Is the United States turning into a police state, as former Reagan-era official and columnist Paul Craig Roberts suggests in a recent interview on Russia Today?

Roberts was referring to the Feb. 3, 2010 testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in which National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair told representatives that American citizens could be assassinated by the US government when they are overseas.

Writing in the LA Times, journalist Greg Miller provides chilling insights into how CIA hit lists are put together:

From beginning to end, the CIA’s process for carrying out Predator strikes is remarkably self-contained. Almost every key step takes place within the Langley, Va., campus, from proposing targets to piloting the remotely controlled planes.

The memos proposing new targets are drafted by analysts in the CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center. Former officials said analysts typically submit several new names each month to high-level officials, including the CIA general counsel and sometimes Director Leon E. Panetta.

As Roberts asks, how is this different from Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany?

It is no secret there has been a steady decline in democratic rights and freedoms in the United States over the past decade. This rather brazen announcement that American spooks can act as judge, jury and executioner is one more indication of how repressive and murderous the U.S. government has become.

If there is a difference between the United States of 2010 and the most notorious 20th century tyrannies it is that most Americans appear to believe they inhabit the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Will this naive mom ‘n apple pie state of mind persist now that the “government of, by and for the people” has publicly declared its intentions to murder some of “the people” without due process of law?

Americans may yet come to understand why so many non-Americans regard the U.S. government with suspicion, fear and loathing.

Abousfian Abdelrazik meets the press in Montreal on his return to Canada on Saturday, June 27, 2009. Photo: Tatiana Gomez

Delist Now!: Six-Month Campaign to Free Abousfian Abdelrazik from the
Prison Without Walls

June 27th will mark the one-year anniversary of Abousfian Abdelrazik’s return to Canada after six years of forced exile and imprisonment in Sudan. Though this anniversary is something to celebrate, many challenges remain for Mr. Abdelrazik and the broader fight against oppressive “security” measures and racism. Mr. Abdelrazik is home, but not yet free and the fight against the UN 1267 regime and for a normal life for Mr. Abdelrazik has only just begun.

The UN 1267 List, which has included Mr. Abdelrazik’s name since 2006, subjects individuals to a flight ban, an arms embargo and a complete asset freeze. These restrictions are severe and indefinite. Listed individuals face vague allegations, have no right to a hearing before they are placed on the list, and are provided with no evidence to support the claims against them. The Federal Court wrote in its June 2009 decision on Mr. Abdelrazik’s case, “There is nothing in the listing or de-listing procedure that recognizes the principles of natural justice or that provides for basic procedural fairness.” (For more information, please read our backgrounder on the 1267 List.)

Project Fly Home invites you to join us over the next six months as we wage an intense campaign focused on two specific demands, which we hope will help move us towards the abolition of the 1267 List and challenge the racist national security agenda as a whole. If this campaign is successful, Mr. Abdelrazik will be able to mark this upcoming one-year of his return with his fundamental rights and freedoms restored, and will be able to move on and live his life in dignity.

The two demands this six-month campaign will make of the government are:

[1] Immediately lift the domestic sanctions on Mr. Abdelrazik

In 2002, Canada changed the Al Qaida and Taliban Regulations (the domestic legislation implementing the 1267 regime) to exempt Mr. Liban Hussein, the only Canadian then on the 1267 list (for more information on Mr. Liban Hussein, see the paragraphs in this article. We demand that the government do the same for Mr. Abdelrazik, or otherwise take action to immediately free him from the sanctions in Canada, ideally repealing the regulations entirely, to be consistent with basic principles of justice and Canadian and international human rights law.

[2] Actively advocate to delist Mr. Abdelrazik from the UN 1267 List.

Though the Canadian government asked the UN 1267 Committee to remove Mr. Abdelrazik’s name from the 1267 List in 2007, it is very difficult to get off the 1267 List once you are on it. There are, in fact, dozens of dead people on the list. Delisting requires the consensus of all members of the committee. Thus, each member of the committee can block a delisting request, and is not required to provide any reason for doing so. This leads to decisions that seem to have much less to do with the individuals in question than external political objectives. The Canadian government must champion Mr. Abdelrazik’s case to the Committee, by clearly making it a diplomatic priority in their relations with the members of the committee, in order for him to be delisted.

In the next six months, Project Fly Home Montreal will be organizing a number of actions and events in the context of this campaign. Please stay posted for more details! Please plan your own actions to support this campaign in the lead-up to the first anniversary of Mr. Abdelrazik’s return to Canada.

To get involved, for more information, or to inform us of your plans to support this six-month focused campaign, please contact us at projectflyhome@gmail.com.

Project Fly Home’s six demands are endorsed by:

1. Advocacy Collective (Fredericton, NB)
2. Apatrides Anonymes
3. Boundary Peace Initiative from the B.C. Southern Interior
4. CAIR-CAN – Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations
5. Canadian Arab Federation
6. Canadian Labour Congress
7. Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW)
8. Canadian Unitarians for Social Justice
9. Coalition contre la répression et les abus policiers
10. Common Cause – Hamilton
11. Council of Canadians – Montreal
12. Council of Canadians | London
13. El-Hidaya Association
14. Fredericton Peace Coalition
15. Immigrant Workers Centre
16. Indigenous Solidarity Committee
17. New Brunswick Public Interest Research Group
18. NSPIRG (Nova Scotia Public Interest Research Group)
19. OPIRG Carleton
20. People for Peace London
21. People’s Commission Network
22. PINAY
23. Pointe Libertaire
24. Project Fly Home
25. QPIRG Concordia
26. Soeurs Auxiliatrices
27. South Asian Women’s Community Centre
28. Students for Sustainability – St Thomas University
29. Students for Sustainability – University of New Brunswick
30. Sudbury Against War and Occupation
31. The Calgary Committee in Support of Abousfian Abdelrazik
32. Ziba Kazemi Foundation
33. Canadian Peace Alliance
34. No One Is Illegal Ottawa

* To add your organization to this list, please read the sign-on statement and email your organization’s name in English and French to projectflyhome@gmail.com.

It all started when Professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois College of Law filed a complaint on January 19, 2010 with the ICC against George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, and Alberto Gonzales for crimes against humanity in the “extraordinary rendition” (kidnapping) by the Central Intelligence Agency of approximately 100 people to secret prisons for torture and interrogation.

Bush to the Hague now has a website, a Facebook group, and a Facebook cause page. They are asking for support from individuals and organizations who care about human rights and justice. That describes you, right? Good. Don’t hold back.

While these are undoubtedly the least of their crimes, because they were committed in countries that are signatories to the Rome Statute that established the ICC there are legal grounds for the ICC to prosecute Bush and his cronies, even though the U.S. is not a signatory.

There is a long distance between filing a complaint and seeing Bush in an orange jumpsuit, but with Boyle as the author, it has a solid legal foundation. He is an internationally recognized expert in the area of human rights, war crimes and genocide, nuclear policy, and bio-warfare, and played a key role in developing the indictment against Slobodan Milosevic for committing genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

I doubt that the ICC prosecutor will act on the complaint in the absence of international public pressure. With the exception of Pravda, the mainstream media has ignored the story so far. Given Boyle’s international stature, this is scandalous (though not surprising.)

While the corporate media has blacked out the story, Boyle’s complaint got a big boost the other day when he appeared on the Alex Jones Show, a nationally syndicated US radio program with millions of listeners via broadcast and the Internet.

Jones’s brand of libertarian populism and his penchant for histrionics probably would not not sit too well with staid Canadian lefties, but if you fall into that category, step outside your comfort zone for a bit and spend some time with his website and his show. The man is a fierce defender of democratic rights and freedoms who has done much to inform and mobilize against America’s descent into tyranny.

So, it’s up to the alternative media to get out the word and fan Boyle’s spark into a raging fire. If there was ever an opportunity to hold Bush and his cronies accountable for their heinous crimes, this is it.

Boyle has asked supporters of the complaint to write or fax the ICC Prosecutor. This is where you can contact Professor Boyle:

Francis A. Boyle
Professor of International Law
Law Building
504 East Pennsylvania Avenue
Champaign, Illinois 61820
Phone: 217-333-7954 – Fax: 217-244-1478
Email: fboyle@illinois.edu

And here is how to contact the ICC.

What are you waiting for?

The Haitian disaster relief program is a thinly disguised military operation to secure the country for corporate interests. Sure, some people are getting food and medical attention, but not nearly enough, given the resources and capabilities of the United States and Canada.

Cynthia McKinney, the U.S. Green Party’s 2008 presidential candidate, captures the hypocrisy in an article published today at Global Research, when she writes:

President Obama’s response to the tragedy in Haiti has been robust in military deployment and puny in what the Haitians need most:  food; first responders and their specialized equipment; doctors and medical facilities and equipment; and engineers, heavy equipment, and heavy movers.  Sadly, President Obama is dispatching Presidents Bush and Clinton, and thousands of Marines and U.S. soldiers.  By contrast, Cuba has over 400 doctors on the ground and is sending in more; Cubans, Argentinians, Icelanders, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, and many others are already on the ground working–saving lives and treating the injured.

Obama’s and Harper’s emphasis on a military response makes sense when you review the history of Canada and the U.S. in the region and factor in Haiti’s undeveloped petroleum reserves.

Haiti has been under a military occupation — ostensibly a U.N. program to stabilize the country — since 2004 when the U.S. Marines (with Canadian complicity) kidnapped President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and spirited him out of the country. The lead-up to the coup included years of economic destabilization brought on by IMF-imposed “structural adjustments” and covert CIA support for Aristide’s opponents (who yearned for the good old days when the Tonton Macoutes would keep the masses in line).

Aristide remains popular among the poor majority in Haiti for the reforms he tried to implement. Who knows what could happen in the wake of an earthquake that not only killed hundreds of thousands but also totally destroyed state and international infrastructure and control? The resulting instability offers an opening for Aristide supporters that must cause unease in Washington, Ottawa and corporate boardrooms that benefit from keeping the Haitians down.

Haiti is popularly understood to be the poorest country the Americas, and one of the poorest in the world. More sophisticated measurements can be found here. The fact is, 80 per cent of the population is dirt poor, living on less than $1,000 a year and often, literally, eating dirt. (If you want to see Haitians eating dirt, watch Inside a Failed State – Haiti, a recent film by Journeyman Pictures.)

Haitians are poor, in large measure, because wages are low and labour standards are nonexistent. According to Canada-Haiti Action, the Canadian firm Gildan, with nearly 8000 employees in the textile sector, is the biggest employer in Haiti, after the Haitian government. The Montreal-based company has been accused of relying on sweatshop labour.

While Haitians are poor, the country is resource rich. For example, Majescor Resources Inc., a Canadian mining company, last year partnered with SIMACT, a group of Canadian financiers and Haitian-American developers, to explore for gold and copper in Haiti.

But I doubt that Obama is dispatching the Marines to safeguard the interests of Canadian T-shirt manufacturers and mining companies. More compelling are reports of sizable, undeveloped petroleum reserves. There is credible evidence that Haiti’s oil patch makes Venezuela’s look tiny by comparison. Read Ezili Danto’s superb discussion of this, entitled Oil in Haiti – Economic Reasons for the UN/US occupation, published last October, on OpenSalon.com.

There is a lot to know about Haiti that you won’t find in the mainstream media. Here are some alternative sources I highly recommend:

• Global Research: Crisis and Despair in Haiti
• Coalition Against the Arms Trade: A Very Canadian Coup d’état in Haiti
• Canada-Haiti Action (has recommendations for where to send your financial expressions of solidarity)

Canadians are responding generously and we need to redouble our efforts. However, our governments (Liberal and Conservative) continue to mislead us about the nature of their involvement with Haiti, prior to and following the quake. We can’t let them get away with this.

Haiti earthquake – U.S. aid mission under scrutiny

(Al Jazeera English, Jan. 19, 2009) Thousands of US troops have arrived on the island, trying to offer security and distribute what humanitarian aid there is.

And the UN Security Council is expected to approve the deployment of 3,500 extra UN troops.

But critics say before more security forces arrive, it is medical equipment, nurses and doctors that need to be allowed access to the country if aid efforts can really begin to reach those most in need.

Sebastian Walker reports from Port-au-Prince.

It’s Martin Luther King Day in the United States. It’s a big deal in the land of toxic derivatives; even the stock markets are closed in his memory.

Once harassed and stalked by the the FBI, King’s memory is now regularly and hypocritically invoked by those who stand on his shoulders.

Were King alive he would have just celebrated his 81st birthday. Had he survived the assassin’s bullet he would still be followed by spooks and menaced by that which he famously described as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” — the U.S. government.

Speaking at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, King exposed the hypocrisy of the U.S. government and called on it to end the war in Vietnam. His words sent shock waves through the land because he articulated a truth that millions of Americans had not been allowed to hear.

He shared with them his outrage at the subversion of democracy, the murder of men, women and children, the destruction of cultures and livelihoods and cruel irony that black and white Americans were being sent to kill and die together by a country that segregated them at home.

Martin Luther King exposed the Big Lie of American imperialism that day in New York City; exactly one year later, in Memphis, Tennessee, he would pay for his truth-telling with his life.

In reading his speech today I’m struck by the parallels between Vietnam (and America’s other wars in Laos and Cambodia) and the current day “war on terrorism” in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and increasingly, in Yemen.

Read King’s speech for yourself; then re-read it and make a few substitutions:

• “terrorists” for “communists”
• “Al-Quaida” for “Viet Cong”
• “Afghanistan” for “Vietnam”
• “America” for “America”

Most of the actors have different names but the script is the same weary, blood-soaked, tear-stained tale.

The antidote remains the same, as well. King called upon his fellow Americans to oppose the war nonviolently, creatively and without letting up. But he acknowledged that anti-war protests were not enough. As King put it:

The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.

King maintained that America needed make radical changes.

We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

Sounds like 2010, to me.

Instead of watching out for people who actually have a track record for mass destruction and terrorism, we are directing our efforts against folks who might be pissed off at us because we have bombed them, strip-mined their economies and plundered their futures.

(The fact that almost all people detained at our borders, coincidentally, are brown or black, leads some to conclude our government is racist because it is engaged in “racial profiling.” While this may be true, that is the subject of another post.)

We have, in the words Stephen Harper, used a “long gun registry approach” that criminalizes everyone when we should limit our efforts to catching “the bad guys.”

So, in the interests of air safety and national security, as well as more convenient air travel, here are my suggestions for Canada’s border watch and no-fly lists.

1. Anyone who has ever used or authorized the use of weapons of mass destruction. While it might seem unfair to single them out, this would include Barack Obama, George Bush (father and son), Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. Collectively, these fellas have slaughtered millions.

But we shouldn’t stop there. Any current or former head of state who told the his military to kill people would qualify for the list. This would crimp Stephen Harper’s travel schedule, or course, but it would also ensure that Jean Chretien and Paul Martin would have to stay home. I’d let Kim Campbell, John Turner and Joe Clark on the plane, but only because they weren’t in office long enough to do much damage.

2. Anyone who has implemented the decisions of their political masters to engage in the above mentioned mass destruction. This would include cabinet ministers, military commanders at all levels, heads of government departments, and so forth.

3. Anyone who has used, or attempted to use a weapon equivalent in destructive power to that of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s underpants (UFAU), which, if you have been following the story, have been deemed by US Justice officials to be a weapon of mass destruction. This means that any military grunt of either gender who has participated in combat loses their opportunity to get on a Canadian plane, or visit Canada. (I guess we should let our grunts come home, soon, today even.)

4. Anyone who benefits from the development, production and sale of weapons of mass destruction (once again, these weapons are defined as being UFAU equivalent.) Now, I’m not arguing that we should outlaw war industries (that’s a subject for another post). I’m just saying that we shouldn’t let these bastards or their products cross international borders.

5. Academics, politicians, religious leaders, editorial writers, journalists, PR flacks, bloggers and anyone else who whores, pimps, shills and otherwise facilitates the climate of fear that promotes our bogus war on terrorism, invasions of other countries and erosion of human rights at home or abroad. You know who you are. Cut up your Aeroplan cards and get into another line of work.

Now, if my modest proposal for air safety and national security were to catch on, it would most certainly have a deleterious impact on the air travel industry, at least in the short term. Many folks who travel by air and cross borders are either war mongers or cannon fodder. However, this is a price I think most folks would be willing to pay for a safer, more secure world.

There’s no question that Yemen suffers from a lack of stability. But the conflict in the country is not the result of a “growing al-Qaida threat.” Yemenis have not gotten along with each other for a long time. President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen’s dictator since 1978, has, for decades, been combating a rebellion from the secessionist south and an al-Houthi Zaydi Shi’ite rebellion in the north.

Estimates of al-Qaida strength vary between 100 – 300, but whatever their numbers, they are small and politically insignificant. After they were conveniently linked to the crotch bomber’s flubbed attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day, their presence offered the Americans their opening. In a recent post at Global Research, Tom Burghardt draws together enough threads to argue convincingly that the “intelligence failure” that allowed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board the flight with high explosives stitched into his undies was no accident.

Voila! The US had it’s “smoking crotch” and the stage was set for more blatant intervention in Yemen.

For the Americans, it’s all about real estate, and, as in real estate, it’s all about “location, location, location.”

Just prior to the invasion of Afghanistan, the Americans were negotiating with the Taliban government for the rights to construct the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline to move Caspian Sea natural gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan into Pakistan and then to India, by-passing Russia.

In the case of Yemen, it’s all about oil reserves and oil transportation.

According to F. William Engdahl, in a recent Global Research article, Yemen sits on a oil patch that contains “enough undeveloped oil to fill the oil demand of the entire world for the next fifty years.” Moreover, the “Strait of Bab el-Mandab is a chokepoint between the horn of Africa and the Middle East, and a strategic link between the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean” which, if blocked, “could keep tankers from the Persian Gulf from reaching the Suez Canal/Sumed pipeline complex, diverting them around the southern tip of Africa.”

Maps: U.S. Energy Information Administration

In 2006, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, an estimated 3.3 million per day barrels flowed through this waterway toward Europe, the United States, and Asia. The majority of traffic, around 2.1 million barrels per day, flows northbound through the Bab el-Mandab to the Suez/Sumed complex.

So, don’t be taken in by all the public hand wringing about “intelligence failures” and the “al-Qaida threat.” Follow da money.

If nothing else, the federal government is proactive. For months now, they have been laying the foundation for Canadian troops to remain in Afghanistan after 2011. The decision to give the “sacrifice medal” to victims of suicide may be a recognition that fighting  a war to prop up corrupt war lords and drug runners is bound to increase suicidal thinking among the troops.

The sacrifice medal is the latest manifestation of Ottawa’s campaign to foster a militaristic cult of human sacrifice and to build support for its failed war in Afghanistan. The proliferation of “yellow ribbon” campaigns and the designation of a part of Highway 401 as a “Highway of Heroes” are other elements.

We can expect more such announcements in the run-up to this year’s Rememberance Day ceremonies.

My heart goes out to our soldiers and their families. No one who goes to war returns whole and healthy. The stresses of combat and the fears of those waiting for the return of loved ones create disease for everyone involved, even if it is not readily apparent.

Whether they “believe in the mission” or not is irrelevant. They are being used as pawns in an imperialist power grab and whether they return physically intact or in a box, they are all human sacrifices to the gods of war and commerce.

I look forward to the day when we honour those who refuse to fight in imperialist wars. While most Canadians agree that we should, for example, shelter American war resisters, our government continues to deport them to the US, where they face harsh punishments for their courageous acts.

The most recent victim of Ottawa’s perverse policy, Rodney Watson, has sought refuge at First United Church on East Hastings Street, in Vancouver. Bravo to the congregation for their courage and willingness to do what our government refuses to do, even after two Parliamentary resolutions in support of war resisters received majority support.

There is currently a private members bill, Bill C-440, in the legislative queue. All of us ought to contact our MPs and urge them to support this bill. But we shouldn’t count on this bill ever becoming law.

Rodney Watson and war resisters everywhere deserve our support. By helping them we are making real contributions to peace and we are sending a clear message to the Harpers of this world that we reject the cult of human sacrifice that they are trying to create.

• 1994: Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO, President of the Palestinian National Authority; Shimon Peres, Foreign Minister of Israel; Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel.
• 1950: Ralph Bunche, Professor Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, Director of the UN Division of Trusteeship, Acting Mediator in Palestine 1948.

He also keeps company with mass murderer Henry Kissinger, who in 1973, was awarded the prize for negotiating the Vietnam War Peace Accord following America’s sustained attempt to bomb the North Vietnamese back to the stone age.

His Vietnamese co-recipient of the award, Le Duc Tho, declined to accept the prize because his country was not yet at peace. (The war still has not ended for an estimated 3 million Vietnamese who continue to suffer from the effects of Agent Orange, the toxic defoliant used by the U.S. in Vietnam between 1962 and 1971 that continues to contaminate the soil, water and people of the country.)

It is difficult to take the Peace Prize seriously. Obama’s award, the Nobel committee declares, is “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Tell that to Pakistanis who have to keep an eye on the sky to avoid being murdered in Predator drone attacks. Tell the Afghans; I’m sure they need a chuckle or two as they celebrate the eighth anniversary of the American invasion, also known to Obamaphiles as America’s “war of necessity.”

Obama’s Peace Prize truly is Orwellian:

From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

- George Orwell: “1984″