Peace and Justice Post

The Financial Express, January 12, 2008

Fritz Stern

The United States, with its claims of exceptionalism, is usually thought of as free of historical analogies. But comparisons with the fate of earlier empires are becoming more common. I have recently been struck by an analogy from German history: the disaster of German leadership during World War I, epitomised by Kaiser Wilhelm II. Wilhelm assumed the throne in 1888 at age 29, his liberal father having reigned for 88 days before succumbing to throat cancer. His grandfather, Wilhelm I, had presided over Prussia’s military victories, which enabled Bismarck to create the unified Reich in 1871. Within two years, Wilhelm II dismissed Bismarck. Wilhelm II became the leader of a country on the cusp of European mastery. By the 1890s, Germany was the strongest power on the continent. But power generates opposition, and Germany’s alarmed neighbours began to form defensive alliances.

Wilhelm flaunted his absolute power, believing it to be divinely ordained. He was contemptuous of parliament, whose circumscribed powers were set forth in a constitution that he boasted of never having read. He was intelligent, impressed by technological progress, but untutored and impulsive; he reveled in the trappings of power and delighted in uniforms. His ostentation and extravagance were deeply un-Prussian.

He was given to bombastic speeches, once warning newly sworn-in recruits that, if he so ordered, they would have to shoot their parents. He gave astounding orders to soldiers departing to suppress the Boxer Rebellion in China: they should awaken fear as had the Huns of yore. He detested liberal critics. And he spoke disparagingly of foreign nations, especially Great Britain. Some of this had to do with his ambivalent anglophobia and his distrust of his mother, Queen Victoria’s daughter.

Continued . . .

Yahoo News, January 19, 2008

GENEVA (AFP) – Israel‘s targeting of a Hamas government office which caused serious casualties at a nearby wedding party was a “war crime” and those responsible should be punished, a United Nations official said Saturday. John Dugard, UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, also slammed the killing of Palestinians in other attacks and the closing of border crossings.

“The killing of some 40 Palestinians in Gaza in the past week, the targeting of a Government office near a wedding party venue with what must have been foreseen loss of life and injury to many civilians, and the closure of all crossings into Gaza raise very serious questions about Israel’s respect for international law and its commitment to the peace process,” Dugard said in a statement.

“Recent action violates the strict prohibition on collective punishment contained in the Fourth Geneva Convention,” Dugard charged in the statement put out by the UN human rights commission.

“It also violates one of the basic principles of international humanitarian law that military action must distinguish between military targets and civilian targets.”

He said that “Israel must have known” about the wedding party in the Gaza Strip near to the interior ministry when it launched missiles at the ministry building on Friday.

The massive air strike destroyed the former interior ministry building in Gaza City, now abandoned, sending a tide of shrapnel crashing against adjacent apartment buildings and killing a 47-year-old woman.

Around 50 people were wounded in the blast, including several children. At least 30 of the victims had been attending the wedding party near the building.

“Those responsible for such cowardly action are guilty of serious war crimes and should be prosecuted and punished for their crimes,” Dugard said.

The United States and other participants in the Annapolis conference in November to relaunch the Middle East peace process “are under both a legal and a moral obligation to compel Israel to cease its actions against Gaza and to restore confidence in the peace process, ensure respect for international law and protect civilian life,” he said.

“We attacked the building and nothing else,” an Israeli army spokeswoman said of Friday’s raid, calling the target a “headquarters” of the radical Hamas movement which controls the Gaza Strip.

On Thursday, Israel announced a complete closure of the Gaza Strip after a sharp escalation in rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian militants on Israeli communities across the border and retaliatory raids by the Israeli army.

The many reasons this torture evidence was too hot to handle

By Nat Hentoff

17/01/08 “Village Voice” — – So what was on those videotapes destroyed by the CIA? Let’s put a face to it. Abu Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and, after being shot in the groin while trying to escape, was sent to recover in a CIA secret prison. He would be the first of the CIA’s many “ghost prisoners”—and also the first to test the value of what the president has often described as an “alternative set of [interrogation] procedures . . . that are safe and necessary.”
As described by Ron Suskind in The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 , Zubaydah—held in an ice-cold cell—was denied medication for his wounds, threatened with death, prevented from sleeping, incessantly blasted with pounding rock music (by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, among others), and, at last, waterboarded. After 30 seconds of feeling that he was on the verge of drowning, he was more than eager to answer any questions.

Continued . . .

RINF.com, January 18, 2008

The US Defense Secretary says his country is trying to understand ground realities before taking any action inside northwestern Pakistan.

“We’re trying to make sure we understand the ground truth before we take any action so that it is not be misperceived,” The Daily Times quoted Robert Gates as saying.

“We’re assessing what value we could have, or any other ally could have, in contributing to their security,” he added.

“This has always been an area that has not been fully under the control of the Pakistani government or where there has been a significant military presence,” he added.

Washington is reportedly considering military operations inside Pakistan allegedly to hunt militants who use the country’s tribal regions as hideouts.

US-led forces have already launched several air strikes on North Waziristan and in the Bajaur tribal area, killing dozens of civilians.

JR/ RE

UK Indymedia

World’s Silence Is Deafening | 19.01.2008 23:15

ALERT: Annapolis a Charade: Israel Plots Massive Aggression

It’s interesting to note that, while the Plant Spammed the site again, pretending to be someone else reposting old articles, he glaringly eliminates certain stories.

The timing is interesting, given the upcoming “Annapolis Conference”, which serves to be about PR alone, as Olmert has already ruled out any Negotiations or Compromise in the name of peace.

If you follow the events surrounding Israel’s “Disengagement” from Gaza, you will quickly understand that this was the plan all along. While Israel was making a public spectacle of “forcing Jews to leave their homes”, it was quietly surrounding the Strip with artillery emplacements, in an operation ominously named “First Rain”.

Under this operation, Gaza basically became a “Free-Fire Zone”, and several artillery and gunship strikes killed a high number of civilians. Finally, when one of these batteries fired upon and murdered a Palestinian family – picnicking on a beach that had been Segregated “Jews Only” only weeks before, Hamas finally decided to call an end to its unilateral, two-year cease-fire.

Continued . . . 

Counter-terrorism alert as a Dutch right-winger launches a movie that will denounce the Koran

Jason Burke, Europe editor
Sunday January 20, 2008
The Observer

The Dutch government is bracing itself for violent protests following the scheduled broadcast this week of a provocative anti-Muslim film by a radical right-wing politician who has threatened to broadcast images of the Koran being torn up and otherwise desecrated.

Cabinet ministers and officials, fearing a repetition of the crisis sparked by the publication of cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper two years ago, have held a series of crisis meetings and ordered counter-terrorist services to draw up security plans. Dutch nationals overseas have been asked to register with their embassies and local mayors in the Netherlands have been put on standby.

Continued . . .

Reuters, January 17, 2008

OTTAWA, Jan 17 (Reuters) – An official Canadian government document has put both the United States and Israel on a watch list of countries where prisoners run the risk of being tortured, CTV television reported on Thursday.

The revelation is likely to embarrass the minority Conservative government, which is a staunch U.S. ally.

The document mentions the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where a Canadian man is being held.

CTV said the document was part of a course on torture awareness given to Canadian diplomats to help them determine whether prisoners they visited abroad had been mistreated.

It said the document mentioned U.S. interrogation techniques such as “forced nudity, isolation, and sleep deprivation.”

Other countries on the watch list include Syria, China, Iran and Afghanistan, CTV said.

A spokesman for Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier tried to distance Ottawa from the document.

“The training manual is not a policy document and does not reflect the views or policies of this government,” he said.

The mention of Guantanamo Bay is particularly sensitive, since the Canadian government rejects allegations that a citizen may have been mistreated there.

Omar Khadr has been in the facility for five years. He is accused of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan in 2002, when he was 15.

Right groups say Khadr should be repatriated to Canada, an idea that Ottawa firmly rejects.

A spokeswoman at the U.S. embassy said she was looking into the report. No one was immediately available for comment at the Israeli embassy.

The torture awareness course started after Ottawa was strongly criticised for the way it handled the case of Canadian engineer Maher Arar, who was deported from the United States to Syria in 2002.

Arar says he was tortured repeatedly during the year he spent in Damascus prisons. An inquiry into the case revealed that Canadian diplomats had not received any formal training into detecting whether detainees had been abused. (Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

The Independent, January 16, 2008

As a bomb explodes in Beirut and Israel kills 19 in Gaza raids, Bush takes his Middle East peace mission to Saudi Arabia (and signs off $20bn weapons deal with repressive regime)

By Robert Fisk