Peace and Justice Post

Middle East Times

Mel Frykberg | published December 20, 2007

The crowd of Hebron settlers shouted, “Gas the Arabs” and, “Death to the Arabs” as they forced open the door of Hasham al-Azzer’s home which borders the neighboring settlement of Tel Rumeida, about 20 miles south of Jerusalem.

The water pipes outside had already been destroyed, the grapevines poisoned, olive branches cut, and garbage from the Jewish settlement strewn on the pathway approaching the front door. Once inside they proceeded to wreak havoc, smashing furniture, computers and windows, scribbling graffiti on the walls, upturning personal belongings, and emptying the contents of cupboards and drawers onto the floors.

After a couple of hours of wanton destruction, the settlers left. Azzer, whose family has lived in the same home for generations, eventually returned and tried to salvage what remained of his property. The settlers had warned him over the preceding months that they would drive him out.

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Telegraph, UK, December 20, 2007
By Sophie Borland

The Archbishop of Canterbury said yesterday that the Christmas story of the Three Wise Men was nothing but a ‘legend’.

Transcript: Archbishop’s interview with Simon Mayo Damian Thompson: Another of Rowan Williams’ own goals Midnight mass at 8pm to fool drunks Dr Rowan Williams has claimed there was little evidence that the Magi even existed and there was certainly nothing to prove there were three of them or that they were kings.   Dr Williams argued that the traditional Christmas story was nothing but a ‘legend’ He said the only reference to the wise men from the East was in Matthew’s gospel and the details were very vague. Dr Williams said: “Matthew’s gospel says they are astrologers, wise men, priests from somewhere outside the Roman Empire, that’s all we’re really told. It works quite well as legend.” The Archbishop went on to dispel other details of the Christmas story, adding that there were probably no asses or oxen in the stable. He argued that Christmas cards which showed the Virgin Mary cradling the baby Jesus, flanked by shepherds and wise men, were misleading. As for the scenes that depicted snow falling in Bethlehem, the Archbishop said the chance of this was “very unlikely”. In a final blow to the traditional nativity story, Dr Williams concluded that Jesus was probably not born in December at all. He said: “Christmas was when it was because it fitted well with the winter festival.” His comments came during an interview on BBC Radio 5 Live with Simon Mayo yesterday. Later on in the show, the Archbishop was challenged by fellow guest Ricky Gervais, the comedian, about the credibility of the Christmas story.

Asia Times, December 19, 2007

By Sudha Ramachandran

BANGALORE – A month of acrimonious campaigning is over and voters have cast their ballots in assembly elections in the western Indian state of Gujarat. Bookies and exit polls indicate that Narendra Modi, Gujarat’s controversial chief minister, is likely to come back for another term at the helm.

This is distressing news for Gujarat’s religious minorities and for secular-democrats across India. Modi’s ideology, actions and public style are widely seen as a threat not only to Indian secularism – he thrives on stoking hatred against India’s Muslims – but also to its democracy.

The outcome of the election is being keenly watched not just by Indians but by foreign governments as well.

Modi’s fans see him as a messiah, someone who “has taught Muslims a lesson”. He is also credited with having brought vibrancy to Gujarat’s economy. His critics describe him as a “barbaric butcher” of Muslims in Gujarat, an “Indian Hitler” and the architect of the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat.

In early 2002, Gujarat witnessed a frenzy of communal violence, when mobs targeted members of the Muslim community in the state, after Hindu pilgrims were killed in an alleged attack on a train. Modi turned a blind eye to the killing, raping and looting of Muslims. Among those who carried out the massacres were members of Modi’s party, the right wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and others of the Sangh Parivar, a family of Hindu right wing organizations. Around 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed and tens of thousands were displaced in the violence.

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Times of India, December 16, 2007
By Shobhan Saxena

The ruins were so magnificent and sprawling that some people believed that the aliens from a faraway galaxy had built the huge pyramids that stood in the desert across the Andes.

Some historians believed that the complex society, which existed at that time, was born out of fear and war. They looked for the telltale signs of violence that they believed led to the creation of this civilisation. But, they could not find even a hint of any warfare. It was baffling. Even years after Ruth Shady Solis found the ancient city of pyramids at Caral in Peru, it continues to surprise historians around the world. It took Ruth Shady many years and many rounds of carbon dating to prove that the earliest known civilisation in South Americas—at 2,627 BC–was much older than the Harappa Valley towns and the pyramids of Egypt.

Solis, an archaeologist at the National University of San Marcos, Lima, was looking for the fabled missing link of archaeology— a ‘mother city’—when she stumbled upon the ancient city of Caral in the Supe Valley of Peru a few years ago. Her findings were stunning.

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Consortiumnews.com, December 18, 2007

By Brent Budowsky

Editor’s Note: Increasingly, U.S. government officials, including senior military officers, must go through verbal gymnastics to avoid implicating George W. Bush in an obvious crime: the authorization to torture al-Qaeda suspects.

In this guest essay, former congressional staffer Brent Budowsky warns that the rhetorical gyrations are now endangering U.S. troops:

In unprecedented congressional testimony, Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann recently refused to say it would be illegal for American POWs to be tortured through waterboarding by our enemies.

He couldn’t because a policy claimed to be legal when committed by our government would be equally legal when committed by our enemies against our troops and POWs.

The legal perversion of Gen. Hartmann’s testimony would outrage American military families.

It dramatizes how alien this torture policy is from two centuries of American military and legal tradition, when an American general cannot defend the time honored rights of American POWs, and America’s enemies could use his testimony as their defense for torture against our troops.

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Christians and Muslims Weep Together

CounterPunch.com, December 18, 2007

By SONJA KARKAR

As Christmas approaches this year, the thoughts of Christians all over the world will once again turn to Bethlehem, the holy town where Jesus was born over two millennia ago. Voices will be raised in joyful celebration and children everywhere will re-create the Christmas story to help us remember the circumstances in which the Christ child was born.

Such a momentous occasion in such humble surroundings heralded a new way of thinking about people’s relationship with God and with each other. It shook the foundations of an unforgiving society presided over by an unforgiving God and proclaimed peace and goodwill on earth amongst all people. There was indeed much to hope for.

However, the tranquil pastoral scene so familiar to us is not at all evident in Bethlehem today. Bethlehem does not lie still, and peace on earth and goodwill towards all is as elusive as ever. The tyranny of Israel’s occupation and its colonial expansionism is crippling the lives of both Palestinian Christians and Muslims alike. Yet, many Christians will again ignore the misery suffered by the Palestinians in the Holy Land and will celebrate Christmas without remembering that it was amongst this people and in their land that Jesus was born. Priests will chant, masses will be said, carols will be sung and nativity scenes will be created, but it is unlikely that many sermons will urge Christian congregations to speak out against the crimes being committed in Palestine.

Continued . . .

RINF.com, December 19, 2007

A federal judge has taken a significant step in dismantling the wall of secrecy the Bush administration has needlessly built around the White House.

Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that White House visitors logs were public records and that the public had a right to see them.

The logs, maintained by the Secret Service, had been public until 2006, when the Bush administration, which adheres to the principle that its business is nobody’s but its own, declared that the logs were presidential records and thus exempt from the Freedom of Information Act under the doctrine of executive privilege.

Executive privilege is intended to protect the confidentiality and candor of the advice the president receives. The logs say only who visited the White House, when and for how long; they contain nothing about the substance of the visits.

It might shed light, however, on White House political machinations.

The White House says it will appeal, using that as an excuse not to comment on the legal setback. One day, it is to be hoped, Congress and the courts will throw open the doors and windows of the Bush administration and the sun will shine in. Unfortunately, it is likely to be long after it has left office.

Scripps Howard News Service

New York Times, December 19, 2007

By CARLOTTA GALL

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies, apparently trying to avoid acknowledging an elaborate secret detention system, have quietly set free nearly 100 men suspected of links to terrorism, few of whom were charged, human rights groups and lawyers here say.

Those released, they say, are some of the nearly 500 Pakistanis presumed to have disappeared into the hands of the Pakistani intelligence agencies cooperating with Washington’s fight against terrorism since 2001.

No official reason has been given for the releases, but as pressure has mounted to bring the cases into the courts, the government has decided to jettison some suspects and thereby spare itself the embarrassment of having to reveal that people have been held on flimsy evidence in the secret system, its opponents say.

Interviews with lawyers and human rights officials here and a review of cases and court records by The New York Times show how scraps of information have accumulated over recent months into a body of evidence of the detention system.

In one case, a suspect tied to the 2002 killing of Daniel Pearl, the American journalist, but not charged, was dumped on a garbage heap, so thin and ill he died 20 days later.

He, like one other detainee, was arrested in South Africa several years ago, and released in Pakistan this year.

In at least two other instances, detainees were handed over to the United States without any legal extradition proceedings, Pakistani lawyers and human rights groups say. American officials here and in Washington refused to comment on the cases.

Continued . . .

World Socialist Web Site, 19 December 2007

By Bill Van Auken

The Democratic-led US Senate voted by a wide margin Tuesday night to approve $70 billion to continue funding the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, without seeking to impose any conditions or pass any proposals for withdrawing a single soldier from either country. The vote came as the body also approved a $516 billion domestic budget bill passed a day earlier by the House.

With just days to go until Congress begins its holiday recess, the Democratic leadership has once again orchestrated a legislative capitulation to the White House that will ensure that the war in Iraq—which they claim to oppose—continues, while making no major substantive changes in the domestic agenda set by the Bush administration.

The House on Monday passed the domestic spending bill by a comfortable margin of 253 to 154, despite charges by the Republican leadership that the measure contained an excessive amount of “earmarks,” specific funding mandates for pet projects sought by legislators for their home districts.

Continued . . .

The New York Times, December 19, 2007

White House lawyers who were involved in discussions with the C.I.A. on its interrogation videotapes, from left: Harriet Miers, John Bellinger, Alberto Gonzales and David Addington.

By MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE

 WASHINGTON — At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials.

The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.

Those who took part, the officials said, included Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as White House counsel until early 2005; David S. Addington, who was the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and is now his chief of staff; John B. Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet E. Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel.

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