites were out in force with their slate of delegates, the “Ronald Reagan, Liberty, Unity Slate,” a name which fooled no one. The establishment marshaled its forces for the Mitt Romney slate. It was not hard to tell who was who in the auditorium; the older part of the crowd was with Mitt and those with kids in strollers belonged to Ron Paul. When the votes were tallied, the Liberty slate won by a 2:1 margin! That scenario was repeated again and again in most of the 9 Congressional Districts, with the Liberty slate trouncing the Romney gang and winning 17 of 27 delegates chosen by the caucuses.

There is one glitch. 14 more delegates will be chosen by the party hierarchy, and so the anti-interventionist contingent might not be in the majority of the Mass delegation, although some in the establishment are having second thoughts about the Liberty faction. After delegates were chosen and the Liberty landslide was evident, the alternates were voted on. One Romney alternate arose to aver that, as he thought about it, he agreed with Ron Paul on about 80% of policies! It did him no good. The Romney alternate slate went down by a margin of 2:1 to the Paul slate. But the careerist pols were now paying attention.

In another CD caucus, the irrepressible Rich Aucoin, once upon a time candidate for Lieutenant Governor and now running on the Liberty slate, elicited a defense of Obomba from the Romney camp! Aucoin writes:
“My speech touched on Obama’s declaration that he has the power to assassinate us without trial…and I ended with a semi-joke:
Q: Why isn’t the TSA catching any terrorists? A: Because they’re not screening passengers on Air Force One!
I got a thunderous response. The next establishment candidate took umbrage at this and inserted into his speech a retort to me, saying something to the effect that it is irresponsible to call the POTUS a terrorist without proof! He received dead silence. I would love to give the guy a follow-up slap down for defending Barack Obama at a GOP caucus (!!!)….and will do so once I have his name.”

And so it went. The mainstream media in Mass. has not covered any of this. But Republican establishment bloggers have taken. Thus, one pro-Romney blogger wrote on the day after the caucuses:
“The establishment is understandably shaken by the turn of these events. With big names like Kerry Healey (former GOP gubernatorial candidate!) and Brad Jones not winning (i.e., losing as delegates to the convention!) in their home district caucuses. They shouldn’t be. They should embrace the energy of these “new” people and not turn them away. This wing of the party, if treated with respect, forms a dedicated grassroots army.”
Translation. Let us see if we can coopt them. But there is an interesting kernel of truth here. The GOP has withered significantly in many places, including Massachusetts; and in such places the Ron Paul people may already have the numbers to take it over. They certainly have the commitment.

This scenario has been repeated again and again throughout the US. Here is what Tim Pawlenty (Remember him?) has to say about the future of the GOP:
“We’ve got to be a party that’s about addition and not subtraction. In places like Minnesota, the Northeast, the West Coast, the Mountain States, the Upper Midwest, the Great Lakes, we don’t have a margin of error where we can afford to shrink the party. We want to be growing the party if we’re going to win elections and also have the opportunity to govern and make a difference for the country. So this is about expanding market share, not contracting it.”

Pawlenty has hit upon the crux of the matter here. The GOP, sucked into Christian Fundamentalism and the vilest designs of the neocons and the Israeli lobby, is an endangered species in the 21st Century. Only the young libertarians offer it a chance of survival.

The core of the libertarian activists see their present activity as one step in a long-term effort to take the GOP back to its anti-interventionist roots. Many feel that Ron Paul is unlikely to get the nomination by capturing caucus votes. But they also understand that they are learning an enormous amount in the battle to make at least one major party – the GOP in this case – into a genuine antiwar and pro-civil liberties Party. The Dems (including the pwogwessives whose candidate was and remains Obama) have failed to field an antiwar candidate. It appears, as a wise friend tells me, that for now the road to peace runs through the Right.

John V. Walsh can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com

The U.S. and Japan have come to an agreement on the relocation of about 9,000 U.S. Marines that will leave their bases in Okinawa, with about 5,000 transferred to Guam and the rest spread among other locations in the region like Hawaii, Australia, etc. This is just one part in the Obama administration’s broader imperial plan to boost American military and naval presence in Asia-Pacific to counter China’s regional influence. I wrote about this agreement earlier in the week, so read on to find out about how the citizens of both Japan and Guam have resisted the Defense Department’s meddling on their land.

I wanted to point out some key quotations from defense officials on this so-called strategic ‘pivot’ to Asia the Obama administration laid out months ago. It’s interesting, they’re very frank about what is happening. Other measures that Washington takes to expand the global military empire come with exhaustive propaganda about why it must be done. In Latin America, the war on drugs is the pretext to support undemocratic regimes and maintain a military presence throughout the region. In the Middle East, its usually about “terrorism” or a single dangerous regime that presents an existential threat.

But there are no such lies when it comes to expansion in Asia-Pacific. Nobody is screaming about any threats, or rogue nations, or criminal networks or terrorism. They’re just admitting the sole purpose is to expand the military presence without the justification of any military threat.

Here’s one senior defense official explaining:

Well, as you know, one of the goals of the administration in Asia is to create a — to build a presence in the Asia-Pacific that’s more geographically distributed.  And I think this agreement is part and parcel of that.  When you look at it in combination with our plans to build a rotational presence in Australia, what you have are sort of an ongoing ability for U.S. forces to be visible and present in multiple places across the region at any given time.  And we think that that presents advantages in building relations with partner countries; helping to respond to, for example, humanitarian emergencies; and as needed, respond to contingencies.

And again:

This new posture that we’ve created results in a more operationally effective presence across the region through Marine Air-Ground Task Forces, which we call MAGTFs — in multiple locations.  So in multiple locations, we’ll have combinations of command, ground, air and logistics capable of deploying and operating together in a — in a self-contained way.  So that’s what the presence on Guam will be like, it’s what the presence on Okinawa will be like, as well as other locations in the region.

No “Hitler-reincarnated” is needed, I guess, for expanding the empire in Asia. The crafters of U.S. foreign policy are openly admitting that this “presence” is reason enough in itself. It’s kind of like what BBC reporter Jonathan Beale described onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz last February: “This carrier and these [fighter] jets are more than just a show of force, they’re here to send a clear message to Iran as to who really controls these waters.”

A similar show is being played out off the coast of the Philippines. Armed Chinese and Filipino naval vessels have been standing off for about two weeks after a dispute about territorial claims in contested waters. This standoff happened just days before the U.S. and the Philippines engaged in new military exercises included in a new agreement facilitating greater U.S. military and naval access to the Philippines. The U.S. has a security agreement with the Philippines promising we’ll defend it against any threats. Not only is Washington playing World Policeman, but they’re making sure China never has the ability to declare its very own Monroe Doctrine.

We want to deter potential adversaries (China) from daring to grow their economies or build up their militaries. Those are strictly American prerogatives. And defense officials don’t mind admitting it.

From what I can tell, the pre-trial hearing of Bradley Manning is a moral mockery that will be looked upon with shame by future generations.

As I wrote on Thursday, the military judge in Bradley Manning’s pre-trial hearing refused to dismiss the criminal charges as requested in a motion from Manning’s defense attorneys. In seeking the dismissal, Manning’s lawyers argued that prosecutors were too slow to share required information with the defense, and that they should therefore be inadmissible.

Not only that, but the defense protested the most serious charge Manning faces, that of “aiding the enemy.” The Uniform Code of Military Justice’s definition of aiding the enemy says that a perpetrator, “without proper authority, knowingly … gives intelligence to or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly.”

Manning’s defense argued the charge of aiding the enemy is unreasonable. “Because the enemy had access to Internet and may go to the website, they are indirectly aiding the enemy?” Manning’s defense attorney David Coombs asked.

The judge still refused to dismiss the charge, although she warned the prosecution that the burden is on them to prove Manning knowingly aided al-Qaeda. This is a tall order which seems designed to make the prosecution fail in this endeavor. But I don’t think it’s right to be implying the judge stuck it to the prosecution, as some reports are doing. She could have just dismissed the ridiculous charge.

Kevin Gosztola at FireDogLade has some superb reporting on the Manning pre-trial, which makes it even clearer to me what a mockery of the rule of law this ordeal is. As Gosztola reports, whether Manning did any harm is “irrelevant.” Sigh.

In the case of Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is accused of releasing classified information to WikiLeaks, the government presented a motion during court proceedings today to prevent the defense from discussing “harm” or lack of “harm” done by leaks in its case.

The government’s motion (which no member of the press will ever get to personally read because these proceedings do not have that kind of transparency) argued Judge Col. Denise Lind should not let the defense raise the issue of harm until the sentencing portion of the trial because “actual harm or damage” is “not relevant” and lack of harm is “not relevant to any defense available.”

Maj. Ashden Fein argued “no element” of the charges against Manning require “actual damage to be proven.” He added: “Whether the accused knew or thought he knew which documents and information would cause actual harm to the United States is irrelevant to his specific acts for which he is charged.”

That these proceedings can advance without everybody involved constantly asking themselves why Manning is being tried as opposed to the war criminals he allegedly exposed through his leaks says everything there is to say about the trial, I think.