News, photography and analysis by an award-winning independent journalist and select colleagues

Damage to USS Liberty, June 1967. (Photo: U.S. Navy)

The Israeli military has attacked a flotilla of international peace activists, killing as many as 19 innocent civilians while they were carrying ten tons of aid to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. This is not the first time the Israeli military has attacked a nonthreatening entity in international waters.

On June 8, 1967, while sailing in international waters, the US Navy intelligence ship USS Liberty was attacked by air and naval forces of the state of Israel. Of the Liberty’s crew of 294, more than half were killed or wounded. More than 40 years later, survivors are still seeking justice.

The Israeli forces attacked with full knowledge that the Liberty was an American ship, yet survivors have been forbidden to tell their story under oath to the American public.

Joe Meadors was on the Liberty during the attack.

“I watched some jets pass us then turn left after they passed our ship, then they started strafing [attacking repeatedly with bombs or machine-gun fire from low-flying aircraft] us,” Meadors told Truthout.

“The attack lasted 90 minutes, during which we got a message off to the 6th fleet asking for assistance, and we learned later, Joe Tully, commanding officer of the USS Saratoga, launched aircraft within minutes of the attack, but he told us later they were recalled before they reached the horizon. We found this out 20 years after the attack.”

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(Illustration: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t)

The tar sands mining project in Alberta, Canada, is possibly the largest industrial project in human history and critics claim it could also be the most destructive. The mining procedure for extracting oil from a region referred to as the “tar sands,” located north of Edmonton, releases at least three times the CO2 emissions as regular oil production procedures and will likely become North America’s single largest industrial contributor to climate change.

Most of the oil produced by the project will likely be consumed by the United States, a country that, along with Canada, is already heavily invested, on many levels, in the project.

The project is operated by Imperial Oil, whose parent company, ExxonMobil Canada, has a long-term production goal of more than 300,000 barrels of bitumen (extra heavy oil) per day. To do this, they will require new equipment to be shipped through the United States.

Trucks and trailers moving specialized, nontoxic mining equipment from where it is manufactured in Korea to the Kearl oil sands project, located in the Athabasca oil sands in northeastern Alberta, are slated to use highways in Idaho and Montana to transport the gear. This would happen after it has been shipped across the Pacific Ocean to Portland, Oregon, where it would then be barged up the Hood and Snake Rivers to Lewiston, Idaho, from which it would be hauled over land into Canada.

Pius Rolheiser, a spokesman for Imperial Oil, said this is the most cost-effective method of moving the equipment, much to the chagrin of many residents in these states.

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Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: miss karen, JohnnyWood

“Most immigrants are economic refugees,” Bob Kee explained as we drove across the rolling arid hills of south-central Arizona towards the border of Mexico. “US policy in the post-9/11 world states that the government knew there would be ‘collateral damage,’ meaning more dead migrants because of the increasing militarization of the borders. But when people are desperate, they’ll do what they need to do to feed their families. It’s a survival situation, and that’s where we’re at.”

Kee is a volunteer with the group the Samaritans, a migrant advocacy organization whose stated goals include “to save lives and relieve suffering of migrants in southern Arizona” and “to encourage elected leaders to humanize border policy.”

The Samaritans have their hands full, and while they are, from what Truthout saw, doing a great job on the former, clearly every group or person sympathetic to the plight of immigrants in that state are shocked by the recent legal machinations of Arizona Governor Jan Brewer.

Arizona’s new anti-immigrant law (SB1070) granting law enforcement personnel the right to detain people based on the “reasonable suspicion” that they are undocumented immigrants recently elicited strong condemnation from six UN human rights experts, who on May 11 claimed that the law may violate international standards that are binding in the US.

“A disturbing pattern of legislative activity hostile to ethnic minorities and immigrants has been established with the adoption of an immigration law that may allow for police action targeting individuals on the basis of their perceived ethnic origin,” the experts said.

Isabel Garcia, an immigration advocate and federal public defender, told CNN on April 20 that the legislation “legalizes racial profiling” and added, “I think this bill represents the most dangerous precedent in this country, violating all of our due process rights. We have not seen this kind of legislation since the Jim Crow laws.”

Brewer also signed a controversial bill that bans ethnic studies in Arizona schools, just three weeks after signing SB1070. The more recent law banning ethnic studies affects specialized courses in African American and Native American studies, and will probably shut down a popular Mexican-American studies program in the Tucson school district. [Read more →]

The assassination of Sheikh Ghazi Jabouri, a prominent Sunni Imam in the Al- Adhamiya district of Baghdad, has raised fears of renewed sectarian violence in the wake of the Mar. 7 elections.

Tensions have been reported in the area following the assassination Wednesday last week. At least two gunmen killed Sheikh Jabouri, 42, as he walked home after completing morning prayers at the Rahman Mosque.

His brother Sarmad Faisal Jabouri, like many Iraqis in Adhamiya district, blames the government. “We hold the government fully responsibility for the killing of my brother, because they are supposed to be in control of security at the entrances and exits to the area,” Jabouri said.

The attack came on a morning when a high-ranking officer in Iraq’s anti- terrorism police was killed by a bomb planted in his car. The attack also killed two nearby policemen.

The violence comes amidst a wave of increasing attacks across the capital, and amidst political instability in the wake of last month’s elections, that have yet to yield a clear winner.

The U.S. fears that rising sectarian violence could begin to match the 2006- 2007 sectarian violence that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths across the war-torn country.

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Army Spc. Marc Hall, jailed for writing a song protesting the stop-loss policy, was discharged Sunday morning. (Photo: Courage to Resist; Edited: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t)

Until April 17, US Army Spc. Marc Hall sat in a military brig at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, facing an imminent court-martial for challenging the US military’s stop-loss policy in a song.

Sunday morning, Spc. Hall was granted a discharge by the military.

On December 17, 2009, Hall was jailed for writing a song about the personal impact of being forced to remain in the military beyond the scope of his contract by the stop-loss policy.

Stop-loss is a practice that allows the Army to keep soldiers active beyond the end of their signed contracts. According to the Pentagon, more than 120,000 soldiers have been affected by stop-loss since 2001, and currently 13,000 soldiers are serving under stop-loss orders, despite public pledges by President Barack Obama to phase out the policy.

Hall’s song included lyrics the Army claimed were veiled threats of violence.

He was charged with five specifications in violation of Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Conduct, two of those for wrongfully communicating a threat based on song lyrics. Article 134 is a vague rule that outlaws anything “to the prejudice of good order and discipline.”

Lyrics included Hall saying he may “go Fort Hood,” a reference to the mass shooting at Fort Hood on November 5, which prosecutors for the Army claimed was a threat of violence.

“I explained to [my first sergeant] that the hardcore rap song was a free expression of how people feel about the Army and its stop-loss policy,” Hall said at the time. “I explained that the song was neither a physical threat nor any threat whatsoever. I told him it was just hip-hop.”

According to Jeff Paterson of Courage to Resist, an Oakland-based organization dedicated to supporting military objectors like Hall, he was not jailed for the song, but was instead jailed “in retaliation for his formal complaint of inadequate mental health services available to him at Fort Stewart. The Army used an angry song that Spc. Hall, a combat veteran of the Iraq War suffering from post-traumatic stress, had produced criticizing the stop-loss policy as the pretext.” [Read more →]

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Spc. Jeffery Sandstrum / U.S. Army, thomas.merton)

The WikiLeaks video footage from Iraq taken from an Apache helicopter in July 2007 showing soldiers killing 12 people and wounding two children has caused an explosion of media coverage. But many Iraq vets feel it is too little and too late.

In contrast to most of the coverage that favors the military’s stated position of forgiving the soldiers responsible and citing that they followed the Rules of Engagement (ROE), Iraq war veterans who have spoken to the media previously about atrocities carried out against innocent Iraqis have largely been ignored by the mainstream media in the United States.

This includes Josh Steiber, a former US Army specialist who was a member of the Bravo Company 2-16 whose acts of brutality made headlines with the WikiLeaks release of the video “Collateral Murder.”

Steiber told Truthout during a telephone interview on Sunday that such acts were “not isolated incidents” and were “common” during his tour of duty. “After watching the video, I would definitely say that that is, nine times out of ten, the way things ended up,” Steiber was quoted as saying in an earlier press release on the video, “Killing was following military protocol. It was going along with the rules as they are.”

Steiber was not with his unit, who were the soldiers on the ground in the video. He was back at his base with the incident occurred. While not absolving of responsibility those who carried out the killing, Steiber blames the “larger system” of the US military, specifically how soldiers are trained to dehumanize Iraqis and the ROE.

“We have to address the larger system that trains people to respond in this way, or the same thing will probably happen again,” Steiber told Truthout.

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BAGHDAD - The March elections have only deepened political divisions, and brought more violence.

Violent incidents come now amid tensions fueled by post-election arrests of victorious MPs, and disputes over vote fraud.

Incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has successfully appealed to the Supreme Court to disqualify more than 50 candidates on the opposition list, accusing them of being former members of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party.

Leaders from Maliki’s group declined to talk to IPS, saying they were busy with meetings to form alliances for the next government.

Members of former interim prime minister Ayad Allawi’s list of the Iraqiya Party, that won 91 parliamentary seats to 89 for Maliki’s State of Law party, were more forthcoming.

“We have a national project to reform the political process, including the starting point for reform of the Iraqi situation, and we will work to promote the reality of Iraq for the better,” Khalil Ismail al-Qubaisi from the Allawi list told IPS at his office in Baghdad.

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(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: The U.S. Army, K. OS, whiteblot)

On Monday, April 5, Wikileaks.org posted video footage from Iraq, taken from a US military Apache helicopter in July 2007 as soldiers aboard it killed 12 people and wounded two children. The dead included two employees of the Reuters news agency: photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and driver Saeed Chmagh.

The US military confirmed the authenticity of the video.

The footage clearly shows an unprovoked slaughter, and is shocking to watch whilst listening to the casual conversation of the soldiers in the background.

As disturbing as the video is, this type of behavior by US soldiers in Iraq is not uncommon.

Truthout has spoken with several soldiers who shared equally horrific stories of the slaughtering of innocent Iraqis by US occupation forces.

“I remember one woman walking by,” said Jason Washburn, a corporal in the US Marines who served three tours in Iraq. He told the audience at the Winter Soldier hearings that took place March 13-16, 2008, in Silver Spring, Maryland, “She was carrying a huge bag, and she looked like she was heading toward us, so we lit her up with the Mark 19, which is an automatic grenade launcher, and when the dust settled, we realized that the bag was full of groceries. She had been trying to bring us food and we blew her to pieces.”

The hearings provided a platform for veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan to share the reality of their occupation experiences with the media in the US.

Washburn testified on a panel that discussed the rules of engagement (ROE) in Iraq, and how lax they were, to the point of being virtually nonexistent.

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Sgt. Travis Bishop. (Photo: via Travis Bishop)

Last August, Travis Bishop refused to serve in Afghanistan. Having filed for Conscientious Objector (CO) status, Bishop, based at Fort Hood, Texas, in the US Army’s 57th Expeditionary Signal Battalion, was court-martialed and sentenced to 12 months in a military brig. He was released from the brig today.

Bishop served his time in Northwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility at Fort Lewis, Washington. This military brig is notorious for being a particularly difficult jail to serve time.

While in the brig, Bishop was recognized by Amnesty International and received support from hundreds of people from around the world who wrote letters of encouragement to him and wrote letters to Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, the commanding general of Fort Hood, asking for Travis to be released from prison.

During his court-martial at Fort Hood last August, Bishop was tried by the military for his stand against an occupation he believes is “illegal.” He insisted that it would be unethical for him to deploy to support an occupation he opposed on both moral and legal grounds, thus his decision to file for CO status. A CO is someone who refuses to participate in combat based on religious or ethical grounds, and can be given an honorable discharge by the military.

In February, Bishop was granted a three-month reduction in his sentence by General Cone as a result of a successful clemency application.

In a letter to Truthout from prison, Bishop wrote this of his being granted clemency:

“Three months clemency. Wow. I am truly astonished. Great for me? Sure. Great for future resisters? Even more so. I cannot believe that I told the Army “No,” refused to deploy, pleaded not guilty, and then indicted the entire system and blamed my command in court, and still merited clemency.” [Read more →]

Plain Speak

The 2008 National Defense Strategy reads:

US interests include protecting the nation and our allies from attack or coercion, promoting international security to reduce conflict and foster economic growth, and securing the global commons and with them access to world markets and resources. To pursue these interests, the US has developed military capabilities and alliances and coalitions, participated in and supported international security and economic institutions, used diplomacy and soft power to shape the behavior of individual states and the international system, and using force when necessary. These tools help inform the strategic framework with which the United States plans for the future, and help us achieve our ends.

It adds:

… Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing or equaling the power of the US. To accomplish this, the US will require bases and stations within and beyond western Europe and Northeast Asia.

In light of such clear objectives, it is highly unlikely that the US government will allow a truly sovereign Iraq, unfettered by US troops either within its borders or monitoring it from abroad, anytime soon.

The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the Iraqi and US governments indicate an ongoing US presence past both the August 2010 deadline to remove all combat troops, and the 2011 deadline to remove the remaining troops. [Read more →]