Bush may follow Bashir to The Hague

Dandelion Salad

Press TV
Sun, 08 Mar 2009 14:41:33 GMT

Former US President George W. Bush could possibly stand trial at the international Criminal Court in The Hague, says an ex-UN prosecutor.

David Crane, an international law professor at Syracuse University, said similar to the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, Bush could be an ICC target.

“The principle of law used to issue an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir could extend to former US President Bush over claims officials from his Administration may have engaged in torture by using coercive interrogation techniques on terror suspects,” Crane was quoted as saying by the New Zealand Herald on Saturday.

[…]

via Press TV – Bush may follow Bashir to The Hague

see

Mosaic News – 3/6/09: World News From The Middle East (last story on the video)

or

MIR: An Arrest Warrant for al-Bashir, Could Bush Be Next?

Torture

Taliban Truce and the Coming Storm in South Asia by Tom Burghardt

Dandelion Salad

by Tom Burghardt
Global Research, March 7, 2009
AntiFascist Calling

With growing instability and political turmoil inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, due in no small measure to American efforts on both sides of the “Afpak” divide to “stabilize” the region for multinational energy companies, this spring will see the rise of combat operations inside both countries.

Pakistan is already feeling the heat generated by the imperialist Dracula and the jihadi Frankenstein.

Despite promises that the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) would lay down their arms once the Army ceased operations in Swat Valley, the state’s capitulatory compact has instead provided militants with an excuse to exact vengeance on their opponents whilst establishing new training camps for pressed-ganged “recruits.”

Call it Pakistan’s “Year Zero” when “everything changed.” Not that the Americans, the state or the corporate grifters who preside over IMF-dictated privatization schemes and debt payments to foreign banks give a hoot.

Viva Palestina Aid Convoy near Gaza + Gaza aid convoy attacked in Egypt

Dandelion Salad

Updated: 3.09.09 added another video report and article

currentsituation

Hasan Ghani reporting for PressTv

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Viva Palestina Aid Convoy near Gaza“, posted with vodpod

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Viva Palestina hopes to break Gaza siege

Press TV
Sun, 08 Mar 2009 12:40:27 GMT

The Viva Palestina aid convoy which has made its way across Europe and North Africa is just a few kilometers away from Gaza.

The convoy carrying humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip is approaching the Rafah Crossing amid signs that the crossing might be open.

Egyptian authorities have so far refused to open the crossing with Israeli official insisting that some of the convoy’s trucks should pass through the occupied territories to be inspected by Israeli troops.

Four Integrity Tests for President Obama by Joel S. Hirschhorn

by Joel S. Hirschhorn
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.foavc.org
March 8, 2009

A great smile does not make a truth teller. A talker of change does not define a reformer. Make no mistake, for the good of the nation I want President Obama to succeed in getting us out of the scandalous economic meltdown we are immersed in. But I do not like many of his actions, policies and strategies for accomplishing this, nor does the stock market.

I always had my doubts that he was a true agent of change and reformer when it came to the structure of the political and government system. He took an awful lot of money from the very rich and powerful in his campaign. Sure, with his superb speaking skills he has the capacity to win public approval, but most Americans are not deep, critical thinkers, nor do most have the best detailed information. What if he is just another untrustworthy politician? What if he does not keep his promises? With these questions in mind, I have examined four areas where I find President Obama’s behavior disappointing.

“Outlaw the Shadow Banking System!” Guess Who Said It? by Matthias Chang

Dandelion Salad

by Matthias Chang
Global Research, March 7, 2009
FutureFastForward.com

When I read the remarks of President Obama and Prime Minister Gordon Brown after their meeting at the Oval Office on March 3, 2009 and the speech of the latter to the Joint Session of Congress on March 4, 2009, I realized that a growing antagonism has emerged between certain factions of the ruling elites in the City of London and in Washington DC.

The first warning of the acute differences was sounded by President Obama himself and it was most surprising that the mass media paid hardly attention to it. In his weekly address on February 28, 2009, President Obama said:

Bush’s karma, Obama’s change? By Jerry Mazza

By Jerry Mazza
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted at Online Journal
www.jerrymazza.com
March 8, 2009

Wiki tell us, “Through the law of karma, the effects of all deeds actively create past, present, and future experiences, thus making one responsible for one’s own life, and the pain and joy it brings to him/her and others. The results or ‘fruits’ of actions are called karma-phala. In religions that incorporate reincarnation, karma extends through one’s present life and all past and future lives as well.” Well, we can all see the fruits of Bush karma, the karma-phala, all around us.

They include a wrecked economy, with debt at an all-time high and the Dow at a 1997 low. Thanks to two preemptive wars that were on the Bush drawing boards before 9/11 ever hit and became that false-flag attack on America to ignite the wars. The lack of responsibility in starting those wars, including lack of real evidence, like the photographs of the so-called terror hijackers that mystically appeared out of the FBI files in 48 hours, when that same bureau and the CIA had been burying reports of a 9/11 attack for years. Also, that a year later, FBI chief Robert Mueller, claimed he could not be absolutely sure the men in the photographs were really the hijackers. By then, we were in Afghanistan.

A Torturous Debate: Controlling the Agenda By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted on TPJmagazine
March 8, 2009

Hopefully, torture, and how to deal with its purveyors in the Bush/Cheney Regime at both the policy and delivery levels, will be back on the political/policy agenda, once A.G. Holder and his team get set in their new positions.

One of the principal lessons that Karl Rove (gone for now, but don’t forget him) learned from his master teacher Lee Atwater was that he who controls the agenda wins the debate and, in grander terms, the election. Rove was positively brilliant with this tactic, from 2000 until 2006. True Bush policies and programs were never on the agenda, whether in that first election or any of the subsequent ones. Rove was able to do this on both the grand and the lesser scales. And so we came to the debate over torture and Judge Mukasey (Bush’s last undistinguished Attorney General, you may recall) at his confirmation hearing, and the agenda for that debate. I have no way of knowing whether Rove was still active on a day-to-day basis at that time in the Bush White House. My suspicion is that he was, for the tactics they used had Rove’s fingerprints all over them.

The Most Successful American President: George W. Bush, Part 1 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted on TPJmagazine
March 8, 2009

About two years ago, on The Political Junkies.net I published a series of columns under this title.  I thought it useful to revisit the argument, and will be doing it over my next several columns here on TPJmagazine.

Under the combined efforts of the GOP and their media Scream Machine and Pres. Obama’s determination to “look forward, not back,” the record of the Bush Presidency is receding quickly from public view.  Most observers who still look at it (and future historians will return to it aplenty, we can rest assured) characterize as the worst, or at least one of the worst, Presidencies in American history.  But “worst” is a value judgment.  In this particular case, given my values, I agree with that assessment.  But I am not talking here about an application of my values.  I am talking about an application of the values of Bush himself and his principal supporters: the extractive industry, military-industrial complex, and prison/industrial complex segments of the US power elite, the thought/behavior-control legions of the Christian Right, and the Republican Scream Machine in the mass media.  In applying their values and measuring against them what of his original true goals (not the advertised ones, almost of them being lies) he accomplished, George W. Bush becomes the Most Successful American President.