Obama administration releases secret Bush anti-terror memos.
Agence France-Presse
Published: Monday March 2, 2009
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Hours after Attorney General Eric Holder repudiated anti-terror methods enacted under former president George W. Bush, the Justice Department released nine internal memos and opinions it said gave legal grounding to the controversial policies.
The documents -- the first dating from the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks to the last from the months following the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq -- detail how Bush gave himself sole power over terror suspects.
"The power to dispose of the liberty of individuals captured ... remain in the hands of the president alone," said a 2002 opinion written by then-assistant attorney general John Yoo on US methods for transferring suspects.
"Congress can no longer regulate the president's ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements," according to another 2003 opinion written for Alberto Gonzales, then counsel for Bush, which detailed prerogatives for military interrogations.
In another potentially explosive opinion, Bush's administration also gave itself ample space to skirt international law.
The president's "power to suspend treaties is wholly discretionary," according to a memo intended for John Bellinger, who was then legal advisor to the National Security Council.
Self-applied boundaries for executive power gave the White House "unconstrained discretion to suspend treaty obligations of the United States at any time and for any reason," said Obama's Justice Department in a statement released alongside the memos.
The house-cleaning move comes as Obama's administration seeks to distance itself from Bush-era policies.
"Waterboarding is torture," Holder said earlier Monday in a speech to the Jewish Council of Public Affairs. "My Justice Department will not justify it, will not rationalize it and will not condone it," he said.
"The use and sanction of torture is at odds with the history of American jurisprudence and American values. It undermines our ability to pursue justice fairly, and it puts our own brave soldiers in peril should they ever be captured on a foreign battlefield."
Holder is currently leading a review of the treatment of terror suspects.
Obama ordered the review as one of his first acts in office, as he also ordered the closing of the infamous Guantanamo Bay detention center, the CIA's secret prisons abroad and special interrogation authorities for terror detainees.
In an executive order, Obama required that all interrogations conducted at US facilities worldwide follow the US Army field manual, which bars the use of waterboarding -- a form of simulated drowning -- and other harsh interrogation techniques.
"Living our values doesn't make us weaker, it makes us safer and it makes us stronger," Obama told a joint session of Congress in a primetime address last month.
"And that is why I can stand here tonight and say without exception or equivocation that the United States of America does not torture."
The president has also vowed "swift and certain justice for captured terrorists."
Many detainees at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have been held there for years without trial, and more than 200 inmates remain.
A Pentagon report in February said that conditions at Guantanamo were in line with the Geneva Conventions but also called for easing the isolation of high-security detainees.
More than 800 detainees have passed through Guantanamo since it was opened on January 11, 2002, as a place to ship suspects in the "war on terror" begun by Bush in the wake of the September 11 attack.
So here's the documents publish by the US Department of Justice in their website. The file is in adobe pdf format:
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Obama administration publish Bush's secret anti-terror memos
Friday, February 27, 2009
Serbian ex-President Milan Milutinovic has been acquitted on charges of war crimes
Serbian ex-President Milan Milutinovic has been acquitted on charges of war crimes
and crimes against humanity in Kosovo by a UN war crimes tribunal
Mr Milutinovic was seen largely as a figurehead president during that time.
The court found that the 66-year-old, who led Serbia from December 1997 to December 2002, had no direct control over the Yugoslav army. His release from custody was ordered.
Judge Iain Bonomy pointed the finger at then-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, saying: "In practice, it was Milosevic, sometimes termed the 'Supreme Commander', who exercised actual command authority over the [Serb army] during the Nato campaign."
In the late 1990s, Milosevic's forces were attempting to suppress the ethnic Albanian majority's independence campaign in Kosovo.
The region, under UN control after Nato drove out Serb forces in 1999, unilaterally declared independence from Serbia a year ago.
Mr Milutinovic and his fellow defendants at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) - all of whom had been allies of Milosevic - had denied all the charges against them.
His five co-accused were convicted for what the judges described as a "broad campaign of violence directed against the Kosovo Albanian civilian population".
Ex-Yugoslav deputy prime minister Nikola Sainovic, ex-Yugoslav army general Nebojsa Pavkovic and former Serbian police public security service chief Sreten Lukic were found guilty on all counts and were each sentenced to 22 years in jail.
The charges included deportation and forcible transfer, murder and persecution.
However five former Serbian top officials were found guilty on some or all the charges relating to the 1990s crimes. Their sentences range from 15 to 22 years.
UN TRIBUNAL SENTENCES
Nikola Sainovic - 22 years
Nebojsa Pavkovic - 22 years
Sreten Lukic - 22 years
Vladimir Lazarevic - 15 years
Dragoljub Ojdanic - 15 years
Read more in BBC
Monday, February 9, 2009
Another skirmish episode to the world yet so usual for the Palestinian
gently wind doesn't calm my restless soul either, I had nothing but mournful of sombre and grief. While I was busy slicing and compressing the movie ('cause somebody forgot to do their job) to a reasonable size and quality, my mind in parallel was never less hectic than my cpu decoding the movie. I traveled so on and so forth to the middle ages and long before the first Aliyah to the land of Palestine until the days of the drone aircraft start carry a missile (instead of just a surveillance camera) and killing the harmless children in Gaza recently. Killing, as we learned, is an audacious act, and killing on this grand scale in Gaza and The West Bank and Lebanon is even more so. As massacre and genocides on Palestinian people have
become frequent occurrences, the world look away on every occasion. while some tiny hands tries as they might to call for justice, the bullies hand always get their ways and shot it down if not tone down to their pathetic subtle. Justice makes democracy possible as the wise man say, but there's ain't no justice for Palestinian in Israel courthouse.Poetic justice maybe. The only democracy in the state of Israel is absolute oligarchy. There is an elections but the running government never hold the doctrine of democratic country left alone be fair and square toward Palestinians people. The only democracies for this people is a democracy of the dead, so to speak.
If there is justice anywhere, they would go to the extra miles just to files their case, but unfortunately some not so invisible hands managed to turn the page, although they have very high chances to win I must say. Its was abruptly case dismiss left alone just to have a trial, even that mean a red face to the judicial authorities of the host country and their supreme leaders, and in this case it was New Zealand. What a treacherous acts. Shame on you Kiwis!. Therefore, while the Nazis leader get to pay with their lives for the crimes they committed, their not so different counterpart, the Elder of Zion been honor as a great statesman and well been protected from even a slightly harm. The same treatment also applicable to their heir. It getting clear over the years that this bunch of people made to their predecessor really proud and even Hitler himself would be ashame. History was rewritten to suit them the most. So much blood in their hand. True as the Winston Churchill said, History is written by the victors. Churchill himself write his history of Second World War from his truly unique perspective.
While the oppressor get aways with their oppressive and atrocities, the oppressed people not only end up with 
none help at all but worse, they get punishment from the world around them instead. Like their miserable and suffering is not enough still! Blood and tears are for decades become their part and parcel of everyday life. In a matters of facts, the rivers of blood and not either the seas of blood is alien to them really. Thus justice is indeed a constant wish. Therefore some resort to retaliation. A sweet revenge though some people always quote out of trivial stuff wasn't sweet at all but bitter and gruesome. Revenge after all is a kind of wild justice. What choice do they have? When the wall cut thru their farm land. Some case it completely unreachable, while others left on the mercy of the Israeli gate keeper, so that they can tent to their orchard on the other side of the wall. Truths to be told, the heavily arm gate keeper not known for their friendliness. That shalt gave you some idea how difficult it could be to toil their land.
If that is worse, there is more, the Israeli illegal settlement in the occupied land just like mushroom hunters sprout by the dozens after heavy rains.
This land of course belong to the Palestinians people for generations. A apartment build in their backyard, a new access road and fences cut tru their land and orchards, uproot their hundred years old olive tree. In spite of all the utter unjustified, the Palestinians is extremely prohibited from using this road mind you! They need to reroute their journey through the impossible ditch and narrow hilly slope along the fences off what used to be a stone's throw distance. The Palestinian farmers often have to make their own roads out to their farm land. In some case, a road has been make through a ditch along side an Israeli by-pass road. In many cases, Palestinians caught using these road by Israeli soldiers or settlers, have had their keys confiscated or have been arrested. The new illegal neighbourhood not very friendly really. They always harass the farmer in their home and farmland. There's many well know cases where the illegal settlers steal or litter in the orchard and arm and mob like illegal settlers will come and disturb the harvesting process just for the fun of it.
The illegal settler not only get aways with their deed but get helps and support from the government, while the poor Palestinians get the house demolish by bulldozer if they ever build a new building/extension on their own tract of land. More often then not with a really short notice or even none at all(no big deal for the Israeli Authority either way). So nothing much could be save really, all went into debris after the big might carterpilar left the scene. The owner suddenly become homeless and scavenge thru the dust and debris for their own belonging which an hour before is completely intact! They really desperate looking for something 
to wrap their children for the cold night before they could lay their hand on tent. You see how democratic this Jewish state could be?The communist and their comrade in Beijing is far better me think.
If that is hell yes hell is yet to come! One should learn of what Israeli's term for collective punishment. It's a brutal retaliation against Palestinian civilians which been regards as a collective punishment. They will bomb the house/building with relatively short notice or none at all, even if there is still people inside, if their kins involved with the shooting, shooter was seem to enter the building or even when the shooter was relatively surrounded and got no where to run but the building behind. The Israeli will detonate it nevertheless, although even the blind man can tell that the the owner got nothing to do wth the shooting nor it's within their control, in the first place.
The state of Israel in the others hand is in no danger of perishing. For some of you who don't
know the facts, Israel is the fourth largest military power in the world. A literally a tniny country with the economy base largely on aid and donations can be this big, just below the US, Russia and the Republic of China. Its enemy nemesis, the Hamas or Fatah factions have no tanks, no war planes, no drone, none radar either, no heavy artillery. Only a very basic and old kalasnikof rifle, no bulletproof vest either pluss a home made Qassam rocket that never been regard as a military grade missile. While the Israeli Occupational Force equipped with the state of the art fighting gadgetry, thanks to the US taxpayer money and their direct military aid. With the air, sea and ground force pounding the Palestinians people with their might firing power and illegal weaponery. A deadly and destruction is a guarantee occurance.
With the year long blockade of Gaza, the humanitarian and economic crisis in Gaza skyrocketing, it doesn't take a humanitarian nor economics skill to know how deplorable and intensified thing are. A basis economy 101 and logic will do. With all the misery put before them by none than the occupier force, do you think they can sleep sound?With the very basic necessities been deny, their livelihood is nothing but a mockery.
The growing cruel and harshness of the Israeli regime in the West Bank and Gaza is bring nothing than creating thousands of potential "suicide bombers" and Israel haters. There are really cling for a basic living as a human yet they have been degrade for as decades, while the international community with the Zionist PR blame them for that. Needless to say they are really desperate and desperate people resort to desperate measure. Thus you will see the picture of a young child trowing stone to the mighty tanks, although they knews the soldiers wont hesitate to put bullets in thier young body.
I shall call your attention to the fact that the attacks on a civilian population as been define by Israeli collective punishment violate the International laws, article 50 of the Hague Regulations to be specific but then the heck wth the laws, Israel not even sign the Rome treaty nor any International treaties on this matters. Thus as a nonsignatory, ICC had no jurisdiction over Israel. It's a bloody complicated really. But if Palestinian Authority can gather the best brains and argue well on the ground that the Israeli Ocupational Force alredy left the Gaza since 2006 there high chances to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Under the Rome treaty, the ICC are subject to prosecute the most serious war crimes only if the country responsible is unwilling or unable to do so through its own courts. Here we got the scenario where Israeli government is refusing to investigate into allegations of war crimes by their soldiers. But in the others hand we also got a stateless Palestine; as widely accepted in the International arena and the security council, in spite of the UN resolution to the Algiers Declaration of a Palestinian State in 1988. This is one of the unjustified and bias policy toward the Palestinian community at large and the peace proces in general. For the Israel, herself illegally declare the proclamation of nationhood in 1948. In may 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion self-proclaims the State of Israel (without border). Why can't the Palestinians do the same? If Ben-Gurion got the US President Harry S. Truman and British Prime Minister Clement Attlee to recognised Jewish State right away, there is even more countries alredy doing the same things toward the the Algiers Declaration of a Palestinian State in 1988, by none others than the Palestine National Council themself. Even if they do it yet again I'm sure the like of muslim leaders whoi's not a lame ducks like al masri of Egyption will hurries to confer and recognise what has been Palestinian's rights, right from the begining. I can bet my money on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela will race to be among the first to recognise (yet again for the sake of "selective entitlement of nationhood" by the power that be) the young State of Palestine. And I am sure there's others muslim leaders and non-muslim leaders who's in their own mind surely will follow suit at no time for sure.
It really delicate and not for the inadequate mind really. But unfortunetely the Fatah organisation for many years full with not the best mind but infest wth some insufferable and corrupt minded. Why can't they really address the issue or even declare the Statehood yet again if it's the only way out? I don't read law back in varsity times but for what ever training that imprint in my head, I never fail to noticed what make them so backward and their many failure and stalemate. It really delicate and not for the inadequate mind really. Having saying that, I stand enlighten by you guys.
So enough with my lousy words, needless to say my thought charged with emotion watching this clip but I'm still not lost my conscience..so before words fail me, let watch the testimony of Amr Shurrab, a young Palestinian from the Gaza Strip whose two brothers were killed by ruthless and growing lawlessly Israeli soldiers (soldier of fortune would suits them better I guess) in January 2009 during the Gaza aggression. On February 2, 2009, the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation held a policy briefing on Capitol Hill, entitled "Armed and Dangerous: Weapons Transfers to Israel during the Bush Administration." Here's part of the video that feature Amr and his heart wrenching story. I'll refrain to comment further, as the video can do far better than myself, plus I fear my vocabulary is inadequate and run short in no time searching for a better words to describe the whole events.
For solidarity, humanities cause and the like. I call upon you guys for international solidarity, with great emphasis on the "sons" of Abraham. For all of you could trace yours spiritual roots back to the same individual, Abraham. Our great great and towering historical figures behind all the Judaism, Christianity and Islam religions. The great descendants of Abraham, namely Moses, Jesus the Messiah(read:Christ in Greek) and Muhammad (peace be upon all the prophets) never taught to shed blood of innocent men, left alone for the chauvinist and narrow political polemics. For thousands year, the three religions live in peaceful and harmony in Jeruselam, the land of the prophets without a major glitch. We have seem too many mothers and fathers, the husbands and wives, the sons and daughters and many relative who lost their loved ones to violence and vengeance. I am aware about some rotten soul in the Jewish state which saw peace with the Palestinians not as a blessing, but as a curse, not just a sign of weak and wrong, but a utter sinful.Thus, it falls to all of us who love peace and uphold the moral value. For the sake of political correctness, we only need 7 ft x 3 ft tract of land when we're 6 foot underground. Not much really. For I see so much, nor live so long. This is not asking for too much.
In the light of thought, please harbours that virtuous thought and leave it here.
credits: pictures from Christian Peacemaker Teams
Sunday, February 8, 2009
The Algiers Declaration of a Palestinian State
State of Palestine Declaration of Independence
In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
born, on which it grew, developed and excelled. Thus the Palestinian Arab people ensured for itself an everlasting union between itself, its land, and its history.Resolute throughout that history, the Palestinian Arab people forged its national identity, rising even to unimagined levels in its defense, as invasion, the design of others, and the appeal special to Palestine's ancient and luminous place on the eminence where powers and civilizations are joined. All this intervened thereby to deprive the people of its political independence. Yet the undying connection between Palestine and its people secured for the land its character, and for the people its national genius.
Nourished by an unfolding series of civilizations and cultures, inspired by a heritage rich in variety and kind, the Palestinian Arab people added to its stature by consolidating a union between itself and its patrimonial Land. The call went out from Temple, Church, and Mosque that to praise the Creator, to celebrate compassion and peace was indeed the message of Palestine. And in generation after generation, the Palestinian Arab people gave of itself unsparingly in the valiant battle for liberation and homeland. For what has been the unbroken chain of our people's rebellions but the heroic embodiment of our will for national independence. And so the people was sustained in the struggle to stay and to prevail.
When in the course of modern times a new order of values was declared with norms and values fair for all, it was the Palestinian Arab people that had been excluded from the destiny of all other peoples by a hostile array of local and foreign powers. Yet again had unaided justice been revealed as insufficient to drive the world's history along its preferred course.
And it was the Palestinian people, already wounded in its body, that was submitted to yet another type of occupation over which floated that falsehood that "Palestine was a land without people." This notion was foisted upon some in the world, whereas in Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations (1919) and in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), the community of nations had recognized that all the Arab territories, including Palestine, of the formerly Ottoman provinces, were to have granted to them their freedom as provisionally independent nations.
Despite the historical injustice inflicted on the Palestinian Arab people resulting in their dispersion and depriving them of their right to self-determination, following upon U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947), which partitioned Palestine into two states, one Arab, one Jewish, yet it is this Resolution that still provides those conditions of international legitimacy that ensure the right of the Palestinian Arab people to sovereignty.
By stages, the occupation of Palestine and parts of other Arab territories by Israeli forces, the willed dispossession and expulsion from their ancestral homes of the majority of Palestine's civilian inhabitants, was achieved by organized terror; those Palestinians who remained, as a vestige subjugated in its homeland, were persecuted and forced to endure the destruction of their national life.
Thus were principles of international legitimacy violated. Thus were the Charter of the United Nations and its Resolutions disfigured, for they had recognized the Palestinian Arab people's national rights, including the right of Return, the right to independence, the right to sovereignty over territory and homeland.
In Palestine and on its perimeters, in exile distant and near, the Palestinian Arab people never faltered and never abandoned its conviction in its rights of Return and independence. Occupation, massacres and dispersion achieved no gain in the unabated Palestinian consciousness of self and political identity, as Palestinians went forward with their destiny, undeterred and unbowed. And from out of the long years of trial in ever-mounting struggle, the Palestinian political identity emerged further consolidated and confirmed. And the collective Palestinian national will forged for itself a political embodiment, the Palestine Liberation Organization, its sole, legitimate representative recognized by the world community as a whole, as well as by related regional and international institutions. Standing on the very rock of conviction in the Palestinian people's inalienable rights, and on the ground of Arab national consensus and of international legitimacy, the PLO led the campaigns of its great people, molded in.
The massive national uprising, the intifada, now intensifying in cumulative scope and power on occupied Palestinian territories, as well as the unflinching resistance of the refugee camps outside the homeland, have elevated awareness of the Palestinian truth and right into still higher realms of comprehension and actuality. Now at last the curtain has been dropped around a whole epoch of prevarication and negation. The intifada has set siege to the mind of official Israel, which has for too long relied exclusively upon myth and terror to deny Palestinian existence altogether. Because of the intifada and its revolutionary irreversible impulse, the history of Palestine has therefore arrived at a decisive juncture.
Whereas the Palestinian people reaffirms most definitively its inalienable rights in the land of its patrimony:
Now by virtue of natural, historical and legal rights, and the sacrifices of successive generations who gave of themselves in defense of the freedom and independence of their homeland;
In pursuance of Resolutions adopted by Arab Summit Conferences and relying on the authority bestowed by international legitimacy as embodied in the Resolutions of the United Nations Organization since 1947;
And in exercise by the Palestinian Arab people of its rights to self-determination, political independence and sovereignty over its territory,
The Palestine National Council, in the name of God, and in the name of the Palestinian Arab people, hereby proclaims the establishment of the State of Palestine on our Palestinian territory with its capital Jerusalem (Al-Quds Ash-Sharif).
The State of Palestine is the state of Palestinians wherever they may be. The state is for them to enjoy in it their collective national and cultural identity, theirs to pursue in it a complete equality of rights. In it will be safeguarded their political and religious convictions and their human dignity by means of a parliamentary democratic system of governance, itself based on freedom of expression and the freedom to form parties. The rights of minorities will duly be respected by the majority, as minorities must abide by decisions of the majority. Governance will be based on principles of social justice, equality and non-discrimination in public rights of men or women, on grounds of race, religion, color or sex, and the aegis of a constitution which ensures the rule of law and an independent judiciary. Thus shall these principles allow no departure from Palestine's age-old spiritual and civilizational heritage of tolerance and religious coexistence.
The State of Palestine is an Arab state, an integral and indivisible part of the Arab nation, at one with that nation in heritage and civilization, with it also in its aspiration for liberation, progress, democracy and unity. The State of Palestine affirms its obligation to abide by the Charter of the League of Arab States, whereby the coordination of the Arab states with each other shall be strengthened. It calls upon Arab compatriots to consolidate and enhance the emein reality of state, to mobilize potential, and to intensify efforts whose goal is to end Israeli occupation.
The State of Palestine proclaims its commitment to the principles and purposes of the United Nations, and to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It proclaims its commitment as well to the principles and policies of the Non-Aligned Movement.
It further announces itself to be a peace-loving State, in adherence to the principles of peaceful co-existence. It will join with all states and peoples in order to assure a permanent peace based upon justice and the respect of rights so that humanity's potential for well-being may be assured, an earnest competition for excellence may be maintained, and in which confidence in the future will eliminate fear for those who are just and for whom justice is the only recourse.
In the context of its struggle for peace in the land of Love and Peace, the State of Palestine calls upon the United Nations to bear special responsibility for the Palestinian Arab people and its homeland. It calls upon all peace-and freedom-loving peoples and states to assist it in the attainment of its objectives, to provide it with security, to alleviate the tragedy of its people, and to help it terminate Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories.
The State of Palestine herewith declares that it believes in the settlement of regional and international disputes by peaceful means, in accordance with the U.N. Charter and resolutions. With prejudice to its natural right to defend its territorial integrity and independence, it therefore rejects the threat or use of force, violence and terrorism against its territorial integrity or political independence, as it also rejects their use against territorial integrity of other states.
Therefore, on this day unlike all others, November 15, 1988, as we stand at the threshold of a new dawn, in all honor and modesty we humbly bow to the sacred spirits of our fallen ones, Palestinian and Arab, by the purity of whose sacrifice for the homeland our sky has been illuminated and our Land given life. Our hearts are lifted up and irradiated by the light emanating from the much blessed intifada, from those who have endured and have fought the fight of the camps, of dispersion, of exile, from those who have borne the standard for freedom, our children, our aged, our youth, our prisoners, detainees and wounded, all those ties to our sacred soil are confirmed in camp, village, and town. We render special tribute to that brave Palestinian Woman, guardian of sustenance and Life, keeper of our people's perennial flame. To the souls of our sainted martyrs, the whole of our Palestinian Arab people that our struggle shall be continued until the occupation ends, and the foundation of our sovereignty and indepe.
Therefore, we call upon our great people to rally to the banner of Palestine, to cherish and defend it, so that it may forever be the symbol of our freedom and dignity in that homeland, which is a homeland for the free, now and always.
In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful:
"Say: 'O God, Master of the Kingdom,
Thou givest the Kingdom to whom Thou wilt,
and seizes the Kingdom from whom Thou wilt,
Thou exalted whom Thou wilt, and Thou
abasest whom Thou wilt; in Thy hand
is the good; Thou are powerful over everything."
Yasser Arafat.
Date: 15-Nov-1988
Location: Algeria
The Palestinian National Council on Nov. 15, 1988, issued the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in a meeting in Algieria.
On December 15, 1988 The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) permanent representative at the UN submitted the Algiers declaration to the United Nations for a vote. The UN General 
Assembly adopted by a vote of 104-2 (the US and Israel against, with 36 abstentions) resolution 43/177, citing the Algiers declaration, and stating that the Palestinian people have the right to declare a state according to Resolution 181. The UN decision also included a provision elevating the PLO's observer status by replacing references to the "Palestine Liberation Organization" with just "Palestine" in all UN bodies.
Following the UN vote, more than 100 states recognize the State of Palestine, and 20 more grant some form of diplomatic status to the Palestinian delegation.
The Algiers Declaration of a Palestinian State was written by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, was significant for its definition of an independence state. You might want this in the light of the International court case againt the Israeli Occupational Force.
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