Peace and Justice Post

RINF.com, January 26, 2008

Rights activists have staged demonstrations in London to denounce Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s ‘human rights abuses’.

The demonstration, organized by human rights group Amnesty International, came on Saturday at Downing Street, prior to a meeting between Musharraf and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Monday.

“British Prime Minister Gordon Brown should tell visiting Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf that free and fair elections will be impossible without the full restoration of Pakistan’s judiciary,” said Brad Adams of Human Rights Watch.

On November 3, 2007 Musharraf suspended Pakistan’s Constitution, fired much of the country’s senior judges and arrested thousands of opponents, most of whom were eventually released because of international pressure.

“An independent judiciary is vital for people to have an avenue to contest the results of this election conducted in an environment of bias and intimidation,” said Adams.

He urged Brown to press Musharraf to rescind these measures, set up an independent election commission and a neutral caretaker government to oversee elections.

SB/RE

Paul Wolfowitz, an architect of the war in Iraq in the Bush administration who became World Bank president only to resign in a pay scandal, was named Thursday as head of a US government advisory panel.

The State Department announced Wolfowitz’s appointment as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s chairman of the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB).

ISAB, the department said, is “a source of independent insight, advice, and innovation on all aspects of arms control, disarmament, nonproliferation, political-military issues, and international security and related aspects of public diplomacy.

“The ISAB provides analysis and insight into current issues-of-interest for the secretary on a regular basis,” according to a statement.

Wolfowitz has been serving as a visiting scholar in foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies development issues.

Wolfowitz, widely credited with raising Africa’s profile in the World Bank’s lending activities, agreed to leave his post on June 30 in the face of accusations he violated bank rules in arranging a promotion for his girlfriend, a bank employee.

Wolfowitz consistently argued that he had acted in good faith in the matter.

Under President George W. Bush, he served as deputy defense secretary where he was a proponent of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

In his decades of public service, he was also Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, US Ambassador to Indonesia, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs and Director of Policy Planning at the Department of State.

© 2008 Agence France Presse

Written by Michael Warschawski, Alternative Information Center (AIC)

Wednesday, 23 January 2008

A majority of Gaza citizens live in poverty and many are without running water. The Israeli government has declared a total war on Gaza, largely cutting electricity and fuel supplies and prohibiting basic products to enter, including food and medicines. Gaza is not a territory, but 1.4 million human beings, women, men and children. “Attacking Gaza” or “putting Gaza under siege” means targeting 1.4 million civilians. According to international law, this is a war crime; according to common sense, it is a crime against humanity. Such a crime cannot be justified by any excuse, and no reason whatsoever can allow a state, a government, or a person to commit it. The martyrdom of Gaza is based on a lie and a stupid assumption. The lie is the Israeli argument that justifies the siege against Gaza in order to quell the daily firing of Qassam rockets onto the town of Sderot. Yet the Qassams are a reaction to forty years of Israeli occupation, colonization and bloody repression, an occupation rendered even more cruel after the “disengagement,” initiated two years ago by Ariel Sharon. The assumption that this siege will help end the Hamas government is as absurd as that used by Israel to justify Operation Defensive Shield in 2002: in both cases, these assumptions strengthened the radicals at the expense of the so-called moderates, and not the other way round. The sole reason that 1.4 million human beings are under siege in the Gaza Strip is collective punishment for their refusal to surrender to the diktats of Washington and Tel Aviv. The women and men of Gaza are not only one of the proudest populations on earth, but also one that has known a unique combination of bloody repression and poverty. As painful as it may be, this combination is the secret of the Gazans’ stubbornness and steadfastness. Olmert and his advisers are gradually understanding that they will not provoke a capitulation from the Gaza population, and the only tool that remains is to punish the Palestinians for this. The Gazans are providing a rare example of resistance and heroism, and no one has the right to expect them to do more. The additional efforts that could ultimately bring about the end of their martyrdom have to come from the solidarity movement all over the world, including Israel. The coalition of Israeli anti-occupation movements is organizing, next Saturday, a convoy of support and solidarity. We hope that several hundred cars will participate from all the parts of Israel. We know well that our modest convoy will not change the material conditions of the Gaza population. Our goal is to send a strong message to the Israeli public: the siege on Gaza in a war crime and whoever is not protesting as strongly as possible is guilty of non-assistance to a people in danger. It is also a call for international the public opinion: demand from your respective governments that they stop their collaboration with the Israeli war crimes and the boycott of Gaza. Ehud Olmert and his ministers, General Gabi Ashkenazi and the members of the Israeli military High Command must all be charged by the International Court of Justice for their war crimes against the population of Gaza. The State of Israel must be sanctioned, not the victims of the Israeli colonial occupation!

· Troops were kept in dark about ban on hooding
· Defence secretary promises further inquiry

Richard Norton-Taylor
Saturday January 26, 2008
The Guardian

Serious failings in army leadership, planning and training – particularly about treating civilians in an occupied country – led to the abuse of Iraqis by British soldiers, a Ministry of Defence investigation has found.

Soldiers were not told about their obligations under international law or about a specific ban on hooding imposed by the government 36 years ago, said the report by Brigadier Robert Aitken, the army’s director of army personnel strategy. Troops were given “scant” information on how to treat civilian detainees and needed “a better understanding between right and wrong”.

His report, released yesterday, is a severe indictment of the overall failure to plan for the invasion and its aftermath. It was ordered after a string of cases alleging ill-treatment by British troops, notably the death of Baha Mousa, a Basra hotel receptionist, in September 2003.

Continued . . .

RINF.com, January 24, 2008

By PHILIP SHENON and ERIC LICHTBLAU

The Justice Department lawyer who wrote a series of classified legal opinions in 2005 authorizing harsh C.I.A. interrogation techniques was renominated by the White House on Wednesday to a senior department post, a move that was seen as a snub to Senate Democrats who have long opposed his appointment.

The lawyer, Steven G. Bradbury, who has run the department’s Office of Legal Counsel without Senate confirmation for more than two years, has been repeatedly nominated to the job of assistant attorney general for legal counsel.

But the earlier nominations stalled in the Senate because of a dispute with the Justice Department over its failure to provide Congress with copies of legal opinions on a variety of terrorism issues. Under Senate rules that place a time limit on nominations, Mr. Bradbury’s earlier nominations expired.

Late last year, Democrats urged the White House to withdraw Mr. Bradbury’s name once and for all and find a new candidate for the post after it was disclosed in news reports in October that he was the author of classified memorandums that gave approval to harsh interrogation techniques, including head slapping, exposure to cold and simulated drowning, even when used in combination.

Mr. Bradbury’s memorandums were described by Democrats as an effort by the Bush administration to circumvent laws prohibiting torture and to undermine a public legal opinion issued by the Justice Department in 2004 that declared torture to be “abhorrent.”

Continued . . .

10 Die in Mistaken Afghan Firefight

New York Times, January 25, 2008

By CARLOTTA GALL and ABDUL WAHEED WAFA

KABUL, Afghanistan — At least nine Afghan police officers and a civilian were killed early Thursday in a firefight between American forces and the officers in Ghazni Province, just south of the capital, local officials said.

The American forces were searching houses in a village on the outskirts of Ghazni town and blew open the gates of a house, according to local Afghan officials. District police officers heard the explosion and rushed to the scene, suspecting that the Taliban were in the area, but were themselves mistaken for Taliban and shot by the American soldiers, the officials said. Aircraft supporting the operation fired on one of the police cars.

The killings set off protests in the town on Thursday afternoon, and demonstrators blocked the main highway and prevented a government delegation from reaching the town from a nearby airfield, local officials said.

“Another big cruelty was made by American forces this morning,” said Khial Muhammad Hussaini, a member of Parliament from the province who was among the elders and legislators who had traveled to the town to try to calm people and persuade them to reopen the highway.

Zemarai Bashary, a spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior in Kabul, confirmed the shooting and called it a “misunderstanding,” but said he had information on only eight deaths.

Keep reading . . .

Information Clearing House, January 24, 2008

By John Pilger

The former president of Tanzania Julius Nyerere once asked, “Why haven’t we all got a vote in the US election? Surely everyone with a TV set has earned that right just for enduring the merciless bombardment every four years.” Having reported four presidential election campaigns, from the Kennedys to Nixon, Carter to Reagan, with their Zeppelins of platitudes, robotic followers and rictal wives, I can sympathize. But what difference would the vote make? Of the presidential candidates I have interviewed, only George C. Wallace, governor of Alabama, spoke the truth. “There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the Democrats and Republicans,” he said. And he was shot.

What struck me, living and working in the United States, was that presidential campaigns were a parody, entertaining and often grotesque. They are a ritual danse macabre of flags, balloons and bullsh*t, designed to camouflage a venal system based on money power, human division and a culture of permanent war.

Traveling with Robert Kennedy in 1968 was eye-opening for me. To audiences of the poor, Kennedy would present himself as a savior. The words “change” and “hope” were used relentlessly and cynically. For audiences of fearful whites, he would use racist codes, such as “law and order.” With those opposed to the invasion of Vietnam, he would attack “putting American boys in the line of fire,” but never say when he would withdraw them. That year (after Kennedy was assassinated), Richard Nixon used a version of the same, malleable speech to win the presidency. Thereafter, it was used successfully by Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and the two Bushes. Carter promised a foreign policy based on “human rights” – and practiced the very opposite. Reagan’s “freedom agenda” was a bloodbath in Central America. Clinton “solemnly pledged” universal health care and tore down the last safety net of the Depression.

Continued . . .

Osamah Khalil, The Electronic Intifada, 24 January 2008

President George W. Bush and Prince Salman bin Abdul Al-Aziz (right) join sword dancers during the President’s visit to Al Murabba Palace in Riyadh, 15 January 2008. (White House photo by Eric Draper)

A staggering disparity in images has emanated from the Middle East over the past two weeks. While US President George W. Bush received a warm welcome during his tour of the Persian Gulf, Israel pounded Gaza killing over 40 Palestinians, nearly half of them civilians. Bush participated in sword dancing ceremonies, watched the prowess of hunting falcons, and in the United Arab Emirates he was finally greeted with the flowers that he once believed American troops would receive in Iraq. The obscene displays of wealth and extravagant gifts by the Gulf states, whose coffers are flush with cash from near-record oil prices, contrasted sharply with the images of death and destruction unleashed on impoverished Gaza. This was compounded by Israel’s total closure of the tiny strip late last week, leaving the 1.5 million Palestinian inhabitants with dwindling food and fuel supplies. As the only power plant in Gaza shut down Sunday night, Palestinian children in a candle-light march covered by Al Jazeera asked, “Where are the Arabs?” Yet, the Arabs weren’t the only ones absent from the scene. Indeed, Gaza appears to have been abandoned by the entire world, further revealing the state of fragmentation and isolation of the Palestinian national movement.

Continued . . .

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Arab regimes may have reconciled themselves to negotiating for negotiation’s sake but it is not something with which the Arab public should have to live with s. Negotiations are a means towards an end, not an end in itself: if they fail to achieve their objective within a reasonable period of time they lose all value and become a burden, even more so when the phase in conflict management is twisted into an instrument for imposing new de facto realities that intensify and complicate the conflict rather than containing or alleviating it. When negotiations drag on unjustifiably and appear, as is the case in the Arab- Israeli conflict, like a wheel that is set to perpetually spin in place then what we have is something akin to a mirage, designed to lure the thirsty yet remain irrevocably distant.The process that ostensibly aimed to resolve the Arab-Zionist conflict began in the immediate wake of the October 1973 War. It will soon be 35 years old. Even supposing that it only began seriously with the 1991 Madrid conference, i.e. when it became a collective process in which all Arab countries took part, it is still more than 15 years old. It is a long time for a negotiating process, though such a span of time could be tolerated should it offer a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Rather than light, though, negotiations have brought only dismay and an intensifying gloom, to the extent that many now believe there will not be a viable peace settlement should negotiations continue for a millennium or more.

Continued . . .