Peace and Justice Post

t r u t h o u t | Perspective, Tuesday 23 October 2007
By J. Sri Raman

Mahatma Gandhi, the foremost symbol of India’s freedom struggle, has died several deaths. He has met his martyrdom again, every time India and Indians departed from the path of peace and equitable progress. The most painful illustration, perhaps, came when the country was proclaimed a nuclear-weapon power in 1998. Not a very distant second, to many, would be Narendra Modi’s declaration the other day that he was a devout disciple of Gandhi.

The comical absurdity of the claim should be obvious. The Mahatma fell to a fanatic’s bullet in 1948 while fighting for interreligious harmony, while Modi rose to his full stature after presiding over a grisly pogrom against the Muslim minority in the State of Gujarat in 2002. Obvious, too, to Indian observers, was the motive behind Modi’s metamorphosis. All were quick to see an electoral compulsion in his attempted new avatar.

Gujarat is going to only State-level polls, scheduled for December 11 and 16. But the elections, which will decide Gujarat’s political dispensation for the next five years, are of much wider interest – national and regional. It is Modi’s involvement that invests the event with such extra-Gujarat significance.

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AFP – Saturday, October 27, 2007

PARIS (AFP) – – French, US and German rights groups said Friday they had filed suit for “torture” against ex-US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, currently in Paris, for his role in the Iraq war and the US “war on terror”.

Around 20 campaigners gave Rumsfeld a rowdy welcome as he arrived for a breakfast meeting in Paris, yelling “murderer”, waving a banner and trying to push into the building, according to the organisers, a political magazine.

The International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), the French League for Human Rights (LDH), the US Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Germany’s European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) filed the joint suit before a Paris prosecutor on Thursday.

They accuse Rumsfeld of being “personally responsible for authorising and ordering the carrying out of acts of torture” in the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq, and US base in Guantanamo, Cuba, during his time as defence secretary from 2001 to 2006, according to lawyer Patrick Baudouin.

“From the moment Donald Rumsfeld sets foot on French territory, he falls within French jurisdiction with regard to the 1984 New York convention against torture,” said Baudouin.

The Paris state prosecutor’s office said late Friday it had asked the French foreign ministry for details on whether Rumsfeld was immune from prosecution and whether he was still in the country.

“France is under the obligation to investigate and prosecute Rumsfeld’s accountability for crimes of torture in Guantanamo and Iraq,” FIDH president Souhayr Belhassen said in a statement.

“France has no choice but to open an investigation if an alleged torturer is on its territory. … We call on France to refuse to be a safe haven for criminals.”

The rights groups notably cite three memorandums signed by Rumsfeld between October 2002 and April 2003 “legimitising the use of torture” including the “hooding” of detainees, sleep deprivation and the use of dogs.

Five previous torture suits have been filed against the former US defence chief: two in Germany, one in Argentina, one in Sweden and one in Spain, the FIDH statement said.

Rumsfeld’s agenda during the rest of his stay in Paris was kept under wraps for security reasons.

Source: The Palestine Chronicle, October 26, 2007

The peace conference will provide the media with the opportunity to bombard public opinion with half-truths regarding those standing for peace and those considered an obstacle to peace.

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By Ramzy Baroud
Special to PalestineChronicle.com

The Middle East peace conference proposed by the Bush administration is clearly a smokescreen, aimed at concealing the true intentions of US foreign policy in the region. In the predictable process of rewarding ‘moderate’ allies and chastising ‘extremist’ foes, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will most likely receive the accolades befitting a peacemaker, while his protagonists in Hamas are reprimanded, demonized and further isolated. But the ultimate goal of this charade is not even so much to isolate Hamas, but rather to set in motion events that will further isolate Iran and Syria.

The significance of the anti-Iran campaign already underway in the US should not be missed in light of the conference next month. The media circus demonizing Iran was unleashed a few years ago, when leading neoconservatives, notwithstanding Richard Perle himself, went on accusing President Bush, some of his advisors and military generals of being ‘stupid’ for failing to recognize the threat posed by Iran. However, more recently, and most notably after the failure of the Israeli military adventure in South Lebanon in the summer of 2006, the war drums sounded by the media began to take on a new and deafening volume, reminiscent of that which preceded the US war on Iraq in March 2003. Those who appreciate the symbiotic relationship between the media and the state in the US can understand well that such a campaign is anything but genuine intellectual concern over the state of human rights in Iran, or the outcome of a sudden realization that Iran is impairing US war efforts in Iraq. Considering the level of determination in Washington and Tel Aviv to confront Iran militarily and the media’s decided role in gathering the public support for such a prospect, it is difficult to imagine a peaceful way out of the crisis.

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Source: Al Ahram, 25-31 October, 2007

The real reason Blair was seconded to the Quartet — liquidating Palestinian resistance to occupation — appears ever more clear, writes Saleh Al-Naami

Click to view caption

A Palestinian teenager uses a makeshift slingshot to hurl stones at Israeli soldiers during a demonstration held by Palestinians, foreign and Israeli peace activists protesting against the Apartheid wall

Rabbi Benny Elon, president of the right-wing Israeli National Union Party, was unable to conceal his relief last Thursday when a Hebrew radio news programme presenter asked him about his evaluation of the recent plan devised by Quartet envoy and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. “Finally, even Blair agrees with us on two primary points,” Benny Elon said. “These are uprooting the Palestinian terrorist organisations and solving the problem of the refugees without holding Israel any responsibility for it.”

Revealed the previous day, Blair’s plan for the reform of Palestinian Authority (PA) institutions left resounding reverberations in the Palestinian arena. Factions, elites and the Palestinian public alike were shocked when it became clear that “reform” of PA institutions, as Blair sees it, means ensuring conditions that allow for a tightening grip on Palestinian resistance movements, particularly in the West Bank. The plan draws no tie between this and decreasing attacks on Palestinians by Israel’s occupation army and settlers.

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Published on Thursday, October 25, 2007 by CommonDreams.org

By Howard Friel

Once again, an American president is threatening to use force against another country; in this case, the Bush administration is threatening, at a minimum, to launch cruise missiles into Iran. President Bush also recently said that a military confrontation with Iran could lead to World War III. And once again, such threats demonstrate that the U.S . news media is content to permit the president to operate outside the U.S. Constitution and the UN Charter when it comes to one of the most important and momentous foreign policy decisions-when to resort to the threat and use of force against another country. How can it be that one person, given our well-established system of constitutional checks and balances, can make that decision alone without any immediate need to defend the territorial borders of the United States against an armed attack?

It is clear that the president has no legal authority under the Constitution or the Charter to decide whether to attack another country. According to the Constitution’s delegation of war powers, only the Congress is authorized “to declare war,” while the president as “Commander in Chief” has the authority to conduct war once it is declared by Congress. Referring to the constitutional limitations placed upon the president, James Madison wrote: “Those who are to conduct war cannot in the nature of things be the proper judges whether a war ought to be commenced, continued, or concluded.”

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The Counterpunch, October 26, 2007

Home of the Brave?

By DAVE LINDORFF

Several years ago, I warned that as the Bush/Cheney administration sought to reduce politically problematic casualty rates in Iraq and Afghanistan, it would resort to increased use of air attacks to combat the growing insurgency in Iraq and the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.

I also predicted that the result of this switch in tactics would lead to higher civilian casualties in those two countries.

We’re now seeing those results.

In the latest reports from Iraq, we had 15 women and children slain, mostly in their homes by rockets and bullets fired from helicopter and fixed-wing gunships which were allegedly in pursuit of some supposed “al Qaeda” fighters, and as many as 17 civilians killed in Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood when US forces called in air strikes after seeing a group of men they deemed to be hostile. Again those airstrikes ended up killing more civilians than alleged enemy fighters.

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UK Independent, October 27, 2007
By Andrew Buncombe, Asia Correspondent

India’s largest opposition party has dismissed claims that its government in the state of Gujarat encouraged the killing of nearly 2,500 Muslims in March 2002.

The allegations against the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were made in secret video recordings by an investigative magazine which were also broadcast on local television. The BJP says the allegations are a conspiracy hatched by India’s governing Congress party ahead of elections in Gujarat next month.

Tehelka magazine claimed that Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, gave Hindus the green light to attack the state’s Muslims after a train fire blamed on Muslims killed 58 people.

An undercover reporter from Tehelka spent six months filming Hindu activists and BJP members, using a hidden camera. Arvind Pandya, a Gujarat government counsel, was recorded saying that Mr Modi’s “blood was boiling” when he first heard of the blaze and that the minister said he “would have burst bombs” in a Muslim area of the city of Ahmedabad.

Haresh Bhatt, from a hardline Hindu group affiliated to the BJP, was filmed saying: “He had given us three days to do whatever we could. He said he would not give us time after that, he said this openly.”

Last night, the BJP rejected Tehelka’s claims as being politically motivated.

Source: Alternet

High-ranking military experts say an attack would lead to world economic chaos, or even what Bush calls ‘World War III.’

By Gregor Peter Schmitz and Cordula Meyer, Der Spiegel. Posted October 26, 2007.

US Vice President Dick Cheney — the power behind the throne, the eminence grise, the man with the (very) occasional grandfatherly smile — is notorious for his propensity for secretiveness and behind-the-scenes manipulation. He’s capable of anything, say friends as well as enemies. Given this reputation, it’s no big surprise that Cheney has already asked for a backroom analysis of how a war with Iran might begin.

In the scenario concocted by Cheney’s strategists, Washington’s first step would be to convince Israel to fire missiles at Iran’s uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Tehran would retaliate with its own strike, providing the US with an excuse to attack military targets and nuclear facilities in Iran.

This information was leaked by an official close to the vice president. Cheney himself hasn’t denied engaging in such war games. For years, in fact, he’s been open about his opinion that an attack on Iran, a member of US President George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” is inevitable.

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Alternet. Posted October 24, 2007

The authoritarian mindset promoted by Horowitz and his gang of touring bigots is the real fascistic threat facing America today.

Editor’s note: the following is a statement released by Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace.

Under the leadership of David Horowitz, Ann Coulter, Rick Santorum, and their neoconservative colleagues “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” is taking place October 22-26 on many campuses across America, including USC and UCLA. We believe that this is a calculated strategy to inflame fear of Muslims and ultimately to soften up the American public to support the next assault in the “War on Terror:” war against Iran. The audience is not so much the young people and their professors on campus but the unsuspecting public – you and us.

Several days after the attacks of September 11, 2001 Ann Coulter asserted: “We should invade their [Muslim’s] countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” Last week she told Donny Deutsch: “… we should throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians.” Now she is scheduled to take her message to academic institutions, to challenge their practices of freedom of inquiry and speech. The targets are Muslims, participants in Women’s Studies Centers and academics who do not espouse the neoconservative litany. But the ultimate victim of these hate-fests will be America’s reputation for fair play, civility, tolerance and liberty.

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Source: Editor & Publisher

Six female staffers at McClatchy’s Baghdad bureau won a major award this week for courage. Here’s how one of them in recent months has revealed, as few others have, the horrific day-to-day life in that country, in blog postings.

Yesterday, six Iraqis who have worked in the McClatchy Baghdad bureau received the International Women’s Media Foundation Courage in Journalism Award at a luncheon at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel. In introducing the six McClatchy reporters — Shatha al Awsy, Zaineb Obeid, Huda Ahmed, Ban Adil Sarhan, Alaa Majeed, and Sahar Issa — ABC News reporter Bob Woodruff said: “These six Iraqi women have reported the war in Baghdad from inside their hearts. They have watched as the war touched the lives of their neighbors and friends, and then they bore witness as it reached into the lives of each and every one of them.

Keep reading . . .