Novorussian and Ukrainian POWs

Givi and the Geneva Conventions

There has been a lot of criticisms of the battalion "Somali" and Givi for the way they treated the junta's prisoners, including the Colonel who, apparently, was the commander of the junta's 93rd Brigade.  Let me begin by agreeing with those who say that the treatment of these prisoners did violate the Geneva conventions, no doubt about it in my mind.

The law (or how it maybe would be in a perfect world)

The first thing to notice here is that the Geneva Conventions (GC) apply primarily to international conflicts, not to civil wars. They do however have a Common Article 3 which is specifically tailored to "non-international conflicts". Common article 3 has a section c which prohibit: "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment".  Since Givi's purpose was precisely to humiliate his prisoners, you can say that his actions were in violations of the GC.

However,

For one thing, neither Novorussia nor the Donetsk People's Republic have signed these conventions.  But that is not that good an argument, because you can also refer to customary human rights instruments (the various conventions, treaties and agreements on human rights) which are always applicable anyway.  More relevantly is the fact that the junta's forces have committed massive and systematic violations of human rights and the laws of war and that they are all at the very least to be considered as war criminals.  Furthermore, unless they were wearing Ukrainian uniforms, they could also be considered as spies or mercenaries who do not benefit from the GC (but still are still protected under human rights instruments).

Finally, all of the above assumes that these forces are acting under the orders of a legal and legitimate government, not an illegal junta which came to power by a coup and then attempted to legitimize that coup in totally sub-farcical elections.

So while at face value Givi does violate the GC, I don't think any of those accusations would withstand a legal challenge in front of a court. And if they did, it would be for a very minor violation anyway.

The real world (this is Russia!)

Okay, not let's get real.  This is not Geneva.  This is Donetsk.  I don't think that anybody will argue that these prisoners had it coming.  Most of them had to chew on their beloved Ukie flag, and the Brigade commander got slapped (hard) by Givi.  Frankly, we have to be honest here, ok?

When the Novorussians were treating junta prisoners with kindness, treating their wounds, feeding them, clothing them, offering them all sort of hospitality, I had a deluge of comments about "how stupid it is to be kind to Nazis" .  And now that a bone fide junta death-squad leader and total SOB get's slapped, there is another deluge of comments about "Givi violating the GC".  Come on!

I have always said that junta death squad members did not get the kind of hospitality which the Novorussians extended to conscripts form the regular armed forces.  Let me repeat here: they get summarily executed, many of them after short but very painful interrogations.  This is what happened to the Wahabis in Chechnia, and this is what happens to Nazis in the Ukraine.  Are these actions in violation of human rights conventions?  Yes, totally.  Does it break my heart?  Not it all.  This is war.  Worse, this is a civil war.  And this war was started by the junta, not the Novorussians.  I remind you that according to the Nuremberg Trial, the ultimate crime is "aggression" because it "contains" all the other.  In other words, the party who starts the war (civil or not) is the prime culprit for all the horrors which are triggered in the course of this war.

I also remind that you that this junta Brigade Commander happened to be #3 in a Right Sector electoral list.  So he is the "real thing" - a real Ukrainian Nazi willing to murder, kill, torture anybody, especially the "bugs" and "subhumans" of the Donbass.

I think that Givi had the right to shoot him right there, on the spot.

All he got, is a good slap on his ape-like skull.  Oh, and that happened on camera.  I say - good thing that Givi did that on camera for the whole world to see.  This is how a real officer should treat a death-squad gang leader.

I also hope that the Novorussians will put that sorry Nazi scumbag on trial, that the trial will be public, and that he will get 30 years in jail (I oppose the death penalty and sentences over 30 years on principle).  And I don't think that the ICRC or anybody else should be granted access to this war criminal (except psychiatrists and those researching psychopaths/sociopaths).  As for the rest of them, I would send them home - at least they were minor riffraff not worth spending much time on.

I generally and sincerely feel sorry for the poor Ukrainian kids drafted to become cannon fodder for the junta and who get slaughtered by the Novorussian forces.  I really do.  But in this case, I simply am unable to muster any kind of pity for that evil piece of shit.  Sorry.  I call it as I see it.  And if somebody tells me that my feelings are crude and non-Christian I will fully agree.  I wish I could feel any Christian compassion for that guy, I can't.  And I won't pretend.

The Saker

State Crime in Iguala, Guerrero (Mexico)

By Rolando Garrido Romo

In these days the people of Mexico are facing a double assault by the political and economic elite of the country, subservient to Washington, which mainly aims to strengthen control over financial and natural resources of the country through the implementation of reforms imposed by the government of president Peña Nieto; and at the same time criminalizing social protest, suppressing all dissent sample or rejection by popular organizations, students, educators, farmers and workers to such predatory and exclusionary model.

In this context a state crime was committed against rural students in the state of Guerrero, where the complicity between municipal and state authorities to organized crime, and the indifference and failure of federal authorities led to another tragedy against country's poorest population.

On the night of 26 last September and the morning of the 27th, a group of about 200 students from the Rural School Raúl Isidro Burgos of Ayotzinapa (municipality of Tixtla), Guerrero (southwestern Mexico) were attacked with firearms by municipal police of the city of Iguala and a group of men in civilian clothes.

The students of Ayotzinapa had taken some passenger buses with which they moved to the neighboring town of Iguala, in order to raise money to go to Mexico City, and attend the march of October 2nd which is held every year in commemorating the Slaughter of Tlatelolco in 1968 (during which the government of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz ordered the murder of dozens of students who performed a rally in the Plaza of the Three Cultures, precisely protesting against government repression and lack of democracy in the country).

The march on October 2, 2014 was of additional importance, since in recent weeks had developed a student movement at the National Polytechnic Institute (an institution created in 1936 by President Lazaro Cardenas, who in 1938 expropriated the oil industry at large transnational corporations) to reject a series of reforms involving the degradation of their academic level and the conversion of the Institute into a provider of technical second level personnel for transnational corporations.

Although the government had an initial response to the demands of students (repeal the reforms and dismiss the director of the Institute), the student`s assemblies were in favor of greater involvement of students and teachers in the direction of the school and in the determination of plans and programs of study, so that the student`s protest continues in this academic institution.

The shooting attack of Iguala municipal police and gunmen who accompanied her, caused the killing of 6 people, 4 of them students, a woman who was in a taxi and then a young football player (team Hornets of the Third Division of professional football) who was on a bus with peers (after participating in a game), which was also shot by the police, who believed that the players were also students of Ayotzinapa.

Some of the students then decided to report the assault they suffered, before the media, but the place where they tried to take out the press conference that same night, was also shot by the armed group in civilian clothes, so students had to flee.

Later it was learned that 43 students were missing, and no authority was aware of his whereabouts.

That night, the body of a young man (Julio César Mondragón Fuentes) who was tortured, put out his eyes and found skinned face, was found in the street. Later was known that he was one of the students missing that tragic night.

In the days following, national outrage at the attack on defenseless young, forced the state government to deposit with the Public Prosecutor to 22 police officers involved in the attack, and at the same time, it was the Mayor of Iguala, José Luis Abarca Velasquez who requested his resignation and disappeared along with his wife Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa, who the day of the incident, paid a report as president of the institution responsible for childcare and family (Integral Development of the Family, DIF) in Iguala.

The subsequent protests of Ayotzinapa’s students, as the demands of the return of the missing students by their parents, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the OAS and even the State Department of the United States (usually let these facts unaccounted when they are committed by allied regimes, such as the one that currently governs Mexico) forced the government of Peña Nieto to attract the investigation at federal level.

Once the Attorney General's Office began investigating, arrested 10 of the gunmen who had participated in the attack and it was they who announced that they were part of a drug cartel known as “Guerreros Unidos”, one of whose leaders known as "Chucky", had given the order to kill the students. It was they also who gave the location of 9 unmarked graves on the outskirts of Iguala, where the authorities found 43 bodies so far, those who have already practiced forensic examinations and DNA tests, of which 28 bodies according to the Attorney General’s Office, do not correspond to DNA from relatives of the missing students. Still need to know the identity of the other 15 bodies found and if those that are in new mass graves found on 14 and 15 October, are of the missing students.

Later (October 13) 14 municipal police officers of Cocula (adjacent to Iguala), who apparently also participated in the attack and in the delivery of the 43 disappeared students to the cartel “Guerreros Unidos”, were arrested, along with the mayor and the director of public security of the municipality of Cocula.

At this point we must begin to untangle the web of mafia relations between much of the Mexican political class (without distinction of parties) with drug trafficking organizations, businessmen who launder money (along with banks) and different levels of municipal, state and federal government officials who protect criminal enterprises through the police (and often, middle and high level ranking officials of the armed forces are also involved), in exchange for funding for their campaigns and for huge profits that are transferred to them by their criminal associates.

The governor of the state of Guerrero, Angel Aguirre Rivero, is occupying the governorship of the state for the second time, as it did the first time replacing a despotic and dictatorial governor, Ruben Figueroa, who had to take leave from his post in 1995, after he ordered the killing of peasants of the Peasant Organization of the Southern Sierra in Aguas Blancas, Guerrero, who were to apply attention to their demands to the state government.

Aguirre then was part of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and replaced his "compadre" Figueroa, who never had to be accountable to justice for the slaughter of Aguas Blancas. Aguirre ruled from 1996 until 1999.

Subsequently, Aguirre wanted to be governor again in 2010, but this time his party, the PRI, decided to run Aguirre's cousin, Manuel Añorve, who was the mayor of Acapulco.

Aguirre expressed his disagreement and left the PRI, so he sought the nomination for governor by the leftist PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution), who does not care about his PRI past and prompted the governor, who won the election in 2010.

Since he rose to the governorship in April 2011, Aguirre has turned the state of Guerrero to a private business, as for example, he has appointed to government positions 38 immediate family members; so do other officials, such as Secretary of Finance and Administration, Jorge Salgado Leyva, who has 20 relatives in various state offices.

Aguirre has entrusted to his nephew, Ernesto Aguirre being the liaison with groups of political and economic power, to apply for "commissions" and percentage required to approve projects, investment, government procurement, etc. The governor's brother, named Carlos Mateo Aguirre, is in charge of controlling everything related to public works by the state.

Also, the governor is pushing his son Angel Aguirre Jr. to be the candidate for mayor of Acapulco.

"Dangerous ", i.e. with drug gangs, relationships correspond to the cousin of the governor, Victor Hugo Aguirre Garzón, who is in charge of drug trafficking in Acapulco.

Aguirre, along with his Health Secretary, Lazaro Mazon (who is identified with the leftist newly created political party, National Regeneration Movement), and the current so-called New Left, which dominates the Party of the Democratic Revolution, were the main political patronage for José Luis Abarca to became mayor of Iguala.

Abarca is married to Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa, who is the sister of Alberto Pineda Villa (aka "El Borrado"), and Marco Antonio Pineda Villa, who were operators of the drug cartel of the Beltran Leyva brothers ("coincidentally" few days after the murders of Ayotzinapa, was arrested in San Miguel Allende, Hector Beltran Leyva, leader of the cartel of the same name, along with a well-known businessman who was responsible for washing drug money, Germán Goyeneche, and who had close ties with the political class of the state of Querétaro) and then formed the cartel “Guerreros Unidos” (on 10 October, another brother of Maria de los Angeles, named Salomon, was arrested in Cuernavaca for drug crimes).

The same mother of Maria de los Angeles, Maria Leonor Villa Ortuño, is considered part of the criminal organization, and just provide a video in which she accuses the governor Aguirre of having received funding for his campaign in 2010, by the cartel of the Beltran Leyva and that is the governor who protects “Guerreros Unidos” (this cartel has a bloody dispute with another drug trafficking organization in Guerrero known as “Los Rojos”).

Mayor Abarca was driving his wife Maria de los Angeles to achieve Iguala municipal presidency next year, and the presentation of her report as president of the municipal DIF in the night of September 26, was to be used as his primary campaign launch, so knowing the mobilization of the students of Ayotzinapa, the Mayor and his wife ordered the police and thugs to stop the students at all cost, to avoid "tarnishing" the act of launching of the candidacy of Maria de los Angeles.

Hence the direct orders for the slaughter came from the municipal authorities, but state and federal authorities were complicit, as it is now known that a number of students were retained by Mexican Army soldiers, without providing them with any help; and the state police, which is also based in Iguala, did not intervene to stop the attack, even though all corporations learned about these facts in minutes.

Additionally, both the state government and the federal, were aware that the Mayor Abarca had directly participated in the kidnapping and murder of three leaders of the Popular Unity organization, who had demanded support for that peasant organization and had directly accused the mayor of taking possession of the resources destined to them. These three leaders were massacred and the mayor apparently shot to the head of one of them (Arturo Hernández Cardona), with a shotgun. This was known since the middle of 2013, but neither the state government nor the federal government initiated a thorough investigation into these events.

It should also be noted that Aguirre, since he was with the ruling PRI, was very close to the current president Peña Nieto, and once it became governor for the second time, supported by the leftist PRD, boasted his good relationship with Peña Nieto who was then governor of the State of Mexico and was constantly invited to Aguirre’s family parties and government festivities.

Now Peña has tried to distance himself from the governor and called him to take responsibility, while it pressed for his resignation, which has triggered a flood of words between state and federal government, in order to dilute their responsibilities in these facts.

In this context, it is important to note that the rural students of Ayotzinapa are part of a segment of the population that has been traditionally excluded, demonized and punished by the State, especially since the coming to power of neoliberal governments (1982), who have attempted to disappear the Rural Normal Schools (created in the 20’s), where young farmers are trained not only as teachers for rural areas, but also as social organizers and promoters and as trainers and assistants in agricultural production.

Permanently, the state and the federal governments, have decreased budget allocations for these schools and have attempted to transform curricula or close them up; but students, teachers and parents have mobilized again and again to stop it.

It is worth to mention that the famous Mexican guerrilla fighter Lucio Cabañas, originally from Atoyac de Alvarez, Guerrero, studied precisely in the Rural Normal School of Ayotzinapa, where he graduated as a rural teacher, subsequently adhering to Guerrero Civic Association (Asociación Cívica Guerrerense), who ran another graduate of Ayotzinapa, Genaro Vázquez.

Vazquez created in 1962-63 the National Revolutionary Civic Association (Asociación Cívica Nacional Revolucionaria), after a brutal repression suffered by members of this organization, precisely in the city of Iguala, which convinced Vàzquez to go underground to fight the repressive Mexican authorities.

The same will happened next with Lucio Cabanas, who would experience firsthand another brutal repression in 1967 by state and federal authorities in Atoyac, leading him to create the Party of the Poor and the Peasants' Justice Brigade to fight in the underground, against the Mexican government.

Also, after the Aguas Blancas massacre, in 1996, the Popular Revolutionary Army appeared (Ejército Popular Revolucionario, EPR), in response to the repression suffered by the peasants by Guerrero state authorities.

Now, following the disappearance of students of Ayotzinapa, the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI), an EPR detachment, has stated that it has created a Justice Brigade to punish cartel “Guerreros Unidos”, for the murder of the rural students.

For its part, the EZLN (the Zapatistas in Chiapas) mobilized thousands of grassroots supporters in a silent march in support of the missing students.

Several schools and colleges of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the Metropolitan Autonomous University and the National Pedagogical University, have initiated a strike in support of students and demand of the appearance of the 43 missing students.

There is a proposal in Congress for the disappearance of powers in the state of Guerrero, given that Governor Aguirre refuses to leave office, but the measure will not fix the situation of this state, which is handled by political groups associated with drug cartels and business groups who get rich juicy concessions, so the arrival of an acting governor to the state will only serve to distract public opinion and eventually make the people forget about the responsibility, political and criminal of the governor and the omissions (perhaps intentional) of the federal government, on these facts; not forgetting that the Mayor of Iguala, his wife and the director of Public Safety of that city, Felipe Flores Velasquez, are still fugitives.

Russian Ministry of Defense accuses Ukies of using White Phosphorus on civilians

The parallels with Gaza are really becoming uncanny:

(Please Click the "captions" Next to settings wheel for English subtitles)

War crimes and atrocities in Syria - a common sense approach

According to the BBC, the UN bureaucrats are now trying to implicate Syrian President Assad in war crimes. According to UN Commissioner Navi Pillay "the scale of viciousness of the abuses being perpetrated by elements on both sides almost defies belief" and evidence indicated responsibility "at the highest level of government, including the head of state".  Notice the nuance?  Both sides have perpetrated atrocities, but the evidence only "points to the highest levels of government" and, just in case somebody had any doubts, Mrs Pillay adds "including the head of state".

One might wonder whether this accusation against Assad personally might be based on the so-called doctrine of "command responsibility" but the answer is clearly "no".  After all since Mrs. Pillay referred to "evidence" and it is unlikely that she just meant by that "evidence indicating that Assad was the President of Syria".  So what kind of "evidence" pointing "directly at the head of state" could she have?

Written orders by Assad to commit war crimes?
Radio intercepts of Assad ordering war crimes?
Witnesses testifying that Assad gave criminal orders?
Witnesses testifying that they saw Assad commit war crimes personally?

As soon as we think about that it becomes quite obvious that what Mrs Pillay has is nothing or, more accurately, all she has is the usual mix of rumors, assumptions, and the usual assortment of testimonies amounting to little more than simple hearsay.

Now, there is no doubt in my mind that unspeakable atrocities were, indeed, committed by both sides.  This is not only normal, this is inevitable.  Any civil war will inevitably result in atrocities.  Since I wrote a full article on this topic (entitled "A few basic reminders about wars, civil wars and human right") I will not repeat it all here other than saying that there is no such thing as a civil war without atrocities.  In fact, there is no such thing as war - civil or international - without atrocities.  To deny that, or say that it is possible to have wars without atrocities, is simply not to understand the very nature of war.

I fully agree with the the words of the chief American prosecutor at Nuremberg, Robert H. Jackson, who said the the crime of aggression (to initiate a civil or international war) is the ultimate crime because "it contains within itself the accumulated evil" of all the other war crimes.  I therefore conclude the party most guilty of all the crimes committed during a war is the one starting the war because wars always produce atrocities and because absent such an initiation of war no crimes would have been committed.  In other words, I submit that it is logical to conclude that it is the side which triggered the civil war which is - by definition - most guilty for all the atrocities committed in the course of this war by all the parties, even the "other sides'" atrocities and war crimes.

The other point which I want to make here is this: historically, when orders have been given to commit atrocities there is very rarely any evidence of those orders coming form the top.  For example, in the case of Nazi Germany, the so-called "Wannsee Conference Protocol" is open to many possible interpretations and there is really no hard evidence at all that Hitler ever gave an explicit order to commit any genocide.

[Side note: This actually makes the entire Nuremberg trial a rather bizarre event.  Think about it: the Bolsheviks (especially Lenin and Trotsky) openly and officially gave orders to take hostages, execute civilians and openly defended terrorism, while the Anglos committed atrocities worldwide, invented concentration camps (Boer war), used slavery at a massive scale in the USA, "multi-genocided" an entire continent (Native Americans), used nukes on Japanese cities, deliberately firebombed German civilians, etc. and yet these powers got to judge the Nazis for their (very real) atrocities even though it was impossible to establish the personal responsibility of most Nazi dignitaries.  Still, I think that Nuremberg trials was useful because it raised many important question even if the answers it gave were dubious at best]

Similarly, the recent trials of Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic or Nikolae Ceausescu and other "ex-allies turned villain" have always resulted in cases of obvious "victor's justice" in which politically pre-judged individuals are tried by kangaroo courts.  This is not to say that the forces under the command of these men did not commit atrocities - just that there is zero real evidence that these men personally actually gave any such orders.

It is much easier to prosecute actual executioners, those who personally participated in war crimes and atrocities.  But the "big guys" - top officials or heads of state - are usually removed the the actual killers by several layers of command authority.  So at the very best, one can charge them with failure to protect and of criminal negligence (via the doctrine of "command responsibility").

Personally, I very much doubt that head of states actually often give any criminal orders to commit atrocities, at least since 1945.  This is not just a matter of protecting themselves from future prosecutions, but also because this is bad PR and because atrocities are usually counter-productive anyway.

There are, of course, the various cases of mass atrocities in Africa, ranging from the infamous Radio des Mille Collines in Rwanda to the kind of grotesque atrocities the world witnessed in Sierra Leone, where mid to high level leaders did clearly give genocidal orders.  But these are cases of basically psychopathic leaders who cannot be considered typical heads of state.

Keep in mind that the UN does not have its own intelligence service.  It cannot intercept phone-calls, letters, emails or anything else.  Of course, there are a number of powers (global and regional) which could share intelligence with the UN.  The problem is that any government or agency with the capabilities to pass on intelligence to the UN is also - by definition - perfectly capable of severely manipulating the intelligence it shares or even of completely make up non-existing facts and stories (WMD in Iraq anybody?).

So all the UN really can get is the testimony of witnesses and "open source" public information, such as newspaper articles.  Again, at the very best this can yield local anecdotes and the identities of local executioners.  Not real evidence against the the big guys running the state.

So should we dismiss the UN report and just say that both sides have committed atrocities?

No.  Why? 

Because whatever atrocities the government forces have committed they are at least not proud of them, they do not present them as justice, much less so divine justice.  Whereas the Wahabi liver-eaters are not only extremely proud of their atrocities, they also claim to commit them in the name of God, hence the endless streams of beheading and shooting videos on the Internet showing large crowds of people gathered together to witness "Islamic Justice" at the hands of local officials followed by execution against the backdrop of a hysterical mob screaming Allahu Akbar!  Talk about "command responsibility":  these executions are ordered by "Islamic" "courts" presided by "Islamic" "judges" who are all well-know, recognized state officials and not some masked death squad leaders of local commanders acting on their own initiative.

Nobody in his right mind would compare the actions of  Canadian Luka Magnotta (real name:"Eric Clinton Kirk Newman")  who dismembered a student with the regular chopping off limbs and heads which regularly occurs in Saudi Arabia: in the first case we are dealing with the actions of a deranged maniac while in the second case, we are dealing with the medieval barbarity of an official law system, backed by the state and presented as ordained by God.  Likewise, we cannot compare the atrocities committed by the government forces and the insurgency because in the former case they are never upheld as normative while the the second case they are also presented as ordained by God.

But the UN, of course, puts the bulk of the blame on Assad, with no real evidence and against the principles basic common sense.

And yet my beef is not with the UN.  Having personally worked at the UN for several years I know the system and I expect nothing else of it.  The folks that really disgust me are all the academics, politicians, journalists, bloggers and self-righteous armchair strategists who first fully support a violence uprising and then express outrage when government forces commit atrocities even though supporting the former meant accepting the latter.  Likewise, I despise those doubleplusgoodthinkers who always will accuse the government forces of atrocities while systematically looking away from the atrocities committed by the putative "good guys".  These hypocrites are cowards who do not have the basic intellectual courage to accept the fact that there are no good guys in a civil war or, more accurately, that the ratio of good to bad guys very rapidly becomes pretty even in all parties involved as soon as a civil war starts.

The Saker

My hypothesis as to why three FBI agents ended up murdering Ibragim Todashev

RT TV is getting better and better, mostly thanks to the truly excellent reporters they hire. And no, I don't mean Larry King (Larry King Now), though hiring him was a nice PR coup, but rather folks like Peter Lavelle (Cross Talk) and Abby Martin (Breaking the Set) who talk to the right people and ask the right questions. This time, I want to draw your attention to a most interesting interview of Reni Manukian, the wife of Ibragim Todashev, the Chechen young man recently murdered by three FBI agents in Orlando Florida (usually I would put a link to the Wikipedia article about Todashev here, but in this case the article is so full of lies and crude propaganda that I will use the "least bad" English source I could find, the Orlando Sentinel).  First, listen to that most interesting interview:


Amazing, no?  There are all the signs of a (botched!) cover-up and practically nobody cares (except the ACLU).  Why?  Is it because it is "well-known" that "all Chechens are terrorists"?

In fact, the case of the Tsarnaev brothers and Todashev could not be more different.  If the Tsarnaev brother had, indeed, been flagged by the Russian security services as linked to Islamist terrorist groups, the Todashev family is well-known in Grozny and several of its members are public officials.  In fact, the Todashev family was anything but linked to any terrorist groups.  So what happened?

Here is my personal guess:

Both the Tsarnaev brothers and Todashev were involved in mixed martial arts.  For Chechens, this is about as original, as playing basket-ball for Americans.  This is not some sign of  some "aggressive disposition" or an indicator that one is about to become a terrorist.  The Caucasus has a long and proud tradition of marital arts (mostly wrestling, but also Russian Sambo) and training in an MMA gym is basically a manly way to say fit.

It appears that Todashev met Tsarnaev at a gym in Boston and that the two became not friends, but acquaintances.  Again, this is hardly surprising, MMA fighters are mostly friendly people and two exiled Chechens would easily spot each other and exchange a few nice words.  I would argue that the fact that Todashev and Tsarnaev clearly came from two opposite sides of the Chechen ideological divide would indicate that they probably never had any serious conversations, much less so about politics.

Then there are the accusations that Todashev was a violent character because in a road-rage incident he was heard screaming "'You say something about my mother, I will kill you!'" and because he got into a fight with two men over a parking space.

Reni Manukian and Ibragim Todashev before their marriage

Let me break you the news: you do not tell any man from the Caucasus that he is a "motherfucker", that *can* get you killed.  This does not at all mean that the Caucasian men is particularly violent, it just means that for the people of the Caucasus mothers and motherhood are sacred. Of course, in a society where nothing at all is sacred, the very concept of "sacred" is hard to comprehend.  As for the second incident, it just goes to show that a Chechen young man will not hesitate to fight against two other guys.  So what?!  These are *Chechens* for heaven's sake!  Not only to they take some insults very seriously, they also consider it an absolute dishonor to run away even if the other side has the advantage in numbers.  In my opinion, these incidents show nothing besides maybe a lack of cultural understanding on the part of Todashev: somebody should have explained to him that Americans can spend 20 minutes screaming "fuck you motherfucker!!" at each other - practically nose to nose - without exchanging a single blow.

So what happened with the FBI agents?

I suspect something similar.  The agents probably showed up full of themselves, aggressive, filled to the brim with unspent testosterone.  It is most likely that these boneheads believed that "Chechens are terrorists" and that they did not like Todashev one bit.  Why?  Because being a Chechen Todashev probably did not show them the typical submissive and demure attitude these FBI agents are used to get from their compatriots.  He probably denied knowing anything and when they "put on the pressure" as they are used to, he probably showed them a great deal of disrespect.  At which point one of the agents apparently decided to punch him which, instead of terrifying Todashev, probably resulted in him immediately striking back after which the terrified FBI agents all pulled their guns and shot Todashev in a mix of terror and outrage at his insubordination.

What about Todashev's knee?  Could he have punched an FBI agent even though he was absolutely sure that with his sick knee he would never overpower three FBI agents?  Of course!  The condition of his knee does prove that his body was no "deadly weapon" but it most definitely does not prove that Todashev would not fight back if punched.  Again, this guy is Chechen and it is very much in the Chechen national culture and ethos not to accept violence or abuse without fighting back.  A man's honor means much more to them than the consequences of getting beat up or even killed.

I see no signs of a big mystery or conspiracy around Todashev's death.  What we have is an example of what happens when poorly educated and boneheaded FBI thugs are trusted with a mission requiring not machismo or intimidation, but a basic understanding of the culture of the subject to be interviewed.  All the rest is just a typical case of American SNAFU/FUBAR featuring a clumsy cover-up and a constantly changing official narrative.

This is still an absolutely unacceptable outrage: an innocent man was murdered by FBI officials because of his ethnicity and their lack of culture.  Even if every single word I have written above is 100% wrong, the fact remains that the official narrative admits that three (or more?) specially trained FBI agents for the Counter-Terrorism division could not handle a single limping young man and had to shoot him seven times to subdue him.  This is absolutely and self-evidently ridiculous.   I am happy to see that the mostly "sleepy" ACLU has finally decided to take on this case and demand some answers.  Let's just hope that the ACLU and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) will have the staying power to demand a full investigation and that they will not be bullied by Uncle Sam into giving up.

The Saker

40 human beings are force-fed everyday in Guantánamo Bay - see for yourself what this procedure looks like (UPDATED!)

As Ramadan begins, more than 100 hunger-strikers in Guantánamo Bay continue their protest. More than 40 of them are being force-fed. A leaked document sets out the military instructions, or standard operating procedure, for force-feeding detainees. In this four-minute film made by Human Rights organization Reprieve and Bafta award-winning director Asif Kapadia, US actor and rapper Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def), experiences the procedure:
 
UPDATE:

Today I came across another video, a response to the one above, which aims to show that being force fed through the nose is no big deal.  The least I can do is to also post it here and hope that somebody will clarify the apparent contradiction between the two videos:

The Saker

100 days of the Guantanamo hunger strike

A few basic reminders about wars, civil wars and human rights

Robert recently posted the following comment on this blog:

Manicheanism tends to take over with civil wars. Both sides tend to believe all that is good is with them and all that is evil with the other and this usually leads to fiendish atrocities on both sides. The media often then gives selective reporting of atrocities by the side they favour. In a war with a foreign enemy you can respect the other guy because he's fighting for his country but in a civil war you are fighting an enemy within and it becomes bitter and cruel because each side regards the other as traitors who are destroying the country.

 I think that he is absolutely right and I feel that I want to add a few observations of my own to this words.  But first, let me remind everybody of a little-know fact: according to the fundamental positions of the Nuremberg Tribunal the worst crime possible is not genocide or any other crime against humanity.  The worst possible crime is the crime of *aggression* because, according to the experts who set up the Nuremberg Tribunal, the crime of aggression "contains" all the other crimes (by the way, the International Criminal Court takes the same position).  In the words of the chief American prosecutor at Nuremberg, Robert H. Jackson,

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

 I think that this is an absolutely crucial insight and it is a bittersweet irony that it came from a scholar from the USA which is, beyond any possible doubt, the nation which waged the most wars of aggression of any nation in mankind's history.

I submit that this argument is also very much applicable to civil wars because civil wars are, by their very nature and inherently, far more vicious and prone to result in atrocities than conventional international conflicts.  I can only repeat Robert's words:

In a war with a foreign enemy you can respect the other guy because he's fighting for his country but in a civil war you are fighting an enemy within and it becomes bitter and cruel because each side regards the other as traitors who are destroying the country.

The Western propaganda machine has done its best to bolt out this idea for the public consciousness and discourse.  Why?  Because of all this "humanitarian intervention" nonsense.  The Western recipe for war is really extremely simple:

Find out whatever issue is upsetting a sizable minority of the public, then support that agenda and foster demonstrations.  When these demonstrations happen, make sure that a few cops and demonstrators get killed.  The more violence the better.  Then encourage an armed insurrection by the opposition and as soon as the government forces use force to crack down on the (now armed) opposition, scream to high heavens about "human rights violations", atrocities, etc.  Then, all you have left to do is intervene, either indirectly or even directly.

Simple, no?

And the best part of this tactic is that while a few atrocities might be false flags, or exaggerations, or even complete fabrications, the real atrocities will *INEVITABLY* begin to happen.  All you need to do is to grossly inflate the atrocities of the government forces and minimize or even better, totally ignore, the atrocities of the opposition.  Now, how hard is that when the entire corporate press is completely under your control?  Very easy, really!

This is what happened in Iraq, in Romania, in Bosnia, in Kosovo, in Chechnia, in Libya and now in Syria.  This is also what is possibly going to take place very soon in Iran.

Indeed, according to Russian sources, the MEK are preparing for a series of terrorist attacks in Tehran and other major cities during the upcoming elections.  While the "Gucci Revolution" of Mr. Mousavi and his patron and boss Rafsanjani lacked the needed level of violence (this is why the Basij and cops were plenty enough to contain it), the upcoming terrorist attacks will have as a goal to force the government to use the Pasdaran to impose law and order.  At that point, it will be easy to whine and yell about all sorts of atrocities and horrors (whether real or imaginary).

There is another idea which the western propaganda machine is trying to bolt out form the public consciousness and discourse.  Simply put, this is my thesis:  in a pre-civil war or civil war situation the government side has NO interest in committing atrocities whereas the opposition/insurgency has a HUGE interest in generating atrocities.

No, I am not saying that Ceausescu, Saddam Hussein, Milosevic, Gaddafi or Assad are tender-hearted doves who would weep over every innocent killed or that they are highly principled men of honor whose ethics and morals which would never allow them to commit an evil act.  Nope.  In fact, all these were ruthless individuals, with a sense of compassion and mercy as developed as the one of a blue-green algae.  The point is that they all perfectly understood that any atrocities committed their watch would be disastrous for them.

You want an example?

Take Ratko Mladic.  The so-called "butcher Srebrenica" and "genocidal war criminal".  What did he do the day his forces entered Srebrenica?  He drove to Srebrenica and addressed the surviving civilians and prisoners of war while on camera and surrounded by the press crops, and then he personally guaranteed their safety.  Now, ask yourself a basic question: no matter how evil you think Mladic was, do you really believe that he would show up in person and deliver such a message right in front of numerous cameras if he had any intention of massacring anybody?  Of course not!  He would have made darn sure to be as far away as possible to generate what the CIA calls "plausible deniability".  And then, let's look just one step further: at the time of the so-called "Srebrenica genocide" who was winning the war and who was losing it?  The fact is that by 1995 the Bosnian-Serbs had comprehensively won the civil war.  In this context, does anybody seriously believe that killed a large number of Bosnian-Muslims was in their interest?

Of course not.  So this is why the corporate press inevitably describes these people as "beasts" "monsters" "bloodthirsty Chetniks" or equally "bloodthirsty Shabiha".  The idea here is not only to demonize, but to explain away seemingly illogical acts by suggesting that these people are such bloodthirsty monsters that they are unable to rationally assess their situation and that they are compelled to torture and murder just because of their bestial and maniacal nature.  This, of course, is utter nonsense.  Why?

Because while it is true that in any country, ethnic group or religion you will find a percentage X of people who will gladly indulge in horrors, massacres and other unspeakable atrocities, these people are very rarely in command positions and, when they are, then they still do not lose sight of their own self-interests.  There is a reason why Lenin, Hitler, Churchill and all the American Presidents liked to kiss small children: it is to appear kind and decent.  Even when they are genocidal maniacs, they engage in this kind of behavior only when they feel that it will give them a tangible advantage, not just because they like to torture or kill.

Notice that in Syria, Assad has just re-subordinated the Shabiha to the regular armed forces precisely to try to stop them from committing atrocities.  This, by the way, exactly what Karadzic and Mladic were trying to do with Serbian irregulars in Bosnia, but now all this is down the memory hole...

Bottom line:, civil wars truly bring out the worst in people, and they provide an ideal environment for the small number of real  bloodthirsty maniacs to indulge in atrocities.  And this is why I submit that the crime of initiating a civil war is even a worse crime than the crime of international aggression.

This still leaves an important question: can there be norms of behavior in civil wars or do we simply have to accept that any civil war will inevitably result in a completely uninhibited orgy of unspeakable horrors for which nobody should be answerable?

Here I can only offer my subjective opinion, and I freely admit that I cannot prove my point.  I want to share it with you only as a basis for discussion:

I believe that the killing of civilians in modern wars, both civil and international is simply inevitable.  In an attempt to minimize so-called "collateral damage" specialists of international humanitarian law and the laws of war have come up with the concept of "proportionality".  The basic idea here is that you not bomb a hospital just because there is a sniper hiding on its roof (well, hospitals should be protected anyway, and no armed combatants should have access to them, but nevermind, you get the idea).  It is a good idea, but not a practical one.

Any good military commander feels a profound sense of responsibility for the men under his command.  In many cultures, the commanding officer is considered morally responsible before the parents of his soldiers for their well-being and survival.  And many officers, in particularly good ones, take this responsibility very very seriously.  It is often the case that generals sometimes address their soldiers (though not officers) by such words as "my son".  For such a commander the life of only one of his soldiers is far more important that the lives of even many enemies, in particular during a civil war where the hatred for the other side is particularly strong.

Ask yourself this simple question: if you are the commander of, say, and armored company, and while you pass a village your soldiers get shot from the rooftops, while you send your men in to do a house-to-house search (and inevitably suffer even more casualties) or will you call in an artillery strike?

Or this: you are the commander of a special operations unit deep inside the enemy territory and while you are moving at night you stumble upon young girl watching over a herd of goats.  She sees you and your men.  What do you do?  If you let her go, she will report you to her village.  If you take her with you, she won't be able to follow you and by her very presence she will compromise your security.  Or do you quietly slit her throat and hide her body?

These are all real situations, which were shared with me by officers who had to take these decisions and who still suffer internally from what they had to do, but they did that to protect that which was the most precious thing for them: the lives of their own men whom they felt responsible for first and foremost.

And then there is this: in the good old days, wars used to have fronts and even battlefields.  Armies had the good taste of fighting in the fields near little known villages like Austerlitz or Borodino.  Now, the very nature of war has completely changed.

To explain this, I will use an metaphor: traditionally wars looked very much like a American football game: a line of scrimmage, two lines of deployed adversaries, a clearly identifiable "front" and "rear".  Modern warfare is much more like European soccer: both teams are deployed all over the field, and each player "covers" one other player, while the game is constantly in motion.  What does that mean for civilians?  That there is no more FEBA (forward edge of battle area) and no "front".  As soon as hostilities begin the full strategic depth of each side becomes as much part of the area of operations, of the battlefield, as any other.  In other words, from now on combat operations will always and inevitably happen right next to and in the middle of civilian areas.  This is why the argument of "hiding behind civilians" is so stupid: civilians will be everywhere, you simply cannot fight at all unless you accept the fact that you will fight in civilians areas.

All this is inevitable for any modern war, civil or international.

Civil wars, however, do have their own unique horrors.

It is not politically correct to say so, but in most civil wars you do not take prisoners.  At all.  Zero.  Why?

Well, for one thing the parties to the civil war rarely have the infrastructure to process and hold large groups of prisoners.  Then, remember what Robert said, in civil wars your enemy is not a patriot of his country, he is a traitor to your country.  And what do traitors deserve?  Yup.  Death.  That is a universally accepted idea.  Finally, in a highly mobile combat environment there is simply not enough time to deal with the issues of prisoners.  So what normally happens is this: you try not to make prisoners in the first place.  If you still end up taking some prisoners, you quickly interrogate them (we are talking for 10-15 mins per prisoner unless the guy caught is really important), and then you shoot them and leave.

This is how it is done.  I am not saying that this is right or that I approve of it.  But this is how it is done by all sides in every conflict.  This, sadly, is the norm.  Again, if you don't like that, if these facts make you uncomfortable, don't start civil wars because this is how civil wars are fought.  All of them.

So, are there things which are truly beyond the pale even in civil wars?

Yes.

Things like torture, rape, deliberate and useless execution of civilians.  Not only are these simply unjustifiable - there can be no military rationale for such acts - but they are also extremely corrupting for the units engaged in them.  Units who engage in these kind of practices always end up losing their cohesion and discipline and the necessary military hierarchy rapidly deteriorates and commanders and commanded all become accomplices.

By the way, the worst offenders in this kind of crimes are typically poorly trained and poorly commanded units.  While a special operations commander might not hesitate to slit a girls throat to protect his men, he will never allow his men to engage in such behavior or, even less so, engage in it himself.

What about torture to extract information?

Well, as I just said, poorly trained and poorly commanded units might think that torturing an enemy prisoner might yield some important information.  But the reality is that 99% of the prisoners have very little information worth sharing and that 99% of these prisoners will be so terrified and depressed anyway that they will talk hoping that this might save their life (it won't) and it makes no sense to spend more than 10-15 minutes to interrogate them.  Sure, those are unlikely to be a pleasant 10-15 mins, you can expect threats, screams, punches, slaps, kicks and rifle-butts in your face, but nothing too gory or medieval.  As for the high value prisoners, they will be sent away to be interrogated by specialists and, unlike what these morons in Guantanamo thought, the best way to "break them open" is not at all to torture them, but to outsmart and out-think them.

Again, none of the above applies to irregular units formed of self-proclaimed "patriots" who really are only poorly trained criminal thugs who love to torture and kill out of viciousness.  Yes, they will also be out there during a civil war, but they will not be acting under orders of the regular military command who typically will feel an intense dislike and distrust for them (and rightly so, I would add).

I thought that it was important to write to these basic reminders of what wars and civil wars are really like.  We are all too conditioned by a "CNN view" of wars which has no resemblance with reality at all.  And I hope that the next time you hear some pious outrage about some horrible dictator and "new Hitler" engaging in all kinds of atrocities you will keep these few considerations in your mind to try to make sense of what has really happened or not.

The Saker

PS: Having thought about it all, I have to add a small caveat here.  What I wrote above does not apply to Africa where, for a number of reasons I do not want to discuss here, the historical record seems to indicate that wanton atrocities are the norm and where the very concept of "regular armed forces" is rather removed from reality.

Georgia ignores close to a million pleas and plans to execute Troy Davis tomorrow

Georgia plans to murder Troy Davis tomorrow ignoring the pleas of almost one million people (including yours truly).

Disgusting beyond words.

I can only think of how right George Clemenceau was when he said:

America is the only nation in history which has gone miraculously directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.

They Are Going To Kill Troy Davis

The DOJ's escalating criminalization of speech

by Glenn Greenwald for Salon.com

Over the past several years, the Justice Department has increasingly attempted to criminalize what is clearly protected political speech by prosecuting numerous individuals (Muslims, needless to say) for disseminating political views the government dislikes or considers threatening. The latest episode emerged on Friday, when the FBI announced the arrest and indictment of Jubair Ahmad, a 24-year-old Pakistani legal resident living in Virginia, charged with "providing material support" to a designated Terrorist organization (Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT)).

What is the "material support" he allegedly gave? He produced and uploaded a 5-minute video to YouTube featuring photographs of U.S. abuses in Abu Ghraib, video of armored trucks exploding after being hit by IEDs, prayer messages about "jihad" from LeT's leader, and -- according to the FBI's Affidavit -- "a number of terrorist logos." That, in turn, led the FBI agent who signed the affidavit to assert that "based on [his] training and experience, it is evident that the video . . . is designed as propaganda to develop support for LeT and to recruit jihadists to LeT." The FBI also claims Ahmad spoke with the son of an LeT leader about the contents of the video and had attended an LeT camp when he was a teenager in Pakistan. For the act of uploading that single YouTube video (and for denying that he did so when asked by the FBI agents who came to his home to interrogate him), he faces 23 years in prison.

Let's be very clear about the key point: the Constitution -- specifically the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment -- prohibits the U.S. Government from punishing someone for the political views they express, even if those views include the advocacy of violence against the U.S. and its leaders. One can dislike this legal fact. One can wish it were different. But it is the clear and unambiguous law, and has been since the Supreme Court's unanimous 1969 decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio, which overturned the criminal conviction of a Ku Klux Klan leader who had publicly threatened violence against political officials in a speech.

In doing so, the Brandenberg Court struck down as unconstitutional an Ohio statute (under which the KKK leader was prosecuted) that made it a crime to "advocate . . . the duty, necessity, or propriety of crime, sabotage, violence, or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform." Such advocacy -- please read the part in bold -- cannot be a crime because it is protected by the First Amendment. The crux of the Court's holding: "the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force" (emphasis added; for more on the First Amendment law protecting this right to advocate violence, see my discussion here).

To put this less abstractly, and as I've noted before, a person has -- and should and must have -- the absolute free speech right to advocate ideas such as this:

For decades, the U.S. Government has been engaging in violence and otherwise interfering in the Muslim world. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslim men, women and children have died as a result. There is no end in sight to this American assault on the Muslim world and those of its client states. Therefore, it is not only the right, but the duty, of Muslims to engage in violence against Americans as a means of self-defense and to deter further violence against Muslims. That is the only available means for fighting back against the world's greatest military superpower. The only alternative is continuing passive submission to this onslaught of violence aimed at Muslims.

One may find that idea objectionable or even repellent, but does anyone believe that someone should be prosecuted for writing that paragraph? Anyone who would favor prosecution for that doesn't understand or believe in the Constitution, as those ideas are pure political speech protected by the First Amendment, every bit as much as: the climate crisis now justifies violent attacks on polluting corporations; or capitalism is so destructive that the use of force in service of a Communist Revolution is compelled; or "if our President, our Congress, our Supreme Court, continues to suppress the white, Caucasian race, it's possible that there might have to be some revengeance taken" (Brandenberg); or such is the tyranny of the Crown that taking up arms against it is not merely a right but the duty of all American patriots (The American Revolution). The Jerusalem Post just fired one of its columnists, a Jewish leftist who wrote that Palestinian violence against Israel is "justified" because they have the "right to resist" the occupation; is he guilty of a crime of materially supporting Terrorism? Should Ward Churchill, widely accused of having justified the 9/11 attack (or Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who did the same) have been indicted?

Judging from the description of Ahmad's video in the FBI Affidavit (Ahmad's YouTube account has been removed), the video in question does not go nearly as far as the clearly protected views referenced in the prior paragraph, as it does not explicitly advocate violence at all; indeed, it appears not to advocate that anyone do anything. Rather, the FBI believes it is evocative of such advocacy ("designed as propaganda to develop support for LeT"), which makes this prosecution even more troubling. Apparently, if you string together video and photographs (or words) in a certain way as to make the DOJ think that you're implicitly trying to "develop support" for a Terrorist group -- based on the political ideas you're expressing -- you risk decades of imprisonment. Is it possible to render the ostensible right of "free speech" more illusory than this?

This case is not an aberration; as indicated, prosecuting Muslims for pure political speech is an increasing weapon of the DOJ. In July, former Obama OLC official Marty Lederman analyzed the indictment of a 22-year-old former Penn State student for -- in the FBI's words -- "repeatedly using the Internet to promote violent jihad against Americans" by posting comments on a "jihadist" Internet forum including "a comment online that praised the [October, 2010] shootings" at the Pentagon and Marine Corps Museum and "a number of postings encouraging attacks within the United States." He also posted links to a bomb-making manual.

Regarding the part of the indictment based on "encouraging violent attacks," Lederman -- who, remember, was an Obama DOJ lawyer until very recently -- wrote: it "does not at first glance appear to be different from the sort of advocacy of unlawful conduct that is entitled to substantial First Amendment protection under the Brandenburg line of cases." As for linking to bomb-making materials, Lederman wrote: "the First Amendment generally protects the publication of publicly available information, even where there is a chance or a likelihood that one or more readers may put such information to dangerous, unlawful use." Lederman's discussion of the law and its applicability to that prosecution contains some caveats (and also raises some other barriers to these kinds of prosecutions), but he is clear that the aspect of the indictment based on the alleged advocacy and encouragement of violence in the name of jihad "would appear to be very vulnerable to a First Amendment challenge." That's government-lawyer-ese for: this prosecution is attempting to criminalize free political speech.

Perhaps the most extreme example of this trend is the fact that a Pakistani man in New York was prosecuted and then sentenced to almost six years in prison for doing nothing more than including a Hezbollah news channel in the package of cable channels he offered for sale to consumers in Brooklyn. On some perverse level, though, all of these individuals are lucky that they are being merely prosecuted rather than targeted with due-process-free assassination. As I documented last month, that is what is being done to U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki due -- overwhelmingly if not exclusively -- to the U.S. Government's fear of his purely political views.

If the First Amendment was designed to do anything, it was designed to prevent the government from imprisoning people -- or killing them -- because of the political ideas they promote. Yet that is clearly what the Obama administration is doing with increasing frequency and aggression.

There is one last point that bears emphasis here. Numerous prominent politicians from both political parties -- Michael Mukasey, Howard Dean, Wes Clark, Tom Ridge, Ed Rendell, Fran Townsend, Rudy Giuliani, and many others -- have not only been enthusiasticaly promoting and advocating on behalf of a designated terrorist organization (MEK of Iran), but they have been receiving substantial amounts of cash from that Terrorist group as they do so. There is only one list of "designated Terrorist organizations" under the law, and MEK is every bit as much on that list as LeT or Al Qaeda are. Yet you will never, ever see those individuals being indicted by the Obama DOJ for their far more extensive -- and paid -- involvement with MEK than, for instance, Ahmad has with LeT. That's because: (1) the criminal law does not apply to politically powerful elites, only to ordinary citizens and residents (indeed, many of those MEK-shilling politicians cheer on broad and harsh application of the "material support" statute when applied to others), and (2) MEK is now devoted to fighting against a government disliked by the U.S. (Iran), so they've become (like Saddam Hussein when fighting Iran and bin Laden when fighting the Soviet Union) the Good Terrorists whom the U.S. likes and supports.

Nonetheless, MEK remains on the list of the designated Terrorist groups, and lending them material support -- which certainly includes paid shilling for them -- is every bit as criminal (at least) as the behavior in the above-discussed indictments. As usual, though, "Terrorism" means nothing other than what the U.S. Government wants it to mean at any given moment. The evisceration of the rule of law evidenced by this disparate treatment is as odious as the First Amendment assault itself.

UPDATE: A couple of commenters, such as abhisaha, argue that the government's prosecution of Ahmad has been made more plausible by last year's Supreme Court decision in Holder v. Humanitarian Law (which I wrote about, among other places, here, when I interviewed the plaintiffs' counsel). It's certainly not an unreasonable point, except (1) that case did not overrule or purport to overrule Brandenberg, which remains good law; and (2) Holder itself emphasized that "pure speech" remains protected. It did, however, allow that one "may not coordinate the speech with the groups on the terrorist list," though whether Ahmad did that is far from clear, as opposed to the MEK advocates, who quite likely would be found to have done so virtue of those payments (nor would it have any bearing on the indictment discussed by Lederman). In any event, Holder is easily one of the worst free speech decisions in several decades, and the fact that prosecutions are now being brought that hinge on a broad reading of it only underscore how relentless is the free speech assault from the Obama DOJ (which, naturally, vigorously advocated for the broad "material support" interpretation upheld in Holder).

Glorious victory for the invincible Tsahal!!

Commentary by Mark Regev (or was it Barak Obama? don't matter - same thing):

It is good to see that the glorious and invincible IDF (aka 'Tsahal') continues to maintain a clear military edge over the terrorists and enemies of democracy, civilization and progress. As the only democracy in the Middle-East continues to be surrounded by millions of barbarians representing an existential threat to the peace-loving Jewish state of Holocaust survivors, and as the specter of a Second Holocaust looms big over our eternal friends, the SIX MILLION (!) Jewish people of Israel, it is absolutely vital that the eternal alliances between the USA and Israel remain as strong as ever, to the point of making the two states indistinguishable.  Let the murderous thugs like Ahmadinejad and the "A-Team of terrorism" - Hezbollah - know that the young men and woman of the Jewish state of Israel will stand strong and proud in defense of the enlightened values of Jewish supremacy, religion-based racism and full-spectrum brutality dominance (aka the Dahiya doctrine).  At a time when the New Antisemitism is on the rise - "The belly is still fertile that gave birth to the vile beast" - and when millions of innocent Jews worldwide are threatened by a Second Holocaust, it is reassuring and deeply comforting to see that those who made the desert green in the land without people for a people without land, are now standing as one in defense of our common values.  Let the Antisemites and self-hating Jews worldwide behold how their terrorist friends are dealt with by the enlightened security forces of Eretz Yisrael acting in self-defense.

Sacrilege, rape, torture, murder and other atrocities continue in Bahrain

by Zafar Bangash for Crescent International

Saudi-Bahraini atrocities against peaceful protesters

Given its tiny size (1.215 million population and 290 sq. miles of territory), Bahrain would not warrant a second glance yet its un-elected, tribal rulers rub shoulders with leaders at the world stage. Originally from Kuwait, the Khalifah family moved to Bahrain displacing Banu ‘Utbah nearly 200 years ago. Since then, the Khalifahs have ruled the tiny island as a family fiefdom but always sought external support to maintain their grip on power. Old habits, especially bedouin habits die hard. Bahrain has been under Iranian, British and now American-Saudi protection.

This brings us to the current situation where an uprising that started on February 14, is being ruthlessly suppressed with the help of Saudi and Emirati troops as well as mercenaries from Pakistan, Jordan and Yemen. The brutal crackdown also has US support. In fact, there was a quid pro quo between the Saudis and the Americans. In return for Saudi help in pushing the Arab League resolution to launch attacks on Libya, the US would turn a blind eye to the Saudi invasion and occupation of Bahrain. The Americans, too, wanted to crush the people’s movement for fundamental rights in Bahrain because it would have put at risk the US Fifth Fleet that uses Bahrain as its regional base. The Americans occupy one-third of the island; local Bahrainis are not permitted to set foot there. The Americans’ needs are taken care of not by local Bahrainis but expatriate workers from Pakistan, India and elsewhere who are treated as little more than slaves.

Ships of the US Fifth Fleet prowl the Persian Gulf in a ceaseless attempt to intimidate regional countries, especially Iran whose independent policies are viewed with fear by the Americans. With America’s large footprint in Bahrain come other demands: free availability of alcohol, nightlife, and other vices. Despite being a 100% Muslim country, the Bahraini rulers are unable to resist American demands. Not surprisingly, Bahrain has numerous night clubs, drinking holes and casinos. In fact, Bahrain came into its own in the 1970s following the eruption of civil war in Lebanon that shut down the Muslim East’s only “enjoyment capital” until then. As if not to be left behind, the Saudis built a causeway, appropriately named the King Fahd Causeway that links mainland Saudi Arabia with Bahrain. Every Thursday evening (start of weekend in the region) thousands of Saudis drive across the causeway to visit Bahraini nightclubs where they drink and partake in other vices that are not openly available in the kingdom.

The causeway has another, altogether sinister purpose as well. In case of threat to the ruling Khalifah family, the Saudis would send troops to rescue them. This is precisely what happened on March 13–14 when an estimated 2,000 Saudi and Emirati troops were rushed to Bahrain to crush the people’s uprising. The overwhelming majority of Bahrainis are Shi‘is while the ruling Khalifah family is Sunni. People were asking for no more than what people elsewhere in the Muslim East have demanded: basic rights and freedom and dignity. And unlike the rebels in Libya, the Bahraini protesters were completely unarmed and peaceful. Men and women came with their children carrying flowers, not guns. Even this was unacceptable to the Khalifahs and their Saudi and American masters. The peaceful protesters were attacked with live ammunition as well as tear gas shells. Some protesters were shot at point blank range. Tanks and armored personnel carriers have also been used to crush cars and smash neighborhoods. At least 30 protesters have been killed, four of them in police custody. This number may appear small but in the context of the island’s overall population, it is significant. Scores of doctors and nurses have been abducted and have simply disappeared because they were treating wounded protesters that happen to be Shi‘i as are the doctors and nurses. Many injured protesters did not seek treatment at the hospitals for fear of being arrested. One Bahraini female poet, Ayat al-Qermezi, was kidnapped, gang-raped and murdered. University professors have also been arrested.

Bahrain is now officially under a state of national security that was imposed when the Saudis invaded and occupied the island state. It is essentially under martial law. Saudi tanks and armored personnel carriers block major intersections; entire Shi‘i neighborhoods are under lock-down. Bahraini security personnel dubbed “Baltajiyah” (thugs) armed with metal bars go around smashing cars and store windows. These acts of vandalism have been secretly captured on camera by the American television network, ABC News. There are police checkpoints all over the country. A midnight-to-early morning curfew is in force and more than 800 Bahraini protesters — all Shi‘is — have been dismissed from their jobs. Tanks are stationed in the center of the capital Manama and at all major intersections.

Despite such atrocities against peaceful protesters, the US and its allies have maintained a studied silence while their wrath is reserved for Colonel Muammar Qaddafi of Libya and Bashar al-Asad of Syria. It seems there is a hierarchy of suffering. If you are from a country whose government the West does not like, you get support and publicity. If you happen to be in a country whose regime is an ally of the West, forget about your rights. You will be arrested, tortured, raped and murdered and nobody in the West would raise a finger.

Acts of sacrilege, rape, torture and murder in Bahrain

Bahraini security forces backed by Saudi troops and their masters in Washington have and continue to perpetrate indescribable crimes against innocent civilians in Bahrain. Those targeted include not only peaceful protesters, but also doctors and nurses treating the injured in hospitals. Poets, teachers and university professors and their family members have also been targeted. The impunity with which Bahraini forces are attacking civilians and the crimes they are committing clearly point to deep collusion with the regimes in Saudi Arabia and the US. The Americans and their allies have gone ballistic over Colonel Muammar Qaddafi’s attacks on protesters in Libya and have sent planes and drones to attack and destroy his installations but are deafeningly silent about well-documented crimes against innocent civilians perpetrated by the unelected minority Bahraini regime.

Saudi troops rushed to Bahrain on March 13 have indulged in wanton acts of vandalism and sacrilege. Masjids have been attacked and destroyed and copies of the Qur’an trampled upon. Muslims rightly take great offense at disrespect to the noble Qur’an as has been witnessed in the case of the extremist American Christian pastor, Terry Jones in Florida whose act of sacrilege has been condemned worldwide. Yet there is near total silence about the Saudis’ acts of sacrilege and desecrations in Bahrain.

Since the invasion of Bahrain by 1,000 Saudi troops (and 1,000 Emirati troops) backed by armored personnel carriers and tanks, they have indulged in wanton acts of destruction, killings and desecrations. The Saudis, pushing their narrow, obscurantist interpretations of Islam have razed masjids in Bahrain’s Bu Quwah locality and deliberately thrown copies of the Qur’an on the floor trampling upon them. Despite these well-documented cases of vandalism and sacrilege, the aged and ailing Saudi King, Abdullah ibn Abdulaziz, has vowed his “full backing” for Bahrain’s ruling Khalifah family. These obscurantist bedouins from the deep recesses of the desert have no legitimacy to rule either in the Arabian Peninsula or Bahrain; the people whom they rule have given them no mandate to do so. The only reason they are in power is because they were agents of the British who installed them on the thrones and now they have transferred their loyalty to the US. They worship America and act at its command. On its part, Washington turns a blind eye to their crimes.

There are other equally troubling crimes the Bahrainis and the Saudis have perpetrated in the island state when people launched peaceful protests for reform in mid-February. Tens of thousands of people accompanied by women and children gathered at Manama’s Pearl Square to press for reform of the political system. They carried flowers that they wanted to give to the Bahraini security forces, reflecting their peaceful intent. Instead, the police and troops fired into unarmed and completely peaceful protesters. Scores were injured or killed. As the protests escalated and it appeared that the Bahraini security forces that have recruited thousands of mercenaries from Pakistan, Jordan, Yemen, and elsewhere into its ranks, are unable to control the surging crowds, Saudi and Emirate troops were rushed in to shore up the regime.

At the risk of offending readers’ sensitivities because of the subject matter, some of the terrible things occurring in Bahrain need to be highlighted. The case of Ayat al-Qermezi, a 20-year-old female poet, is the most shocking. Ayat had composed and recited poems critical of Bahraini Prime Minister Khalifah bin Salman al-Khalifah to the masses assembled in Pearl Square. Soon thereafter, she started receiving threatening emails and letters. Most were laced with profanities. When she referred these to the police, instead of taking her complaint seriously and apprehending the culprits, they insulted and threatened her.

In late March, masked Bahraini troops raided al-Qermezi’s home twice, demanding the family tell them about Ayat’s whereabouts or they would “destroy the house over your heads, by the order of high-ranking officials,” according to her mother’s statement. Following such threats and coercion, al-Qermezi’s family was forced to tell them where she was hiding. Ayat then disappeared and the family heard no word from her. Deeply concerned about this, the family started searching for her. The police were no help; they told the family they had no information about Ayat and tried to force them to confirm through a letter that their daughter had gone missing. In mid-April, al-Qermezi’s family received an anonymous call informing them that Ayat was in a coma at an army Hospital.

At the hospital, doctors confirmed that Ayat had gone into a coma after being raped repeatedly. The physicians’ efforts failed to save her life and she died at the army hospital. Her story has received scant attention in the Western media that goes into a fit of frenzy if any such crime is perpetrated by people opposed to the West. In Bahrain’s case, a blanket of silence has fallen over Ayat’s brutal torture, rape and murder. Even al-Jazeera, the Qatari-based network that claims to be leading the Arab Awakening by its 24/7 coverage of events elsewhere in the Middle East, has been silent about atrocities in Bahrain. There are no grainy videos of atrocities captured on cell-phone cameras that al-Jazeera is so fond of showing of events in Syria and Libya. Ayat’s story is not seen worthy of being reported by the Doha-based network that seems intent on protecting the decrepit monarchies in and around the Persian Gulf including their own in Qatar. Instead, al-Jazeera beams exaggerated reports about what the Syrian or Libyan regimes are allegedly doing to their people.

So far, several other women, including doctors, university professors and students, have been kidnapped or arrested by Bahraini security forces and have similarly disappeared. Masked Bahraini security agents have occupied all hospitals and prevent the injured from being treated. Doctors and nurses wishing to fulfill their professional duty are prevented from doing so. Dr. Richard Sollom, deputy director of Physicians for Human Rights, was so concerned about the abuse of doctors and nurses in Bahrain after his fact-finding mission that he contributed an op-ed piece to the British daily The Independent on April 21. Following his visit to Bahrain — a rare example of independent outside reporting allowed by the regime — Dr. Sollom wrote: “In two decades of conducting human rights investigations in more than 20 countries, I have never seen such widespread and systematic violations of medical neutrality as I did in Bahrain… Ambulances, hospitals and medical clinics as well as its physicians, nurses, and medical staff are all being targeted. It’s pervasive and ongoing. These attacks violate the principle of medical neutrality and are grave breaches of international law.” Doctors around the world have expressed similar shock and outrage.

Since doctors and nurses have had to treat patients that suffered injuries when shot at by Bahraini security forces, this has provided them “unparalleled evidence” of the atrocities committed by the authorities and its forces. “Their knowledge of these atrocities has also made them targets,” says Dr. Sollom. He wrote that more than 32 healthcare professionals have been “abducted” (his words in the original) “over the last two months and are being held incommunicado by security forces.” At the Salmaniyah, the island state’s largest hospital where Bahrain’s leading medical specialists work, “the hospital administration… called doctors and nurses in for appointments, from which they were never seen again. Presumably they are taken to places of detention,” he wrote.

Dr. Sollom specifically mentioned the Criminal Investigations Directorate at Adliya, a notorious detention centre where torture is rampant. His team, however, found that doctors did not have to be taken to detention centres to suffer violent attacks. “We have documented the story of six doctors beaten by security forces in a Salmaniyah staff room. When security forces are capable of such brutality in a hospital, one can only imagine what happens in a detention center,” he wrote in his April 21 piece. Doctors have even been dragged from their homes in the middle of the night and have simply disappeared.

Doctors are supposed to treat patients whoever they are, not locked up because they are caring for supposed dissidents. John Black, president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, said: “These reports of harassment of medical staff in the ongoing unrest in Bahrain, including surgeons trained in the UK, are deeply disturbing. The protection and care of people wounded in conflict is a basic right guaranteed by the Geneva Convention and one that every doctor or medical institution should be free to fulfill.”

Michael Wilks, vice-president of the British Medical Association and a former chair of the ethics committee, said: “The Geneva Convention and international medical ethical standards are absolutely clear — punishing doctors because they are perceived to be treating patients of whom the regime disapproves is completely unacceptable.” Such mistreatment, harassment and torture of doctors and nurses constitute war crimes but we have yet to hear from the champions of human rights in the US or Europe that the Bahraini rulers should be tried for war crimes.

According to a documentary secretly recorded in Bahrain and shown by the American television network, ABC, on April 19, “private companies” in Bahrain have dismissed some 800 employees from work because they participated in anti-government demonstrations. In his report for ABC, Trevor Bormann said most people did not wish to reveal their identity when interviewed for fear of being arrested, but Farida Ghulam whose husband Ibrahim Sharif was arrested and is still held in detention, made no attempt to hide her identity. Bormann pointed out that while the regime tries to give a sectarian twist to the demonstrations, Farida Ghulam and her husband are Sunnis and they are asking for reforms based on respect for people’s rights. Jafar Adam, a youth who was shot in the hip also made no attempt to conceal his identity. He said that the security forces already know his identity since he went to the hospital where they took all his details. Other youth injured in demonstrations — and Bormann showed several of them with bodies pierced with shotgun pellets — were willing to show their wounds but not their faces. They have not been to the hospital for treatment for fear of being arrested and possibly disappearing like scores of other injured people.

The case of Dr. Masaud Jahromi, Chairman of the Engineering Department at Ahlia University in Bahrain, is equally disturbing. A highly respected academic who had obtained his Masters and PhD from Britain, and dedicated his life to academic excellence, was dragged from his bed at 2:30 am by Bahraini security forces on April 14. He has not been involved in any protests. His only “crime” is that like the majority of Bahrain’s population, he is Shia. That as far as the illegitimate Bahraini rulers and their Saudi patrons are concerned is enough to have him arrested, tortured and perhaps killed.

The Bahraini regime is perpetrating terrible crimes against innocent civilians. Life for the overwhelming majority of its citizens has become living hell. Their neighborhoods are under constant surveillance; armored personnel carriers and tanks are stationed on every street corner with security personnel going around smashing cars and property for no apparent reason except to humiliate people. Objecting to such vandalism immediately leads to arrest and disappearances. Even without objecting, it is enough to be a young Shia to be dragged away by the overzealous police that act like the Gestapo.

But do not wait to hear about this on CNN or al-Jazeera. And you will certainly not hear one Western ruler objecting to such barbaric behavior.