Somali Anarchist Forecasts:

Nur · April 6, 2007

Nomads.

eNuri has made its niche to peek into the future to share with you what could be happening in the future, no voodoo involved, just an interpretation of the news events in light of the current "Policies" of the actors on the political and military platforms.

Below is one of eNuri's Satirical predictions made two years ago ( March 17, 2005) that were proven real by news media released yesterday.

e-Nuri Satirical Syndicates

Presents:

Outsourcing Anarchy

An Open Letter To President Bush

Dear President Bush

Globalization is on the upswing, economics of scale and free competition of ideas and goods are driving the world to a new level of chaos and anarchy, which will guarantee your interests abroad.

As you are well aware of, when the marines in Iraq order a hamburger with cheese, the order is taken by the contractors who are outsourcing the call center in Delhi, by Indian employees who speak flawless Texas accent. More and more companies are now outsourcing all of their non-core business to poorer countries of the world where skilled labor are willing to work for a dollar a day, just like it used to be in the USA in the turn of the 1900s.

Many nations are now benefiting from this outsourcing business from Europe and the USA, for example, Turkey is benefiting from Germany, Algeria is benefiting from France, Afghanistan and Iraq are benefiting from USA and Jordan is heavily dependent on Israel as a labor outsourcing destination.

Because the laws of the developed nations grew so irrational that they are against the interest of American large businesses and newcon politicians, I noticed that you have set up offshore horror sites like Guantanamo Bay to outsource Neocon Version justice services with foreign flavor not in good taste with Majority of Americans who love true freedom even for their enemies. So, I read in the papers that because the USA laws safeguard the rights of ALL human beings ( and cats) in US territory, you have decided to outsource interrogation of suspects to countries that guarantee a confession in thirty minutes ( like Domino Pizza ) or your money back. These countries can make anyone confess to anything with a smile as allies and friends of the the "free World".

So, I reasoned, if some nations can get a contract from USA to provide I.P.S. Express Persuasion Services and make money doing it, then by all means we Somalis need piece of the action.

Naturally, as a Somali I am envious that we have nothing to offer the world except Anarchy, so since the USA is buying express confession services, why not offer the USA A.O.S. Anarchy Outsourcing Services ?.

Here is the product line we can offer the USA upon a short notice.

1. Anarchy For Export

Somalis can export their homegrown anarchy to any country the USA needs to be destabilized , our young men and women can work like locusts to strip down the entire infrastructure of any country in a matter of days, after they are done, you will not recognize that country anymore, afterwords the USA can move in to build oil refineries and pipelines without any attacks to their contractors.

2. Anarchy a la Carte

This service is rather a distracting tactic product, we can design a localized Anarchy situation in a matter of seconds, specially to disrupt political rallies against your policies, to depict the opposition parties as a bunch of uncivilized demonstrators. This product has wide applications specially when you want the media off your back, you can order it with your American Express card and we can distract the cameras for hours so you can focus on your holy mission.

3. Nuclear Waste Management Anarchy

This service is unique in that we Somalis have developed resistance to radiation against nuclear waste, the late Siad Barre administration and later the warlords of Somalia and the Italian government have dumped tons of European toxic waste on Somali shores and the East ( Bari) highway, but the Somalis developed resistance to this radiation by chewing on the Qat weed, which is believed to detoxify the brain making it violent and a Jinn possessed tribal bigot. So in case you have some Nuclear Waste we can host it in Somalia and we can assure you that the uranium will decay faster than Somali tribalism mentality.

Let me know how we can serve you today.

Cag Bakeyle Chairman

Somali Anarchist Declaration ( SAD )

2005 e-Nuri Satirical Syndicates @ Somaliaonline

The NEWS.

'Outsourced Guantanamo' - FBI & CIA Interrogating Detainees in Secret Ethiopian Jails, U.S. Citizen Among Those Held

Thursday, April 5th, 2007

The CIA and FBI agents have been interrogating hundreds of detainees at secret prisons in Ethiopia. Many of the prisoners were recently transferred there secretly and illegally from Kenya and Somalia. They are being held without charge or access to counsel. One of those held is 24 year-old U.S. citizen, Amir Mohamed Meshal. We speak with an attorney working on Meshal's case, Human Rights Watch and a reporter in Nairobi who covered the story. [includes rush transcript]

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The Associated Press reports the CIA and FBI agents have been interrogating hundreds of detainees at secret prisons in Ethiopia. Many of the prisoners were recently transferred there secretly and illegally from Kenya and Somalia. They are being held without charge or access to lawyers or their families.

At least one of the prisoners held in Ethiopia is an American citizen. 24 year-old Amir Mohamed Meshal was detained in Kenya, then transferred to Somalia, then to Ethiopia. On Monday, Congressember Rush Holt of New Jersey called on Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to demand his release. Meshal's parents live in Tinton Falls, New Jersey.

We are joined by three guests:

Anthony Mitchell, reporter for the Associated Press. He joins us on the line from Nairobi, Kenya.

John Sifton, researcher at Human Rights Watch. Read HRW letter to Kenyan government.

Jonathan Hafetz, lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. He is assisting the family of Amir Mohamed Meshal, the US citizen detained in Ethiopia.

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RUSH TRANSCRIPT

This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.

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JUAN GONZALEZ: The Associated Press has revealed CIA and FBI agents have been interrogating hundreds of detainees at secret prisons in Ethiopia. Many of the prisoners were recently transferred there secretly and illegally from Kenya and Somalia. They’re being held without charge or access to lawyers or their families.

At least one of the prisoners held in Ethiopia is an American citizen. 24-year-old Amir Mohamed Meshal was detained in Kenya, then transferred to Somalia, then to Ethiopia. On Monday, Congressmember Rush Holt of New Jersey called on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to demand his release. Meshal’s parents live in Tinton Falls, New Jersey.

AMY GOODMAN: Anthony Mitchell is a reporter who broke the story. He joins us on the phone from Nairobi, Kenya, a correspondent for Associated Press. With us here in our firehouse studio, two guests: Jonathan Hafetz is a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, assisting the family of Amir Mohamed Meshal, the US citizen detained in Ethiopia right now; and John Sifton is a researcher at Human Rights Watch. We called the FBI, we called the State Department to invite them on the show; they declined our request.

Anthony Mitchell, you broke the story. Lay it out for us.

ANTHONY MITCHELL: This is a story that dates back to the beginning of January in the collapse of the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia. There had been a conflict between the Ethiopian and Somali transitional governments against the Islamic Courts. The Islamic Courts movement collapsed, and at that time hundreds of people, thousands, fled Somalia, many of them to Kenya, and a large number were detained crossing the border. After they were detained a number of weeks, they had been transferred on flights back to Somalia and onto Ethiopia, where they are now in detention.

AMY GOODMAN: Who is responsible for this detention?

ANTHONY MITCHELL: Well, at the moment, Ethiopia has a number in its detention, according to human rights groups that we have spoken to. Many of them were originally detained in Kenya and were then transferred to Somalia. We have seen flight manifests of those detained and then transferred to Somalia. From Somalia, they were then taken to Ethiopia, according to a number of officials and human rights groups we have spoken to.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us the story of Kamilya Mohammedi Tuweni?

ANTHONY MITCHELL: Sorry, I didn’t catch that.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us the story of Kamilya Mohammedi Tuweni, the 42-year-old mother of three who had a passport from the United Arab Emirates? What happened to her?

ANTHONY MITCHELL: She was an interesting case. She says that she was arrested in Kenya in a coastal town of Malindi on the 10th of January. She says she was here in Kenya on business, had never been to Somalia and was not connected to anything that was going on in Somalia. She says she was then taken from the coast to Nairobi, where she was questioned by Kenyan officials. She was then transferred on a flight to Somalia on the 27th of January and held in Somalia for about ten days, before being transferred on to Ethiopia. Whilst in Ethiopia, she was questioned by US agents. And about a month after she had been questioned, she was then released without charge and is now back in the United Arab Emirates.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Could you tell us the roles of both the Kenyan government and the US government in all of this? How do the Kenyan officials justify sending people back into Somalia, knowing the situation there and the continuing conflict there? And what is precisely the role of some of these US officials? We know that there are obviously some US soldiers in Somalia. There were a couple recently killed in supposedly a traffic accident there, while they were in there. But what’s the role of the FBI and US Army troops, as far as you know?

ANTHONY MITCHELL: The Kenyan government have been clear, from day one, that these transfers are wholly legal. They argue that under Kenyan law they can turn people to the countries from where they have come. So if people have crossed over from Somalia, then Kenya can return these people back to Somalia. The issue of Somalia being a dangerous place and its implications and whether that makes these transfers illegal is more a question for lawyers, I think, to flesh out. In terms of the role of the FBI, they say that they were invited in by the Ethiopian authorities to question suspects. And the FBI’s interest was primarily the 1998 bombings of its American embassies based in Kenya and Tanzania.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to John Sifton, before we turn to find out more about this young New Jersey man who’s being held in Ethiopia. John, you’re with Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch has written a letter to the Kenyan Director of Political Affairs Thomas Amolo. What do you understand about what’s happening here? Are we seeing an outsourced Guantanamo in Ethiopia?

JOHN SIFTON: Well, what we see here is a bunch of countries acting together jointly to interrogate, detain and basically screen a whole bunch of people who were captured along the border and inside of Kenya and even inside of Somalia. It’s not very clear what the power dynamic is, but it is clear the countries are acting together. We’ve said that the United States and Ethiopia are some of the more responsible countries here, but Kenya and the Somali transitional government also are playing a role. It’s essentially a joint operation.

And it’s a decentralized form of detention that doesn’t exist inside the rule of law. It’s basically a system which no courts have oversight over. The countries are acting together, moving people across the borders back and forth, screening them. And, you know, war zones are complicated places. You have people who are fleeing, ordinary innocent people. You have criminal suspects who were involved in the embassy bombings. You have people who were fighting with the Islamic Courts Union. And you just have ordinary people who get caught up. And so, it’s a very complex situation, which is why you need a legal system, to sort out who’s who on the battlefield. And that’s what we don't have here.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And what’s been the response of the Kenyan government to your letter to them?

JOHN SIFTON: Well, the Kenyan government is still trying to play this diplomatically and explain that, yes, people were detained, but it was according to the rule of law. But the facts of the matter are they moved at least eighty-five people to Somalia, and Somalian authorities appear to have handed them over to Ethiopian authorities, some of them who ended up in Ethiopia. Others were released.

It bears remarking that the United Kingdom was able to secure the release of four citizens of their country who are now back in London. Sweden also was able to do that, and the United Arab Emirates. The United States, by contrast, and several other countries have been unable to get their own citizens out of custody, or so they say. We find it extraordinarily difficult to believe that countries like the United States are not able to put diplomatic pressures on countries like Kenya and Somalia to get their own citizens released.

AMY GOODMAN: So let's talk about Amir Mohamed Meshal. Jonathan Hafetz, you’re with the Brennan Center. Who is this young man?

JONATHAN HAFETZ: Well, he’s a young man, a 24-year-old born and bred American citizen from New Jersey, who has been swept up in these goings on over there and is being held in secret incommunicado detention in Ethiopia and is being denied basic due process rights. The FBI claims they have no -- publicly claims they have no intent to prosecute him. And either through their acts of omission or through deliberate acts, the United States has left him to rot -- an American citizen -- rot in an Ethiopian jail, where he can be faced with torture.

JUAN GONZALEZ: If this has all happened in secret, how did you first learn of it and get involved with the case?

JONATHAN HAFETZ: Well, we heard about the case. The case was made public through newspaper accounts. There were stories about the renditions, and then it was learned that there were two American citizens, one of whom, a man named Daniel Maldonado, was brought back to Houston and has been charged, and then Amir Meshal, who is in Ethiopia. We heard about the case, and through discussions with groups, including Human Rights Watch, we’ve been -- and the family, we’ve been providing assistance to the Meshal family.

JUAN GONZALEZ: What was Maldonado charged with?

JONATHAN HAFETZ: Maldonado was charged with attending an al-Qaeda training camp. He has a lawyer, and he has due process. Amir Meshal, on the other hand, who the FBI says they have no intent to bring charges against, is rotting in an Ethiopian jail. This is the crazy product of the lawless system that we’re seeing on display in Ethiopia and Kenya right now.

AMY GOODMAN: Has the FBI met with the Tinton Falls parents, with Meshal’s parents?

JONATHAN HAFETZ: The FBI met with them briefly on February 6. They came to Mr. Meshal’s, the father’s, home in New Jersey -- Mr. Meshal, also an American citizen; his family, American citizens -- and they told him his son was being held in Kenya, but they were going to arrange a phone call for him to speak with his son. And then the next day the agent showed up and said that was impossible, and they couldn’t arrange a phone call.

Meanwhile, the Department of State at that time contacted Mr. Meshal in New Jersey, said they were trying to bring the son home and Mr. Meshal should make arrangements to send a ticket for this to happen. He did so, but two days later the State Department said, “He’s gone. He’s in Somalia. There’s nothing we can do about it.” And they just have not -- the State Department has not made this case a high priority, it is evident.

AMY GOODMAN: In Anthony Mitchell’s piece, the AP reporter, Anthony, you write, "U.S. diplomats on Feb. 27 formally protested to Kenyan authorities about Meshal's transfer […] then spent three weeks trying to gain access to him in Ethiopia, [according to] Tom Casey, […] the State Department. He confirmed Meshal was still in Ethiopian custody pending a hearing on his status. An FBI memo read to AP by a U.S. official in Washington, who insisted on anonymity, quoted an agent who interrogated Meshal as saying the agent was ‘disgusted’ by Meshal's deportation to Somalia by Kenya. The unidentified agent said he was told by U.S. consular staff that the deportation was illegal.” He said -- and then he went on from there. Can you talk further about this, Anthony Mitchell in Kenya, about what you understand what happened to Amir Mohamed Meshal?

ANTHONY MITCHELL: Well, our understanding is pretty much as you laid it out there, is that this is a young man who was picked up in Kenya. He was -- according to police reports we have seen, he was held, detained, while he was with a group of men sleeping under a tree. The men were, according to Kenyan police reports, were armed. They had AK-47 assault rifles. He was detained. He was brought down to Nairobi, where we understand he was questioned by the FBI, then, about ten days later, was transferred up to Somalia and -- along with other groups -- and on to Ethiopia. He was transferred, according to the flight manifests that we’ve seen, he was transferred on the 10th of February to Somalia and onwards to Ethiopia, where US consular officials have visited him several times, we understand.

AMY GOODMAN: John Sifton of Human Rights Watch, what does -- I mean, there are many surprising things about this story, but what does the FBI -- we think of it as collecting domestic intelligence, like our last story on American citizens in the United States. What’s it doing with the CIA? And then, we’ll get to what is the CIA and FBI doing, involved in these "extraordinary renditions."

JOHN SIFTON: Well, the CIA’s role is very interesting, in that it doesn’t appear. There was a time not long ago when the United States regularly detained people and used CIA secret prisons to hold them and detain them and interrogate them. The CIA, however, has had a terrible track record in Somalia. They funded a bunch of warlords to try to take over Mogadishu; they failed. Islamic Courts Union took their place. As a result, there is an internal struggle in East Africa among US agencies, and the CIA has been largely pushed to the side. The lead agencies now are the military and the FBI.

And it’s a very interesting new relationship, because it basically -- you’ve got to understand that two years ago and five years ago in Pakistan, the way this operation would have went, most of the people detained would have been sent to Guantanamo or to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, held as combatants and interrogated by military intelligence. But now, we see the Bush administration has shifted gears, and now they have the FBI interrogating people, but basically outsourcing the detention and some of the interrogation, as well, to local forces, like the Ethiopians, the Kenyans. So that’s why we call it a sort of outsourced Guantanamo. It’s not like Guantanamo; we’re not holding combatants in Cuba or at Bagram. But it is this sort of outsourced decentralized system.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And what is the situation in terms of the legal system and the prison conditions, as far as you know, in Ethiopia?

JOHN SIFTON: Well, Ethiopia has an absolutely horrendous record. It’s often overlooked in favor of Egypt and Morocco and countries like that. But Ethiopia has a terrible record with torture, that runs even to the present day. And so, we have major concerns. Thankfully, this woman who was in Dubai has not reported any mistreatment, but that might be due to the fact that she was innocent and she’s an older woman. But the young man, especially the Eritreans and Ethiopian citizens who are suspected of fighting against Ethiopia, they are at high risk of torture and even execution. So we’re very concerned about them. But all of the detainees, it’s very serious.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And your client in this case, what was he doing in Somalia, to your knowledge, that he ended up then across the border in Kenya?

JONATHAN HAFETZ: Well, we haven’t spoken to him. We’ve not been allowed to speak to him, but I understand that he was there, from the reports, to study Islam. And, you know, we’ve seen there no evidence to the contrary. And there was a reference a moment ago to a rifle, but I want to make clear that there’s been no evidence, and the United States has said that, time and again, about people -- for example, Yaser Hamdi, a US citizen, said was in Afghanistan with a rifle -- but when it came time for the United States to show the evidence, Hamdi was released. Very more often than not, the government has not had evidence. And there’s been no evidence produced to show that anything, except that Amir Meshal is an innocent man.

AMY GOODMAN: John Sifton of Human Rights Watch, we called the FBI. They declined to come on. But Democracy Now! spoke with Richard Kolko, a spokesperson for the FBI. He said the FBI did question Meshal. He reiterated the point the US never had custody of him. He also said the FBI was questioning people there to protect America from terrorism. He wouldn’t say why they questioned Meshal. He reiterated the point Meshal was arrested by a foreign sovereign state. And he said if you get arrested in Tijuana with marijuana and you’re a US citizen, you don’t get a free pass; it doesn’t work that way.

JOHN SIFTON: Well, certainly, there is some grains of truth to that. We have to understand it’s not just a purely legalistic system. This is a power dynamic, a war zone, in which the United States has been one of the major players, helping Ethiopia invade Somalia and restore the transitional government there, and in Kenya, where they have worked hand-in-glove with Kenyan intelligence services to interrogate suspects. It is true that the FBI takes a back seat in many countries when local authorities are in the front seat doing the interrogations, but with the power dynamic in East Africa, we find responses like that to be somewhat disingenuous. The fact of the matter is the United States is very much in a power player role, as a military that has supplied massive amounts of military aid to both Kenya and Ethiopia. And we just find it very difficult to believe that they are basically just sitting on the side, powerless to do anything for their own citizens.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, not only that, but it seems to me that the analogy is not quite the same, because at least if somebody is arrested with drugs in Tijuana, they’re charged with drug trafficking. Here, you have a situation where this particular individual and several of the others have not been charged with anything, as far as we know, right?

JOHN SIFTON: That’s absolutely right. I mean, basically, the system is existing outside of the rule of law. I mean, you’re in pretty good shape if you’re in Kenya, but it’s still not perfect. When you get sent to Ethiopia or Somalia, which continues to be an active war zone, there are no courts operating which are going to help you. It’s not as though lawyers can go in and ask to see the Eritreans, the Ethiopians, the Kenyans or the Americans. It just doesn’t work that way.

AMY GOODMAN: Jonathan Hafetz, what is the State Department doing now to help? First of all, Human Rights Watch has sent a letter to Condoleezza Rice. Congressmember Rush Holt of New Jersey has sent a letter. What’s happening?

JONATHAN HAFETZ: Yeah, and Congressman Rush Holt has taken a very active and strong role, which is greatly appreciated. The State Department has really, as I said, not made this a priority. They have now visited Mr. Meshal a few times. It took them a month to get access. Meanwhile, he was being interrogated repeatedly by FBI agents. I find the State Department’s failure to see him more quickly very troubling. And the State Department has just not made this a priority to bring this American citizen home and to bring him out of this lawless void.

And there’s also -- I do want to point out that the story by Anthony Mitchell contains a statement from an individual, an unnamed individual -- I believe it’s in the State Department, but somewhere in the United States government -- saying the United States is playing a "guiding role" in this. And, you know, we believe the United States is involved in this and could bring this American citizen home if it made it a priority to do so.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Anthony Mitchell, you talk about the one prisoner who’s been released, who is describing her situation, the translator, Tuweni, who said she was arrested on a business trip, that she was blindfolded from a prison where she had been beaten, sent to a private villa in the Ethiopian capital, said she was interrogated with other women by a male US intelligence agent. He assured her she would not be harmed, but urged her to cooperate.

And then you go on to tell the story of a 17-year-old Swedish detainee named Safia Benaouda, who said she was freed from Ethiopia, had traveled to Somalia with her fiancé. Her mother talked to you and said, again, according to website, that an American specialist visited the location where Benaouda was being held and took DNA samples and fingerprints from the detainees? Anthony?

ANTHONY MITCHELL: Sorry, I [inaudible] --

AMY GOODMAN: I was just asking you about the US involvement, from the case of the 17-year-old Swedish detainee, who has just been released to Sweden, as well as the translator.

ANTHONY MITCHELL: Yes. I mean, both of them are saying that they were questioned by US agents. Kamilya says the agent she was questioned by said he was not FBI, but he was a US agent. The 17-year-old girl, the information that has been received, as you say, is from her mother's website, who’s been writing about the case, and she has given those details. The CIA -- I understand an official of the CIA has not commented on whether they questioned these two women, and certainly there’s been no -- no US officials commented on individual cases. So the details we have are from Kamilya and the website of the mother. They both seem to have similar stories. They both tell of a similar sort of modus operandi. But as yet, there’s been no US confirmation on whether they were actually questioned, who questioned them, and why. Kamilya said that the questioning she underwent was fairly basic questioning, wanting to know personal details about her, where she was born, where she was from, how many children she had, these sorts of things.

AMY GOODMAN: Anthony Mitchell, we’re going to leave it there, but I want to thank you very much for being with us, a reporter for the Associated Press who broke this story, “US Agents Visit Ethiopian Secret Jails,” speaking to us from Nairobi, Kenya; Jonathan Hafetz, lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice; and John Sifton, researcher at Human Rights Watch. And we will continue to follow this story.

Nur · April 6, 2007

Getting Away With It: Rendition and Regime Change in Somalia

By Chris Floyd

03/24/07 "ICH" -- -- Yesterday we wrote of the plight of a U.S. citizen who had fled the fighting during the Bush-backed invasion of Somalia only to find himself "renditioned" into the sinister prisons of the Ethiopian invaders – despite the fact that U.S. officials declared that there were no charges against him. (See the second half of that post.)

Now The Independent reports that Amir Meshal – the 24-year-old New Jersey man renditioned by U.S. officials because he refused to confess to being an al Qaeda agent – is not alone in being subjected to the lawless procedure so beloved by the defenders of civilization. (For an early example of this, which also involved Somalia, see Render Unto Caesar.)

Anger at US 'rendition' of refugees who fled Somalia (Independent)

Excerpts: At least 150 people arrested in Kenya after fleeing violence in Somalia have been secretly flown to Somalia and Ethiopia, where they are being held incommunicado in underground prisons, human rights groups say...

Several of the suspects are understood to be held in underground prisons at Mogadishu airport where they are held shackled to the wall. Most have since been sent on to two detention facilities in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia has been accused of routinely torturing political prisoners. A further 50 or 60 people accused of belonging to Ethiopian rebel groups fighting alongside Somalia's Union of Islamic Courts were sent directly to Ethiopia....

The suspects deported from Kenya were interrogated beforehand by American FBI officials in Kenyan prisons, where they were accused of having links with al-Qa'ida. "This is extraordinary rendition," said Maini Kiai, chairman of the Kenya National Human Rights Commission. "Britain and America are involved in interrogating suspects."

Following the US-backed invasion of Somalia by Ethiopian troops, thousands of Somalis have tried to escape the violence by crossing the long, porous border with Kenya. Many of those caught on the Kenya-Somalia border were accused of belonging to the Islamic Courts and refused entry.

At least 150 of those who managed to get through were detained by Kenyan police, including 17 women and 12 children, one a baby of seven months. Many needed medical attention but did not receive it, including a pregnant Tunisian woman who had a bullet lodged in her back.

All were held in Kenyan prisons for several weeks without access to lawyers and family members. As well as being interrogated by the FBI, human rights groups in Nairobi also claimed British officials were involved.

"The Americans had direct access to the prisoners, one on one," said Al-Amin Kimathi of the Muslim Human Rights Forum, adding that US diplomatic vehicles carried the suspects from Nairobi police stations to be questioned. "Senior Kenyan police officers told us they had nothing to do with the operation," said Mr Kimathi. "It was out of their hands."

The US has claimed that Somalia's Islamic Courts, which controlled much of the country until December, was run by an al-Qa'ida cell. Ethiopian troops, backed by US intelligence and logistical support, overpowered the Islamic Courts within a few days of fighting at the end of last year.

This latter claim is baseless. It is simply a reflection of the Bush gang's primitive tactic of labeling any inconvenient Muslim group or individual as "al Qaeda," which then "justifies" any action taken against them: military invasion, assassination, rendition, indefinite detention, torture.

It's clear that no nation on earth will be allowed to organize its own society as it wishes, or work out its own internal conflicts, if the American elite decides they have some financial or strategic interest in the matter. The only nations immune to this power-mad interventionist philosophy are those who can strike back hard enough to upset the elite's apple cart. And thus we have Bush's "war on terror" – which is, as we've often noted, simply an escalation of the long-running, bipartisan foreign policy of the "National Security State" that has ruled America for 60 years.

This year marks the anniversary of this coup d'état: the 1947 "National Security Act." Writing on the 50th anniversary of this supplanting of the Republic, Gore Vidal wrote:

Fifty years ago, Harry Truman replaced the old republic with a national-security state whose sole purpose is to wage perpetual wars, hot, cold, and tepid. Exact date of replacement? February 27, 1947. Place: The White House Cabinet Room. Cast: Truman, Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson, a handful of congressional leaders. Republican senator Arthur Vandenberg told Truman that he could have his militarized economy only IF he first "scared the hell out of the American people" that the Russians were coming. Truman obliged. The perpetual war began. Representative government of, by, and for the people is now a faded memory. Only corporate America enjoys representation by the Congress and presidents that it pays for in an arrangement where no one is entirely accountable because those who have bought the government also own the media. Now, with the revolt of the Praetorian Guard at the Pentagon, we are entering a new and dangerous phase. Although we regularly stigmatize other societies as rogue states, we ourselves have become the largest rogue state of all. We honor no treaties. We spurn international courts. We strike unilaterally wherever we choose. We give orders to the United Nations but do not pay our dues...we bomb, invade, subvert other states. Although We the People of the United States are the sole source of legitimate authority in this land, we are no longer represented in Congress Assembled. Our Congress has been hijacked by corporate America and its enforcer, the imperial military machine..."

Obviously, the situation that Vidal describes didn't begin with the illegal implantation of the Bush Regime by the rightwing faction of the Supreme Court (two of whom had family members profiting from the Bush campaign) in December 2000. It has gone on for decades, under "liberal" Democrats and "conservative" Republicans. But it has reached a new pitch of intensity, audacity and recklessness today.

Somalia might seem an odd choice for "the path of action" – the Hitlerian phrase that Bush incorporated into the official "National Security Strategy of the United States" in formalizing the doctrine of "preventive" – i.e., aggressive – war. (It was also then that he declared that his version of corrupt crony capitalism to be the "single sustainable model of national success.") But as "blaqfather," a commentor on the previous points out, before Somalia collapsed into anarchy in 1991, it was being actively explored by major oil companies: "A World Bank and U.N. survey that year of eight northeastern African countries' petroleum potential ranked Somalia second only to Sudan as the top prospective commercial producer. Northern Somalia lay within a regional oil window reaching south across the Gulf of Aden, the geologists said." So Somalia's affairs are not entirely without interest to a Washington regime populated by professional oilmen.

What's more, Somalia's geographic location gives it heightened importance in the Bush Regime's strategy to control the Horn of Africa and dominate the continent's ever-more-vital oil supplies. The Pentagon recently set up its first-ever "African Command," adding it to the string of regions under the command of a military proconsul. (Bush has also created the first such satrapy covering the United States itself, which has never before been the subject – the target? – of a military "command.")

And finally, Somalia was "doable." You can crush it without cost, squash it like a fly, and not only do it on the cheap – with Ethiopian troops and local warlords serving as your proxies – you can do it without notice. The entire Somalian campaign – and America's very extensive involvement in it – has passed virtually unremarked in the U.S. media, and plays no part at all on the national political scene. It is simply a non-event, something happening far away to a bunch of darkies – Muslim darkies, on top of that – so who cares? It's not even worth a joke by Leno or Letterman.

But "doability" is a major factor in the "War on Terror" strategy. The Bush gang thought Iraq was "doable," as the BBC's John Simpson noted in 2006:

It was a few weeks before the invasion of Iraq, three years ago. I was interviewing the Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, in the ballroom of a big hotel in Cairo...he described to me all the disasters he was certain would follow the invasion. The US and British troops would be bogged down in Iraq for years. There would be civil war between Sunnis and Shias. The real beneficiary would be the government in Iran.

"And what do the Americans say when you tell them this," I asked? "They don't even listen," he said.

... I asked him why he thought the US was determined to invade Iraq.

He said he had put the same question to Vice-President Dick Cheney. Mr. Cheney had replied: "Because it's doable."

The Bushists were wrong about Iraq, of course, because they are ******, arrogant, third-rate characters, blinded by their greed and by the ignorant prejudices that boil up in their "guts," which Bush cites so often as his guide. But Cheney's remark is a perfect expression of their approach, which is the way of the coward and the bully, who only beat up people who can't hit back.

That is doubtless the only thing delaying the attack on Iran for which they have openly prepared: they're trying to figure out, with their crabbed little minds, if they can get away with it with all their apple carts intact. Anyone not blinded by greed or drunk on imperial arrogance knows that such an attack will be a costly, ghastly moral horror and a vast strategic mistake. But then, that was also the case with the attack on Iraq, which millions of people across the world marched against, in an outpouring for peace never seen before in human history. But the Bushists – and their drunken sycophants in the American political and media establishments – were still ****** enough to pull the trigger. And although some of those Establishment figures have sobered up a bit since then, why should we think that the Bushists themselves – who rejected the wan Establishment attempts to rein in the Iraq war and instead "surged" into an escalation – are any smarter now?

Meanwhile, they have slaked their constant craving for "regime change" with this little "do-able" appetizer in Somalia. And they have gotten away with it.

Chris Floyd is the author of Empire Burlesque: The Secret History of the Bush Regime. Visit his blog at www.chris-floyd.com

Nur · April 7, 2007

Let’s Hear it for the War on Terror: Somalia

By Barry Lando

04/06/07 "ICH " -- -- On April 5th, there was a moving ceremony at the State Department. Assistant Secretary Barry Lowenkron presented—as mandated by the U.S. Congress—the fifth annual Supporting Human Rights and Democracy Report, which, said the secretary, “ documents the many ways the United States worked worldwide last year to foster respect for human rights and promote democratic government.”

Then, citing one of the globe’s great champions of human rights, “ As President Bush has said, what every terrorist fears most is human freedom — societies where men and women make their own choices, answer to their own conscience and live by their hopes instead of their resentments.”

Of course, in that war on terror, as in any war, you’ve got to be tough minded. You do what you have to do: torture, kidnap, murder, whatever. You also find your allies where you can, right? Like in the horn of Africa where Al Qaeda has been active—killing and bombing for years. One place they were supposed to be operating was Somalia, Black Hawk Down country: the very definition of a failed state, a seething, ungovernable land of perpetually warring clans. Between 1991 and last year, 13 governments came and went.

Then, last year a coalition of Islamic groups managed to bring calm to the capital of Mogadishu by getting the feuding clans to disarm their militias, and convincing Somalis, the majority of whom are Sunnis, to accept Islam as the solution to their turmoil.

That calm lasted for six months. The problem was that, as the U.S. saw it, while militant Islam might pacify the Somalis, it could also offer sanctuary for groups linked with Al Qaeda to regroup and train for future attacks—attacks like their bloody bombings in 1998 of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

U.S. Special Forces went to work with their military buddies in neighboring Ethiopia. And so it was that in December 2006, the Ethiopians attacked and Somali crowds cheered in the battered streets of Magadishu as the Islamists were sent packing. The Ethiopians and their U.S. advisors patted themselves on the back. This was the beginning of a new era for Somalia. It was like Baghdad after the fall of Saddam, or Kabul after the Taliban were evicted.

Similarly as well, the Ethiopian military scooped up scores of people –people of all ages, some apparently just passing through–and packed them off to clandestine prisons. Added to those were several hundred more who had fled to neighboring Kenya. International reaction was not long in coming.

According to the Associated Press, “Human rights groups, lawyers and several Western diplomats assert hundreds of prisoners, who include women and children, have been transferred secretly and illegally in recent months from Kenya and Somalia to Ethiopia, where they are kept without charge or access to lawyers and families.” They include citizens of 19 countries, including the U.S. Canada, France, Sweden.

While the Ethiopians deny they have any secret prisons in their country. American officials admitted to the AP that the FBI and CIA have been allowed “limited access” to question prisoners as part of their counter-terrorism work.”

As Paul Gimigliano, a CIA spokesman, put it “To fight terror, CIA acts boldly and lawfully, alone and with partners, just as the American people expect us to.”

U.S. officials, however, claimed that America had nothing to do with the arrests or imprisonment. But John Sifton, a Human Rights Watch expert on counter-terrorism, charged that, on the contrary, the United States has acted as “ringleader” in what he labeled a “decentralized, outsourced Guantanamo.”

O.K. so what goes on in the prisons of Ethiopia, America’s partner? You could ask Human Rights Watch, which of course talks of torture and beatings. But we know what knee-jerks the HRW folks are. To get the real truth, we turn to the U. S. State Department and its current report on Human Rights around the globe.

Their summary on Ethiopia?

“Human rights abuses reported during the year included: limitation on citizens’ right to change their government during the most recent elections; unlawful killings, and beating, abuse, and mistreatment of detainees and opposition supporters by security forces; poor prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention, particularly those suspected of sympathizing with or being members of the opposition; detention of thousands without charge and lengthy pretrial detention”…and so on.

You get the picture.

Meanwhile, back in Somalia, turns out that, after the initial euphoria, the regime installed by the Ethiopians and –one presumes—their American advisors, has been incapable of bringing together the major clans. Large numbers of African peacekeepers who were supposed to take over from the Ethiopians have, for more the most part, yet to show up. Meanwhile, as the interim government, which was supposed to be a transition on the road to democracy, has become ever more authoritarian and isolated, a new insurgency has grown. It began with some clans linked to the Islamists, but has now greatly expanded.

The past weeks have seen increasingly bloody battles in Mogadishu. Government troops often refused to take action , while the Ethiopians, feeling no such restraint, have reportedly been launching devastating and indsicriminate barrages into heavily populated urban areas. Mogadishu is once again filled with death and destruction. Over a hundred thousand Somalis have fled.

Impressive, while we’ve been obsessed with Iraq and Afghanistan and Iran, the progress being made elsewhere in the War Against Terror.

More About the author: My journalistic experience includes 25 years as a producer with CBS “60 Minutes”, which I left in 1997. Prior to that I was a correspondent for Time-Life in South America. I have also freelanced articles over the years for a large range of North American and European publications. barry.lando@wanadoo.fr - http://barrylando.com/

Fabregas · April 7, 2007

The unofficial madaxweynad of Somalia, Jeenday Frazer", has pleged a further $60 million to the Trojan Fedh-ruled Government in Baidoa. We suspect this money is for "reconstructing", that is, after the "destruction" phase. Any budding entrepreneurs interested or experienced in the following jobs should apply as quickly as possible:

Interrogation: Those with experience in African or Middle Eastern jails are preferred!( ps. need to supervise secret( oops) jails in Ethiopia!)

Clan Elders: Must have skinny limbs and a large belly; combined with a traditional Somali hat. Must have affliations, legitimacy and connections with Somali Clans. A large pocket( good bonuses paid) and a traditional walking stick will also come in handy (PS. needed in order to sell the occupation to Somali clans). Potential to become future President of Somalia!

Journalists: Must be either extremely: Liberal, clanish or antiislamist! Running a clan based Somali website would also help! ( ps. required to know Somali lineages by heart)

Intelligence officers: Fluency in: Arabic, Somali, English and Amharic would be extremely helpful. Knowledge of Affan Oromo would be usefl for interrogation of Oromo suspects!

Policemen and Soldiers: Ability to stay up for long hours needed, chewing khat would help! Must be good at taking orders and fulfilling self/clan interests. Minumum of two years under Warlords service needed!

Warlords: You guys must be prety bad, even President Bush hasn't managed to attain this impressive title. At least five years experience as a professional Somali Warlord required. Must command a militia of at least 5000 men and a reputation of ruthless among the Somali populace is needed! Bonuses, for those willing to sell national treasures( and people)!

Halliburton: Note: Only apply if you personally know Dick Cheney! Only rich African wanted!

Warning: This Job is not appropriate for Islamists/Somali Nationalists!

Please forward all applications to:

Headquarters of Ethiopian Army, Muqdisho, Greater Ethiopia!

Geel Jire12!

Fabregas · April 12, 2007

Clanish Fever Outbreak in Somalia

Geeljire correspondents has been monitoring the situation in Somalia via global Geel Jire media outlets. Several of our analysts have detected signs of severe " Clanish Fever Outbreak in Somalia", although at an early state, it has the capacity to become a deadly virus which sweeps the entire community. Signs of severe Clanish Fever Outbreak have been reported in several parts of the country which include:

Puntland/Somaliland!

Southern Somalia and Muqdisho in particular!

Somaliaonline politics section!

On the outside, this seems like ordinary Somali clan bickering.However, due to careful Geel Jire analysis, we can exclusively report that this is part of a careful plan, which has several outside agents !We will report to you, the key players in the next few days, in order that ordinary Geel Jire do not fall for these colonial games !

Nur · April 14, 2007

Geel Jire bro.

You need to switch channels, in times of fitna, we might only get one track of events, but if you are resourceful, ou can get the big picture.

The Amplification of the Clan Politics is a well coordinated Americam-Ethiopian Scheme, to erode the support of all Somalis to their resistance against illegal foreign occupation, and what better way than to inflame dormant clan hate, just to divide them and rule.

Those who seem to be fighting along the clan lines, are the very ones who are sponsored by Ethiopia, their retoric calls for the following amusing story that took place in Somaliland ( possibly villages around Hargeisa)

There was a well known thief by the name ( Yonis Tuug), Yonis the Thief. One day, neighbors heard loud scream by his wife, they came to rescue the woman from beating, The woman ran into one of the huts for protection and the neughbors stopped Yonis who was chasing her, once she was in one of the huts, she started calling him names, and he also called her names in return to the bewilderment of the villagers. Later, they managed to make peace between them, and the woman was escorted back to her husband.

What really happened?

Yonis The Thief, learned that a fresh Butter supply was stored in one of the houses, and he wanted to steal some, so he made a plan in which his wife can get inside that house, the beating was a show, once she got in that house, she found the buter too frozen to be put in he bowl, so she came out as if she was insulting him saying in Somali, " Ina Xarkag-Xarkgato" code word for "the butter is to hard", so he insults her back " Ina Rux-ruxato, ka soo ridato" code word for " shake it well and pour into your vessel. Once she followed he direction, she successfully stole the butter, while the neighbors were thinking that there was family fight.

eNuri Analogy:

The Butter is the Oil in Somalia,

Bush wants to steal the Oil, because his Iraq oil heist failed big, so stealing africans is easier.

The Mock war is the "WAR AGAINST TERROR" manufastured by Bushladen organizeation to rob the world.

Islam is the force against Bushladen's greed for oil.

So, Islam must be called " Terror" and a fake war created to divert attention of the world to steal oil.

Now, add a little spice of Christian Fundementalists worried losing their followers to Islam, a more sensible faith, so they support the fake war to protect a fake religion.

International community is the village that does not understand the War agaist Terror.

Ethiopia is the cheap blood for the war for Oil, because, American blood is much expensive, for 650,000 dead Iraqis, america only lost 3000 soldiers, but the new Bush Strategy is to sacrifice Ethiopians and other nationalities for their global thirst for cheap energy (or is it?).

Today, in Somali Clan politics, we have Yonis the Thief, Those fighting along clan lines, are the first to be bought with Mighty Dollar to do the dirty work of the Devil. Be careful, do not fall for the Media jargons. Somali peoples struggle against the Tigre invaders is bringing Somali people together.

In one Major foreign city, inhabited by All clans equally, Puntlandians alone have raised and paid half of all the contribution for resistance, and the rest of the somalis paid the other half, that is the Islam picture, that is the right channel to get your information.

Nur

Fabregas · April 14, 2007

Somalian PM Hopes to Tempt Oil Majors Back with Oil Law

by Benoit Faucon

Dow Jones Newswires

Friday, April 13, 2007

LONDON Apr 13, 2007 Dow Jones Newswires

Somalian Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi hopes big oil companies will return to the country and said parliament is set to vote on a petroleum law to encourage this by providing a legal framework.

Gedi told Dow Jones Newswires last week: "The parliament will approve the law within two months."

Large oil companies were awarded acreage before the country's government collapsed in 1991 but have yet to return owing to years of political instability and violence.

To get their contracts confirmed, the companies "will have to comply to the terms of concessions agreements" demanded by the law, Gedi said.

He emphasized that the law stipulates contracts will be production-sharing agreements. These require companies to share their production with governments after they recover their costs.

Asked whether contract holders had expressed any interest in returning, the prime minister said: "We have the information that they are interested," but declined to give any names.

But until the law is passed, "they have to wait and see," he added. The law will come into force as soon as it is approved by the parliament, Gedi said.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB.LN), Phillips, now part of ConocoPhillips (COP) and Chevron Corp. (CVX) were awarded exploration acreage before 1991. Eni SpA (E) also has licenses in the country, though it's unclear when they were granted.

A person close to Shell said the company "is monitoring the situation" and a Chevron spokesman said it didn't intend to return to Somalia. Eni and ConocoPhillips didn't return requests for comment.

A spokeswoman for Total SA (TOT) said the company signed a technical agreement with the Somali government in 2001 to conduct seismic work offshore but that the security and political situation has so far prevented the company from implementing the contract.

Recent fighting that pitted Somali government troops and their Ethiopian allies against Islamist insurgents killed more than 1,000 civilians and wounded 4,300 in the capital Mogadishu, according to a committee assessing damage from the worst fighting in more than 15 years, released Monday.

The insurgents are linked to the Council of Islamic Courts, which was driven from power in December by Somali and Ethiopian soldiers, accompanied by U.S. special forces. The U.S. has accused the Islamic group of having ties to al-Qaida. Washington has also accused neighboring Eritrea of supporting the Islamic Courts.

The Courts stockpiled thousands of tons of weapons and ammunition during the six months they controlled Mogadishu. The insurgency will likely last until that stockpile is depleted, or key leaders are killed.

The militants have long rejected any secular government and have sworn to fight until Somalia becomes an Islamic emirate.

Experts fear the conflict in Somalia could engulf the region.

Somalia has been mired in chaos since 1991, when warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned each other. A national government was established in 2004 but has failed to assert any real control.

@ Nur, you took the word out of my mouth.Inshallah i will try to add something later. In the meantime, it looks like the big boys are lining up for the oil in Somalia.

Nur · April 14, 2007

Wish List of Dow Jones?

"The Courts stockpiled thousands of tons of weapons and ammunition during the six months they controlled Mogadishu. The insurgency will likely last until that stockpile is depleted, or key leaders are killed"

The Hypocracy is so transparent here, they armed Ethiopian Troops with American Weoponry, Tanks, Aircrafts, Black Hawk Copters, Artillary pounding civilians, killing thousands, supporting a government no one but Oil Companies and Dow Jones wants, So their strategy is slow killing of the insurgency who is in the way of stealing the oil, by accusing them with the handy " Terrorsit" buzz accusation, now, this author is suggesting blatantly the targeted assaination of the Islamic Courts Leadership.

This suggestion if done against Bush or any other leader on a responsible publication would be tantamount of a war crime, but by dehumanizing Muslims, like Hitler used to call Jews RATS, killing a few Muslim leaders here and there is accepted by the "International Community", and " The coolition of the willing, which includes Palau and Macronesia"

Same movie all over again, Iraq II, is unfolding before our eyes, this time, an Organized Crime of a global Dimension against the poor who sit on top of strategic oil reserves.

Nur

rudy-Diiriye · April 14, 2007

dont worry 2 much there! neo-cons and the oil barons are done deal for now! new blood skirt wearing has come to us congress and in about year, you will see new different strateges.

chaney will be moving to dubai, lil dummy in his horse farm and god only knows whats gonna come out of the earth!! lool. tplf and tfg will be history.

hopefully, this time, islamic brothas will concentrate first on their own ppl rather than put their FOOT in their mouths like they did in Afgan and somalia..! as the saying goes! put your house in order before venturing to your neighbors houses! peace.

Nur · April 17, 2007

Torture, Secrecy, and the Bush Administration

By Scott Horton

04/16/07 "Harpers" 04/14/07 -- -- I want to give a bit of pre-constitutional history, and share with you the story of John Lilburne, an Englishman born in the early 1600s because his story—the story of an agitator who directly challenged the English legal system—has a great deal to tell us about the issues we're facing today. Lilburne's story explains why these matters—torture and secrecy—were not issues to the Founding Fathers, and it helps us understand the true nature of a government which, like the current administration, thrives in that matrix of torture and secrecy.

So much of what has happened over the last six years seems a repetition of events drawn from English history, from the turbulent years from the Civil War to the Glorious Revolution—this could be said of the struggle over habeas corpus, which was right at the center of the conflict between Parliament and king, as seen in the Five Knights case of 1627 or the Shipmaster's tax case of 1637. But the notion of secret legal proceedings, closed courts and the use of secret evidence also characterize that period of history. Before the English Civil War, court proceedings were frequently closed, and one of the principles of fair process introduced in the Commonwealth—it seems to have been an initiative of the solicitor general, John Cooke—was the notion that no court should conduct its hearings behind closed doors, and neither should any evidence be taken which could not be shared with the public and presented to the defendant and the jury.

The key case for this notion involved a man commonly called “Freeborn John,” or John Lilburne. He was a person of little formal education who became a firebrand pamphleteer among the Puritans in the years of the Civil War. He had republican sentiments, but more to the point he was a sharp critic of the king's justice—writing constantly of the aspects which were, well, unjust. He was particularly outraged by the use of the king's courts to persecute dissenters, as the Anglicans called them—though at the time this would be a changing blend of Puritans, Calvinists, Baptists and Quakers; not to mention the “terrorists” of the day, the Catholics. Lilburne had been convicted in the Star Chamber in 1638 on a charge of importation and dissemination of unregistered religious tracts. He wrote a compelling account of his treatment—he had been imprisoned for refusing to answer questions and then flogged, pilloried and gagged—but he also described the use of coercive interrogation techniques to extract a confession, the denial of rights of confrontation, the fact that his judges were all political figures placed there to do their king's bidding—the Star Chamber, you see, was to Lilburne's age what the Military Commission is to ours.

His account was an instant bestseller and provided much of the impetus for the abolition of the Star Chamber by the Long Parliament in 1641. As Uncle Tom's Cabin was to abolition, Liburne's book was to habeas corpus and the Star Chamber. Lilburne served with distinction as an officer during the Civil War, and afterwards his advocacy of Republican virtues caused Oliver Cromwell a bit of discomfort, and at length Cromwell decided to silence Lilburne by charging him with treason. The trial convened in October 1649, which is to say just months after the second Civil War had been successfully concluded for the Parliamentary forces.

This was in effect the second significant trial for the Commonwealth after the trial of King Charles himself in January. Lilburne was a popular figure in London and was well aware of that fact. When the court proceedings commenced behind closed doors in the Painted Chamber of Westminster, Lilburne opened his answer to the charges read in court with these famous words: “The first fundamental liberty of an Englishman is that all courts of justice always ought to be free and open for all sorts of peaceable people to see, behold and hear, and have free access unto; and no man whatsoever ought to be tried in holes or corners, or in any place where the gates are shut and barred.” Lilburne was raising a direct challenge to the reputation of the Commonwealth courts—asking whether one of the most abusive of the practices of justice under the Stuart monarchs would be continued. The court fully understood this and directed that the doors be opened, in order that “all the world may know with what candour and justice the court does proceed against you.”

In the balance of that remarkable case, Lilburne established a number of other principles. The prisoner in the dock was to be treated with dignity and respect, not dragged before the court in manacles and an orange jumpsuit. There were to be no ex parte communications between the counsel and the court. He was to have a right to confront all evidence against him (that is, there could be no secret evidence), and the public also was to be allowed to hear it, to form its own opinion of the quality of justice dispensed by the court. He was guaranteed the right of counsel, and for the first time, counsel were permitted to participate in the presentation of evidence for the defense as well.

The fairness of the proceedings had its limit. The judge charged the jury that they must convict, saying “never was the like treason hatched in England.” But the vigor of Lilburne's defense was impressive and the jury returned a verdict of acquittal. (To this day, some attribute the acquittal to Judge Keble's refusal of the jurors' request of a “butt of sack,” which is to say, a very large quantity of fortified wine, as a pre-deliberation refreshment).

The Lilburne case sums up the most significant of what may be called the “Commonwealth reforms” of criminal procedure—one of the few legacies of the revolution to survive the restoration of the monarchy.

Secrecy was what the Roundheads found most odious about the Stuart monarchs' justice. Certainly unjust practices accompanied some of our Puritan forefathers to this country; we can't forget the Salem witch trials, for instance. But so too, did a healthy contempt for the abuses practiced by the Stuart monarchs, starting with the notions of torture and secret courts with secret evidence. The contempt was reciprocal of course—they say that King Charles' lip would curl at the very mention of the word “Massachusetts,” and seven of the ten members of the first graduating class of Harvard—the class of 1642—returned to England to enlist in the Model Army and fight against the King. The practice of secret courts. The use of torture to secure confessions. The receipt of secret evidence. The exclusion of the public from proceedings. The offering of evidence in the form of summaries delivered to the judges, without the defendant being able to confront the evidence or conduct a cross-examination. These practices were the definition of tyrannical injustice to the Puritan fathers and the Founding Fathers. We thought them long-banished a hundred years and more before our own revolution. And now suddenly here they are again.

Secrecy has reemerged just as torture has made its comeback, being justified on the public stage, by government officials for the first time since the famous gathering at the Inns of Court in 1629 at which the judges declared “upon their and their nation's honor” that torture was not permitted by the common law.

The two fit together, hand in glove: torture and secrecy. Torture and secrecy. Where one is used, the other is indispensable.

Torture is no longer a tool of statecraft. Today it is a tool of criminals, though sometimes of criminals purporting to conduct the affairs of state. Having resorted to these “dark arts,” to quote Dick Cheney, the torturers now have the dilemma faced so frequently by criminals. They seek to cover it up. And so the path flows from torture to secrecy, the twin dark stars of the tyrannical state.

If we look quickly at the proceedings that held the world's attention down in Gitmo over the last two weeks, we see what the secrecy is all about.

When the Combat Status Review Tribunal process commenced, the Pentagon told us that the proceedings would not be open to the public. Instead, it said, a transcript would be offered up to the public a few days later, giving the Pentagon an opportunity to redact “classified national security” information from the transcripts. Pete Yost of the Associated Press gave me a ring just as this came out and asked: what do you suppose they think is going to require censoring? I said the answer is clear based on submissions the Department of Justice has made in four or five cases: they will take the position that any evidence of torture must be censored or expunged, because the testimony would disclose the specific torture techniques which have been applied, and that would divulge highly classified national security data. Why do you think the DVDs of the treatment of Jose Padilla, all two dozen copies, mysteriously disappeared? Why, as Colonel Couch recently told the Wall Street Journal's Jess Bravin, did the recording devices inexplicably malfunction whenever torture incidents occurred? Yes. Why indeed. Of course, I was relying not only on what was said and done in Padilla, El-Masri, Arar and other cases, but also on Terry Gilliam's movie, “Brazil,” in which all of this morally deviant thinking is taken to its logical conclusion. What the Bush Administration has created in Gitmo is “Brazil,” minus, of course, any pretense of humor.

Now we have the first two transcripts, and the results are exactly that. The torture is cut out. The case of al-Nashiri is particularly striking:

PRESIDENT (of the tribunal): Please describe the methods that were used.

DETAINEE: (CENSORED) What else do I want to say? (CENSORED) There were doing so many things. What else did they did? (CENSORED) After that another method of torture began. (CENSORED) They used to ask me questions and the investigator after that used to laugh. And, I used to answer the answer that I knew. And if I didn't replay what I heard, he used to (CENSORED).

Now let's consider—would there be any need to censor the allegations unless they are true? No. Indeed, the fact that they are censored should be taken as an admission. No meaningful effort is made to refute any of the detainee's contentions. No records are spread out showing that he was not tortured. Why might that be?

And the second case for secrecy we see in the trial of David Hicks, which follows a pattern established with the John Walker Lindh case. It came to a plea bargain in the end, and a strong focus on silencing the witness. In particular, he was to be gagged as to everything that was done to him while he was in U.S. custody for a period of one year, which is to say, until the Australian elections are past. The plea bargain, it appears, was negotiated by Susan J. Crawford, a protégée of Vice President Cheney, and Cheney had only six weeks earlier visited Australian Prime Minister John Howard downunder. According to accounts of their meeting published at the time in the Australian press, at the top of Howard's agenda was an urgent plea to bring the Hicks case to a speedy conclusion that would allow him to serve a brief sentence in Australia. Crawford delivered exactly what was requested.

There is a common theme to these cases. Secrecy is not invoked to protect military or legitimate state security confidences. It is invoked for nakedly political reasons, or darker and still more likely, to obscure crimes and avoid the creation of court records which would document them.

On April 27, 1961, John F. Kennedy gave a speech in the Waldorf-Astoria to the American Newspaper Association. “The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society;” Kennedy said “and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control.”

I believe that the moment—the day of “official censorship and concealment”—that Kennedy foresaw is drawing near, if it is not already upon us in America today. The moment has crept upon us by stealth, as a result of decisions taken at the highest level in government. These decisions have been made behind closed doors, with no public discussion—and indeed with a concerted effort to misdirect the public as to the gravity of the changes in policy which have been undertaken. They have led to a dramatic expansion of Government action without oversight, which is to say on the basis of a decision by the President unchecked by courts and Congress, and to a shrinkage of individual freedom.

We have a duty to posterity, and that is to bear witness to these events. We must document them carefully. We must act to avoid the destruction of valuable evidence—and recognize, as we have already seen, that it is in the character of those who commit crimes to destroy the evidence of their misdeeds. In this way we lay the path for the justice which will in good time be meted out to those who betrayed a nation's trust. For I believe, like the Puritans, in the certainty that justice will triumph and that wrongdoers will be held to account, though I am not so foolish as to think that this will happen soon. Still, the time is coming, as John Milton wrote,

that sun part the clouds which tyrants muster,

that good men may enjoy the freedom which they merit,

and the bad the curb which they need.

Fabregas · May 3, 2007

Originally posted by Geel_Jire12:

The unofficial madaxweynad of Somalia, Jeenday Frazer", has pleged a further $60 million to the Trojan Fedh-ruled Government in Baidoa. We suspect this money is for "reconstructing", that is, after the "destruction" phase.

Geel Jire12!

Nur · May 5, 2007

Geel Jire

According to eNuri Press Service, TFG is an acronym for: Transplanted Foreign Government.

Jus Like " President Yusuf" functions with a transplanted Liver, taking medications that suppress his body's immunes system aka Resistance, in order for his body to accept the foreign organ, likewise, Somalia's current government known as the TFG ( Transplanted Foreign Government) was planted by US and Ethiopia for their advancing their own interests, now they are colectively working on a medicine ( Strategy) to pacify the resistance ( aka Terrorists ) of the Somali body, such as:

1. Bribing clan leaders

2. Elimination of lawmakers who are agianst the transplant government ( Politically, and if necessary physically)

3. Fomenting clan hate and division

4. Brute force that will label any resistance as "TERRORIST" for which the US and Ethiopia and Kenya are the allaince and partners to fight such war together to appease Somalia and the horn of Africa for exploitation of Foreign intersts.

Read the following news from a Neocon Newspaper perspective.

U.S. force aims to secure Africa

By Jason Motlagh

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Published April 30, 2007

The United States hopes by year's end to establish an Africa Command that will anchor military operations across a continent seen to be of increasing strategic importance and threatened by transnational terrorists.

The new force, known informally as AfriCom, will preside over all countries on the continent except Egypt and is expected to be operational by the fall, according to Pentagon officials. They say it is needed to secure vast, lawless areas where terrorists have sought safe haven to regroup and threaten U.S. interests.

"Part of the rationale behind the development of this command is clearly the growing emergence of the strategic importance of Africa from a global ... security and economic standpoint," Rear Adm. Robert Moeller, head of the Africa Command Transition Team, said earlier this month. "This allows us to work more closely with our African partners to ... enhance the stability across the continent."

Plans for such a force were first disclosed in April 2004, but it was not until February this year that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates laid out the scope of the new command.

AfriCom will initially operate as part of the Stuttgart, Germany-based European Command before becoming independent at the end of 2008. It will be a "unified combatant command" that includes branches of the military along with civilians from the departments of Defense, State and Agriculture, among others, according to Adm. Moeller.

The force will deal with peacekeeping, humanitarian aid missions, military training and support of African partner countries. A headquarters location has yet to be determined.

The United States now maintains five military commands worldwide, with Africa divided among three of them: EuCom covers 43 countries across North and sub-Saharan Africa; Central Command oversees East Africa, including the restive Horn of Africa; and Pacific Command looks after Madagascar.

In 2001, CentCom established a task force in the Horn to track down al Qaeda terrorists and monitor instability in Somalia. It has since expanded to conduct humanitarian missions in the region.

EuCom directs a seven-year, $500 million counterterrorism initiative that provides military and developmental aid to nine Saharan countries deemed vulnerable to groups looking to establish Afghanistan-style training grounds and carry out other illicit activities.

The main target of U.S. Special Forces training African troops has been the Algeria-based Salafist Group for Call and Combat. The group withered after a crackdown by Algerian authorities and a state-sponsored amnesty program, but a new al Qaeda-linked offshoot claimed responsibility for the April 11 Algiers suicide bombings that killed more than 30 people.

U.S. military officials say there is evidence that a quarter of suicide bombers in Iraq are from North Africa. Other jihadists are said to have traveled as far as Afghanistan to receive training before returning home to Africa to sow trouble.

However, the initiative is not welcome in every African country. Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, quoted in the Libyan daily Al-Fajr Al-Jadid, said at a conference in Chad last week that such a force was neither wanted nor needed.

"We told [the Americans] we do not need military aircraft flying over, nor do we need military bases," he reportedly said. "We are in need of economic elements and an economic support. If your support to us is military intervention, then we do not need you, nor your help."

Some Western critics worry that a military-based policy on the continent could breed radicalism where it scarcely exists by sustaining despotic regimes that usurp funding and military hardware to tighten their grip on power.

A 2005 report by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, said the Saharan region is "not a terrorist hotbed," and warned that some governments try to elicit U.S. aid while using the "war on terror" to justify human rights abuses.

U.S. officials insist the new AfriCom will not result in a large-scale deployment of U.S. forces on the continent. Instead, they want to place "a greater mix of diplomatic, developmental and economic experts" on the ground. Current estimates are for about 1,000 personnel, on par with other regional commands.

"The goal is for AfriCom not to be a U.S. leadership role on the continent," said Ryan Henry, deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, who spoke with reporters in Washington last week after returning from a "fact-finding" trip to Africa.

"We would be looking to complement rather than compete with any leadership efforts currently going on."

Ana_Juwa2 · May 5, 2007

The United States hopes by year's end to establish an Africa Command that will anchor military operations across a continent seen to be of increasing strategic importance and threatened by transnational terrorists.

The new force, known informally as AfriCom, will preside over all countries on the continent except

Egypt

and is expected to be operational by the fall, according to Pentagon officials. They say it is needed to

secure vast, lawless areas where terrorists have sought safe haven to regroup and

threaten U.S.

interests.

I wonder why Eygpt isnt covered by this lool.

The future looks bleak for the region!

Fabregas · May 13, 2007

Originally posted by Geel_Jire12:

Policemen and Soldiers: Ability to stay up for long hours needed, chewing khat would help! Must be good at taking orders and fulfilling self/clan interests. Minumum of two years under Warlords service needed!

Warlords: You guys must be prety bad, even President Bush hasn't managed to attain this impressive title. At least five years experience as a professional Somali Warlord required. Must command a militia of at least 5000 men and a reputation of ruthless among the Somali populace is needed! Bonuses, for those willing to sell national treasures( and people)!

Geel Jire12!

Update: Warlord militias(drug militias) patrol Muqdisho removing Women's veils by force, in one incident even breaking a sisters' hand. Meanwhile two of the most promiment Warlords have been placed to run Muqdisho and strike fear into the hearts of the residents. Welcome to Liberation!

Nur · May 17, 2007

Nomads

eNuri, back in 2003 predicted te content of an article that was published today, the eNuri Satirical article suggested that America is going down hill by spreading itself too thin, like empires of old, globe trotting (without the skills of the Haarlem Basket ball players), below is my light hearted article, followed by a serious article expanding on that notion, enjoy.

Somali Anarchists Letter to George Bush

Dear President Bush

On behalf of the Anarchist Association of Somalia I congratulate you for the quick win in Iraq that you badly needed to justify for your upcoming reelection. This letter is coming to you as an inspiration from your friends in the area, friends who believe that the world should be united under a new world government that will establish a new world order ( or disorder) as predicted by your Dad a decade ago.

The idea of uniting diverse people, with diverse backgrounds under one world government has eluded the Somali Anarchist Association for the past decade. But, watching the fireworks in Iraq and Afghanistan has reassured your Anarchist Allies in Somalia and the world over that might is indeed right and since you represent the mightiest nation on earth, Somali Anarchists have unanimously decided to be loyal to your world government in order to further the common ideals we share of power brokering. We also support your decision to ignore the UN and all those silly French and German politicians who have no idea of the enormous job that is awaiting you of establishing some sort of a new world order.

As I am not capable of writing, this letter was prepared by my secretary his name is Carrabey , meaning he mispronounces and misspells words frequently, so in case some words do make a different sense, you can decide what it means for yourself, just like how you deal with the world bodies such as Human Rights and International War criminals court.

The Anarchist Association of Somalia (aka War Lords)is commending you for acting locally and sinking globally , sorry ( Carrabey misspelled this one, I meant Thinking Globally). The question that forces itself in light of current world affairs is how can America sink globally when it is acting so well locally.? The answer according to the Somali Anarchist Sinkers and the Somali Chaotic Sink Tank, is that great empires sink big when they spread themselves too sin (thin) and after a while implode after all the resources they have stole all those years are used up in adventures far from home and when their moral high ground of " Justice for All" becomes meaningless at home and overseas, which affects the productivity mindset of the citizenry and even increases contempt for the Emperor's power, triggering an avalanche of mishaps that brings the empire down, just like it did to Empires of old, which in effect gives a new meaning to the negative of Descartes famous argument " I Sink, therefore I do NOT Exist"

As an anarchist, I share with you the notion that there is no need for the United Nations, I believe that Coffee Anan Salary can feed 200,000 Somalis per day, so, by disbanding these gangs who live on poor peoples misery cycle, we believe that your highness as the new Emperor of the New World Order, that you can reach the end users of the US aid directly, cutting off the middle man, and you do not have to pay your hard cash, you can literally pay peanuts, (Peter Pan Brand is my favorite). Somalis would be grateful to consume the overproduced American wheat cereals and Florida Citrus ( frozen Concentrates before they expire) which in economic terms can create the dependence of the Somali economy on American aid, thus making them obedient while at the same time stabilizing commodity prices in the USA ( Do not worry, in case Somalis get sick, you can send expired medicines, and you are the Judge and the Policeman)

The UN is a waste of resources, and as the Thief executive officer of the World, ( I mean Chief Executive, Carrabey, my secretary misspells frequently) you should invade the UN building, since the UN office is in New York, a US property, and then disband them. If anyone disagrees with you, remind them that there should be only one world Power, and one United Nations. How can they forget that there are more Germans in Wyoming than Bavaria's Black Forest and more Gadabursi in Ohio than in Borama. So, the new United Nations should be declared as The United States of America, a nation of nations in a melting pot not a salad bowl like Soviet union.

I know that you like to compensate Chairman Coffe Anan once you disband the UN. The ( EDCO) Entrepreneurial Development Cooperative Office of The Somali Anarchist Association will closely work with Coffee Anan to trade mark his name in all Somali tribal Jurisdictions as a Café for the Armchair Veteran Generals of The Somali Civil War ( Fadhi Ku Dirir), We would even consider to nominate him the Honorary Visiting Anarchist of the year, to thank him for all the anarchy that his organization helped create and maintain in Somalia and the world.

Mr. Carrabey, signing

for Mr. Cag Biciid of Nurtel

Nairobi, Kenya

2003 Nurtel Network News

No Noose is Good News

Evil Empire

Is Imperial Liquidation Possible for America?

By Chalmers Johnson

05/17/07 "ICH" -- -- In politics, as in medicine, a cure based on a false diagnosis is almost always worthless, often worsening the condition that is supposed to be healed. The United States, today, suffers from a plethora of public ills. Most of them can be traced to the militarism and imperialism that have led to the near-collapse of our Constitutional system of checks and balances. Unfortunately, none of the remedies proposed so far by American politicians or analysts addresses the root causes of the problem.

According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, released on April 26, 2007, some 78% of Americans believe their country to be headed in the wrong direction. Only 22% think the Bush administration's policies make sense, the lowest number on this question since October 1992, when George H. W. Bush was running for a second term -- and lost. What people don't agree on are the reasons for their doubts and, above all, what the remedy -- or remedies -- ought to be.

The range of opinions on this is immense. Even though large numbers of voters vaguely suspect that the failings of the political system itself led the country into its current crisis, most evidently expect the system to perform a course correction more or less automatically. As Adam Nagourney of the New York Times reported, by the end of March 2007, at least 280,000 American citizens had already contributed some $113.6 million to the presidential campaigns of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Mitt Romney, Rudolph Giuliani, or John McCain.

If these people actually believe a presidential election a year-and-a-half from now will significantly alter how the country is run, they have almost surely wasted their money. As Andrew Bacevich, author of The New American Militarism, puts it: "None of the Democrats vying to replace President Bush is doing so with the promise of reviving the system of check and balances.... The aim of the party out of power is not to cut the presidency down to size but to seize it, not to reduce the prerogatives of the executive branch but to regain them."

George W. Bush has, of course, flagrantly violated his oath of office, which requires him "to protect and defend the constitution," and the opposition party has been remarkably reluctant to hold him to account. Among the "high crimes and misdemeanors" that, under other political circumstances, would surely constitute the Constitutional grounds for impeachment are these: the President and his top officials pressured the Central Intelligence Agency to put together a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's nuclear weapons that both the administration and the Agency knew to be patently dishonest. They then used this false NIE to justify an American war of aggression. After launching an invasion of Iraq, the administration unilaterally reinterpreted international and domestic law to permit the torture of prisoners held at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and at other secret locations around the world.

Nothing in the Constitution, least of all the commander-in-chief clause, allows the president to commit felonies. Nonetheless, within days after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush had signed a secret executive order authorizing a new policy of "extraordinary rendition," in which the CIA is allowed to kidnap terrorist suspects anywhere on Earth and transfer them to prisons in countries like Egypt, Syria, or Uzbekistan, where torture is a normal practice, or to secret CIA prisons outside the United States where Agency operatives themselves do the torturing.

On the home front, despite the post-9/11 congressional authorization of new surveillance powers to the administration, its officials chose to ignore these and, on its own initiative, undertook extensive spying on American citizens without obtaining the necessary judicial warrants and without reporting to Congress on this program. These actions are prima-facie violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (and subsequent revisions) and of Amendment IV of the Constitution.

These alone constitute more than adequate grounds for impeachment, while hardly scratching the surface. And yet, on the eve of the national elections of November 2006, then House Minority Leader, now Speaker, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), pledged on the CBS News program "60 Minutes" that "impeachment is off the table." She called it "a waste of time." And six months after the Democratic Party took control of both houses of Congress, the prison at Guantánamo Bay was still open and conducting drumhead courts martial of the prisoners held there; the CIA was still using "enhanced interrogation techniques" on prisoners in foreign jails; illegal intrusions into the privacy of American citizens continued unabated; and, more than fifty years after the CIA was founded, it continues to operate under, at best, the most perfunctory congressional oversight.

Promoting Lies, Demoting Democracy

Without question, the administration's catastrophic war in Iraq is the single overarching issue that has convinced a large majority of Americans that the country is "heading in the wrong direction." But the war itself is the outcome of an imperial presidency and the abject failure of Congress to perform its Constitutional duty of oversight. Had the government been working as the authors of the Constitution intended, the war could not have occurred. Even now, the Democratic majority remains reluctant to use its power of the purse to cut off funding for the war, thereby ending the American occupation of Iraq and starting to curtail the ever-growing power of the military-industrial complex.

One major problem of the American social and political system is the failure of the press, especially television news, to inform the public about the true breadth of the unconstitutional activities of the executive branch. As Frederick A. O. Schwarz and Aziz Z. Huq, the authors of Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror, observe, "For the public to play its proper checking role at the ballot box, citizens must know what is done by the government in their names."

Instead of uncovering administration lies and manipulations, the media actively promoted them. Yet the first amendment to the Constitution protects the press precisely so it can penetrate the secrecy that is the bureaucrat's most powerful, self-protective weapon. As a result of this failure, democratic oversight of the government by an actively engaged citizenry did not -- and could not -- occur. The people of the United States became mere spectators as an array of ideological extremists, vested interests, and foreign operatives -- including domestic neoconservatives, Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi exiles, the Israeli Lobby, the petroleum and automobile industries, warmongers and profiteers allied with the military-industrial complex, and the entrenched interests of the professional military establishment -- essentially hijacked the government.

Some respected professional journalists do not see these failings as the mere result of personal turpitude but rather as deep structural and cultural problems within the American system as it exists today. In an interview with Matt Taibbi, Seymour Hersh, for forty years one of America's leading investigative reporters, put the matter this way:

"All of the institutions we thought would protect us -- particularly the press, but also the military, the bureaucracy, the Congress -- they have failed… So all the things that we expect would normally carry us through didn't. The biggest failure, I would argue, is the press, because that's the most glaring…. What can be done to fix the situation? [long pause] You'd have to fire or execute ninety percent of the editors and executives."

Veteran analyst of the press (and former presidential press secretary), Bill Moyers, considering a classic moment of media failure, concluded: "The disgraceful press reaction to Colin Powell's presentation at the United Nations [on February 5, 2003] seems like something out of Monty Python, with one key British report cited by Powell being nothing more than a student's thesis, downloaded from the Web -- with the student later threatening to charge U.S. officials with 'plagiarism.'"

As a result of such multiple failures (still ongoing), the executive branch easily misled the American public.

A Made-in-America Human Catastrophe

Of the failings mentioned by Hersh, that of the military is particularly striking, resembling as it does the failures of the Vietnam era, thirty-plus years earlier. One would have thought the high command had learned some lessons from the defeat of 1975. Instead, it once again went to war pumped up on our own propaganda -- especially the conjoined beliefs that the United States was the "indispensable nation," the "lone superpower," and the "victor" in the Cold War; and that it was a new Rome the likes of which the world had never seen, possessing as it did -- from the heavens to the remotest spot on the planet -- "full spectrum dominance." The idea that the U.S. was an unquestioned military colossus athwart the world, which no power or people could effectively oppose, was hubristic nonsense certain to get the country into deep trouble -- as it did -- and bring the U.S. Army to the point of collapse, as happened in Vietnam and may well happen again in Iraq (and Afghanistan).

Instead of behaving in a professional manner, our military invaded Iraq with far too small a force; failed to respond adequately when parts of the Iraqi Army (and Baathist Party) went underground; tolerated an orgy of looting and lawlessness throughout the country; disobeyed orders and ignored international obligations (including the obligation of an occupying power to protect the facilities and treasures of the occupied country -- especially, in this case, Baghdad's National Museum and other archaeological sites of untold historic value); and incompetently fanned the flames of an insurgency against our occupation, committing numerous atrocities against unarmed Iraqi civilians.

According to Andrew Bacevich, "Next to nothing can be done to salvage Iraq. It no longer lies within the capacity of the United States to determine the outcome of events there." Our former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Chas W. Freeman, says of President Bush's recent "surge" strategy in Baghdad and al-Anbar Province: "The reinforcement of failure is a poor substitute for its correction."

Symbolically, a certain sign of the disaster to come in Iraq arrived via an April 26th posting from the courageous but anonymous Sunni woman who has, since August 2003, published the indispensable blog Baghdad Burning. Her family, she reported, was finally giving up and going into exile -- joining up to two million of her compatriots who have left the country. In her final dispatch, she wrote:

"There are moments when the injustice of having to leave your country simply because an imbecile got it into his head to invade it, is overwhelming. It is unfair that in order to survive and live normally, we have to leave our home and what remains of family and friends.... And to what?"

Retired General Barry McCaffrey, commander of the 24th Infantry Division in the first Iraq war and a consistent cheerleader for Bush strategies in the second, recently radically changed his tune. He now says, "No Iraqi government official, coalition soldier, diplomat, reporter, foreign NGO, nor contractor can walk the streets of Baghdad, nor Mosul, nor Kirkuk, nor Basra, nor Tikrit, nor Najaf, nor Ramadi, without heavily armed protection." In a different context, Gen. McCaffrey has concluded: "The U.S. Army is rapidly unraveling."

Even military failure in Iraq is still being spun into an endless web of lies and distortions by the White House, the Pentagon, military pundits, and the now-routine reporting of propagandists disguised as journalists. For example, in the first months of 2007, rising car-bomb attacks in Baghdad were making a mockery of Bush administration and Pentagon claims that the U.S. troop escalation in the capital had brought about "a dramatic drop in sectarian violence." The official response to this problem: the Pentagon simply quit including deaths from car bombings in its count of sectarian casualties. (It has never attempted to report civilian casualties publicly or accurately.) Since August 2003, there have been over 1,050 car bombings in Iraq. One study estimates that through June 2006 the death toll from these alone has been a staggering 78,000 Iraqis.

The war and occupation George W. Bush unleashed in Iraq has proved unimaginably lethal for unarmed civilians, but reporting the true levels of lethality in Iraq, or the nature of the direct American role in it was, for a long time, virtually taboo in the U.S. media. As late as October 2006, the journal of the British Medical Association, The Lancet, published a study conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad estimating that, since March 2003, there were some 601,027 more Iraqi deaths from violence than would have been expected without a war. The British and American governments at first dismissed the findings, claiming the research was based on faulty statistical methods -- and the American media ignored the study, played down its importance, or dismissed its figures.

On March 27, 2007, however, it was revealed that the chief scientific adviser to the British Ministry of Defense, Roy Anderson, had offered a more honest response. The methods used in the study were, he wrote, "close to best practice." Another British official described them as "a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones." Over 600,000 violent deaths in a population estimated in 2006 at 26.8 million -- that is, one in every 45 individuals -- amounts to a made-in-America human catastrophe.

One subject that the government, the military, and the news media try to avoid like the plague is the racist and murderous culture of rank-and-file American troops when operating abroad. Partly as a result of the background racism that is embedded in many Americans' mental make-up and the propaganda of American imperialism that is drummed into recruits during military training, they do not see assaults on unarmed "rag heads" or "hajis" as murder. The cult of silence on this subject began to slip only slightly in May 2007 when a report prepared by the Army's Mental Health Advisory Team was leaked to the San Diego Union-Tribune. Based on anonymous surveys and focus groups involving 1,320 soldiers and 447 Marines, the study revealed that only 56% of soldiers would report a unit member for injuring or killing an innocent noncombatant, while a mere 40% of Marines would do so. Some militarists will reply that such inhumanity to the defenseless is always inculcated into the properly trained soldier. If so, then the answer to this problem is to ensure that, in the future, there are many fewer imperialist wars of choice sponsored by the United States.

The Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex

Many other aspects of imperialism and militarism are undermining America's Constitutional system. By now, for example, the privatization of military and intelligence functions is totally out of control, beyond the law, and beyond any form of Congressional oversight. It is also incredibly lucrative for the owners and operators of so-called private military companies -- and the money to pay for their activities ultimately comes from taxpayers through government contracts. Any accounting of these funds, largely distributed to crony companies with insider connections, is chaotic at best. Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, estimates that there are 126,000 private military contractors in Iraq, more than enough to keep the war going, even if most official U.S. troops were withdrawn. "From the beginning," Scahill writes, "these contractors have been a major hidden story of the war, almost uncovered in the mainstream media and absolutely central to maintaining the U.S. occupation of Iraq."

America's massive "military" budgets, still on the rise, are beginning to threaten the U.S. with bankruptcy, given that its trade and fiscal deficits already easily make it the world's largest net debtor nation. Spending on the military establishment -- sometimes mislabeled "defense spending" -- has soared to the highest levels since World War II, exceeding the budgets of the Korean and Vietnam War eras as well as President Ronald Reagan's weapons-buying binge in the 1980s. According to calculations by the National Priorities Project, a non-profit research organization that examines the local impact of federal spending policies, military spending today consumes 40% of every tax dollar.

Equally alarming, it is virtually impossible for a member of Congress or an ordinary citizen to obtain even a modest handle on the actual size of military spending or its impact on the structure and functioning of our economic system. Some $30 billion of the official Defense Department (DoD) appropriation in the current fiscal year is "black," meaning that it is allegedly going for highly classified projects. Even the open DoD budget receives only perfunctory scrutiny because members of Congress, seeking lucrative defense contracts for their districts, have mutually beneficial relationships with defense contractors and the Pentagon. President Dwight D. Eisenhower identified this phenomenon, in the draft version of his 1961 farewell address, as the "military-industrial-congressional complex." Forty-six years later, in a way even Eisenhower probably couldn't have imagined, the defense budget is beyond serious congressional oversight or control.

The DoD always tries to minimize the size of its budget by representing it as a declining percentage of the gross national product. What it never reveals is that total military spending is actually many times larger than the official appropriation for the Defense Department. For fiscal year 2006, Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute calculated national security outlays at almost a trillion dollars -- $934.9 billion to be exact -- broken down as follows (in billions of dollars):

Department of Defense: $499.4

Department of Energy (atomic weapons): $16.6

Department of State (foreign military aid): $25.3

Department of Veterans Affairs (treatment of wounded soldiers): $69.8

Department of Homeland Security (actual defense): $69.1

Department of Justice (1/3rd for the FBI): $1.9

Department of the Treasury (military retirements): $38.5

NASA (satellite launches): $7.6

Interest on war debts, 1916-present: $206.7

Totaled, the sum is larger than the combined sum spent by all other nations on military security.

This spending helps sustain the national economy and represents, essentially, a major jobs program. However, it is beginning to crowd out the civilian economy, causing stagnation in income levels. It also contributes to the hemorrhaging of manufacturing jobs to other countries. On May 1, 2007, the Center for Economic and Policy Research released a series of estimates on "the economic impact of the Iraq war and higher military spending." Its figures show, among other things, that, after an initial demand stimulus, the effect of a significant rise in military spending (as we've experienced in recent years) turns negative around the sixth year.

Sooner or later, higher military spending forces inflation and interest rates up, reducing demand in interest-sensitive sectors of the economy, notably in annual car and truck sales. Job losses follow. The non-military construction and manufacturing sectors experience the largest share of these losses. The report concludes, "Most economic models show that military spending diverts resources from productive uses, such as consumption and investment, and ultimately slows economic growth and reduces employment."

Imperial Liquidation?

Imperialism and militarism have thus begun to imperil both the financial and social well-being of our republic. What the country desperately needs is a popular movement to rebuild the Constitutional system and subject the government once again to the discipline of checks and balances. Neither the replacement of one political party by the other, nor protectionist economic policies aimed at rescuing what's left of our manufacturing economy will correct what has gone wrong. Both of these solutions fail to address the root cause of our national decline.

I believe that there is only one solution to the crisis we face. The American people must make the decision to dismantle both the empire that has been created in their name and the huge (still growing) military establishment that undergirds it. It is a task at least comparable to that undertaken by the British government when, after World War II, it liquidated the British Empire. By doing so, Britain avoided the fate of the Roman Republic -- becoming a domestic tyranny and losing its democracy, as would have been required if it had continued to try to dominate much of the world by force.

For the U.S., the decision to mount such a campaign of imperial liquidation may already come too late, given the vast and deeply entrenched interests of the military-industrial complex. To succeed, such an endeavor might virtually require a revolutionary mobilization of the American citizenry, one at least comparable to the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Even to contemplate a drawing back from empire -- something so inconceivable to our pundits and newspaper editorial writers that it is simply never considered -- we must specify as clearly as possible precisely what the elected leaders and citizens of the United States would have to do. Two cardinal decisions would have to be made. First, in Iraq, we would have to initiate a firm timetable for withdrawing all our military forces and turning over the permanent military bases we have built to the Iraqis. Second, domestically, we would have to reverse federal budget priorities.

In the words of Noam Chomsky, a venerable critic of American imperialism: "Where spending is rising, as in military supplemental bills to conduct the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it would sharply decline. Where spending is steady or declining (health, education, job training, the promotion of energy conservation and renewable energy sources, veterans benefits, funding for the UN and UN peacekeeping operations, and so on), it would sharply increase. Bush's tax cuts for people with incomes over $200,000 a year would be immediately rescinded."

Such reforms would begin at once to reduce the malevolent influence of the military-industrial complex, but many other areas would require attention as well. As part of the process of de-garrisoning the planet and liquidating our empire, we would have to launch an orderly closing-up process for at least 700 of the 737 military bases we maintain (by official Pentagon count) in over 130 foreign countries on every continent except Antarctica. We should ultimately aim at closing all our imperialist enclaves, but in order to avoid isolationism and maintain a capacity to assist the United Nations in global peacekeeping operations, we should, for the time being, probably retain some 37 of them, mostly naval and air bases.

Equally important, we should rewrite all our Status of Forces Agreements -- those American-dictated "agreements" that exempt our troops based in foreign countries from local criminal laws, taxes, immigration controls, anti-pollution legislation, and anything else the American military can think of. It must be established as a matter of principle and law that American forces stationed outside the U.S. will deal with their host nations on a basis of equality, not of extraterritorial privilege.

The American approach to diplomatic relations with the rest of the world would also require a major overhaul. We would have to end our belligerent unilateralism toward other countries as well as our scofflaw behavior regarding international law. Our objective should be to strengthen the United Nations, including our respect for its majority, by working to end the Security Council veto system (and by stopping using our present right to veto). The United States needs to cease being the world's largest supplier of arms and munitions -- a lethal trade whose management should be placed under UN supervision. We should encourage the UN to begin outlawing weapons like land mines, cluster bombs, and depleted-uranium ammunition that play particularly long-term havoc with civilian populations. As part of an attempt to right the diplomatic balance, we should take some obvious steps like recognizing Cuba and ending our blockade of that island and, in the Middle East, working to equalize aid to Israel and Palestine, while attempting to broker a real solution to that disastrous situation. Our goal should be a return to leading by example -- and by sound arguments -- rather than by continual resort to unilateral armed force and repeated foreign military interventions.

In terms of the organization of the executive branch, we need to rewrite the National Security Act of 1947, taking away from the CIA all functions that involve sabotage, torture, subversion, overseas election rigging, rendition, and other forms of clandestine activity. The president should be deprived of his power to order these types of operations except with the explicit advice and consent of the Senate. The CIA should basically devote itself to the collection and analysis of foreign intelligence. We should eliminate as much secrecy as possible so that neither the CIA, nor any other comparable organization ever again becomes the president's private army.

In order to halt our economic decline and lessen our dependence on our trading partners, the U.S. must cap its trade deficits through the perfectly legal use of tariffs in accordance with World Trade Organization rules, and it must begin to guide its domestic market in accordance with a national industrial policy, just as the leading economies of the world (particularly the Japanese and Chinese ones) do as a matter of routine. Even though it may involve trampling on the vested interests of American university economics departments, there is simply no excuse for a continued reliance on an outdated doctrine of "free trade."

Normally, a proposed list of reforms like this would simply be rejected as utopian. I understand this reaction. I do want to stress, however, that failure to undertake such reforms would mean condemning the United States to the fate that befell the Roman Republic and all other empires since then. That is why I gave my book Nemesis the subtitle "The Last Days of the American Republic."

When Ronald Reagan coined the phrase "evil empire," he was referring to the Soviet Union, and I basically agreed with him that the USSR needed to be contained and checkmated. But today it is the U.S. that is widely perceived as an evil empire and world forces are gathering to stop us. The Bush administration insists that if we leave Iraq our enemies will "win" or -- even more improbably -- "follow us home." I believe that, if we leave Iraq and our other imperial enclaves, we can regain the moral high ground and disavow the need for a foreign policy based on preventive war. I also believe that unless we follow this path, we will lose our democracy and then it will not matter much what else we lose. In the immortal words of Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Chalmers Johnson is the author of Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007). It is the final volume of his Blowback Trilogy.

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