2 Non-Israel/Palestine Double Standards

These are two double standards I've heard blurbs about in the news recently. They don't have much to do with the Israel-Palestine thing, if you can believe it.

The first is rather new; the second is pretty old, but a persistent problem.

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Saberi vs. journalists we hold in the same way

We made a big deal about getting Roxana Saberi freed; should we do the same to journalists we have imprisoned? I mean, where are the protests and extensive coverage?

This, like the contrast in coverage of Iran protesters vs. Honduran protesters, makes me worry what the government and press is trying to cook up with regards to Iran. Maybe we won't even try to prove imminent threat and make a WMD charge (if wrong) this time. Maybe the groundwork has been laid for us to go to war with rulers we deem deficient in concessions to our side of an issue, rulers who are generally disagreeable or troublemakers, rulers whose people we deem not sufficiently free, etc.

But, back to the double standard-
Are we Americans acting like Iran in sending journalists to Guantanamo?

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/may/24/world/fg-iraq-journalist24
(two page article)

These are highlighted in the article:
Ibrahim Jassam, a cameraman and photographer for the Reuters news agency
Sami Haj, a cameraman for the Al Jazeera TV network
Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein

How many more are there?

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The School of the Americas/ WHINSEC

I was first introduced to the School of Assassins (Americas) by this guy, I think. I haven’t seen this site 'til I Googled him today, but he is the guy I emailed and got a VHS tape from. An email list I was on gave his name and email and a brief description of the contents. It’s been years. Maybe it was 2000 or 2001? I was horrified and rather surprised there wasn’t more of an outcry such that I’d have heard something about it.

http://www.addictedtowar.com/dorrel.html


Anyway, the School of the Americas graduates dictators and soldiers who would later perpetrate massacres in Central America. Most recently, it was said that the coup leader, Micheletti, who took over in Honduras, is also a graduate of this “school”.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/1/generals_who_led_honduras_military_coup

What is the purpose in this? Nothing would justify such behavior we taught dictators and others, but we generally have motives, regardless if they make sense or not. In the Middle East, we act unjustly because of oil, Holocaust guilt, the appearance of a Western-style government and whatever else. What’s the deal here?

Here’s the watchdog group:
http://www.soaw.org/

Its other name is WHINSEC. And Blackwater is now Xe. How do you re-brand murder? I wonder how that works for them.


A book:
The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas
http://www.amazon.com/School-Americas-Political-Encounters-Interactions/dp/0822333929

Pentagon report says terrorism is speaking out against Gitmo torture tactics

6/6/09 New York Times finally apologizes for false Guantánamo recidivism story

I think this is the story (with recent Editor's note) that is referred to in the above link- "1 in 7 freed detainees rejoins fight, reports says":
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/us/politics/21gitmo.html?_r=1


The first link describes the situation pretty well, though I don't know anything else about the blog.

I found out about this latest apology from NYT by listening to a podcast of Al Jazeera Listening Post 6/17/09 and they made some good points:

-Some detainees weren't picked up on the battlefield, so the "return" is in question.

-The so-called acts of terrorism they "returned to" included writing an op-ed for NYT against detainee treatment at the prison, talking about their abuse in Guantanamo to the media, appearing in film about Guantanamo, like the "Tipton 3." (I don't know if their names were included in the infamous list, it wasn't clear, but this is a film about Guantanamo)

-Also rather sketchy is that this Pentagon report was dated April 7, 2009, but no one knew about it until the NYT printed the May 21 story, which happened to be the same day Obama gave that major speech on closing Guantanamo, followed immediately by Cheney's speech blaming him for future terrorist attacks, essentially.

-This is not the first time. In 2002 the Bush Admin leaked false info about Iraq's nuclear program and Cheney quoted it the same morning in the circular validation of "facts" to gain public support for war in Iraq. Two years later, the NYT said their article on Iraq lacked rigor and should have been more aggressive. Hoyt issued another similar mea culpa for this debacle.

And here is a blog post from someone (again, I don't know anything about the author or blog other than this article) about a year ago noting problems with a similar claim as the April 7, 2009 Pentagon report:

http://www.perrspectives.com/blog/archives/001115.htm