Peace and Justice Post

By: Ezzat Goushegir

This is fire, scraps of metal raining down
These are not dandelions, or butterflies circling in the air
These are children’s torn clothes
Strands of hair floating in the air

There are tall palm trees in the Middle East
The trees have now been decapitated
The men in the south are strong
Now their skulls rest on broken telegraph polls
Like scarecrows in a barren field

The women of the south are brave
Now you must look for their torn limbs
On the mounds of the scorched bricks of dilapidated homes

What is this on the earth, in the air and water?
Raw, bloody scraps of meat?

Global Research

British forces fear influx of Americans may harm ‘hearts and minds’ campaign after Blackwater shootings in Iraq

By Kim Sengupta in Kabul

Published: 14 October 2007

The Independent. Large numbers of US private military personnel are expected to arrive in Helmand, the focal point of British involvement in Afghanistan, as part of a new effort to promote reconstruction and development in the war-torn province.

The US has contributed the largest sum to the new aid effort, over $200m. But British officials striving to win “hearts and minds” in the conflict against the Taliban have expressed concern over the potential influx of military contractors, amid a continuing furore over the shooting of civilians in Iraq by Blackwater.

As Nato troops reclaim territory from the Taliban, the movement has increasingly resorted to suicide attacks and roadside bombings. “The worry is that there will be a blast, and some contractors will panic and open fire, as happened with Blackwater in Baghdad. That is the very last thing that Helmand needs at the moment,” said a Western diplomat.

Keep reading . . .

CounterPunch, October 15, 2007

Something is Rotten in Iraq and the Pentagon

By DAVE LINDORFF

Isn’t it odd that in the air attack that the US military claims killed 19 high-ranking leaders of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and 15 civilians, all the slain Al Qaeda members were men and all the men were Al Qaeda, while all the civilians were women (6) and children (9)?

Think about this a minute.

This means that no women were Al Qaeda–and yet we know that women also fight, and also blow themselves up as suicide bombers. Yet these women were all civilians. The children, of course, were children.

And we’re to believe that there were no men who were innocent bystanders? All those adult males who were killed were “bad guys.”

Yet there were innocent bystanders: the women and the children. Somehow, any innocent bystanding men managed to duck out of the way, or the bullets and bomb fragments (and I’m sure they were fragmentation bombs that were used, as well as a withering spray of machine-gun fire) that hit all those poor women and kids, just somehow (magically?) missed the men.

Pretty amazing huh?

Except that it’s an absurd claim that should insult our intelligence.

It’s not like the Pentagon has a list of all the enemy fighters, after all. What actually happens is the military has people come in after an action, and they find all these dead people. They look at the guys and have to decide, are they fighters or are they civilians? If the guy’s got a gun in his hand, or nearby, they might assume he’s a fighter, but is that a good test in a country where every guy has an AK47? And if he doesn’t have a gun? Do you honestly think all 19 of those dead guys had a gun with him? I doubt it. These were people fleeing an attack by US troops and planes. They were–whether fighters or ordinary citizens–fleeing for their lives in a surprise attack. If they didn’t have a gun with them at the time, they wouldn’t have stopped to get one.

And since they don’t let reporters travel independently to these battle sites and check what happened, who knows if they even bother looking for evidence. (And this doesn’t even get to the point that they call every kill a “terrorist” or member of Al Qaeda, when odds are that if they are combatants they are neither, but rather some other insurgent group or other just fighting to drive the US out.)

It’s clear to me that what we’re getting is a big lie. Just as in Vietnam the troops would just count the bodies and turn in a report saying that was how many VC were killed, in Iraq (and Afghanistan), they count the men and call them the enemy.

Nobody calls them on this. Certainly nobody in what used to be called the free press.

The numbers are simply accepted as fact and dutifully reported to us.

The truth: we are conducting a slaughter of innocents in Iraq that is as bad as anything the Nazis did in their Eastern Front campaign.

Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His book of CounterPunch columns titled “This Can’t be Happening!” is published by Common Courage Press. Lindorff’s newest book is “The Case for Impeachment“,
co-authored by Barbara Olshansky.

He can be reached at: dlindorff@mindspring.com

Truthdig.com. Posted on Oct 15, 2007

AP photo

An Egyptian activist flashes an Arabic banner condemning torture in front of riot troops during a protest in Cairo.

By Chris Hedges

The Bush administration has called for the respect of human rights in Burma, a pretty safe piece of posturing, but it remains silent as Egypt’s dictator, Gen. Hosni Mubarak , unleashes the largest crackdown on public opposition in over a decade. Our moral indignation over the shooting of monks masks the incestuous and growing alliance we have built in the so-called war on terror with some of the world’s most venal dictatorships.

Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for 26 years and is grooming his son, Gamal, to succeed him, can torture and “disappear” dissidents—such as the Egyptian journalist Reda Hilal, who vanished four years ago—without American censure because he does the dirty work for us on those we “disappear.” The extraordinary-rendition program, which sees the United States kidnap and detain terrorist suspects in secret prisons around the world, fits neatly with the Egyptian regime’s contempt for due process. Those rounded up by American or Egyptian security agents are never granted legal rights. The abductors are often hooded or masked. If the captors are American the suspects are spirited onto a Gulfstream V jet registered to a series of dummy American corporations, such as Bayard Foreign Marketing of Portland, Ore., and whisked to Egypt or perhaps Morocco or Jordan. When these suspects arrive in Cairo they vanish into black holes as swiftly as dissident Egyptians. It is the same dirty and seamless process.

Continued . . .

DailyIndia.com

From our ANI Correspondent

London, Oct 14: An agreement between former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and President General Pervez Musharraf has not only paved the way for the PPP chief’s return to Pakistan, but it is also reported to have allowed the former to reclaim her hundreds of millions of pounds frozen in Swiss bank accounts.

According to a report in the Times, Islamabad has cleared the way for Benazir and her husband to reclaim 740 million pounds in Swiss bank accounts.

The report, filed by Dean Nelson from Lahore and Ghulam Hasnain, quoted senior anticorruption officials as saying that their assets allegedly included a 10-bedroom, mock-Tudor Surrey mansion and 740 million pounds, which was amassed from kickbacks on government contracts during Benazir’s two terms as Prime Minister.

According to Hassan Waseem Afzal, a civil servant who led the Bhutto investigation for 10 years, the deal with Musharraf to drop the corruption charges against Benazir, which would allow her to return home from exile this week, would unlock the frozen accounts.

The accounts were registered in the names of Bhutto’s mother, Begum Nusrat Bhutto, and Zardari, a former minister, said the report, which appeared in the Sunday Times.

However, Afzal, who was deputy head of Pakistan’s anticorruption National Accountability Bureau (NAB), said that the Pakistan government and a Swiss magistrate had obtained evidence that Bhutto herself was a beneficiary.

Bhutto’s chief spokesman had last week quoted her as denying owning any of the frozen accounts.

She is scheduled to return from her self-exile on October 18, and is expected to become Prime Minister again after parliamentary elections in January if Constitutional ban on serving more than two terms is revoked.

Bhutto and Zardari, who spent seven years in prison in Pakistan on corruption charges, were convicted in absentia by a Swiss court in 2003, the daily said, adding that the Swiss magistrate found that during her second term as Prime Minister she enriched herself or her husband with kickbacks from a government contract with two Swiss companies.

As per the agreement, Bhutto did not oppose Musharraf’s re-election as President on October 6. In return, Musharraf announced an amnesty for all Pakistani politicians and officials accused of corruption between 1986 and 1999.

Copyright Dailyindia.com/ANI

urkunet.info, October 15, 2007

Chris Floyd , Empire Burlesque

The latest revelations in the Bush Administration’s long-unfolding, ever-growing illegal wiretapping scandal carry with them a multiple string. For not only do they bear upon Bush’s vast system of lawless espionage aimed at the American people, but they also underscore the perversion of the Justice Department into an armed enforcer of partisan thuggery and confirm that that the unprecedented authoritarian powers that Bush has seized have nothing to do with their ostensible justification, the 9/11 attacks, but were part of a pre-planned evisceration of the constitutional republic that began in the first days of his ill-gotten presidency. What’s more, the revelations give strong indications that nothing about the domestic spying program will change under a Democratic administration – because the heart of the scheme was in fact created under Bush’s predecessor, who bears the same last name as Bush’s likely successor. Keep reading . . .

The Nation, October 15, 2007 Issue

Eric Alterman

Having exposed their country to the ignominy of certain defeat in Iraq, the Bush Administration and its neoconservative allies are seeking to salvage their crumbling reputations by blaming their critics for the catastrophe their policies have wrought. We are witnessing the foundation for a post-Iraq “stab in the back” campaign.

The tactic–Dolchstoßlegende, which means, literally, “dagger stab legend”–is associated with attacks by German anti-Semites on Jews in the aftermath of World War I and is a familiar response for frustrated American right-wingers when reality fails to live up to their ideological fantasies. Following the inevitable collapse of nationalist China, unhinged accusations of a liberal conspiracy inside the US government that purposely “lost” China to the Commies ruled the foreign policy debate. Consider these words from GOP Senator William Jenner of Indiana: “This country today is in the hands of a secret inner coterie which is directed by agents of the Soviet Union…. [A] secret invisible government…[has] led our country down the road to destruction.” The China lobby–the AIPAC of its day–tirelessly policed American politics to insure that no one with national aspiration dared recognize the reality of the Communist Chinese victory.

Keep reading . . .

Reuters, October 14, 2007

By Aung Hla Tun

YANGON (Reuters) – Myanmar’s ruling generals have restored public Internet access, more than two weeks after cutting Web connections to stem the flow of images of mass protests and a ruthless crackdown that outraged the world.

The junta also reduced a curfew to just four hours, but arrests of opponents and participants in the protests — the biggest challenge to 45 years of military rule in the former Burma since 1988 — continued despite international pressure for talks with the opposition.

“The Internet connection was restored on Saturday afternoon, but we still haven’t decided whether or not to reopen our internet cafe yet,” a Yangon Internet cafe owner said.

There had been intermittent access to the Internet over the past week, mostly during a curfew first imposed as the junta sent the army in to end protests led by thousands of Buddhist monks.

Keep reading . . . 

Opednews.com, October 13, 2004
By Sherwood Ross

Mistakenly, many Americans still believe President Bush’s war on Iraq is justified because Congress supported it and funds it.

Yet, as international legal authority Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois points out, President Bush got congressional backing by lying that Hussein had W.M.D. and that Hussein was connected to 9/11.

That’s fraud, probably the bloodiest, costliest lie in White House history.

Also, to start a war, a country needs UN Security Council approval, which Bush failed to get. Otherwise, a nation can fight only in self-defense when attacked.

By attacking Iraq, Bush violated the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact of 1928, the UN Charter, the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals, and the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment and Principles, Boyle said.

As all treaties become the supreme law of the land under Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, the Bush-Cheney presidency is guilty of breaking all of the above, warmongering in spades.

In testimony defending U.S. soldiers who have refused to fight in Iraq, Boyle noted that, under Nuremberg, “a soldier has a right to absent himself or herself from committing international crimes.”

In short, if given a criminal order, the defense used by Adolf Eichmann, Hitler’s master killer, that he was only doing his job, is a phony.

Boyle testified that First Lt. Ehren Watada had the right, “if not the obligation,” to say, “I don’t want to participate in this.” Watada faced an army court martial for not deploying with his unit for Iraq. Watada won a victory when the judge ruled a mistrial.

Keep reading . . .