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This section added
2022/05/12
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"Between 1945 and 2005 the United States has attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements struggling against intolerable regimes. In the process, the U.S. caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair."
William Blum, from the third edition of his book Rogue State.
Certainly in the Vietnam war the USA was guilty of gross crimes against humanity, of betraying the common people of Vietnam, terrible and widespread cruelty and injustice and of genocide. They also turned a blind eye to the blatant corruption, the favouritism, the use of torture and other crimes of the various South Vietnamese dictatorships whom they supported.
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This section added
2024/02/25
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United States administrations often talk about how the USA is a bastion of democracy.
A nation supportive of democracy would be prepared to abide by the decisions of the majority of votes in the United Nations. What is the US's record on this?
As of August 2023, the USA had used its veto 82 times to deny the right of the majority of nations to make a decision in the United Nations. The only nation with a worse record is Russia/USSR, and who would expect them to respect democratic consensus?
The power of veto, so blatantly used by nations like Russia and the USA, makes the United Nations a 'toothless tiger'. The UN could be much more democratic if it was not hamstrung by vetos. If the USA was truly a champion of democracy it would be pressing for removing the power of veto from the UN.
Look at it this way: how would democracy work in the USA if the state with, say, the largest population had the power to veto any law that the federal government tried to pass? So if the state government of California didn't like a law that the US government tried to make, they could veto it? Would that be democratic? Of course not.
As long as the US uses its power to vito in the United Nations it is working to undermine world democracy.
The cost of the Iraq War has now (April 2006) exceeded one trillion $US. What has the war achieved for the US people? Consider how much good might have been done with this money if it was spent on reducing US reliance on oil (rather than
replacing an unfriendly regime with a friendly one and arranging that multinational companies get the financial control of the oil), reducing greenhouse gas production, or improving health services or education.
How much more would have been achieved in the "War against terror" had the money been spent on overseas aid and making friends rather than on making more people hate the USA.
The US government has betrayed the US people and it has betrayed the rest of the world. The rest of the world can't do much about it, we can only hope that eventually the good people in the USA will clean up their government.
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This section edited 2020/05/09
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At the time of writing the
Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 has infected far more people in the USA (1,322,163) than any other country (second was Spain with 260,117 cases). The USA had far more deaths from the pandemic (78,616) than any other country (UK, 31,241).
(These data were taken from
Worldometer, 2020/05/09.)
The deaths per million of population in the USA was 238. In my own country, Australia, the corresponding figure was 4.
The percentage of deaths among the closed cases in the USA was also very high. Cases were considered to be closed when the outcome was either 'recovered/discharged' or the victim had died. The percentage of closed cases that were deaths in the USA was 26%, the corresponding figure in Australia was 2%.
The percentages of deaths in the reported world-wide outcomes was 17%.
The Australian response to the pandemic was not what it might have been, the federal government were slow to act and significant mistakes were made (see
Ruby Princess).
But plainly the pandemic in the USA is a far greater disaster than it is in Australia and many other countries.
All this suggests that the response to the pandemic in the USA was highly incompetent and ineffectual. The Trump administration would have to be held largely responsible for these terrible figures.
Had the pandemic been handled in the USA as well as it was handled in Australia there would have been (to the date of writing) 77,000 less deaths.
It also should be noted here that serious as the Covid pandemic is, it is a
much smaller disaster than is climate change, and Trump's failure in protecting the US people from the pandemic is a far smaller
crime against humanity (and the biosphere) than is his failure to support action to slow climate change.
Donald Trump, with his refusal to take action on climate change is one of the
greatest criminals of all the world's leaders through history.
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This section added 2020/01/14
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I could write at great length about this despicable man.
I will (at least for the present) limit myself to one example of his total lack of ethical standards. (There's also a
page devoted to trump on this site.)
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One thing you’d have to grant to Donald Trump. He has gone a long way to confirming what we’ve long heard, that anyone can be President of the USA. No matter how dishonest, how narcissistic, how crude, how biased, how blinkered, how totally lacking in ethical standards, how ignorant you are. None of these failings need stand in your way, the job is available if you want it enough.
Although having quite a few million dollars to spend on your campaign would help a lot, and I suppose you'd need one of the major political party either with sufficiently low standards, or willing to lower its standards sufficiently, to support you.
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This section added
2022/03/11
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In Around the Nation with Jeff Waldorf Donald Trump was asked about what he thought of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He ranted about 'windmills' (utility scale wind turbines) instead.
I doubt I've ever heard so many blatant lies about wind turbines in a single media item before. I've written elsewhere on these pages about 'Wind power problems, alleged problems and objections'.
The item says much more about Trump's blatant lying than anything else.
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In January 2020 President Trump threatened to
target Iranian cultural sites with a military strike.
Iran's cultural sites are invaluable records of the development of western civilisation.
To purposely target them would be a criminal and disgusting act, the cultural sites have no military value.
They don't just belong to Iran, they belong to the world.
This sort of act has only been done in recent times by mentally twisted religious fanatics; the reader will probably remember the
Buddhas of Bamyan that were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. This act was condemned by civilised people around the world.
There are many horrible people in the world; Trump is one such.
There is nothing surprising in that.
The inexplicable point about Trump is that he was elected by the US people to lead them and still, years after his election, and after he has demonstrated how despicable he is over and over again, he still has the support of many.
Many others are too apathetic to bother voting at all.
Donald Trump's presidency of the USA is surely a significant step along the way toward the suicide of humanity.
See also the
section above on the Covid-19 pandemic.
This is a black period in the history of the USA.
While the USA tries to stop nuclear weapons proliferation (one
suspects that their motive is selfish rather than any high ideal;
they have the bomb, they don't want others to get it)
they are, I
believe, the largest weapons exporting nation in the world; making
enormous profits from other people's wars.
(Some readers have interpreted the above as an accusation that the US is
the world's biggest supplier of illegal weapons.
Rather, I am saying the US supplies weapons legally, but immorally, to many
nations – so encouraging wars, and making them more bloody.
The Iran/Contra deal showed also that
the US is not above illegal arms deals and supporting terrorists.)
If world wide peace was to break out tomorrow, the nation that would suffer
most would be the USA.
Its economy would be hard hit by the loss of trade in weapons.
Brazil has relaunched the "Lula Fund": a proposal to tax arms
sales and fight poverty,
(Common Dreams).
What a huge step toward world peace if all wealthy nations agreed to do
the same!
The USA, being the only superpower in the world, is ideally placed to
abolish war,
if it wanted to.
Wars between nations are no longer unavoidable.
Consider the fact that almost all the wars between nations since the
Second World War,
except for a few that the USA started because it perceived that they would
be to its advantage, have been between
poor nations.
The wealthy nations have realised that to become involved in a war that
you might loose is stupid and have avoided them.
A
World Government would be one way to
abolish war, but there are others.
An international agreement between nations – only the more powerful
nations would really have to agree – to abolish war by strict limits
on the arms trade would be a good start.
The USA is, of course, not interested in abolishing war, there is way
too much money in the
arms business.
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International relations the USA way
Fallujah burning during the siege of November 2004.
Apologies to photographer, I don't have your name.
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International relations the humane way
The My Thuan Bridge (aka. The Friendship Bridge) in Vietnam,
built with financial assistance from Australia.
This photo thanks to
TraveltoVietnam.com
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Which is the better way to approach international
relations?
Obviously it is an oversimplification to suggest that there is always going
to be a choice between war and aid, but the USA is much too keen on the
former and cares little for the latter.
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There are a great many pages on the Internet that will give an almost infinite
number of reasons why people should mistrust or hate the USA.
Many are emotional, poorly
written, and poorly informed. I have tried to concentrate here on a few that
are objective, well written, and well informed.
- George
Monbiot writes for the UK Guardian.
He is the best informed and most talented journalist on subjects such as 'the
real USA' that I know of;
- A very detailed site on why people hate America can be found at
Why do they hate us so much;
- An unemotional, extensive and informative site is Vexen's
Why do people hate
America;
- A site worth a visit is
Americans Against World Empire: Americans Against Bombings;
- Another interesting site is
Why do they hate us;
- An open letter from Dr. Robert M. Bowman (Lieutenant Colonel US
Air Force, retired) to President G.W. Bush is on
Kryss Tal's
site and is well worth reading;
- Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace;
Eisha Mason on Where the Real Danger Lies;
-
Dissident Voice; "A Radical Newsletter in the Struggle for Peace and
Social Justice"
Many other informative links are scattered throughout the text of this page.
Much more information can be found on the Internet. Search using key
words such as; USA, ethics, lies, government, international, affairs,
fact, truth, meddling; and the names of countries
such as Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Columbia and Nicaragua.
I think you will find that the great majority of Net pages are critical
of the US government's position.
When the USA cannot get political leaders to allow US big business to
dominate their countries either through naivete, by intimidation, or
corruption then they might 'send in the jackals'.
There is good reason to believe that President Jaime Roldós of Ecuador
was assassinated, directly or indirectly, by the CIA on May 24th
1981. He died in a helicopter crash.
Roldós had committed the crime (in US eyes) of trying to
retain control of Ecuadorian oil resources for Ecuadorians.
This is discussed in detail, and a bibliography is given, in John Perkins
book, 'Confessions of and Economic Hit Man'; see the
Acknowledgements.
Similarly, the CIA is implicated in the death of President Omar Torrijos of
Panama, who died in a plane crash on July 31st 1981.
Torrijos had got control of the Panama Canal zone back from the USA and
President Reagan of the USA found that he could not intimidate Torrijos into
renegotiating the Canal Treaty to suit the US.
Also Torrijos was providing an
example of what could be achieved by those who had the determination and
strength to stand up to the USA. He had to go. Again,
this is discussed in detail, and a bibliography is given, in John Perkins
book, 'Confessions of and Economic Hit Man'; see the
Acknowledgements.
Bombings
Why do so many people hate the USA?
Dropping bombs on people really pisses them off!
The USA has bombed the following nations since the end of WW2.
(Original from Australian Options Quarterly No. 31, Summer 2002.)
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Frodo has failed
Apologies to the artist, I don't have your name
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- China 1945-46
- Korea 1950-53
- China 1950-53
- Guatemala 1954
- Indonesia 1958
- Cuba 1959-60
- Guatemala 1960
- Congo 1964
- Peru 1965
- Laos 1965-73
- Vietnam 1961-73
- Cambodia 1969-70
- Guatemala 1967-69
- Grenada 1983
- Libya 1986
- El Salvador 1980s
- Nicaragua 1980s
- Panama 1989
- Iraq 1991-2002
- Sudan 1998
- Afghanistan 1998
- Yugoslavia 1999
- Afghanistan 2001
- Iraq 2003
A few of these may have been justified, most were very questionable.
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Update, May 2020
Even with the buffoon Donald Trump as president of the USA the Australian Morrison government maintains its close ties with the US administration. Not one word of criticism of Trump has come from the Morrison government.
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In the eyes of the Australian Governments of John Howard and Kevin Rudd
– that have been in power for more than thirteen years up to the time of
writing this (march 2009) – the USA can do no wrong.
Why must Australia be the poodle of the USA?
New Zealand got out of the old ANZUS alliance (Australia, New Zealand,
US security alliance) before Howard came to power; no disasters have
befallen NZ, it has not been invaded.
Quite the reverse; New Zealanders are not the targets
of terrorist attacks, why should they be?
People do not fear or hate NZ because it has no links with US aggression.
In 2006 Rupert Murdoch expressed the hope that Australians would
not become so strongly anti-American as the Europeans.
Why should they not?
How could anyone read half of this page with an open mind and not become,
at least to some extent, anti-American?
So long as Australia supports the USA, Australians will share the
guilt of that country and probably
continue to be
a terrorist target.
President George W. Bush has often made statements to the effect that
he has always acted "in the best interests of the USA".
In the first place I contend that while he may have acted in what he believed
to be the short-term best interests of the USA, he has not acted in the best
long-term interests of his nation.
More importantly I would like to suggest that the US President,
being the leader of the most economically powerful nation in the world, has a
responsibility to look beyond the USA.
US administrations since the Second World War have involved themselves
in the affairs of many countries (that is perhaps the main thesis of this
page).
This being so, doesn't the US President then have an ethical obligation to
think, not only of the best interests of USA, but also the best interests of
the nations with which he is interfering, as well as the best interests
of the world as a whole?
For a government to meddle in the affairs of other nations and only
look after the best interests of his own nation, while ignoring the greater
good of all, is plainly unethical.
Bhutan
What has the USA ever done to harm this small, inoffensive, landlocked
country in the Himalayas?
Bhutan is at risk because of what climate change is doing to the glaciers of
the Himalayas. As temperatures rise and glaciers melt, lakes are formed.
The terminal moraines that dam these lakes tend to be stable so long as
they are held together by permafrost, but of course, the permafrost is also
melting. The permafrost melts, the natural dams eventually burst, and
everyone downstream is in grave danger from the potentially catastrophic
floods.
The poor people of Bhutan therefore are suffering because of the selfishly
greedy people of the USA who, per capita,
produce far more
greenhouse gasses
than any other country on Earth and refuse to do anything significant to
curb their emissions.
Of course Bhutan is far from the only country that will suffer from global
warming.
A quote from 'Dissident Voice...
In violation of the U.S. Code and international law, the Bush
administration is spending more money (in inflation-adjusted dollars) to
develop illegal, offensive germ warfare than the $2 billion spent in World
War II on the Manhattan Project to make the atomic bomb.
So says Francis Boyle, the professor of international law who drafted the
Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enacted by Congress. He
states the Pentagon "is now gearing up to fight and 'win' biological
warfare" pursuant to two Bush national strategy directives adopted
"without public knowledge and review" in 2002.
The Pentagon's Chemical and Biological Defence Program was revised in 2003
to implement those directives, endorsing "first-use" strike of chemical
and biological weapons (CBW) in war, says Boyle, who teaches at the
University of Illinois, Champaign.
Read the article that this quote was taken from at
Dissident Voice.
The following is quoted from the book 'Advance Australia Where' by Hugh
Mackay:
In his 2007 Manning Clark Lecture, 'Restoring the Primacy of Reason',
Barry Jones [one-time Science minister in the Australian Parliament,
long-time member of Parliament, and well known media personality] noted
several similarities between the religious motivations of US President
George W. Bush and the leader of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden:
'Both are on a divine mission, fundamentalists, punitive, monocultural,
prefer faith over evidence, believe in pre-emptive strikes and that
necessity overrides the rule of law, manipulate fear, confuse revenge
with justice...'
Both men are a danger to world peace, and for very similar reasons.
Bush is a far greater danger to peace than is Osama because Bush has
the weapons that Osama would love to have.
Cambodia
The USA illegally bombed Cambodia during the Vietnam war causing terrible
destruction and destabilisation. The disorganisation brought about by this
bombing helped Pol Pot gain control of the country.
By the time Vietnam invaded and put an end to the Cambodian
'Killing Fields' in December 1978 Pol Pot's murderous regime was responsible
for the deaths of around 2 million Cambodians.
At the time of the invasion Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge was carrying out attacks against Vietnam in border areas; Vietnam justified its invasion on the ground of self defence.
Whether or not the Vietnamese invasion was justifiable on self defence grounds is questionable, but surely it was justified by its result: the removal of the murderous Kmer Rouge regime.
The US reaction to the Vietnamese invasion was condemnation and the imposition
of harsh sanctions. (I remember being puzzled at the time; I still had
some idea that the USA, while having been wrong in its bombing of
North Vietnam and Cambodia, was basically motivated by good intentions.)
It is interesting that the US claimed that its invasion of Iraq
in 2003 was justified while Vietnam's 1978 invasion of Cambodia was not.
I invite readers to give the motivations, justifications and results of both
some consideration.
The USA and Somalia are the only countries in the world that have
not signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Why has the USA refused when the rest of the world signed?
The US, through the CIA, was
instrumental in ousting the elected socialist Allende Government
and replacing it with the barbaric
Pinochet Government that went on to torture and murder thousands of
the Chilean people.
General Rene Schneider was Commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army under
Allende. He was assassinated in 1970 by a group of officers with whom the
CIA had been collaborating. Later the US assisted in protecting the
assassins. This was the first political assassination in Chile since 1837.
(Material for this paragraph came from the New Internationalist No Nonsense
Guide to Terrorism.)
Gerald Ford, who was President of the USA at the time of Pinochet's coup,
is recorded as saying of the US involvement in that coup that it was
"in the best interest of the people in Chile and certainly in our own
best interest."
(New York Times, September 17, 1974, p.22.)
On 29th of May 2008 an agreement was reached between 94
nations to not use cluster bombs because of their terrible record for
causing injuries among non-combatants.
As of July 15th 2009, 98 nations have signed, of which 14 have ratified.
See
Wikipedia.
Cluster bombs are dropped from aircraft in canisters that open while falling,
releasing up to hundreds of bomblets.
It is said that the aim is for the bomblets to explode when they hit the
ground, but in fact up to 40% do not (one wonders if this is really
intentional – to deny the enemy the safe use of the land involved).
The bomblets are brightly coloured and attract the attention of children.
Of course if the children play with the bombs, they are likely to
explode, causing horrible injuries.
No prizes for guessing that the USA was not among the countries that
banned these obscene weapons.
Also see
Israel and Lebanon.
The USA has forced a trade embargo on Cuba since (I believe) the time
of the Bay of Pigs fiasco in John Kennedy's Presidency.
The US assault against Cuba has been condemned by: the UN, the
European Union, the Organization of American States, and the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
The US action against Cuba is blatant bullying of a poor,
small nation by a rich, big nation.
It should also be said that the
Cuban regime is repressive of its own people.
Guantanamo Bay is in Cuba.
In Nicaragua the USA supported the Contra rebels who fought a ruthless
war against the legitimate socialist government.
The International Court of Justice ruled that the US had acted
illegally in helping to mine Nicaraguan harbours and financing
the Contras, and ordered the USA to pay billions of dollars in
reparations to Nicaragua. The response from the USA was that they
didn't recognize the Court's jurisdiction.
The USA seems to be one of the first nations to insist that others
(Iraq, Libya) should abide by international law, but is not willing
to do so itself.
Duplicity is used frequently by the USA; perhaps it could be the most
fundamental characteristic of US diplomacy and rhetoric.
- The US attacks Iran's alleged
support for terrorism, while the US has supported many terrorist groups when
it was felt to be convenient.
- The US talks about its enemies' weapons of
mass destruction, while the US has far more WoMDs than any other organisation
or country.
- The US is the greatest critic of any nation (especially if that
nation is not friendly to the US) that wants to obtain nuclear weapons, while
the US has far more nuclear weapons than any other nation.
- The administration of the US is vocal about justice and peace, while it
reserves the right for itself to use force against any nation that the US
perceives to be a threat to itself.
While the US tries, often
feebly and half-heartedly, to twist the interpretation of UN articles
and resolutions to suit its purposes, it frequently breaks
international law. Yet it attempts to trick its citizens, and
anyone else who will listen, into believing that it is the guardian
of everything good, honest, true, free, and wonderful.
The US (in early 2007) is highly critical of Iran whom it accuses of arming
some of those involved in the carnage in Iraq.
What nation is responsible for the whole
Iraq fiasco?
Plainly the USA.
Other examples of US duplicity are given on this
page under
East Timor,
Iran (Contra affair),
The
School of the Americas,
Who sold Saddam his weapons?, and
US supporting terrorism in Iran
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An American President may not legally conduct a war without a declaration
of Congress.
So, various Presidents have conducted "police actions", "armed incursions",
"protective reaction strikes," "pacification," "safeguarding American
interests," and a wide variety of "operations".
The USA likes to present itself as a champion of democracy; in fact it
is much more a champion of capitalism. It is quite possible for a
government to be socialist and democratic at the same time; however,
under the present global dominance by the USA socialist democracies
can expect to have the US working at undermining them.
The US administrations of the last few decades have primarily looked after
the interests of big corporations at the cost of democracy and the less
well off of the world and of the USA itself. The USA is at present a
global plutocratic empire.
There is a myth in the USA that anyone can become President.
The truth is that one must first be able to raise several tens of millions
of dollars to have any chance of becoming President.
What percentage of the US population could ever hope to raise that amount
of money for a political campaign?
It has recently been revealed (Dec. 2001) that President Suharto asked
for, and received, American approval for the Indonesian invasion of
East Timor in 1975 (see
The National Security Archive).
This was a completely unprovoked invasion of
one nation by another, it resulted in more than 200 000 deaths and
a quarter of a century of brutal treatment of the East Timorese by the
Indonesian army and police.
It seems that the de facto Fretalin government that had emerged in
East Timor following the collapse of Portuguese colonialism
was rather too socialist for American approval.
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The world's betrayal of East Timor
I've written another page on how the East Timorese people have been betrayed over and over again by the whole world and in particular, by one of East Timor's closest neighbours, my country, Australia.
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The Australian government was equally as culpable as the American,
however the former did have the honesty to recognize Indonesian
control over East Timor; the Americans were two-faced enough to
withhold recognition.
The duplicity of the USA went further: in December of 1975 the UN
Security Council unanimously ordered Indonesia to withdraw its
forces from East Timor. The US followed by secretly increasing
shipments of arms to Indonesia.
In his memoirs, UN Ambassador to the UN Daniel Patrick Moynihan stated:
"The United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring
this about.
The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly
ineffective in whatever measures it undertook.
This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable
success."
It should be noted that the US sponsored atrocities in East Timor
were far greater than anything perpetrated in Kuwait by Iraq;
Amnesty International estimates that 210 000 people died as
a result of the Indonesian occupation.
Some of the Indonesian atrocities were witnessed by a sixty-three-year-old
Portuguese priest, Father Leoneto Vieira do Rego.
The Boston Globe published the quote from Father Rego below:
"Problems started [in the interior] in early 1977.
A full-scale bombardment of the whole island began.
From that point there emerged death, illness, despair.
The second phase of the bombing was late 1977 to early 1979, with modern
aircraft.
This was the firebombing phase of the bombing.
Even up to this time, people could still live.
The genocide and starvation was the result of the full-scale incendiary
bombing.
... We saw the end coming.
People could not plant.
I personally witnessed – while running to protected areas, going from
tribe to tribe – the great massacre from bombardment and people dying
from starvation.
In 1979 people began surrendering because there was no other option.
When people began dying, then others began to give up."
Much more can be read about the US involvement in the Indonesian genocide
in East Timor in "The Essential Chomsky" edited by Anthony Arnove.
From 1964 to 1992, Texaco drilled for oil in the northern region of
the Ecuadorian Amazon, known as the "Oriente". The company left 627
open toxic waste pits and other facilities which continue to leak
highly toxic waste, affecting more than 30,000 local people.
The above quotation is from
ChevronToxico. A number of other sites also discuss the terrible
environmental damage done to the Ecuadorian environment by this giant
US company.
On 2004/12/04 it was reported on Australian Broadcasting Commission
radio that evidence obtained by the use of torture would be
admissible for use against detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
Information gained by torture has not been admitted in US courts
for 70 years.
The Australian newspaper
The Age reported that evidence obtained
by torture could be used against (Australian) alleged terrorist
David Hicks in his (then) coming trial.
Presumably this 'evidence' was used to find Hicks guilty of 'providing
substantive support to terrorists'.
The USA is using a fast-growing proportion of its corn crop to produce
ethanol for powering cars.
This diversion of what used to be sold as food for people into motor fuel
is causing world food prices to rise; often to the point where people can
no longer afford to buy the food they need to live.
Lester R. Brown, in his book Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization,
said that "The grain required to fill an SUV's 25-gallon tank with ethanol
just once will feed one person for a whole year".
Give this a bit of thought.
Most people who use SUVs in the USA do not need them; they could use much
smaller, lighter, more fuel efficient vehicles; they could often ride
bicycles or walk, and be more healthy for it.
Yet they divert grain from feeding humans into the fuel tanks of their
big gas-guzzlers because that's what they want to drive – it apparently
is a status symbol.
(Some people in the USA own big SUVs because they need them, in some
cases because they have big families.
I remain to be convinced that this is the case with most
USians.
I hold that they are like the people of my own country,
Australia; who drive SUVs for one reason or another,
but don't need to drive them.
Some drive big SUVs because they – rightly – believe that if they
collide with a smaller car they will come out of the accident better;
what kind of
selfish
attitude is this?
If we all followed this logic we would all be driving around in tanks and
no-one would be better off.)
This is an inditement on the US people, not just on the US administration.
The USA is quick to demand that other countries remove trade barriers, yet
it has recently (March 2002) imposed heavy tariffs on imported steel and
promised huge subsidies to its inefficient farmers. Not long ago a 30%
tariff was applied to imported lamb.
The US market is one of the largest in the world and this gives it the power
to bully smaller nations. It has been particularly hard on
Australia, but the Australian government continues kowtowing to the
USA. One wonders why?
Heavily subsidized agricultural products exported from the US to
developing countries wreak devastation by undercutting local producers (Oxfam).
In effect, the US is using its economic muscle to advantage its own farmers,
who are wealthy by Third World standards, and disadvantage Third World farmers.
See Oxfam's
Make Trade Fair Web site.
US Federal Government subsidies have increased from nothing in 1930 to $15
billion in 2002. There was a jump of more than 70% following the Farm
Security and rural Investment Act of 2002 alone.
Total farm subsidies are now about $40B. This is
US$21 000 per farm! How can the remainder of the world's farmers
compete?
"Full-spectrum dominance means the ability of U.S. forces, operating alone
or with allies, to defeat any adversary and control any situation across
the range of military operations."
The quote above is from the US Department of Defence Web site, but is no
longer at the same URL.
This is the avowed aim of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and
is recorded in the Joint Vision 2020 document.
They do not hide the fact that the US is aiming at having the ability to
dominate the world by force.
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This section added 2009/11/08
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Grenada is a small Caribean nation of about a hundred thousand people, most
of whom are the descendents of African slaves.
The USA took a direct interest in Grenada following a period of
anti-imperialism, non-alignment and political instability.
To quote from the New Internationalist:
The US took steps towards military intervention, a move which had been
decided upon and planned for over a year; troop-landing had been rehearsed
in maneuvers.
Early in the morning of October 25 1983, 5000 marines and Green Berets
landed on the island.
They were followed several hours later by a symbolic contingent of 300 police
from six Caribbean countries: Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Jamaica, St Lucia
and St Vincent, who joined the farce of a 'multinational intervention for
humanitarian reasons'.
Resistance from the Grenadian militia and some Cuban technicians and workers,
meant that the operation lasted much longer than expected.
The US suffered combat casualties, and the press was barred from entering
Grenada until all resistance had been eliminated.
This made it impossible to verify how many civilians had been killed in
attacks on a psychiatric hospital and other non-military targets.
Noam Chomsky, in Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic
Societies, 1989, wrote that "6000 [US] elite troops succeeded in
overcoming the resistance of several dozen Cubans and some Grenadan
Militiamen, winning 8000 medals of honor for their prowess."
The intervention was not condoned by the United Nations, it was effectively
a US unilateral action, and entirely against the agreed UN rules that state
that one nation may only invade another when either it is under immanent
threat or it is given approval by the UN Security Council for such an
invasion.
Obviously a nation of one hundred thousand people could pose no threat to
the USA.
Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was elected President in 1951. He intended to
institute land reforms; the country's economy was agriculturally based
and many farmers were trying to make a living from very small farms
while 95% of the land was owned by only 5% of the population
or
foreigners.
The United Fruit Company, for example, owned 220 000ha although
only 15% of this was in production. Apparently there was a land tax
based on the declared value of the land; so United Fruit had declared
that their non-production land had an extremley low value.
Now, President Arbenz intended to buy land at the declared value and
pass it over to poor farmers. This placed the United Fruit Company
and others in a predicament: they could either have some of their
land compulsorily acquired at the very low values they had declared
for it, or they could declare more realistic and much higher values,
and pay much higher levels of taxation.
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The phrase, 'Banana Republic' was coined to refer to the fact that Guatemala
was not ruled by its elected leaders, but by the United Fruit
Company and its US owners.
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I will keep this short and simply say that the owners of United Fruit
happened to hold very high positions in the US government. Soon
the USA decided that President Arbenz's land reforms were Communist
and unacceptable. They sent in the bombers. Arbenz was forced to resign and
was replaced by a repressive government headed by Colonel Armas.
This was more acceptable to the USA because the Armas government was not
interested in land reform.
After driving the Iraqi forces out of Kuwait the USA encouraged the
Sheas of Southern Iraq and the Kurds of Northern Iraq to revolt
against Hussein. These peoples subsequently did revolt, but their
revolutions were brutally suppressed by Hussein. The USA
provided no support for the revolutions that they had encouraged.
The USA is by far the biggest greenhouse gas producer in the world.
China is also a big greenhouse gas producer, but then it has
four times the population of the USA.
The US per-capita production is either the largest in the world or very
close to it (the same can be said of my country, Australia.)
The USA is becoming a pariah state because it refuses to ratify the Kyoto
protocol and to significantly reduce its greenhouse gas production.
(Also see
Climate change denial.)
President George W. Bush said that "ratification is not in America's best
interest"; plainly he feels that the damage that climate change will
cause the whole world in the future is less important than money
in his supporter's pockets now.
(It should be mentioned here that President Obama seems much more responsible
in relation to the climate change problem.
However, the vehicle fuel efficiency targets announced in 2009 by Obama
are well short of those announced for Europe and China.)
A quote from America the Unbeautiful...
"The answer is corporate payback. This has been the defining trait of President
Bush's administration. His election was a straightforward capitalist venture
for the energy corporations. Oil, gas, coal and nuclear companies are the power
behind Bush; together,
they donated more than $50 million dollars to put him in the White House."
It seems that the Republican party has not changed since President Ronald
Reagan was elected and immediately removed the solar water heater from the
White House roof; symbolising his active opposition to sustainable energy.
Bush and climate change
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President Obama has promised to do much better.
As of March 2009 I have seen little action, but it is still early days, we live in hope.
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President George W. Bush does not want to admit that climate change is
happening, because to do so would show his inactivity on the crisis to be the
criminal neglect that it is.
A quote from George Monbiot...
"Last month, the New York Times revealed that Philip Cooney, a lawyer with no
scientific training, had been imported into the White House from the American
Petroleum Institute, to control the presentation of climate science. He
edited scientific reports, striking out evidence that glaciers were
retreating and inserting phrases suggesting that there was serious scientific
doubt about climate change. Working with the Exxon-sponsored PR man Myron
Ebell, he lobbied successfully for the sacking of the head of the
Environmental Protection Agency, who had refused to accept the official line."
Read the full article at
Faced with this crisis, George Monbiot.
I must thank George Monbiot for bringing the piece below to my notice too...
Monbiot said
"Scientists whose research demonstrates that climate change is taking place
have been repeatedly threatened and silenced and their findings edited or
suppressed."
The Union of Concerned Scientists found that 58% of the 279 climate
scientists working at federal agencies in the US who responded to its
survey reported that they had experienced one of the following constraints.
- "Pressure to eliminate the words 'climate change,' 'global warming', or
other similar terms" from their communications.
- Editing of scientific reports by their superiors which "changed the
meaning of scientific findings".
- Statements by officials at their
agencies which misrepresented their findings.
- "The disappearance or unusual delay of websites, reports, or other
science-based materials relating to climate".
- New or unusual administrative requirements that impair climate-related
work".
- "Situations in which scientists have actively objected to, resigned
from, or removed themselves from a project because of pressure to change
scientific findings."
They reported 435 incidents of political
interference over the past five years
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The table below shows that the USA is by far the world's worst producer of
carbon dioxide emissions.
That the USA could greatly reduce its carbon emissions is shown by a
comparison with the UK, Germany, Italy and France, countries
with similar standards of living and very similar climates,
but much lower per capita levels of emission.
From Scientific American, April 2002
|
| Percent of world emissions
| Emissions per capita
(metric tons per year)
|
| U.S.
| 24
| 5.4
|
| China
| 14
| 0.7
|
| Russia
| 6
| 2.7
|
| Japan
| 5
| 2.5
|
| India
| 5
| 0.3
|
| Germany
| 4
| 2.8
|
| Canada
| 2
| 4.2
|
| U.K.
| 2
| 2.5
|
| South Korea
| 2
| 2.2
|
| Italy
| 2
| 2.0
|
| France
| 2
| 1.7
|
| Mexico
| 2
| 1.1
|
Also see
Greenhouse and Environment.
The US President, Mr Bush, excuses his mistreatment of his Taliban
prisoners of war with the statement that these people are the worst
of the worst. They have never been tried, but it seems Bush knows that they
are guilty.
In the Afghan war he killed several thousand more Afghan civilians than the
number
of civilians killed in the Trade Center with the excuse that it was
the only way that he could root-out the perpetrators of the
September 11th outrage. Two wrongs
never made a right.
Mr Bush cannot seem to see that al-Qaeda does its work because it is
motivated by hate; and to try to fight hate with bombing, killing, and
abuse of human rights is only going to generate more hate. The more
bombs he drops the more hate for the US is created.
It may be that the USA will protect itself from terrorism by
destruction, murder, and abuse of power, but if so it will be a
peace of the sort that was achieved in Stalin's Russia or Suharto's
Indonesia. A peace where the people's hatred of their overlord is
exceeded only by their fear of him. Is this a desirable state of
affairs?
If the USA was to correct its own behaviour: cut back on the arms
industry, stop covertly interfering in the politics of other nations,
work toward limiting its voracious appetite for non-renewable
resources, shoulder its responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas
production, provide more aid for developing nations;
in short to behave ethically, then it might reduce the
hatred that exists in the Muslim world for the US. Wouldn't this
produce a better world and a safer USA?
See also
A cure for terrorism for a view on an alternative to
the politics of hate.
I do not condemn the USA for dropping the nuclear bombs that ended the
Second World War, but to what degree it was justified is a hugely important
ethical question.
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Did the bombs end the war?
In his book Hiroshima Nagasaki: The Real Story of the Atomic Bombings and Their Aftermath, Paul Ham wrote that it was not the nuclear bombs that ended the war. Just as much death and destruction had already been inflicted on other Japanese cities by fire bombing.
According to Paul Ham the Japanese surrendered because they knew that the Russians were closing in on them through China and they preferred to surrender to the Americans then to the Russians.
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Something around 60 000 people were killed in each of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.
There can be no doubt that had the bombs not been used, there would have
been very high numbers of Allied casualties before the war ended.
It is quite possible that had the bombs not been used Japanese casualties
might have been even higher, because of the
fire-bombing that was being used against Japanese cities and the
Japanese determination to never surrender.
The question that remains though is could it have been done differently, with the same end effect of finishing the war, but with much less loss of life?
For example, what if the first nuclear bomb were dropped a few kilometres
off the coast at Yokohama as a warning, followed with demands for surrender?
If no surrender followed, then the second bomb could be dropped on a city;
followed by further demands for surrender.
It may be that the USA only had the two bombs and building a third could
have taken months (at that time the supply of fissile material must have
been very limited).
The very considerable possibility that one or other of the bombs might not
have exploded, or might have a much lower 'yield' than expected,
had to be taken into account.
Perhaps it was believed that they had to get the absolute maximum strategic
impact from each bomb in order to be relatively sure of ending the war?
President Ronald Reagan, and then George W. Bush, must both bear the blame for
thousands, if not millions, of unnecessary deaths in Africa from HIV/AIDS.
Both have refused to provide, and have even discouraged the use of,
condoms in Africa as a means of limiting the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Further, both have denied any US aid to any
family planning clinics that even mention the word 'abortion', forcing
their morality onto millions of other people.
Condom use is proven to be very effective in limiting the spread of the HIV
virus that causes AIDS.
To his credit, President Obama has reversed the US refusal to support family
planning clinics that provide information about abortion.
The USA consumes a larger share of the world's non-renewable
resources than any other nation. The USA, especially under
G.W. Bush, is making very
little effort to reduce its consumption; the average US car is
bigger than those of other
countries and consumes more fuel per kilometre; of course
greater fuel consumption results in greater global air pollution so
it affects everyone on the planet.
An indication of American thinking on sharing the atmosphere is given
by the recent (Nov. 2004) awarding of a $13.22M prize to the builders
of SpaceShipOne. The prize was "designed to encourage technology to
open the heavens to tourists". These tourists will be the
disgustingly wealthy few, and every 'trip' into space will add
more pollution to the atmosphere in a few minutes than 100 citizens
of the Third World add in a year.
The US used white phosphorus in its siege of Fallugia. Its use on
civilian targets is banned by UN conventions, but the US claimed that they
were allowed to use it against military targets.
The use of white phosphorus is banned by the UN protocol on incendiary
weapons, but then the US did not sign that protocol.
However, white phosphorus is a chemical as well as an incendiary weapon.
George Monbiot, 2005/11/22, stated that:
The US army knows that its use as a weapon is illegal. In the Battle Book
published by US Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas,
my correspondent David Traynier found the following sentence. "It is against
the law of land warfare to employ WP against personnel targets."
Chapter 5, Section III.
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/army/docs/st100-3/c5/5sect3.htm
The US Department of Defence had earlier claimed that Saddam Hussein had
used white phosphorus as a chemical weapon against Kurds in Iraq. It seems
that it is OK for the US to use it, but not for anyone else.
I strongly recommend the above article by George Monbiot, he is a far better
writer than I am, and far better informed.
When George W. Bush claimed (January 2008) that Iranian speedboats swarmed
around US warships in the Strait of Hormuz and threatened to blow them up
I shuddered.
Is he looking for an excuse to invade or bomb Iran?
The Iranians claim that "The pictures that the Pentagon broadcast of the
naval incident are file pictures and the voices have all been fabricated".
I'm inclined to believe the Iranians more than the Americans.
The USA fabricated an attack on two US destroyers in the
Gulf of Tonkin Incident
in 1964 to justify the beginning of their monstrous campaign of
bombing North Vietnam.
Similarly it made up the story about an Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction
threat to world peace to justify its invasion of Iraq in 2003.
(The USA has more WoMDs than any other nation in the world and if Iraq
ever did have WoMDs they were at least partly supplied by the USA.)
If the USA is the guardian of the world's peace, freedom and democracy,
Flying Spaghetti Monster help us all!
According to an article by William Lowther (Washington DC) and Colin
Freeman published in the London Sunday Telegraph on 2007/02/25,
"America is secretly funding militant ethnic separatist groups in Iran in an
attempt to pile pressure on the Islamic regime to give up its nuclear
programme."
The article went on to say
"The operations are controversial because they involve dealing with
movements that resort to terrorist methods in pursuit of their grievances
against the Iranian regime."
Fred Burton, a former US state department counter-terrorism agent, was
quoted as saying:
"The latest attacks inside Iran fall in line with US efforts to supply and
train Iran's ethnic minorities to destabilise the Iranian regime."
This is, of course, exactly what the US has complained that Iran is doing
in Iraq.
Another example of US duplicity. The USA
soundly criticises those who support terrorists when those terrorists
are working against the interests of the US establishment, but it is
quite happy to support terrorists who it sees as useful to its own
causes.
Also see
US support for terrorism elsewhere on
this page.
In a 1953 coup backed by the US Central Intelligence Agency and
master-minded by Kermit Roosevelt (Theodore's grandson), Prime Minister
Mossadegh of Iran was deposed. The US wanted Mossadegh out of the way because
he intended to nationalize the Iranian
oil industry. Prime Minister Mossadegh's government was replaced by the near
absolute dictatorship of the Shah, who enforced his rule with his hated
'secret police', the Savak. (See Kryss Tal's
Why USA.)
The hated government of the Shah was overthrown in a popular revolution in
1979 and replaced with an Islamic government. Had the US not meddled in
Iran's internal affairs that country could well have an open and
democratic government rather than the theocracy-dominated one it has.
So much for the USA as the champion of democracy.
In late 2004 there is evidence that Iran is trying to develop nuclear
weapons. Is this at all surprising, or even wrong, when the possession
of nuclear weapons is probably the only way that Iran can be sure
that it will not be invaded by the USA and its allies? The USA
government sees nothing immoral in possessing more nuclear weapons
than any other country on Earth. The aggressive international
relation style of the USA is pushing nations that fear it toward
developing nuclear weapons as the only way of self defence.
In a remarkable example of duplicity, President Reagan sold arms
to Iran in 1985 and 86. He used the income from the arms sales
to help finance the
Contras;
all this being kept secret from the American people.
Consider this in relation to 'Who sold
Saddam
his weapons' and 'War with
Iraq'.
Nuclear capacity in any nation run by religious bigots must be of great
concern.
Probably very few people outside Iran, other than Islamic extremists or
fundamentalists, would like to see Iran develop nuclear weapons, or to
be in a position to do so.
But what rational justification can be given to stop Iran having nuclear
power – whether for peaceful or war-like purposes – while so
many other nations have nuclear power and nuclear weapons?
Why should the USA have more nuclear weapons than any other nation, and
Iran – which must feel threatened by the aggressive stance of the
USA – be denied any nuclear weapons?
If nations run by religious bigots should not have nuclear weapons then
the USA should give up its weapons.
It is interesting to observe that in the period when Shah Reza Mohammad Pahlavi was in control, largely as a puppet of the USA, it seemed that the USA was happy for Iran to build nuclear power stations (which would later be useful for producing materials potentially useful for weapons).
This is mentioned in the book 'Daughter of Persia'; see below.
More information on the USA and Iran
I can recommend the book 'Daughter of Persia' by Sattareh Farman Farmaian, with Dona Munker.
It is an autobiography of a woman who tried to improve the lot of the common Iranian.
She writes of the interference by the USA in Iranian affairs, which was critical, and generally disadvantageous to the Iranian people and the development of democracy in Iran in a number of periods.
The
Center for Public
Integrity ("Investigative Journalism in the Public Interest"),
placed this in its Internet site...
"Following 9/11, President Bush and seven top officials of his administration
waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat
posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials,
including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice, and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false
statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national
security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the
U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that
the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively
galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under
decidedly false pretences.
On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews,
testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with
Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz,
and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated
unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to
produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort
was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war.
It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass
destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda..."
The piece was written by Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith.
The whole article can be read at The
Center for Public
Integrity.
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It happened exactly as this cartoon described
(except for the bit about the moustache); and after the war
no-one could find any Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Apologies to artist, I don't have your name.
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Started by the USA (with assistance from several other countries,
notably the UK and Australia) without any legitimacy from the UN
in March 2003, the war was an act of invasion of a sovereign
nation. The moral justification was flimsy. For more detail see
The Iraq War.
Nearly 3000 civilians were killed in the September 11th
attacks on the USA. The results of an extensive study into the
number of civilians killed in the 2003 Iraq War and its
aftermath was published in the prestigious journal The Lancet
October 2004; it estimated that 100 000 Iraqis have died as a result of
the coalition invasion.
In October 2006 the same journal published an
estimate of 650 000 Iraqi civilian deaths, based on a larger survey.
In 2006 the killing continued. In January 2007 the UN released figures
indicating that more than 34 000 civilians were killed and
more than 36 000 were wounded in 2006.
In November 2005, over two years after the invasion, more are dieing every day
because the invaders have not managed to restore order.
Osama bin Laden was responsible for 9/11, Gorge W. Bush (with Tony Blair
and John Howard) was responsible for the 2003 Iraq War. Who can claim
to be 'good' in this? Who can say that right is on their side?
The Iraqis are bombing and shooting their 'liberators'.
This can be hard for Westerners to understand, I suspect especially
hard for Americans. They may see themselves as the white knights who
saved the Iraqi people from Saddam's barbaric rule.
It would be a good exercise for Americans to try to see the situation
from the point of view of the Iraqis.
Imagine if, after George W. Bush was first elected,
China
invaded the
USA to install the rightful President, Al Gore; after all, George W.
Bush had very flimsy grounds for his claim on the Presidency.
(OK, I know the Chinese could not successfully invade the US, the
US has more weapons than anyone, but just suppose that they have
for the sake of the exercise.)
How would Americans feel? Would they welcome the Chinese as
liberators? I think not; I think they would use terrorist tactics
(in this case they would call it 'freedom fighter' tactics) to try to
get the Chinese out of the country.
Abed Hamed Mowhoush was a major general in the Iraqi Air Force. He was
tortured to death by US Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshoffer Junior in
November 2003. The punishment for Mr Welshoffer for this inhuman act was
a reprimand, forfeiture of Aust$10 000 salary, and confinement to
barracks for 60 days. The matter is covered by
Wikipedia.
US troops torture and humiliate Iraqi prisoners
I quote from the CBS Net site (2004/04/30):
"According to the U.S. Army, one Iraqi prisoner was told to stand on a
box with his head covered, wires attached to his hands. He was told that
if he fell off the box, he would be electrocuted.
There are shots of the prisoners stacked in a pyramid, one with a slur
written on his skin in English.
In some, the male prisoners are positioned to simulate sex with each
other. And in most of the pictures, the Americans are laughing,
posing, pointing, or giving the camera a thumbs-up.
But the Army investigation found serious problems behind the scenes.
The Army has photographs that show a detainee with wires attached to
his genitals. Another shows a dog attacking an Iraqi prisoner.
Frederick said that dogs were 'used for intimidation factors.'"
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In justice it should be said here that much worse crimes of humiliation
and torture occur routinely in many, probably most, Arab nations.
However, two wrongs never made a right.
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Of course, if these crimes are recorded on photographs and have
come to light, one must
ask how many times equally reprehensible acts have been committed
by US troops, but have been kept secret?
It might be that only a small minority of US troops would be capable
of this behaviour, but the fact is that war often brings out the
worst in people. Also see the My Lai
Massacre (on this page).
Torture in Iraq prisons
Buffalo News and others
on 2005/12/13 reported "at least 12 cases of what an Iraq
official called "severe torture" at a prison run by the Interior Ministry's
special police commandos."
"Prisoners' bones were broken and their fingernails pulled out, were subject
to electric shocks, and burning cigarettes were crushed into their necks and
backs"
"The cases appeared more severe than those of beaten, emaciated prisoners
found in the basement of another Baghdad Interior Ministry facility last
month."
It seems that the main difference between the Iraqi prisons before and
after the
invasion is that now it is Shiites who are torturing Sunnis, before the
invasion it was Sunnis who were torturing Shiites. What has been achieved?
In October 2010
Wikileaks released "The
Iraq War Logs".
In the summary of the Wikileaks front page:
"The reports detail 109 032 deaths in Iraq, comprised of 66 081
'civilians'; 23 984 'enemy' (those labeled as insurgents); 15 196
'host nation' (Iraqi government forces) and 3 771 'friendly'
(coalition forces).
The majority of the deaths (66 000, over 60%) of these are civilian
deaths.
That is 31 civilians dying every day during the six year period."
Add to this more than two million Iraqi refugees and the present
(November 2010) genocide
against Iraqi Christians and you can get some feel for the result of the
Bush/Blair/Howard invasion of Iraq.
1
st Sept. 2006.
I will confine my comments on Israel's invasion of Lebanon on
one small aspect.
The Secretary General of the United Nations has recently
announced that in the last three days before the cease fire Israel war planes
dropped many cluster bombs. It was estimated that something like
100 000 unexploded bomblets remain on the ground in Lebanon.
Cluster bombs can explode when they are disturbed, they are
notorious in causing injuries and deaths to civilians, especially children.
Of course they do not discriminate between 'terrorists' and civilians.
This was a war crime.
The USA, who supplied most of the cluster bombs to Israel, will continue to
support Israel in its military dominance of the Middle East.
The USA has generally supported Israel in its subjugation of the Palestinians and the theft of their land.
It provides billions of dollars of aid to Israel each year.
Whether the actions of the Israelis is productive or not is questionable. The more they bomb and murder, the more hate and revenge is engendered in the Palestinians.
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Update 2023-24; Israel-Gaza conflict
Following a cruel and unjustifiable attack on Israeli civilians by Palestinian militant groups on 2023/10/07 the Israeli government mounted a murderous response. By the time of writing (April 2024) it is hard to call the Israeli bombing and killing in Gaza anything other than genocidal.
While US President Joe Biden has consistently asked the Israelis to reduce the killing of civilians and destruction of Gaza, the US has persistently provided Israel with the weapons and money to continue in their unjustifiable actions.
Wikipedia has an article on the Gaza-Israel 'clashes'.
The Wikipedia article states that a thousand civilians were massacred in the Palestinian attack on Israel. The Israeli's response has resulted in the reported death of more than thirty thousand Palestinian civilians.
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In September 1982, Israeli troops surrounded the Palestinian refugee camps of
Sabra and Chatila in southern Lebanon and stood by while Christian militiamen,
over a three-day period, massacred at least 800 people, including women,
children and the elderly. Foreign journalists, including Americans, who entered
the camps as soon as the killing was finished, were sickened by what they saw.
My own opinion is that the nation of Israel should continue to exist and
that Israelis have a right to peace.
My complaint with the USA – and the government of Australia, my own
country – is that they
always blame the Palestinians and rarely place any blame on the Israelis
for aggression, land theft, or unjustified killing of civilians.
I believe that the Israelis have killed far more Palestinian civilians
than the Palestinians have killed Israeli civilians; yet we always hear
from our governments that the Israelis are protecting themselves while
the Palestinians are the aggressors.
This is a very one-sided and dishonest view.
In October 2003 Doctor Mahathir, President of Malaysia, at a meeting of
representatives of Islamic states said that Jews ruled "the world by
proxy" and that Islamic countries should arm against them. He said that
they get others to fight and die for them.
He was referring to the community of Jews in powerful positions in
the US Government.
While Mahathir's suggestion was foolish and provocative, he was right in his
concern. My impression is that the right-wing Christians and the Jews who
appear to be running
America's foreign policy in relation to the Middle East are
misguided. They seem to believe that Israel can be made safe, and the
threat of terrorism in the USA can be controlled, by use of
force and weaponry. The long-term result of this policy is likely to be
a bloody reaction to Jewry and the West.
(If you think that this statement makes me anti-Semitic I suggest you try to
develop a more balanced outlook.)
The USA navy wants to deploy sonar that has been shown to kill
whales. On several occasions whales that have beached themselves
near US naval exercises have been examined and it has been shown
that the whales had seriously damaged ears and, in some cases,
brains. The Navy have admitted that their sonar has caused some
of this damage. Yet they insist that they have the right to
deploy this sonar in some 80% of the world's oceans.
There are many links on the Internet, including
Natural Resources Defence Council.
The liberation of Kuwait from Iraq was not the heroic deed that the USA would
have the world believe; it was motivated by pure self-interest.
If the USA was really the bastion of democracy that it claims to be
it seems surprising that it didn't make sure that
a democratic government was set up in Kuwait after the Gulf War.
The Head of State in Kuwait is an emir who is chosen by and from
among the royal family. The emir appoints the prime minister and
council of ministers; he dissolved the elected National Assembly
in 1986 and promulgated legislation by decree.
(Iraqi forces invaded in Aug. 1990 and were expelled from Kuwait
in Feb. 1991.)
A new parliament was elected in 1992, but only one in seven of Kuwait's
citizens (no females) were eligible to vote.
(SBS World Guide, 10th edition, 2002)
The only reason the USA liberated Kuwait is that it wanted surety of oil supply.
While many countries have banned the production and laying of
anti-personnel land mines, the USA has not (too profitable a
business?). These devices have
caused, and continue to cause, huge numbers of terrible injuries.
I have read that the UN estimates there are 100 million land mines
world wide from past and present wars and that 20 to 25 people
are maimed each day.
Only a few days before I wrote this section an Australian SAS trooper
was seriously injured by a land mine in Afghanistan. I wonder whether
the mine had 'made in the USA' printed on it?
The worst aspect of land mines is that they are indiscriminate; they
maim or kill civilians just as easily as combatants, and they go on
maiming and killing after hostilities have ended.
Very many countries have signed the 1997 Oslo Convention on
anti-personnel land mines, but not USA,
Iraq, North Korea, Libya, China, and Russia.
Neither is the USA a full signatory to the Geneva Convention of the
international rules of war.
Addition 2004/03/28
Scientific American, April 2004
"Land mines kill or injure some 26 000 people every year, and
roughly 110 million remain unexploded in about 64 countries"
This point is a personal gripe, the fault is not at all criminal, in
contrast to many of the other points on this page.
The USA is one of the few countries to not have
officially embraced the metric system. The French realized the
faults of the old systems of measurement after their Civil War of
the late eighteenth century and developed the metric system of
measurement. It is based on ten (the base of our numbering system)
and, to a lesser extent, one thousand. For example 10 millimetres
in a centimetre, ten centimetres in a decimetre, ten decimetres in
a metre; one thousand millimetres in a metre, one thousand metres
in a kilometre. The superiority of this system over one in which
there are twelve inches in a foot, three feet in a yard, 22 yards
in a chain, 80 chains in a mile is obvious.
Why not let the Americans live with the primitive system while the rest
of the world moves ahead? The trouble is that they tend to keep
forcing the old system on the rest of us. Hence aeroplane altitudes
are measured in feet, gas in cubic feet, oil in barrels, and the
resolution of scanners in dpi (dots per inch).
Mexico is the poor neighbour of the USA and has a huge problem with drug
traffickers destabilising its government and society.
Two thousand guns a day are illegally crossing the US border into Mexico
and the US seems to be doing very little about it.
(From SBS television news, Australia, 2009/02/28.)
No doubt it is good for the US
arms business.
North Korea is developing nuclear weapons.
Is this surprising, possession of nuclear weapons is the only deterrent to
invasion by the USA.
The USA, by its aggressive style of international relations,
is pushing all nations that have reason to fear it to develop
nuclear weapons.
The USA sees nothing immoral in possessing more nuclear weapons than
any other nation (with the possible exception of Russia).
North Korea has a terrible human rights record. Its elite look
after themselves and buy weapons while the poor starve. Perhaps
if they were not so terrified by the USA they might look after
their own people a bit better? Who knows?
I read on the Internet that there was a near miss accidental detonation
of a one-megaton nuclear weapon at the Pantex plant near Amorillo, Texas
in March of 2005. A decades old W-56 warhead (see
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Allbombs.html for a
description) was being
dismantled at the time.
The facility's operator was fined $110 000 for the incident.
What would have happened had the weapon exploded? Being about a hundred
times the power of the Hiroshima bomb, it would have levelled an area
several kilometres in diameter, and presumably obliterated all evidence
of the cause of the blast. I suspect that the US administration might
have jumped to the conclusion that terrorists had set off the blast.
Might Bush have used it as an excuse to initiate an invasion, or at least
a series of bombing raids, on Iran in the hope of bolstering his badly
flagging popularity?
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Remember that Bush invaded Iraq as a part of his war against terrorism,
in spite of there never being any link shown between the Iraq regime and
the 9/11 attack, and there were never any
weapons of mass distruction
found.
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We'll never know.
A Joel Dyess, apparently a US citizen,
who read the above, emailed me claiming that it would not happen because:
"the source of radioactive material can be determined literally to the
location, time and date of its rendering.
So within hours after an explosion it can be determined who manufactured
any given nuclear source."
Joel seemed to be implying that the authorities would recognise that the
explosion was of a US weapon and therefore must have been an accident.
I believe that he is right in as much as, if a sample of enriched uranium
can be tested, it's source can be identified.
Whether such testing could be successfully done following a huge nuclear
explosion is much more doubtful; and it must be remembered that this would
probably not be the only weapon at this plant, so there would be other
nuclear material mixed in with the debris.
Then there is the question of whether testing would be done, and if it was
done successfully, would the results be made public?
Even if testing was done and showed that the explosion came from US
nuclear material,
it could still be supposed that terrorists had stolen a bomb, or had
somehow infiltrated the Pantex plant and detonated the bomb.
A Mike Williamson, also apparently a US citizen said that
"unless properly fuzed, which they are not unless in the
process of being used, a nuclear weapon will at most suffer a
subcritical fizzle."
This may well be true, I don't know, but we were also told that nuclear
accidents like Three Mile Island were impossible, until it happened.
Nuclear weapons are built to produce huge explodions, of course the makers
do everything they can think of to stop accidental explosions, but can we
be sure they are impossible?
The prestigious journal Scientific American published an article in its
February 2006 issue about the danger posed by the 50 tonnes of highly enriched
uranium (HEU) around the world in private hands. Unlike the HEU in military
hands, this is often held in situations where security is poor, sometimes
very poor.
Only 60kg of HEU is needed to make a simple atomic bomb, and little skill is
required. A well set up engineering firm could make a bomb like that used on
Hiroshima.
Ordinary uranium, as it comes out of the ground, cannot be used to make a
bomb. Low enriched uranium (LEU), like that used in most modern nuclear
power stations, cannot be used to make a bomb. Even plutonium is much more
difficult to turn into a bomb than is HEU.
Yet in their 'war against terror' Bush, Blaire and Howard seem to have almost
entirely neglected the threat posed by terrorists getting hold of HEU. The
Scientific American article concludes by stating that 'civilian HEU could be
eliminated from the world in five to eight years'. Why is the USA
concentrating on Iraq and Iran rather than removing the threat posed by HEU?
Could it all be more about oil supply than terrorist threat?
The Scientific American journal, in its January 2008 issue, contained an
article explaining how the USA could get 69% of its electricity and
35% of its total energy needs from solar power by 2050.
This would cost, the authors estimate, US$420 billion in subsidies.
(I believe that to the present – April 2008 – something over a
trillion dollars has been spent on the Iraq War.)
The authors went on to write that "if wind, biomass and geothermal sources
were also developed, renewable energy could provide 100% of the nation's
electricity and 90% of its energy by 2100."
Electric power from
wind: projection
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|---|
| Year | Percentage of
consumption
|
|---|
| 0 | 2007 | 1.2
|
| 1 | 2008 | 1.8
|
| 2 | 2009 | 2.6
|
| 3 | 2010 | 3.8
|
| 4 | 2011 | 5.6
|
| 5 | 2012 | 8.2
|
| 6 | 2013 | 12
|
| 7 | 2014 | 18
|
| 8 | 2015 | 26
|
| 9 | 2016 | 39
|
| 10 | 2017 | 57
|
| 11 | 2018 | 83
|
| 12 | 2019 | 122
|
The Danish journal, Wind Power Monthly, March 2008, reported that installed
wind power in the USA increased by 47% to a total of nearly 17GW in 2007.
At the end of 2007 wind provided about 1.2% of the electricity
requirements of the USA.
(If the USA was to hold its electrical consumption at the 2007 level and
go on increasing its wind power by 47% a year, simple arithmetic shows
that if the USA was to hold its power consumption constant at the 2007
level and go on increasing its wind power at 47% each year it would
generate all its electricity from wind in 12 years: see the table at
the right.
A simplistic argument, but worth some thought.)
So, should the USA go on spending trillions of dollars on fighting
oil wars over an ever diminishing supply of oil, or should it spend hundreds
of billions on developing sustainable energy supplies?
The Philippines has one of the lowest percentage of breast-fed babies in
the world, with resultant disastrous health effects.
(70% of Philippinos have inadequate access to clean water, so often
contaminated water is used to make up the baby formula; there are of
course many other adverse health effects of using formula rather than
breast milk to feed babies.)
The government is doing all in its power to educate mothers about the
health benefits of breast feeding, but the (predominantly US)
baby formula companies,
with the collusion of the US government, are doing their best to foil
the best efforts of the Philippines government and keep the dollars
flowing into the USA.
George Monbiot describes the situation in some detail.
The USA claims the right to make "pre-emptive" strikes whenever it chooses.
This is the 'right' to go in and bomb any part of any nation in the world
– where it perceives a threat to itself –
without warning and without any permission from the United Nations.
How could anyone believe that there is any justice in this?
Imagine how the US government would squeal if China claimed the right to
bomb any part of the USA where there were ethnic Chinese who supported
independence for Taiwan!
Guantanamo Bay
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A quote from Winston Churchill
"The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without
formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to
deny him the judgement of his peers, is in the highest degree
odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government
whether Nazi or Communist."
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A rod for their own back, where to send the mainly innocent men
from Guantanamo?
As I write this, in November 2009, President Obama is trying to close down
Guantanamo Bay.
He is finding that the US has placed itself in a difficult position.
By telling the world that the inmates of Guantanamo were 'the worst of
the worst' the US now has a very tough job finding a country that will take
them.
If he was to free them in the US he would probably have to run a
publicity campaign to reverse the public perception of the ex-prisoners,
or else they would likely face harassment; the Republican side of
politics and the hawks in the Pentagon would strongly resist such a
climb-down from the previous stance.
In many cases they cannot be sent back to their countries of origin because
they would be persecuted there.
A group of ex-Guantanamo inmates who are Muslim Uighurs (pronounced
'Weegers'), from one of
China's western
provinces, have been sent to Samoa, a small Pacific state.
The US apparently applied diplomatic pressure to Samoa to accept the
Uighurs (Samoa receives aid from the USA), but now Samoa is in trouble
with China, because China has a problem with Uighurs in the homeland wanting
more autonomy; China lumps
separatism
in with terrorism and extremism.
Samoa has benefited from Chinese investment, which now seems to be drying
up.
The Uighurs would quite like to go to Australia, but of course
Australia has been repeating the US
lies about how evil the Guantanamo detainees are, and would now find it
embarrassing to accept these men; besides, Australia has a lot of trade
with China and would not want to put that at risk.
The Uighers themselves, like so many other ex-Guantanamo prisoners have never
been found guilty of anything, are very likely innocent men who just want a
chance for a decent life.
Much of the above concerning the Uighurs was extracted from an Australian
Broadcasting Commission Television item in "Foreign Correspondent".
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The USA keeps its prisoners of war from the invasion of Afghanistan
in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, so that the laws of the USA do not apply.
These people have been held without trial and without formal charge
for over five years (as of Feb. 2007), this is against the basic principles of
accepted Western Justice.
In October 2003 a senior Red Cross official,
Christophe Girod, took the very unusual step of
publicly expressing the concern of his organisation about the
indefinite detention of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay without
charge and without trial.
Bright lights are kept on in cells 24 hours a day,
many of the cells are small and uncomfortable, and punishments
such as removing a prisoner's bedding are used on those that
the guards consider uncooperative prisoners.
See
BBC article.
George W Bush has excused Guantanamo by saying that it is only
bad people who are imprisoned their, yet a number of innocent
men have been returned to Afghanistan after over a year at
Guantanamo.
In October 2004 it was revealed that the USA tortured Guantanamo
Bay prisoners with a combination of
very loud music, strobe lights and freezing conditions for up to
14 hours at a time. The information came from military guards,
intelligence agents "and others", who were speaking on the
condition of anonymity (for obvious reasons).
One
Australian citizen, David Hicks, was among the prisoners of Guantanamo.
He was been abandoned by the Australian Government, guilty because their
US puppet-masters said he was guilty.
After a show trial –
that would have been laughable in its obvious lack of justice, but for the
effect on a man's life – he was sent to Australia to "serve the
remaining six months of his term" in prison.
As I write this, in November 2009, he is now a free man, so far as I know,
simply getting on with his life.
The US officials do not call the Guantanamo Bay prisoners 'prisoners of
war', because to do so would entitle them to rights under the Geneva
Convention. The US calls these unfortunates 'enemy combatants'.
The USA, by the way, is among a minority of nations that have not
fully agreed to the Geneva convention.
Rear Admiral Harry Harris, commander of Guantanamo Bay (Feb. 2007) said
that the USA had no obligation to give the prisoners a trial. As they
were 'enemy combatants' the US had every right to detain them indefinitely.
He did not explain how the world could know that these people were
enemy combatants if they had never had a trial to prove that. We are
apparently to take the word of the US military that these people are bad
without any trial being necessary. (Who's word in the US military?
The commander? Why should the commander's
word be more reliable than some dissident officer who has the courage to
speak out against Guantanamo?)
In any case, the USA invaded Afghanistan.
These 'enemy combatants' resisted.
Doesn't a person have the right to resist an invader?
A hypothetical question – if China was to invade
the USA, would China have the right to lock up indefinitely all those who
it captured resisting its invasion?
Bagram airbase, Afghanistan
The US has used
torture on prisoners at Bagram. They have forced
prisoners to kneel, holding their hands over their heads, for several
hours at a time; an un-permitted movement results in an extension of the
period of torture.
Deprivation of sleep is inflicted using loud noise
and bright lights.
Two prisoners have died at Bagram. US investigators have
described the causes as homicide, yet nobody has been charged over
the deaths.
The USA has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the World.
Is this what we would expect of a country that claims to be the exemplar
of freedom, human rights and democracy?
"In 2001 Human Rights Watch estimated that at least 140,000 inmates in the
US had been raped while incarcerated"
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_rape); what a terrible indictment.
People's behaviour is greatly influenced by the behaviour of others.
How many US prisoners broke the law because they followed the example of
their government?
If the administration of the USA was more ethical, would it influence
more US citizens to be law abiding?
Just a thought.
One of the central tenets of most, if not all, of the great religions,
certainly of Christianity and Judaism, is the Golden Rule. It will be
worded something like, 'Treat other people as you would like them to treat
you'.
Would US people like others to drop bombs on them?
All recent US Presidents have claimed to be Christians. Jesus said 'Love
your neighbour' and 'Turn the other cheek'. How can someone who believes
in what Jesus taught use death and destruction to try to rule the world?
The wealth gap in the USA, the socio-economic distance between the wealthiest
and poorest citizens, is one of the highest in the First World.
The Scientific American of Dec. 2005 stated that the USA has the steepest
socio-economic status gradient of Western nations.
Those who are financially poor have correspondingly poor health.
It said that "one study
showed that the poorest white males in America die about a decade earlier than
the richest".
Is this a situation that would be acceptable to an ethical government?
How ethical are the wealthy of the USA if they are content to allow this
situation to stand?
Paul Robeson was a
great American, but because he was black and had
socialist sympathies, he was treated abominably by the US establishment.
An extract from the School of the Americas Watch web site...
"The US Army School of Americas (SOA), based in Fort Benning,
Georgia, trains Latin American soldiers in combat,
counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics. Graduates of the SOA are
responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin
America. Among the SOA's nearly 60,000 graduates are notorious
dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo
Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of
Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of
Bolivia. Lower-level SOA graduates have participated in human rights
abuses that include the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and
the El Mozote Massacre of 900 civilians."
Look up their web site:
School of the Americas Watch
Another informative site on the SOA:
CIP online: SOA
The School of the Americas is to be renamed the
"Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation."
The Baltimore Sun obtained, under the US Freedom of Information Act, two
School of the Americas training manuals that showed that "Torture was
used by CIA". The manuals discussed the use of electric shocks and drugs
for "The Coercive Counterintelligence Interrogation of Resistant Sources".
(1997/01/27, Gary Cohn, Ginger Thompson and Mark Matthews; Baltimore Sun)
Even more disgusting than
Guantanamo Bay
are the secret CIA prisons that have been revealed to be scattered around
the world (2005-07).
The
Washington Post
(2005/11/02) printed an article stating that there were secret prisons in
at least eight countries scattered around the world, including Thailand,
Afghanistan and several Eastern European countries.
Of course that fact that these prisons were secret would mean that there
would be no inspections of the conditions under which the prisoners were
held. The Washington Post article went on to say that
"Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what
interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made
about whether they should be detained or for how long."
US ABC News on 2005/12/05 reported
"Two CIA secret prisons were operating in Eastern Europe until last month
when they were shut down following Human Rights Watch reports of their
existence in Poland and Romania.
Current and former CIA officers speaking to ABC News on the condition of
confidentiality say the United States scrambled to get all the suspects off
European soil before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived there
today. The officers say 11 top al Qaeda suspects have now been moved to a
new CIA facility in the North African desert."
Many other references can be found on the Internet.
In spite of all their failings, many Americans seem to believe
themselves and their country to be the 'chosen of God'. Consider,
for example, the way the attack on the World Trade Center was
called "an attack on freedom and democracy". It was
not, it was an attack on the USA and all its failings as the
world's greatest power. It was probably too, an attack on global
capitalism and financial imperialism.
A love of one's own country is understandable and good, within
limits; but there must also be present a recognition of the errors,
the weaknesses, and the wrongs
of which your country has been guilty. Many
Americans seem unable to see themselves as others see them.
The USA is the lowest per-capita donor of Third-World development funds
among all the developed nations. This is particularly obscene considering
the US's record on
Greenhouse
and the way it
hogs the world's resources.
The graph below is from OECD year 2000 figures – the aid is
shown as a percentage of Gross National Product (y axis, on
the left of the graph);
Some people have said that these figures do not give a true
representation of the 'generosity' of the US people because
most US aid to the international needy are from individuals
rather than from government. In fact, adding donations
from individuals would only increase the above figure from
0.1% to 0.14%.
Interestingly, surveys have shown that the US public
perception is that about 20% of the US budget is spent on
aid rather than the true figure of around 1%.
Also see A cure for terrorism
which compares US defence spending with foreign aid spending.
Three thousand people died due to the terrorist attack on the USA of September
11. On that
same day 24 thousand died from hunger and related causes. In fact, every day
24 thousand die because they are unable to obtain life-sustaining food.
(See the United Nations World Food Program.)
In response to the September 11 terrorist attack the US started its "War
against terror". As a part of that war
the United States spent $87 billion (by 2004) on the war in Iraq. The United
Nations has estimated that for less than half that amount, clean water,
adequate diets, sanitation services, and basic education could be provided to
every person on the planet.
(See the United Nations Development Program.)
By around 2009 the total cost to the US for the Iraq War was around one
trillion dollars.
It has been known for years that whales and dolphins use sound to find
prey, to find their way about, and to communicate.
It has also long been strongly suspected that loud seismic exploration
noises have a very bad effect on these important creatures.
Therefore it is very disappointing that the Obama administration is reopening
the east coast of the USA to under-sea oil exploration using sonic canons,
(Guardian, 2014/07/20).
The Guardian reported that: "The cannons create noise pollution in waters
shared by whales, dolphins and turtles, sending sound waves many times
louder than a jet engine reverberating through the deep every 10 seconds for
weeks at a time."
Following the September 11th terrorist attack on the Twin Towers and the
Pentagon George W. Bush said that anyone who was not 'with the US' in its
proposed war on the terrorists was 'with the terrorists'.
Plainly this was quite false; the class of argument is the false
dichotomy: pretending that there are only two alternatives when there
are more.
It was quite possible for people and governments to deplore the terrorist
attack and yet not support the US in its aggressions.
One can only suppose that Bush was trying to pressure as many nations as
possible to join in to his efforts to get revenge.
Examples of state sponsored terrorism can be seen in many of
the items listed on this page.
The Collins Concise English Dictionary defines terrorism as
"The systematic use of violence and intimidation to achieve some goal".
The USA frequently uses violence and intimidation to achieve its goals.
How then can it not be called a terrorist state?
3000 civilians were killed in
the Twin Towers strike. Estimates of the number of civilians
killed in the subsequent war on Afghanistan vary from 3000 to
5000.
The USA then went on to kill 10 000 or so civilians in Iraq.
The prestigious journal the Lancet in October 2006 published an
estimate of 650 000 Iraqi civilian deaths from violence since the
invasion.
Are the deaths attributable to the USA less to be condemned than
those attributable to Al Qaeda? If USA citizens fear terrorist
attacks, how must Middle Eastern Muslims feel about the USA?
The US has supported, financed and trained groups widely regarded as
terrorists, such as the Contras in Nicaragua, the Mujahadin in
Afghanistan, and UNITA in Angola.
There is evidence that the USA has
supported terrorists in Iran.
Yet in 2003 the USA used Iraq's supposed support for terrorism as one
of the excuses for the invasion.
See also the School of the
Americas.
Greatly to his credit
President Obama declassified Department of Justice-CIA interrogation memos
in April 2009.
Time on-line reported that:
"The legal memorandum for the CIA, prepared by Assistant Attorney General
Jay Bybee, reviewed 10 enhanced techniques for interrogating Zubaydah, and
determined that none of them constituted torture under U.S. criminal law.
The techniques were: attention grasp, walling (hitting a detainee against
a flexible wall), facial hold, facial slap, cramped confinement, wall
standing, stress positions, sleep deprivation, insects placed in a
confinement box, and waterboarding."
It has been reported that at least one prisoner was water-boarded more than
a hundred times and another more than 80 times; in the latter case it was
admitted that no useful information was obtained by the use of the torture.
One thing that is not clear to me is how do the interrogators force the
victims into cramped confinement and to hold stress positions?
There must be forceful means used, or punishments applied, when the victims
attempt to move to reduce the stress on them.
The victims would not hold the stress positions unless the fear of the
alternative was very strong.
What were these means or punishments?
Strangely no-one seems to be interested.
That President Obama has moved to stop these disgusting practices
is a great step toward returning the USA to being, as it once was, a
leading nation in human rights and freedoms.
We can only hope that the criminals who authorised these barbaric
activities are eventually brought before an international court and
prosecuted as they deserve.
One of the memorandums denied "that sleep deprivation results in severe
physical
pain or suffering", yet I remember reading in a book written by a member of
the Chinese Falun Gong sect – about Chinese mistreatment of sect
members – where the author wrote that sleep depravation
was worse than the beatings that were regularly handed out by the gaolers.
Finding the actual memorandums on the Net is not easy, but I eventually found
one of the main ones at
"http://72.3.233.244/pdfs/safefree/olc_08012002_bybee.pdf".
This link was found on
The Public Record: torture
Net site.
Interestingly, the phrase 'severe physical pain' occurs in the memorandum
I downloaded 28 times, in most cases relating to some sort of denial
that the intention was to inflict 'severe physical pain'.
I leave the implications to the reader's interpretation, but the
Shakespeare quote "The lady doth protest too much" comes to my mind.
(The phrase 'severe physical pain or suffering' occurs 17 times.)
In March 2005 it was revealed that the USA has been outsourcing torture.
While not wanting to be seen as a state that 'officially' uses
torture the US government has been sending prisoners on special flights
for interrogation overseas to countries that do use torture.
There has been an attempt to keep these flights secret from
the American public, and the rest of the world, although there is official
denial that the purpose is to have the suspects tortured. The official line
is that the US seeks and receives assurances from the countries to which the
suspects are 'rendered' that torture will not be used. How reliable would
such an assurance be, when it comes from a country that is known to
torture its own citizens?
It sounds very much like a face-saving device used by the USA.
'Rendition' has been the term used for sending suspects from one
country to another for trial.
'Extraordinary rendition' is
the sending of a suspect for interrogation to some other country where
torture is known to be used.
It has been used by the USA for a number of years, at least up to
Obama's Presidency.
The CIA trained people, who later became terrorists, in torture techniques
in
The School of the Americas.
Naomi Klein has written an informative article on the history of the use of
torture by the USA, see
'Never Before!' Our Amnesiac Torture Debate, the History News Network.
It contains several
references to books that could be used for further study.
The admissibility of
evidence obtained by torture
in US courts is also discussed on this page.
According to the International Red Cross, the USA has used
humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use
of forced positions, exposure to loud and continuous noise and
beatings against prisoners.
Interrogation methods that amount to torture have been used by the
US at
Guantanamo Bay (Cuba), Abu Ghraib (Iraq) by the USA forces, and
at Bagram Airbase (Afghanistan).
A quote from the
Miami Herald...
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There have been more than 300 alleged instances of torture in Iraq,
Afghanistan and at Guantanamo. Yet not even two dozen individuals
have been charged with a crime. An investigation commissioned by
Secretary Rumsfeld last summer agreed that the incidents of torture
and abuse "were not just the failure of some individuals to follow
known standards, and they are more than the failure of a few
leaders to enforce proper discipline. There is institutional and
personal responsibility at higher levels." Despite this finding,
seven months after the photos at Abu Ghraib became public, neither
institutions nor senior commanders have been held responsible.
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This section written 2009/11/16
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The right of access to a court (habeas corpus) and to a fair trial has
been considered a fundamental right in English speaking countries since
the Magna Carta.
In the case of anyone outside of the USA who is suspected of terrorism this
right no longer exists, so far as the USA is concerned.
It is enough to be suspected of terrorism to be considered guilty,
subject to removal to some place selected by US authorities,
indefinite deprivation of liberty and possible torture.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the
September 11th
attack has been held in
Guantanamo Bay for years.
It was announced in mid November 2009 that he was to be put on trial in
New York and that he had admitted his guilt (he was water-boarded many
times).
Concern was expressed over his treatment during detention; evidence obtained
under duress has not normally been admissible in US courts.
What if KSM is found not guilty in the trial?
The public was reassured by a spokesman for the US administration: even if
the court found him not guilty he would still be kept imprisoned because
there were laws that allowed people who were [considered to be] a threat to
the USA to be detained as long as considered necessary without trial.
This is virtually an admission that the trial will simply be a show trial;
so far as the US administration is concerned KSM is guilty without the need
for a trial.
The National Missile Shield will not work
More than $80B dollars have been spent on "Starwars II", but it will
not work. The prestigious magazine Scientific American in November
2004 said "The U.S. system will not counter even the earliest threats
from emerging missile powers".
Why deploy the missiles if they are not going to work?
The US administration wants to keep its citizens in a state of
fear. The belief that it is only a strong militaristic government
that is between the American people and destruction is useful for
government, military, and many big corporations. Deploying a
missile shield is 'a demonstration' that the government is serious
about looking after the people.
Who would fire missiles at the USA?
North Korea is held to be the front runner, with Iran in
second place. Yet, while both nations have undemocratic repressive
regimes, they are not run by fools. A nuclear attack on the USA
from any nation, even one the size of China, would result in
annihilation for the attacking nation, or something close to it.
Also, if the USA did not continually threaten and intimidate
North Korea and Iran, those nations would have little reason to
develop their nuclear weapons.
They are probably producing nuclear weapons because they feel that is the
only way they can make
themselves safe from American invasion, Iraq style.
42% of Americans believe a convenient lie
A Newsweek poll of September 2004 indicated that 42%
of Americans believe that Sadam Hussein was directly involved
in the September 11 attacks on the USA. The truth is that there
has never been any sound evidence connecting him to those attacks in
any way.
Any government that misleads its own people to this extent must surely
be quite morally bankrupt.
There have been attempts to somehow credit President Ronald Reagan with
ending the Cold War (the arms race, political empire-building, and nuclear
standoff between the USA and the USSR and their allies,
which started at the end of WW2 and went until the around the time
of the break-up of Soviet Union in 1991).
Whether this was a conscious decision on the part of the US propaganda
machine or simply wishful thinking on the part of US supporters, I don't
know.
In fact the end of the Cold War had far more to do with President Gorbachev
of the USSR and his
perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (publicity, openness) combined
with the economic problems the USSR had at the time and the desire of
many of the states within the USSR for independence.
Economically the USSR was a mess around the end of the 1980s, and when
Gorbachev relaxed the tight controls that the state had held over the
'empire', it could no longer be held together; with no more Soviet Union
there was no more Cold War.
The emailed letter below came to me apparently from a
USian ('American') who had been reading this page.
At first I thought it so ignorant, aggressive, rude, and lacking in any moral standards that I would ignore it, but then I realised that it was typical of the
feedback that I have been getting from the worst type of American.
I will include the more interesting and relevant parts below (on the left) and add a few comments (on the right).
Email | Comments
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"First, we know our ancestors gave blood sweat and tears for this planet
to be safe from fascism and communism.
We have sent or grandfathers, brothers, sons, uncles and now mothers to
die for other countries in an effort to help others be free.
Our government may do the wrong thing once we get somewhere, but in the
average Americans heart we are willing (unlike our European counterparts,
who we pretty much consider liberal pussies) to leave the comfort of our
homeland and defend the downtrodden."
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Very few US military excursions have been 'in an effort to help others
be free', as any reading of this page will show.
By far the majority are motivated by the self-interest of the US
establishment.
Consider this in relation to the list of countries that the USA has
bombed.
Was this all 'defending the downtrodden'?
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"We as Americans hate the fact that we have to go around doing this, but
it seems the rest of the world cannot make a decision. In my part of
America, We do not see gray zones when it comes to right and wrong.
The gray is what you are willing to tolerate and when it comes to right
and wrong, wrong cannot be tolerated.
Wrong is bowing down to
environmental terms that will hurt our country and cost our citizens jobs.
Wrong is letting bullies do what they want, wrong is allowing radical
Islam to spread one-inch thus removing freedoms with each of it's
heartbeats, wrong is when countries starve their people.
Wrong is killing or imprisoning someone for owning a bible."
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I hold that the USA is the world's pre-eminent bully, as many of the
points discussed on this page show.
Is it not wrong to lock someone up for seven years
( Guantanamo Bay)
and not charge them with any crime?
Is it not wrong to use
land mines
and cluster bombs
that kill and maim children decades after hostilities have ended?
It is clear that he believes it is wrong to put at risk US profits and
living standards for the sake of limiting climate changing
greenhouse
gasses (see also his comments on SUVs below).
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"Almost every country you listed on your
"WHO WE BOMBED list" deserved
it almost every country was engaged in the spread of socialism.
I suppose that is ok with you."
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Why should the people of a democratic country not elect a socialist government if that is what they want?
What right does the USA have to force a capitalist system onto them?
The US administration has been forcing capitalist governments onto American nations in particular for a long time,
( Chile,
Guatemala and
Nicaragua
to name a few), but few USians would put it as bluntly as this man does.
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"Like it or not, you have taken a look at a war, which we don't like here
either Do you actually think we the citizens like sending sons, friends
and dads away to fight for people who that is what they do for fun!"
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If Americans do not like sending their military out to invade other
nations, please, please, keep them home.
There have been few times, since
the Korean War, when these excursions have been justified.
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"Next, Feed the people
or our SUV's.
I drive a $60,000 SUV, yes that is right Asshole.
I drive one of those. I also don't care about feeding the world.
Maybe if some of these countries quit acting ass backward, they could
grow a tomato and maybe if the leaders of these primarily socialist and
Islamic governments were not so busy killing their folks and spending all
their government aid WE SEND THEM for guns with countries such as China
and North Korea the people would not be starving!
Who are you to tell me what vehicle I should drive!"
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The comment about the Bible above indicates that this man considers himself
to be a Christian.
Love thy neighbour?
I believe the USA is the world's biggest
arms exporter,
much of the 'aid'
is in the form of weapons, or money that must be spent on US weapons.
Per-capita, the USA provides less
aid to the Third World
than any other developed country.
Unfortunately it is not only USians who are incapable of understanding
the concept of the earth's limited capacity to soak up
greenhouse gasses and the consequent need to share the biosphere
equitably.
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I strongly suspect that the majority of USians are not as ignorant,
parochial, and selfish is this man, but it seems that people like this,
or sentiments like these, do have a big influence on US foreign policy.
President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan is a despot who routinely uses torture
and murder to keep the Uzbek people under his control. The USA has a
military base in Uzbekistan, and one of the largest remaining oil regions is
in and around Uzbekistan.
So the USA is willing to overlook the gross violations of human rights in
order to look after its military and financial interests. Not only that, but
the Uzbek people's attempt at uprising is being crushed by US-trained troops
and US funds.
President George W. Bush can only suggest that the Uzbek people use peaceful
demonstrations, while many Uzbeks have disappeared simply for criticising their
government.
A crime, not only against humanity, but against the environment as well
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Photo from the War Remnants Museum, Saigon, Vietnam.
The caption on the photo in the museum states that this is water torture
being used by USA personnel in the Vietnam war.
On the 4th of July 2008
I had an email from a Jolyon Stephenson who stated that this picture is
"actually a victim of a burn wound being nursed back to health with water,
I know, I am the man in the background on the left.
I remember the picture being taken."
On 16th of October 2009 I had an email from an Adam Pugliese who stated that
he was an infantryman in the US Army trained in battlefield first aid.
It appeared to him that the
soldier on the left was applying pressure to a field dressing on a wound,
and that "The victim appears to have suffered facial burns, because the
soldier on the right was covering the wound with
a damp cloth to ease the pain and keep out dust and debris".
I'm inclined to believe Stephenson and Pugliese; certainly the Vietnamese
Government is not above lying for the sake of propaganda.
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On the Vietnam war following one of several visits to Vietnam
My wife and I visited Vietnam in 2004, 2006, 2008 and again in 2011. I've written on the war in my pages recording those visits.
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Putting aside, for the moment, the ethics of the US and Australian involvement in this war, consider the effect and result. Very great damage was done to Vietnam's environment and infrastructure with a huge toll of injuries and deaths and continuing problems with landmines and other unexploded ordnance for many years.
The declared aim was democratisation, but it had to be a capitalist democracy with full access to multinational corporations.
It was not achieved; nothing good was achieved.
I could quote pages from Noam Chomsky's essay 'The Rule of Force in International Affairs' – which has been published in 'The Essential Chomsky' – on US atrocities in Vietnam, I will confine myself to one quotation.
The My Lai Massacre is what would come to mind for most Western people when they think of atrocities committed by the USA in Vietnam.
Quoting from The Essential Chomsky:
The province of Quang Ngai, in which My Lai is located, had been virtually
destroyed.
Half the population had been forced into refugee camps, and children were starving and wounded.
Colonel Oran Henderson, the highest ranking officer to have faced court-marshal charges for the My Lai massacre, states that "every unit of brigade size has its Mylai hidden some place," though "every unit doesn't have its Ridenhour."
Ronald
Ridenhour
was the helicopter gunner who had the courage to make public the My Lai
massacre on his return to the USA.
There should be no need for me to say that the obvious implication of
Colonel Henderson's statement above is that he believed that My Lai was
nothing out of the ordinary, except that it became public knowledge.
Sue Downie in her book Down Highway One states that "between 1965
and 1973 in South Vietnam alone the war killed 1.4 million civilians
compared to 58 000 American servicemen, left 300 000
invalids, one million widows, 800 000 orphans and more than
three million jobless."
She wrote that in the bombing of North Vietnam the US hit "six
industrial cities, 28 of the 30 provincial cities, more than 350
hospitals, 1500 infirmaries, 3000 schools and 1000 churches or
temples. According to Vietnamese data, five million square metres
of houses were destroyed, not including many thousands of thatched
huts, 40 000 farm animals were killed, and all road bridges, sea
and river ports, and power stations seriously or completely
destroyed."
The 2007 Lonely Planet Guide to Vietnam contained the following under
"War on the Environment":
"American forces sprayed 72 million litres of herbicides (named Agents
Orange, White and Blue after the colour of their canisters) over 16% of
South Vietnam to destroy the Viet Cong's natural cover.
Another environmentally disastrous method of defoliation employed
during the war involved the use of huge bulldozers called 'Rome ploughs'
to rip up the jungle floor.
Large tracts of forest, agricultural land, villages and even cemeteries
were bulldozed, removing the vegetation and topsoil.
Flammable melaleuca forests were ignited with napalm.
In monunain areas, landslides were deliberately created by bombing and
spraying acid on limestone hillsides.
Elephants, useful for transport, were attacked from the air with bombs
and napalm."
"Some 13 million tonnes of bombs – equivalent to 450 times the
energy of the atomic bomb used on Hiroshima – were dropped on
the Indochina region.
This equates to 265kg for every man, woman and child in Vietnam,
Cambodia and Laos."
Following the war the US orchestrated a trade embargo on Vietnam, making
recovery from the war much slower than it could have been.
I visited Vietnam in October and November of 2006. I was told that ten people each month are still injured by mines and bombs left over from the war in Quang Tre, the province containing the old 'Demilitarized Zone' (DMZ).
I could well believe it; I saw at least three men using metal detectors to find scrap metal. When they find metal mines, bombs or bomb fragments, they can sell them for scrap, if they are not injured or killed by the discovery.
I was also told that four million were killed during the war (most of them Vietnamese civilians)
and 7000 Vietnamese had been killed since the end of the war.
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A Vietnam War Remnants Museum photo of a victim of a white phosphorus bomb
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I apologise if some people find this photo shocking.
War does terrible things to people, would it be better if we lived more in
ignorance of how shocking some of those terrible things can be, or is
it better to face the terrible facts?
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Atrocities were committed on both sides and many lies were used by both
sides to try to make their opponents look worse and themselves better;
"truth is the first casualty of war".
It is probable that the 'water torture' photo above
might actually be some field nursing, I'm
sure many of the Vietnamese Communists lied when it suited them, on the
other hand the US administration under Bush Junior has admitted using water
torture,
although they claim it is not torture.
The USA used napalm bombs and
white phosphorus
against civilian targets.
They sprayed huge areas with 'agent orange', a herbicide that was contaminated
with the terrible poison dioxin. Dioxin continues to cause many health
problems to the Vietnamese people. The USA has never provided compensation
for the terrible things they did to the Vietnamese people during the war.
For a Vietnamese view of the American-Vietnam war I recommend "Memoirs of
War – The Central Highlands: A North Vietnamese Journal of Life on the Ho
Chi Minh Trail 1965 – 1973" by Le Cao Dai.
Dr Le was a medical doctor who worked in many field hospitals along the
Ho Chi Minh Trail.
In his book he tells of the hardships suffered by those who worked and fought
along the trail, of how it typically took months to walk from north to
central Vietnam, of the lack of food, of being sick with malaria, of the
primitive conditions in the hospitals, of the
many times when the Americans bombed the various hospitals
that he helped to set up and in which he worked. (Of course bombing
hospitals is a war crime under the Geneva Convention. Why did the Americans
bomb hospitals? Did they knowingly bomb hospitals? Did the Vietnamese not
mark their hospitals with large red crosses on the roof? Did they try this
and find the Americans bombed anyway? There are many questions that the
book did not answer.)
The US bombings of North Vietnam were started in response to claimed
unprovoked attacks on two US destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin on August
2
nd 1964.
The truth was that at least one of the destroyers was engaged in
aggressive intelligence-gathering manoeuvres, but this didn't come out fully
until some documents were declassified 30 years later.
See
Fair (Fairness
and Accuracy in Reporting).
But President Johnson lied to the US people and
started a war against North Vietnam based on attacks on US ships that
were largely or entirely a fabrication.
With the 2003 invasion of Iraq being based on lies about
Weapons of Mass Destruction
it seems that not much has changed in 30 years.
Also see
Wikipedia.
In Vietnam the US used a herbicide called agent orange to kill
huge areas of forest so that they could
better see the Vietnamese they were fighting.
Unfortunately, agent orange contained quite a bit of the
highly toxic substance, dioxin. In the USA and Australia we
hear about how servicemen who fought in Vietnam have had, and
continue to have, their health adversely effected by this contamination.
We have not heard so much about the much worse health effects
on the Vietnamese. In 2005 this is just starting to become
known in the West.
The
BBC
reported on 2004/06/14 that there are 150 000 people suffering
birth defects due to exposure to agent orange. The US has refused
to accept any responsibility. (Other estimates of birth defects due to
agent orange go up to half a million; and two million cancers.)
American victims of agent orange get up to US$1500 a month, most
Vietnamese families receive around US$5 for each disabled child.
On 16
th March 1968 American soldiers killed more than 500
civilians at the village of Song My. To quote from Sue Downie's book:
"The Americans, believing the village was harbouring a Viet Cong battalion
and spoiling for a fight, shot or stabbed almost everything that moved,
and then set fire to homes." ... "No Viet Cong was seen and not a shot was
fired at the Americans" ... "Many women were raped, sodomised, scalped,
disembowelled and had their hands cut off."
It seems that the only American to spend any time in jail over this
abomination was the officer in immediate command, Lt. William Calley.
He spent two days in jail.
There are many references on the Internet. They are easily found.
Several suggest that this was not an isolated incident (see the statement
above by Colonel Oran Henderson for example).
There is no doubt
that the US military would have hushed it up if they were able to.
Did they successfully hush-up other incidents?
During the Vietnam war the US dropped two million tonnes of bombs on
neighbouring Laos (the most bombed
country in history) and nothing good was achieved, either from the point
of view of 'winning' the war, or any advancement of human rights or
move toward democratic government. Laotians continued to be killed
in thousands by left-over bomblets for decades after the war, and the
USA not only gave no assistance to clean up the unexploded bombs that
they had dropped, but refused to even inform those who were trying to
help of how the bombs could most safely be rendered harmless.
And yet, as I write (2003/03/15), with the USA and Australia threatening
to invade Iraq, what has been learned?
Venezuela
In 1998 the Venezuelan people democratically elected Hugo Chávez
as their president. Chávez denounced the US for its "shameless
imperialism" and brought in a hydrocarbons law that was similar to the one
that Jaime Roldós enacted in Ecuador shortly before his (probable)
assassination. The law
doubled the royalties charged to foreign oil companies.
At the time Venezuela was the fourth-largest oil exporter in the world and
the third largest supplier to the US. Not surprisingly, this behaviour was
not acceptable to the US, so they organised a coup in January 2003.
Unfortunately for the US, the Venezuelan military and the state oil company
remained loyal to Chávez, and the coup was reversed; democracy in
Venezuela made a come-back despite the best efforts of the US. The Los
Angeles Times printed...
"Bush administration officials acknowledged Tuesday that they had discussed the
removal of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez for months with military
and civilian leaders form Venezuela... The administration's handling of the
abortive coup has come under increasing scrutiny."
Hugo Chávez was re-elected in December 2006. No doubt a shot in the
eye for emperor Bush.
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This section edited
2023/05/11
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On the 3
rd July 1988, during the Iran-Iraq War, the USS Vincennes
fired two heat seeking missiles at Iran flight IR655, a commercial Airbus airliner on a regular daily flight from Bandar Abbas to Dubai, killing 290 civilians.
Soon after this tragedy the US tried many excuses to justify the action of the American captain. One of the most shameful was that the Airbus was being flown on a collision course with the Vincennes, in spite of the fact that the airliner was at an altitude of 10 000 feet and climbing at the time the missiles were fired.
The Western press published stories biased toward the American point of
view.
Robert Fisk,
in The Great War for Civilisation, Chapter eight,
tells how the Murdoch owned London Times
gutted a story that he (Fisk) had written on the incident.
Fisk had shown that
the US Navy was guilty of gross carelessness, while after the Times
editors had finished with his story the Americans looked blameless.
We in The West hear a great deal about the Russian culpability in shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine in 2014. By comparison we heard relatively little about the USA culpability in the shooting down of that other commercial flight, Iran flight IR655 in 1988 while it was flying on its regular route over Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf.
President George W. Bush is strident in his criticism of nations such as Iraq,
Iran and North Korea for their development of "weapons of mass destruction".
The USA has the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction in the world!
The USA used the argument that Iraq might sell WoMD to terrorist groups
or other rogue states as justification to invade Iraq.
To the present it appears that only a few western
nations, including the USA and Germany, have sold WoMD (or their precursors)
to rogue states (eg. Iraq).
Even the US Government now (2004) admits that there were no WoMD in Iraq at the
time of the coalition invasion.
The war was justified on false intelligence.
A cure for terrorism
compares
US spending on weapons with other groups worldwide. The US spends 26
times as much on weapons as all the 'rogue states' combined.
A couple of UN resolutions regarding WoMD
On October 2nd 2002, the UN Disarmament Committee adopted
a resolution that called for stronger measures to prevent the
militarization of space and thereby to "avert a grave danger for
international peace and security." The vote was unanimously in
favour, with two
abstentions: the US and Israel. Of course the US abstention
amounted to a veto.
On the same day a resolution to reaffirm the 1925 Geneva Protocol
"prohibiting the use of poisonous gases and bacteriological methods
of warfare" suffered the same fate.
Much of the information for this section originated from a page on
the Web site of the Sunday Herald.
More recent evidence has come from leaks from the report that Iraq
was forced to produce about its weapons, see
Common Dreams.
Upper Valley Peace and Justice, an organization based in Vermont
and New Hampshire, USA, gives a list of the companies that
supplied weapons or components.
According to the authors of the Sunday Herald article, Neil Mackay
and Felicity Arbuthnot,
the information was published in a report of the
US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.
Authenticity checking
I checked the Internet
site
of this US Senate Committee, but could not
find the reference (not surprising, I didn't know where to look).
I have inquired of the Senate Banking Committee Webmaster,
(webmaster@banking.senate.gov), but have never received any reply.
I have emailed the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs
(Alexander Downer), Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs
(Laury Brereton) and Australian Democrats Senator
with the Foreign Affairs portfolio (Natasha Stott-Despoja).
I received a reply only from Senator Stott-Despoja, who confirmed
that many western nations had supplied chemical and biological
materials, or their precursors, to Iraq.
The claim
"THE US and Britain sold Saddam Hussein the technology and materials Iraq
needed to develop nuclear, chemical
and biological weapons of mass destruction.
Reports by the US Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban affairs
– which oversees American exports
policy – reveal that the US, under the successive administrations of
Ronald Reagan and George Bush Snr, sold
materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and
botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as
well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria
sold included brucella melitensis, which
damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas
gangrene.
Classified US Defence Department documents also seen by the Sunday
Herald show that Britain sold Iraq the drug
pralidoxine, an antidote to nerve gas, in March 1992, after the end
of the Gulf war. Pralidoxine can be reverse
engineered to create nerve gas."
The article goes on with more detail and at some length, but I think this is
sufficient for the present purpose.
Noam Chomsky, in his book Rogue States, says that:
The Senate
Banking Committee reported in 1994 that the US Commerce Department
had traced shipments of "biological materials" identical to those
later found and destroyed by UN inspectors.
and
In a February 28, 1998, review of Western sales of materials usable for
germ warfare and other weapons of mass destruction, the New York
Times mentions one example of US sales in the 1980s that included
"deadly pathogens," with government approval – some from the army's
center of germ research in Fort Detrick.
The importance of the claim
How can any nation
sell arms to another nation, and then use that nation's
possession of those arms
as the primary justification for invasion? This would
be a gross violation of all ethical principles.
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This paragraph added 2020/09/11
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Starting around 2010 Wikileaks exposed a great many war crimes committed especially by the US government. In 2024 the US government was still trying to get its revenge against Julian Assange and make an example of him in order to show any others who might want to expose their wrong-doing that punishment will follow. The US government, most governments, are far more interested in getting their own way than they are in justice.
Julian Assange could be seen as an opportunist who saw a chance of fame and fortune and grabbed it, or as a hero exposing the dirty secrets of duplicitous governments, particularly the USA government. I'd certainly tend toward the latter view. People who 'blow the whistle' on illegal and/or unethical behaviour by governments deserve our respect and admiration.
Whatever you think of Julian Assange you would have to say that Bradley Manning, the US marine who sent huge amounts of data to Wikileaks has not seen any justice from the US government.
He has been locked up without trial, and facing conditions that have been called torture, for something like 800 days up to the time I write this (2012/08/23).
One of the more infamous of the war crimes exposed by Wikileaks was when a US helicopter gunship fired on and killed Iraqi and other civilians, including reporters, in July 2007.
This incident came to be called Collateral murder.
The USA is keen to use international law to get other counties
to change their ways, when it suits the USA. However, the USA itself
is one of the few countries that does not recognize the World Court.
Another case of the 'might is right' principle; if you are a little
guy you have to abide by the rules, if you are a gangster who is
more powerful than the police force (the UN in this case) you
can do what you like.
1st Lt. Ehren Watada of the US armed forces spoke out against the Iraq
war and refused to go to Iraq on the grounds that the war was illegal.
Col. Ann Wright, ex of the US Army Reserves, said that
"I think the Army should have dropped all four 'conduct unbecoming' charges
because all of Ehren Watada's statements were given out of uniform and not
on government time. And there is still such a thing as free speech, even in
the military." She said that Lt. Watada believed the Iraq War was a
war of aggression (what honest person could argue against that?) and that
therefore it was a war crime.
Aaron Glantz – an independent journalist and author of the book How
America Lost Iraq – has reported extensively from Iraq since the
spring of 2003. He
said today: "The U.S. military's prosecution of Lt. Watada for speaking out
against the war contradicts American values. America's involvement in Iraq
is increasingly unpopular among the rank and file of the Armed Forces. ...
It is extremely important during this time of war that we hear from our
servicemen, because they know more than most about the folly and brutality
of the U.S. occupation of Iraq."
Most of the above several paragraphs were drawn from the Net site of IPA, the
Institute for Public Accuracy. (http://www.accuracy.org/)
It would seem that the US military is not at all interested in freedom of
speech.
Should we be surprised at this, in a nation that claims to be the guardian
of freedom?
A threat to freedom of speech
The University of California at San Diego has ordered a student
organization to delete hyperlinks to an alleged terrorist Web site,
citing the recently enacted USA Patriot Act.
School administrators have told the group, called the Che Cafe
Collective, that linking to a site supporting the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) would not be permitted because
it violated federal law.
The law involved is the USA Patriot Act, brought in by President
George W. Bush in October 2001.
Is the USA going the way of the old communist nations by trying to
limit its citizen's exposure to information from bodies of which it
does not approve?
I know practically nothing about FARC (Fuerzas Armadas
Revolucionarios de Columbia) other than it opposes the
current government of Columbia. Pravda claims that FARC is a
legitimate opposition party. Shouldn't US citizens have the right
to make up their own minds on where the truth is?
The USA has a large financial interest in the Columbian oil industry.
Scooter Libby was sentenced to, I think it was, 2½ years in prison for releasing the name of an undercover CIA agent.
In July 2007 Bush used his right to give Presidential clemency to Libby. Why? He said that he felt the sentence was excessive.
Has Bush ever given anyone else Presidential clemency?
It seems that Bush looks after his mates;
mateship, US style.
This is not ethical behaviour!
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Kangaroos on our land
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| This small mob of kangaroos seemed to spend most of their time on what was at the time our land in the Clare Valley. The property is fenced, but the kangaroos come and go over the fences as they want.
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Several US states have moved to ban the use of kangaroo products on the grounds that the commercial hunting of kangaroos for products is "unconscionable".
For reasons that I've given on another page on this site I believe that this, while well meaning, is both ethically and environmentally unjustifiable; worse than that, if animals are to be killed for human use at all, it is better to use kangaroos than animals such as cattle, pigs, chickens, sheep and goats when the environmental and ethical factors involved are considered properly.
I, the writer of these pages, am Australian and of course the kangaroo products imported into the USA mostly come from Australia.
Can we hope for change?
The USA is largely a Christian nation.
Jesus is recorded in the New Testament as saying that a wealthy man
has little chance of going to Heaven (Matthew 19:24, "Again I tell
you, it is easier
for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to
enter the kingdom of God.")
Interestingly, both Mark (10:25) and Luke (18:25) record the same statement,
so it must be considered one of the most verified statements of Jesus.
As I understand it, the sixteenth century French theologian Calvin
(Jean Chauvin) theorised that those people who had managed
to become wealthy must have had help from God, and if they had God's
help then they must have been favoured by God.
Wealth, Calvin thought, was an earthly sign of God's grace. The
thinking then went the next step: wealth was good; the wealthy were
God's chosen to some extent.
Of course this opinion, rather than 'the eye of the needle' statement
attributed to Jesus, had a lot to recommend it to rich people in the USA.
The question is, should US Christian citizens be living by the words of
Calvin or those of Jesus?
The relevance to the subject of this page to the proposition that
Wealth=God's Grace is
obvious. Almost all of US meddling in the affairs of other countries
has been fuelled by greed and it must be supposed that at least some of
those people behind the meddling must consider themselves Christians.
The other side of the idea also deserves a little thought. If the wealthy
have the grace of God then the poor must have been cursed by God? To people
like George W. Bush this probably excuses the US government's
neglect of the poor of the USA.
I must express my thanks to the investigative journalists and authors who
have brought many
of the points listed on this page out into the light of day.
Reporters have recently worked, at great danger to themselves
(ten or so have been killed), to give us the truth about the
Iraq War. Consider what we would have been told by the US
establishment if they could give us as much or as little
information as they liked.
A free press is the greatest thorn in the side of corrupt US
(and Australian) governments. Long may it remain so!
However, it must be said that while the laws or the US and Australia
give freedom to the press, the mainstream media tend not to print
much against the 'corporatocracy'. This is not surprising I suppose, since
most of it is owned by the same corporatocracy.
The word corporatocracy was, I believe,
coined by John Perkins in his book 'Confessions of and Economic Hit Man' to
refer to what is effectively government by corporations.
Alternatively, the word plutocracy, government by the wealthy, could be used.
There are many citizens of the USA who are trying to make it a better place.
It is harder for those of us who are outside of the USA to bring about
any changes, but we can try. The aim of this page is not to make people
hate the USA – certainly not to make them hate
USians,
but to try
to show people what is wrong with the country and jolt them into doing
something about it; to try to bring about an improvement.
An unethical
government is a bad government, it is as simple as that.
The USA government and the Howard government in Australia seem to think that
unethical means can legitimately be used to bring about 'good' results.
This is not so.
In a democracy the citizens must ultimately take responsibility for bad
government.
In my page on ethics I have written a section on
better government.
This suggests a list of actions that citizens of democracies can take to
try to bring about better government.
Perhaps the greatest single crime of the USA in recent years is its
refusal to make a responsible stance on
greenhouse/climate change.
The USA and Australia (my country) are the worst greenhouse polluters on
the planet. Australia in per-capita terms and the USA in both per-capita
and absolute terms.
The US refusal to do anything about its greenhouse gas production rates
is holding back the rest of the world from action.
(I should also say that several of the USA's state governments, including
that of California, seem to be among the most progressive on greenhouse
in the world. Ironical!)
Above all, use peaceful methods in whatever attempts you make to bring
about change.
Gandhi confined himself to peaceful methods and did more than anyone else
to bring about a democratic government to India.
India is now by far the most populous democratic nation on earth.
At around the end of 2003 the USA had national debts of US$7 trillion, a
staggering $24 000 for every man, woman and child in the country.
Much of this is owed to Asian countries, Japan and China in particular.
One might think that even if these countries called in their debts there would
not be a problem, the US could simply print more money, but it is
not that simple. Should the US print that many new US dollars the whole
currency would be devalued; the world would loose trust in the US dollar as
a unit of exchange. This would be disastrous to the US economy.
With George W. Bush's tax cuts and the huge cost of the Iraq War there can
be little doubt that the US is going steadily deeper into debt. Will US
greed for money and empire ultimately backfire?
The USA, despite its wealth, has a sick society.
From Scientific American, Dec. 2005:
- Of Western Nations, the USA has the greatest income inequality in the
world. 40% of the wealth is controlled by 1% of the population;
- The USA has the greatest discrepancy (between rich and poor) on health
care in the world;
- The USA has the greatest discrepancy between the life expectancy of rich
and poor in the world.
- Also; its prison
populations are, in per-capita terms, the highest in the world;
Surveys of US citizens ask them if they believe they have anything to be
thankful for, are they satisfied and happy? They are not! The wealth of the
nation has not brought happiness to the people.
Several Asian economies are growing much more quickly than the US economy.
Both India and China appear capable of becoming richer than the US.
Where will that lead?
What is one to call citizens of the USA?
The word American applies to all who live in North, South or Central America.
The words Yank and Yanky applies to citizens of
the states that were on the Union side in the USA Civil War; to call a
Texan a Yank would quite probably result in a punched nose.
I will use USians (pronounced 'Yoo-ess-ians').
The material for this page have been garnered from many sources including
Scientific American, World Book Encyclopaedia, the books listed below,
and, of course, the Internet.
Of particular interest on the Internet are the writings of
George Monbiot.
I recommend the books below – they are listed in alphabetical order of
author...
- Lester R. Brown
- Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization
- Noam Chomsky
- Hegemony or Survival
Rogue States
The Essential Chomsky
- Jared Diamond
- Guns, Germs and Steel
- Collapse
- Rober Fisk
- The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East
- Tim Flannery
- The Weather Makers
- Catherine Ingram
- In the Footsteps of Gandhi
- Le Cao Dai
- Memoirs of War: The Central Highlands: A North Vietnamese Journal of
Life on the Ho Chi Minh Trail 1965-1973
- John Perkins
- Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
- Arundhati Roy
- The Ordinary Person's Guide To Empire
- Peter Singer
- How Ethical is Australia?
How are we to live?: Ethics in an age of self-interest
- Howard Zinn
- A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present
The books above provide lists of references to further reading.
The
New Internationalist
publishes a highly informative magazine on "The people, the ideas, the
action in the fight for global justice" and many books on the same subject,
including a series of 'No Nonsense Guides'.
