Tom Engelhardt’s latest article, “Killing Civillians: How Safe Do You Actually Want to Be?” appears in The Nation. Below are a few paragraphs from his piece, highly recommend reading the full article:

“Almost like clockwork, the reports float up to us from thousands of miles away, as if from another universe. Every couple of days they seem to arrive from Afghan villages that few Americans will ever see without weapon in hand. Every few days, they appear from a world almost beyond our imagining, and always they concern death–so many lives snuffed out so regularly for more than seven years now. Unfortunately, those news stories are so unimportant in our world that they seldom make it onto, no less off of, the inside pages of our papers. They’re so repetitive that, once you’ve started reading them, you could write them in your sleep from thousands of miles away.

…Forgotten? It’s true that we forget these killings easily–often we don’t notice them in the first place–since they don’t seem to impinge on our lives. Perhaps that’s one of the benefits of fighting a war on the periphery of empire, halfway across the planet in the backlands of some impoverished country.

One problem, though: the forgetting doesn’t work so well in those backlands. When your child, wife or husband, mother or father is killed, you don’t forget.

Only this week, our media were filled with ceremonies and remembrances centered around the tenth anniversary of the slaughter at Columbine High School. Twelve kids and a teacher blown away in a mad rampage. Who has forgotten? On the other side of the planet, there are weekly Columbines.

Similarly, every December 7, we Americans still remember the dead of Pearl Harbor, almost seven decades in the past. We still have ceremonies for, and mourn, the dead of September 11, 2001. We haven’t forgotten. We’re not likely to forget. Why, when death rains down on our distant battlefields, should they?”

Israeli Foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has yet again ramped up his Iran bashing rhetoric. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post on Friday, Lieberman said the greatest obsticle to a solution in the region “is not Israel, it is not the Palestinians. It’s the Iranians.” 

Lieberman also said it would be impossible “to resolve any problems in our region without resolving the Iranian problem.”

Earlier this month Lieberman said the instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan was the greatest threat to regional and international security. So which one is it? Iran, Afghanistan, or Pakistan?

Any nuclear armed rogue state who aggressively and methodically attack and terrorise it’s neighbours is a threat. Sound familiar Lieberman? Israel is no victim.

Former US Vice President Dick Cheney has come out swinging following the publication of memos from the Bush administration justifiying torture. 

Cheney now wants the CIA to release its own memos showing how effective these techniques were. ITS TORTURE!! Of course its effective! After days of sleep deprivation, waterboarding and constant humilliation even Cheney, the dark lord himself, would say anything to make it stop.

“One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is that they put out the legal memos… but they didn’t put out the memos that show the success of the effort,” Mr Cheney told Fox News.

“There are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified. I formally ask that they be declassified now.”

Stop being such a Dick, Cheney!

US President Barack Obama has said that CIA agents who used harsh interrogation techniques on terror suspects will not be prosecuted:

“The four secret memos detail the legal justification for the Bush-era CIA interrogation programme, whose methods critics say amounted to torture.

 

Mr Obama gave an assurance that “those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice… will not be subject to prosecution”.

 

One of the documents contained legal authorisation for a list of specific harsh interrogation techniques, including pushing detainees against a wall, facial slaps, cramped confinement, stress positions and sleep deprivation.

 

The memo also authorises the use of “waterboarding”, or simulated drowning, and the placing of a detainee into a confined space with an insect.

 

Critics of the Bush-era interrogation programme say the newly-released memos provide evidence that many of the methods amount to torture under US and international law.

 

“Bottom line here is you’ve had crimes committed,” Amnesty International analyst Tom Parker told the BBC.

 

“These are criminal acts. Torture is illegal under American law, it’s illegal under international law. America has an international obligation to prosecute the individuals who carry out these kind of acts.”

Human Rights Watch has said the deal between the Pakistani Government and the Taliban, that enforces islamic Law in the Swat valley, “presents a grave threat to the rights of women and other basic rights in the troubled region.”

“The Taliban have imposed their authority in Swat and adjoining areas through summary executions - including beheadings - of state officials and political opponents, public whippings, and large-scale intimidation of the population. Girls’ schools have been shut down, women are not allowed to leave their homes unless escorted by male family members, polio immunization programs have been halted, and nongovernmental organizations have been expelled. Music and film have been banned and stores trading in them have been destroyed. All men have been required to grow beards.

“The government defends this ordinance by saying that the officials implementing the law are still appointed by the provincial government and that they will respect the rights of women and others,” said Hasan. “But the reality is that any official in Swat who does not follow the dictates of the Taliban may be signing his or her own death warrant.”

“The Taliban are “taking Swat back to the Dark Ages and the Pakistani government is now complicit in their horrific abuses,” Ali Dayan Hasan, a senior South Asia researcher for the New York-based group, said Wednesday.”

President Obama is going to call for a world free from nuclear weapons in a speech he is to deliver on Sunday in Prague.

“Even with the Cold War over, the spread of nuclear weapons or the theft of nuclear material could lead to the extermination of any city on the planet - this weekend in Prague, I will lay out an agenda to seek the goal of a world without nuclear weapons,” Said Obama in a meeting in Strasbourg, France on Friday.

Obama’s stance against Iran’s nuclear programme has not changed - “We can not have a nuclear arms race in the Middle East,” he said. Now with fresh support from Russia, the idea of  “a world without nuclear weapons” is more likley to mean “a world without nuclear weapons in Iran, or any other Muslim country.”

Well, good luck Pakistan. There is no wonder why Admiral Mike Mullen feels so “comfortable” about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons - the US have their sights firmly set on the region and like a dog with a bone, they wont give up until its either been devoured or buried.

Maybe America should lead by example and disarm its own nuclear arsenal first. Now thats a novel idea…

Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,  said the US has invested in an effort to keep Pakistan’s nuclear weapons secure and that Pakistan has “taken significant steps in recent years, so I’m comfortable.”

“My biggest concern is that if Pakistan gets to a point where it implodes, you’ve got a country that could be an Islamist, theocratic country with nuclear weapons which could both use them and proliferate them. One of our goals is to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

What price will the people of Pakistan have to pay for Mullen’s “comfort?”

My previous article, “Eyewitness to Pakistan turmoil” was re published in USA TODAY  and the Epoch Times, a leading Independent News Organisation with offices in 30 countries accross five continents and published in 17 languages.

Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev met in London ahead of the G20 summit to strengthen diplomatic ties and discuss Iran’s nuclear programme - The basic premise: We can have them… But you can’t!