Left I on the News  

From the latest press conference by Barack Obama:

Q: Did the capture of Mr. Libi comply with international law?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: We know that Mr. al-Libi planned and helped to execute a plot that killed hundreds of people, a whole lot of Americans. And we have strong evidence of that. And he will be brought to justice.

We'll take that as a "no." Or a "who gives a shit, we're the United States." By the way, note that Obama goes from what we "know" to "we have strong evidence." "Strong evidence" is not "knowledge" (in fact, coming from the U.S. government, it's just as likely to be a complete fabrication). Just for the record.

Also, although there were plenty of follow-up questions during this press conference, this particular reporter didn't do so. Wouldn't want to press too hard on U.S. contempt for international law.

The media are all noting "moderate" Iranian President Rouhani's talk at the U.N., and contrasting him with former "crazy" President Ahmadinejad. Here's what Rouhani said on the major topic of interest, Iran's [non-existent] nuclear weapons program:

"Nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction have no place in Iran's security and defense doctrine, and contradict our fundamental religious and ethical convictions."

And here's what Ahmadinejad said in 2008:

"Regarding the question of the bomb. We believe, as a matter of religious teaching, that we must be against any form of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons. The production and the usage of nuclear weapons is one of the most abhorrent acts to our eyes.

"In addition, we also believe that the atomic bomb has lost its use in political affairs, in fact. The time for a nuclear bomb has ended. Whoever who invests in it is going the wrong way.

"Was a nuclear bomb able to help keep the Soviet Union intact and prevent its downfall?

"Was it able to bring victory for the United States either in Afghanistan or Iraq?

"Can it be used to that end?

"Can the nuclear bomb save the Zionist regime?

"The time for bombs of that nature has ended. It is a time of thought, a time for culture and reason to prevail."

A radical change? No, a virtual word-for-word repetition, albeit with a bit more elaboration by Ahmadinejad.

But Ahmadinejad was an anti-Semite who said horrible things about Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians, right? Like this:

"In Palestine, 60 years of carnage and invasion is still ongoing at the hands of some criminal and occupying Zionists...UN resolutions that have addressed the plight of the Palestinians have been relegated to the archives unnoticed."

And here's Rouhani:

"Palestine is under occupation. The basic rights of the Palestinians are tragically violated, and they are deprived of the right of return and access to their homes, birthplace and homeland."

...was the deliberate murder of a million Iraqs, 500,000 of them children, by the United States Government.

The recent attack in Syria, which is presumed to have been carried out using some sort of poison gas, is described as "the largest use of chemical weapons since the Syrian civil war began." 25 years earlier, an even larger attack launched on Iran by Iraq, with the assistance of the United States, killed thousands of people.

But shortly after that attack, there occurred another attack, this one directly perpetrated by the United States, which killed a million people, half of them young children. Although it's not commonly thought of in the same category, that attack was, in fact, a biological weapons attack, planned and carried out by the U.S. with callous disregard for the lives of its Iraqi victims.

How was this attack carried out? Step one was a war crime all by itself, one of staggering dimensions - the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Iraqi water system during the first Gulf War in 1990-91. Article 54 of the Geneva convention states:

"It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies, and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive."

But what followed - a decade of sanctions imposed on Iraq - was even worse, and what caused those deaths. It was the U.N. sanctions, which had as a key component forbidding Iraq from important "dual-use" chemicals, most notably chlorine, which were needed to repair the water filtration system. And those sanctions were kept in place under completely false pretenses since the U.S. government knew well that Iraq had destroyed its stocks of chemical and biological weapons.

And why did this qualify as a "chemical and biological weapon of mass destruction"? Because untreated water contains pollutants and bacteria, which when ingested can (and did) cause epidemics of such diseases as cholera, hepatitis, and typhoid. The U.S. had no need to introduce these "chemical and biological weapons" into the Iraqi water supply, it simply had to make sure that what was there naturally could not be removed, and death would follow.

Was this all an accident? An unforeseen consequence of the sanctions? The answer to this is "no," and it was provided by Professor Thomas Nagy of George Washington University back in 1991. Professor Nagy uncovered documents of the Defense Intelligence Agency which prove unequivocally that the U.S. knew exactly what it was doing, reaching the conclusion (before the policy was put into effect) that "Failing to secure supplies [of essential chemicals for water purification] will result in a shortage of pure drinking water for much of the population. This could lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease." In other words, the U.S. embarked on (and carried out) a deliberate policy of genocide in its war against the Iraqi people.

A million Iraqis, half of them young children who are the most vulnerable to such diseases, died as a result of this chemical and biological warfare carried out by the U.S. all in the guise of, as U.S. politicians were fond of saying, "keeping Saddam in a box." Unfortunately for a million Iraqis, the box they were in was a coffin, manufactured in the United States.

Today's AP news headline: "Syrian rebels shell neighborhood close to Assad." But did they?

The first paragraph is certainly frightening news for the Syrian government:

Rockets and mortar shells hit an upscale Damascus neighborhood Thursday where Syrian President Bashar Assad was visiting a nearby mosque, laying bare the ability of rebels to strike one of the most secure areas of the capital despite an ongoing government offensive.

And the next paragraph gets even worse, telling us "At least two rebel brigades claimed to have hit Assad's motorcade on its way to the mosque." But then the story goes to pot. AP, having reported the claim, then says "but this appeared to be untrue. Two opposition figures said the route was hit but not the convoy itself." One does wonder why they bother to report claims which they themselves don't believe, but let's continue reading.

So now the "route" was hit, right? Well, that too is hard to believe from what we read next: "There were no reports of casualties or damage in the shelling of the Malki district." So there was a rocket and mortar attack which not only caused no casualties but not even any damage? Not even a pockmarked street?

Notwithstanding that there is no evidence for this attack on the motorcade other than rebel claims, AP then proceeds to have an opposition spokesman tell us how significant it was, and then to repeat the claim about the attack.

If a mortar falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound?

Yes, today is the 10th anniversary of Left I on the News. Most of what I'm doing now is on Twitter @leftiblog, although I'm still posting longer thoughts here as time and occasion warrant. Ten years ago, this was a lonely left voice in the Blogosphere (and by left I do not mean "liberal," I mean left). Now there are many more voices (although still not enough!). But I'm still standing. Here's to another ten, at which time I hope to be writing about the wonders of the socialist revolution. No, I don't expect to be doing so, but I certainly hope to be!

Today the U.N. claims that "5000 people a month" are dying in Syria. As I have before, I have to demonstrate why I find this claim utterly non-credible. 5000/month would be 167 every single day. Now we don't know what the standard deviation might be, but we have to assume it would be reasonable large, which would mean that some days would be much lower, while on other days, we could easily expect 300 or more to be killed in a single day, if the 5000/month were to be believable.

So let's look at a report from today, when major battles are being reported. Looking through the article, we find (claims of) six mediators shot in Homs, eight Nusra front militants killed by Kurds, nine people killed at a checkpoint, and "several" regime fighters killed. All in all fewer than 30 were reported killed on a day when major battles are being fought. Is it remotely credible that an average of 167 are being killed every single day? Just yesterday we read about 40 people being killed in a single bombing in Iraq; when is the last time we read about an event in Syria which killed even that many people? And when was the last time we read about a day when more than 200 people died in Syria in just a single day? For my part, the answer would be: never.

I don't know what the statistics are, and I'll also state clearly that they make no difference whatsoever to my stand, which is: Hands off Syria! No U.S. intervention in Syria. However, because these numbers are being used (and, in my opinion, "ginned up") to justify ever-increasing intervention in Syria, it is important to understand them, and rebut them, if they are false. Which, in my opinion, is without question.

Edward Snowden, who recently disclosed the massive nature of NSA spying on not only Americans but on every single person in the world who uses electronic communications of any kind, is currently a fugitive from "justice" in the United States. Although he is currently in a Russian airport, he has been offered political asylum by Venezuela, as well as by Nicaragua and Bolivia.

Although Snowden isn't yet in Venezuela, the U.S. government has already requested his extradition from that country. The irony of this request abounds. For eight years now, since June 15, 2005, the U.S. has refused to extradite a notorious terrorist to Venezuela. Luis Posada Carriles is wanted in Venezuela on 73 counts of murder for masterminding the 1976 midair bombing of a Cubana airliner (the flight originated in Venezuela, and the bombing was planned there, which is why that country is involved). Posada was also responsible for a string of Cuban hotel bombings in 1997 which killed Italian tourist Fabio di Celmo, and was jailed for four years in Panama (2000-2004) for an attempt to bomb an auditorium in which Fidel Castro was speaking to university students. This is the man the U.S. Government continues to allow to walk the streets of Miami a free man, while they ask for the extradition of a man whose crime was to expose their own illegal actions.

The excuse for refusing Venezuela's extradition request is the totally unsupported assertion that Posada might be subject to torture in Venezuela, rather ironic given the recent history of torture practiced by the U.S. Remarkably, the only "evidence" to the possibility of torture in Venezuela was the testimony of Joaquin Chaffardet - Posada's lawyer, former boss in the Venezuelan secret police, former business partner at the time of the airline bombing, and someone who was indicted, though not convicted, for organizing the prison break which sprang Posada from a Venezuelan jail in the first place!

Posada entered the U.S. illegally in 2005, which could have been ground enough to deport him. More than 400,000 undocumented workers were deported by the Obama administration just last year, and more than a million since Obama took office, but Posada, a man who even the U.S. Department of Justice acknowledges is a terrorist, was not among them.

Having refused a valid extradition request from Venezuela, the U.S. is then obliged under the Montreal Convention to try Posada for the airplane bombing "without any exception whatsoever." The U.S. has, needless to say, ignored that legal obligation as well.

Although it hasn't been publicly disclosed whether the U.S. has also filed an extradition request with Bolivia, that too would be ironic, because the U.S. is also harboring a fugitive from Bolivian justice, its former President, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. In 2003, Bolivian troops attacked and murdered 59 civilians who were engaged in a peaceful protest. Not long after, Sánchez de Lozada resigned and escaped to the United States. On November 11, 2008, Bolivia formally served the US government with a request to extradite Sánchez de Lozada back to Bolivia for crimes against humanity and extrajudicial killings, but the U.S. has rejected that request, as it did in the case of Venezuela's request for the extradition of Posada Carriles.

As Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro put it, "Who is the terrorist? A government like us, who seeks to serve the young Snowden, a figure of humanitarian asylum from persecution by the American Empire? Or the United States government that protects with political asylum Luis Posada Carriles, a confessed convicted murderer and terrorist, who is wanted by Venezuela for the bombing of the Cubana plane in 1976?"