Torture at Abu Ghraib
Seymour M. Hersh
The New Yorker, May 7, 2004

***

The Taguba Report
Article 15-6 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade
Compiled by Major General Antonio M. Taguba,
Deputy Commanding General Support,
Coalition Forces Land Component Command

Completed in February and not intended for public release. Details abuses more horrific even than those in the horrific photographs we by now have all seen.

***

The Third Geneva Convention
Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War

The Fourth Geneva Convention
Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War

Bush support tied to misinformation
American Assembler

UN General Assembly Resolution 181
November 29, 1947

Calls for an end to the Palestine Mandate and endorses a plan for partition.

UN Security Council Resolution 242
November 22, 1967

In response to the Israeli capture of the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 war. Emphasizes both “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” and the need for “a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security.” Calls for “[w]ithdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict,” a “just settlement of the refugee problem,” and “a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security.”

UN Security Council Resolution 338
October 22, 1973

In response to the Yom Kippur war. Reaffirms 242 and calls for its immediate implementation.

UN General Assembly Resolution 3379
November 10, 1975

“Taking note” of earlier resolutions that “international co-operation and peace require the achievement of national liberation and independence, the elimination of colonialism and neo-colonialism, foreign occupation, zionism, apartheid and racial discrimination in all its forms, as well as the recognition of the dignity of peoples and their right to self-determination” (World Conference of the International Women’s Year, Mexico City, June 19 to 2 July 2, 1975) and that “the racist regime in occupied Palestine and the racist regimes in Zimbabwe and South Africa have a common imperialist origin, forming a whole and having the same racist structure and being organically linked in their policy aimed at repression of the dignity and integrity of the human being” (Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the Organization of African Unity, Kampala, July 28 to 1 August 1, 1975), “determines that zionism is a form a racism and racial discrimination.”

Discussion of this resolution at the 2001 United Nations Anti-Racism Summit in Durban, South Africa led the US and Israeli delegations to walk out.

UN Security Council Resolution 425
March 19, 1978

“Convinced that the present situation impedes the achievement of a just peace in the Middle East, Calls for strict respect for the territorial integrity, sovereignty and political independence of Lebanon within its internationally recognized boundaries;

“Calls upon Israel immediately to cease its military action against Lebanese territorial integrity and withdraw forthwith its forces from all Lebanese territory . . . .”

UN Security Council Resolution 672
October 12, 1990

Reaffirms that “a just and lasting solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict must be based on” resolutions 242 and 338, “[e]xpresses alarm at the violence which took place on 8 October at the Al Haram Al Shareef and other Holy Places of Jerusalem resulting in over twenty Palestinian deaths and to the injury of more than one hundred and fifty people, including Palestinian civilians and innocent worshippers,” and [c]alls upon Israel, the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by its legal obligations and responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention, which is applicable to all the territories occupied by Israel since 1967.”

UN Security Council Resolution 673
October 24, 1990

Expresses “alarm at the rejection of Security Council resolution 672 by the Israeli Government,” “[d]eplores the refusal of the Israeli Government to receive the mission of the Secretary-General [called for in 672] to the region,” and urges reconsideration and the full compliance with 672.

UN Security Council Resolution 681
December 20, 1990

Among other items “[e]xpresses . . . grave concern over the rejection by Israel of Security Council resolutions 672 and 673,” “[d]eplores the decision of the government of Israel to resume deportations of Palestinian civilians in the occupied territories,” and “[u]rges the government of Israel to accept de jure applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, to all the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, and to abide scrupulously by the provisions of the said convention.”

UN Security Council Resolution 1322
October 7, 2000

“Deplores the provocation carried out at Al-Haram Al-Sharif in Jerusalem on 28 September 2000,” “condemns acts of violence [in the region], especially the excessive use of force against Palestinians, resulting in injury and loss of human life,” and reaffirms, in language taken from resolution 672, that “a just and lasting solution to the Arab and Israeli conflict must be based on” resolutions 242 and 338.

Adopted with 14 votes in favor and the abstention of the United States.

***

A List of UN Security Council Resolutions “against Israel”
1955-1992

UN Security Council Resolutions on Israel

“These provide a revealing parallel with US insistence that Iraq must comply with UN resolutions or face a massive military assault.”

No mention of this on CNN.com international or US editions more than five ten hours after the BBC dateline.

(Brief AP wire-service account posted on CNN international at 17:58 GMT.)

Dear Mr President

Your unqualified support of Sharon’s extra-judicial assassinations, Israel’s Berlin Wall-like barrier, its harsh military measures in occupied territories, and now your endorsement of Sharon’s unilateral plan are costing our country its credibility, prestige and friends. (more)

***

Diplomats Slam Blair on Mid-East
BBC News World Edition, April 27

Ambassadors’ Letter to Blair

We the undersigned former British ambassadors, high commissioners, governors and senior international officials, including some who have long experience of the Middle East and others whose experience is elsewhere, have watched with deepening concern the policies which you have followed on the Arab-Israel problem and Iraq, in close co-operation with the United States. (more).

Edward Said display, 7th floor, Tower Records, Shibuya, Tokyo,
photographed by Candice Wilson on her cell phone
and e-mailed to themargins.net from her cell phone, 15 January 2004.
Thanks Candice. ]]> 2004-01-19T07:00:37Z 2004-01-19T15:00:37+08:00 tag:themargins.net,2004:/marginalia//1.8 2004-01-19T07:00:37Z

Marginalia will not be updated until I return to a broadband connection in the second week of January. All best wishes for the new year.

The Kerala Model of Development
Kerala.cc image gallery
Paradox in Paradise
Kerala History
Kerala.gov.in

Image: © Josefa Vivancos Hernandez, 2000.

Kenneth Rexroth
22 December 1905 ~ 6 June 1982

I regret not finding time today properly to note Rexroth’s interest in and poems of Japan. The interest brought Japan to a generation of readers and many of those readers to Japan, and the poems are among the most beautiful that have been written of the country in English. I refer among others to the poems of The Heart’s Garden / The Garden’s Heart (Pym-Randall, 1967), On Flower Wreath Hill (Blackfish, 1976), The Silver Swan (Copper Canyon, 1976), The Love Poems of Marichiko (Christopher’s Books, 1978), and The Morning Star (New Directions, 1979, which includes Flower Wreath Hill, Silver Swan, and Marichiko). For now, this, set in Higashiyama, Kyoto, November 1974, from Flower Wreath Hill:

III
The full moon rises over
Blue Mount Hiei as the orange
Twilight gives way to dusk.
Kamo River is full with
The first rains of Autumn, the
Water crowded with colored
Leaves, red maple, yellow gingko,
On dark water, like Chinese
Old brocade. The autumn haze
Deepens until only the
Lights of the city remain.

IV
No leaf stirs. I am alone
In the midst of a hundred
Empty mountains. Cicadas,
Locusts, katydids, crickets,
Have fallen still, one after
Another. Even the wind
Bells hang motionless. In the
Blue dusk, widely spaced snowflakes
Fall in perfect verticals.
Yet, under my cabin porch,
The thin, clear Autumn water
Rustles softly like fine silk.

V
This world of ours, before we
Can know its fleeting sorrows,
We enter it through tears.
Do the reverberations
Of the evening bell of
The mountain temple ever
Totally die away?
Memory echoes and reechoes
Always reinforcing itself.
No wave motion ever dies.
The white waves of the wake of
The boat that rows away into
The dawn, spread and lap on the
Sands of the shores of all the world.

VI
Clustered in the forest around
The royal tumulus are
Tumbled and shattered gravestones
Of people no one left in
The world remembers. For the
New Year the newer ones have all been cleaned
And straightened and each has
Flowers or at least a spray
Of bamboo and pine.
It’s a great pleasure to
Walk through fallen leaves, but
Remember, you are alive,
As they were two months ago.

Image: Photograph by Gerard Malanga, American Poetry Review Records, 1971-1998.

Shirin Neshat, Speechless, 1996

Shirin Neshat, Time Europe Photo Essays, 2000
Shirin Neshat, Carnegie International
Interview: Identity, Culture, and Media, by Nader Vossoughian, agglutinations.com, 21 October 2003

Heinrich Böll
21 December 1917 ~ 16 July 1985

Let’s stop joking, that joke was worn out in any case, after Verdun. They were the last knights—killed in battle, too many knights, too many lovers, all at once—too many well-brought-up young people. Have you ever thought of how much pedagogical sweat was wasted in the space of a few months? All in vain. How was it none of you ever had the idea of setting up a machine gun at the entrance of the trade schools and colleges, right after the exams, and shoot dead all those radiant successful graduates? You think that’s exaggerated? Well, let me say that the truth is pure exaggeration. I danced with the graduates of 1905, 1906, and 1907. They wore their caps, they drank their beer and I drank with them at their student parties—but more than half the students of those three years fell at Verdun.

Billard um halb zehn / Billiards at Half-Past Nine, English translation by Patrick Bowles (1959; Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1961).

Heinrich Böll Foundation
An Essay on the Reason of Poetry, Nobel Lecture, 2 May 1973

The most startling aspect of the 21st century—something that is genuinely new—is that we have, for the first time in human history, the existence of a single Empire. This is not the abstract utopian “empire” of Hardt-Negri, but something very concrete and real. The dominant position of the United States has no precedent in history. The figures speak for themselves: there are 189 member states of the United Nations, there is a US military presence in 121 countries. (more)