Peace and Justice Post

COPENHAGEN Muslim groups in Denmark yesterday criticised the “foolish” republication of a controversial cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad after the arrests of three people for allegedly plotting to kill the artist.

Although 15 Danish newspapers carried the drawing of the prophet wearing a bomb instead of a turban, Muslims vowed to do nothing to inflame tensions in the Islamic world. The cartoon, by Kurt Westergaard, was one of 12 published in 2005 that provoked rioting and protests which left about 50 dead.

Mostafa Chendid, an imam at the Islamic Faith Community, which organised a delegation to the Middle East to complain about the cartoons in 2005, said: “This is very foolish and does not help building the bridges we need. [But] it is the same picture, so it is just a republication of what was published before.”

One of those arrested, a Danish citizen of Moroccan origin, was understood to have been released pending further investigations.

• Kamila Shamsie in Karachi
• The Guardian,
• Thursday February 14 2008

Earlier this month in Pakistan, a popular television show instructed viewers on the proper method of casting a ballot in the coming elections. The programme was the satirical 4 Man Show, and the elections in question are being run by a music channel to determine the people’s choice for best VJ. The subtext to the skit was the listlessness surrounding those other elections in Pakistan, scheduled for February 18.On the streets of Karachi there are few visible signs of campaigning, aside from banners announcing various constituency candidates. But many of those banners have been in place since the run-up to the January 8 elections, which were postponed following Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, and the slogans on the Pakistan People’s party banners – The Return of Benazir is the Return of Hope – now sound a note of doom.

It’s easy to find the reason for the absence of the large-scale rallies that usually characterise campaigns: suicide bombings. It hasn’t been just Benazir’s rallies – first her homecoming rally on October 18, then the election rally on December 27 – that have been targeted. Over the past weekend, there was a suicide bombing at an Awami National party rally in the volatile North-West Frontier Province, killing 27.

Continued . . .

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig. Posted February 12, 2008.

Christian extremists are preaching a war against tolerance to target and persecute all Muslims, including the 6 million who live in the U.S.

Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zachariah Anani are the three stooges of the Christian right. These self-described former Muslim terrorists are regularly trotted out at Christian colleges — a few days ago they were at the Air Force Academy — to spew racist filth about Islam on behalf of groups such as Focus on the Family. It is a clever tactic. Curly, Larry and Mo, who all say they are born-again Christians, engage in hate speech and assure us it comes from personal experience. They tell their audiences that the only way to deal with one-fifth of the world’s population is by converting or eradicating all Muslims. Their cant is broadcast regularly on Fox News, including the Bill O’Reilly and Neil Cavuto shows, as well as on numerous Christian radio and television programs. Shoebat, who has written a book called Why We Want to Kill You, promises in his lectures to explain the numerous similarities between radical Muslims and the Nazis, how “Muslim terrorists” invaded America 30 years ago and how “perseverance, recruitment and hate” have fueled attacks by Muslims.

Continued . . .

RINF.com, Feb 13, 2008

By Nigel Morris

The mothers of two teenage soldiers killed in Iraq accused Tony Blair’s government of going to war “on a lie” as they took their fight for a public inquiry into the conflict to the House of Lords.

Beverly Clarke and Rose Gentle argue that ministers breached their duty to Britain’s armed forces by failing to ensure the invasion was lawful.

Trooper David Clarke, from Littleworth, Staffordshire, was killed by “friendly fire” near Basra in 2003, while Fusilier Gordon Gentle, from Glasgow, died in a roadside bomb attack in Basra in 2004. Both were 19.

The law lords yesterday began considering the mothers’ argument that servicemen and women have the right not to have their lives jeopardised in illegal conflicts.

Rabinder Singh QC, who is representing the women, told the court: “That duty is owed to soldiers who are under the unique compulsory control of the state and have to obey orders. They have to put their lives in harm’s way if necessary because their country demands it.”

Mr Singh said the overwhelming body of legal advice received by the Government was that the invasion would not be lawful without a second UN Security Council resolution. “These mothers … have come to court with reluctance. They are proud of their sons, who died with honour serving their country,” he said.

Mrs Clarke and Mrs Gentle base their argument on the legal advice prepared by Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney general, in the run-up to the war. They say 13 pages of “equivocal” advice were reduced to one page of unequivocal advice that military action would be legal in just 10 days.

The women are challenging a Court of Appeal ruling that said the Government was not obliged to order an independent inquiry under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the “right to life”.

Mrs Gentle said: “I think Tony Blair sent our boys to war on a lie. He just agreed with George Bush right away.” Peter Brierley, whose son, L/Cpl Shaun Brierley, was killed in 2006, said: “This was not defending his country. The country was not under any threat of attack.”

Lord Bingham, sitting with eight other law lords, said they were mindful of “the human loss which underlies these proceedings”.

Tony Blair Section has more related reports

Help keep RINF going..

By Mark A. Goldman

12/02/08 “ICH ” — – If I have my facts straight, Hitler killed only one person in his lifetime: himself. All the other atrocities that are attributed to him were carried out by people who were only following orders.

If it is true that the war in Iraq is illegal, as I and others believe it is—including the Secretary General of the United Nations—then all the deaths and atrocities that have occurred to date, inflicted by our coalition forces, are the acts of individuals who, knowingly or unknowingly, with good intentions or not, have been willing to break the law in order to follow the orders of superiors.

Each member of the US military took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Each also took a pledge to follow the legal orders of the Commander in Chief. Under the Constitution, no soldier is required to follow an illegal order. But that’s what many Americans have been doing now for quite some time. And this is not confined to our military personnel, but also to members of the FBI, the CIA, the NSA (the folks who have been carrying out those illegal wire taps), outsourced contractors, the media, and perhaps most egregious of all— elected members of Congress, who for all intents and purposes, put their conscience and oversight responsibilities on hold as they get their marching orders from the Oval Office or from party leaders.

Continued . . .

The Independent, UK, Feb 12, 2008

By Andrew Gumbel

The United States military announced yesterday that it was bringing death penalty charges against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and five other men suspected of orchestrating the September 11 attacks, and intended to try them under the Bush administration’s much-criticised military tribunal system, which is subject only to partial oversight by the civilian appeals system.

The decision to use Mohammed and the others as guinea-pigs in a constitutionally dubious legal proceeding is likely to trigger a firestorm of anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world and spark a fractious domestic debate in an already highly charged presidential election year.

Concerns were raised last night of political interference by the White House in the military’s decision to go to trial in the middle of an election campaign in which the Republican frontrunner, John McCain, has made the fight against al-Qa’ida central to his election bid.

Keep reading . . .

After half a dozen years of waterboarding, genital zapping, sleep deprivation and brainwashing, the Pentagon has finally found six patsies who will readily welcome their 72 virgins and take the fall for 9/11, providing debunkers with ample ammunition to dismiss questions about the gaping holes in the official story of the terror attacks.

“Among those held at Guantanamo is Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the attack six years ago in which hijacked planes were flown into buildings in New York and Washington. Five others are expected to be named in sworn charges,” reports the Associated Press.

The fact that KSM’s confession included a plan to target the Plaza Bank building in Washington state, which was not founded until 2006, four years after the alleged Al-Qaeda mastermind’s arrest, should provide a clue as to the reliability of the “terror mastermind’s” culpability for 9/11.

Continued . . .

 Mother Jones, Feb 12, 2008

By Michael Schwartz 

A tidal wave of misery is engulfing Iraq—and it isn’t the usual violence that Americans are accustomed to hearing about and tuning out. To be sure, it’s rooted in that violence, but this tsunami of misery is social and economic in nature. It dislodges people from their jobs, sweeps them from their homes, tears them from their material possessions, and carries them off from families and communities. It leaves them stranded in hostile towns or foreign countries, with no anchor to resist the moment when the next wave of displacement sweeps over them.

The victims of this human tsunami are called refugees if they wash ashore outside the country or IDPs (“internally displaced persons”) if their landing place is within Iraq’s borders. Either way, they are normally left with no permanent housing, no reliable livelihood, no community support, and no government aid. All the normal social props that support human lives are removed, replaced with…nothing.

Continued . . .