Peace and Justice Post

By: Bulov on: 12.02.2008
Source:
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/103963-1/

This Government tortures people, states former President Jimmy Carter, who claims that for the first time in his life, he has seen the United States of America abandoning the upholding of human rights as a mainstay of its policy.

In an interview with CNN this week, Jimmy Carter, President of the United States of America between 1977 and 1981, declared that far from believing that the Bush Government commits torture, he knows it for certain. Denying the veracity of George Bush’s claim on Thursday that “This Government does not torture people,” he added that “Our country, for the first time in my life, has abandoned the basic principle of human rights. We have said that the Geneva Conventions do not apply for those detained in the prison in Abu Ghraib and in the base at Guantanamo, and we have decided that we can torture prisoners.”

For Jimmy Carter, the influence of Vice President Cheney on foreign affairs in general and over George Bush in particular, has been “disastrous” for the USA.

The declarations of Jimmy Carter, who through the Carter Centre, in its own words, is “committed to advancing human rights and alleviating unnecessary human suffering… creating a world in which every man, woman, and child has the opportunity to enjoy good health and live in peace” has travelled the world promoting human rights, comes at the same moment when Michael Hayden, Director of the CIA, has admitted that this Agency used torture against three detainees.

Continued . . .

Published: February 11, 2008 7:30 AM ET

FORT CARSON A Fort Carson soldier who says he was in treatment at Cedar Springs Hospital for bipolar disorder and alcohol abuse was released early and ordered to deploy to the Middle East with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team.

The 28-year-old specialist spent 31 days in Kuwait and was returned to Fort Carson on Dec. 31 after health care professionals in Kuwait concurred that his symptoms met criteria for bipolar disorder and “some paranoia and possible homicidal tendencies,” according to e-mails obtained by a Denver newspaper.

The soldier, who asked not to be identified because of the stigma surrounding mental illness and because he will seek employment when he leaves the Army, said he checked himself into Cedar Springs on Nov. 9 or Nov. 10 after he attempted suicide while under the influence of alcohol. He said his treatment was supposed to end Dec. 10, but his commanding officers showed up at the hospital Nov. 29 and ordered him to leave.

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Is extraordinary rendition really a “state secret” anymore?

By Maya Harris, ACLU Northern California. Posted February 10, 2008.
Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian citizen and legal resident of the United Kingdom, was abducted in 2002 by masked men and flown, blindfolded, from Pakistan to Morocco. For 18 months, Mohamed was regularly beaten into unconsciousness by his interrogators. After a scalpel was used to cut into his body, hot, stinging liquid was poured into his wounds.

Mohamed is just one victim of the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” program, which the Bush administration has defended openly, yet is now arguing it cannot discuss without endangering national security.

The government is calling for the dismissal of an ACLU lawsuit — brought on behalf of Mohamed and four other rendition victims — against the San Jose Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan Inc. for its alleged participation in the rendition program. The Bush administration has intervened in the case and is invoking the “state secrets” privilege to avoid accountability for its illegal torture policies. A hearing on the government’s motion was held Feb. 5 in San Jose and we are awaiting a decision.

The “state secrets” privilege has historically been used to exclude discrete pieces of evidence from lawsuits in order to protect national security, not to throw out entire cases. But the Bush administration has begun to misuse the privilege by routinely waving the “state secrets” flag in an effort to quash lawsuits that might expose its illegal conduct. In addition to this case, the “state secrets” claim has been raised in an effort to throw out other torture and illegal wiretapping suits.

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Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 11 February 2008

Israeli border police take position during a protest against the Israeli wall in the West Bank village of al-Khader, 8 February 2008. (Luay Sababa/MaanImages)

“The next logical step” for the Israeli government “will have to be a decision whether to target the top political leadership” of Hamas. So said an Israeli official quoted in The Jerusalem Post. Tzahi Hanegbi, a senior member of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Kadima party and chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, echoed the call, arguing that “There’s no difference between those who wear a suicide suit and a diplomat’s suit.” Following a cabinet meeting on 10 February, Israel’s Interior Minister Shimon Sheetrit specifically called for the execution of Ismail Haniyeh, the democratically-elected Hamas prime minister, and added that for good measure “We must take a neighborhood in Gaza and wipe it off the map.”

Last September, Yossi Alpher, the co-founder of the European Union-funded publication Bitterlemons, wrote an article advocating “decapitating the Hamas leadership, both military and ‘civilian.'” Alpher, a former special adviser to Israel’s defense minister Ehud Barak when the latter was prime minister, worried that Israel would “pay a price in terms of international condemnation,” for “targeting legally elected Hamas officials who won a fair election,” but that overall it would be well worth it.

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Consortiumnews.com, Feb 10, 2008

By Nat Parry

Only days before the make-or-break “Super Tuesday” primaries, Hillary Clinton dipped into her personal finances to lend her campaign $5 million, a move she kept secret until the day after she had battled Barack Obama to a standstill in the coast-to-coast voting.

If she had disclosed the loan before Super Tuesday, it might not only have generated troubling questions about the financial health of her campaign; it might have focused unwanted attention on the sources of the Clintons’ money.

Unlike other well-to-do politicians, the Clintons did not inherit their wealth or amass a fortune during a prior business career. Just seven years ago, on leaving the White House, the Clintons were millions of dollars in debt due to the costs of fighting legal battles.

Since then, they amassed a personal fortune – now estimated at about $30 million – largely from book contracts and the cachet of a former U.S. President, whose status attracted lucrative business deals and speaking tours, many involving overseas interests.

The proximity between the Clintons’ new-found wealth and Hillary Clinton’s presidential run raised eyebrows over whether the $5 million loan – and any future financial help she might give her campaign – could constitute backdoor financing from benefactors beyond what they could legally donate.

On Feb. 6, Sen. Clinton told reporters that the loan was “my money,” apparently meaning that she was not relying on the funds of her husband or anyone else. A Clinton spokesman later added that the loan was from her “share of their joint resources.”

Since 2001, Sen. Clinton has reported earning $9.9 million from Simon & Shuster for her memoir, Living History, on top of her Senate salary of $169,300 a year.

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By Zeeshan Haider | Reuters, Feb 10, 2008

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani voters are expected to succeed where President Pervez Musharraf has failed, pushing back the Islamist tide and throwing out of power political clerics governing Pakistan’s violent northwest.

“God forbid, I will never vote for mullahs,” said Saif-ur-Rehman, a bearded stall owner in Qissa Khawani, a famous bazaar in Peshawar, before rushing for prayers at a mosque in the provincial capital of North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

Parliamentary and provincial assembly polls set for February 18 will take place against the backcloth of a Taliban and al Qaeda campaign to destabilize President Pervez Musharraf.

For all the revulsion over almost-weekly suicide attacks, conservative religious folk of the area have more immediate concerns, like lack of jobs, rising food prices, power outages and gas shortages that left them without heat over the winter.

The mullahs who have held power in NWFP as well as politicians aligned with the unpopular Musharraf have become discredited.

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The case for a single state solution for Palestine is irrefutable

By Hassan Nafaa

10/02/08 “Al-Ahram” — – -Is there truly hope for the establishment of a viable, sovereign Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel in peace? Sadly, I doubt it very much, at least in the foreseeable future, in view of current local, regional and international conditions.

The creation of a Palestinian state should not be regarded as an end in itself, but rather as a means for resolving a long and complex historical conflict. Accordingly, our judgement on a formula for a proposed state should rest not so much on whether it complies with necessary formal and legal conditions as whether it meets that overriding criterion: will it serve to draw to a close, once and for all, that protracted conflict?

After all, the concrete existence of a Palestinian state with certain specifications could, in itself, become an instrument in the conflict as opposed to a step towards its solution. The conflict between the Palestinians and the Zionist movement is not over disputed borders or material interests and, therefore, resolvable by merely coming to an agreement over permanent borders and a give-and-take over material interests. Rather, it is a conflict between two identities, each of which claims sole propriety right over a given territory. Such a conflict cannot be solved by the same means that are brought to bear on conventional international conflicts.

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From day-one of the crisis that has gripped Kenya this year, much of the mainstream media has been quick to label the violence “tribal warfare,” while the top US envoy to Africa called the Kenyan clashes “ethnic cleansing.” The problem with those terms is that they don’t actually explain anything. Yet many people hear the words “tribal warfare” or “ethnic cleansing” and assume that people’s identity is the root of the violence in Kenya.We live in a time when the notion of a “clash of civilizations” passes for political science and an us-versus-them mentality (”you’re either with us or with the terrorists”) is the basis of super-power foreign policy. The crudeness of those ideas makes it hard to remember that, while identity can be mobilized in the service of hatred, a person’s “tribe,” ethnicity, or religion does not cause or motivate violence.

So what does? In the case of Kenya, tribal categories are a short-hand for describing people’s unequal access to political power and economic resources.

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Khaleej Times, Feb 10, 2008

Editorial

THE United States does its war-on-terror profile no favours by constantly repeating charges that Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omer continue to operate from within Pakistani territory, especially since the long years since the ouster of the Taleban have not seen Washington forward any credible evidence to back the claim.

It is interesting to note that occupation forces’ fortunes in Afghanistan have been at a lower level than before each time this accusation has surfaced, the latest incident being no different.

It is no secret that both the Afghan and Iraq chapters of the terror-war have been effectively lost. So much as holding the status quo at present means constant hemorrhaging of life and material, which does not speak very highly of the world’s mightiest military machine’s credentials when faced with rag-tag urban guerilla insurgencies. As things stand in Afghanistan, America is near abandoned by its own Nato allies, who refuse to commit more troops to take further flack from Washington’s failed war strategy.

Criticising Pakistan’s efforts at this juncture, that too without proof, is ill-advised. Washington should note that Islamabad has clearly done more than any other ally since 9/11, committing its own troops in operations inside its own borders, which has come with serious domestic political, social and economic spillovers. President Musharraf has his share of problems on the domestic political landscape. But those, too, owe in no small manner to his “unstinted support” to Washington’s post 9/11 policy.

It is difficult to question critics’ assertion that a good reason for both Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omer slipping away was Washington’s over confidence as it quickly turned to Baghdad once Kabul fell. In doing so, its material constraints meant both endeavours were approached with half-hearted sincerity. And once the Afghanistan situation started worsening, America did not exercise prudence by bolstering its military presence there, instead resorting to the endless blame game that serves only to betray frustration on its part.

Pakistan has already risked serious threat to its federation by indulging wholeheartedly in America’s game in the region. And as Afghan militias are in the process of bleeding yet another superpower that waged war on them, America should seek to strengthen Pakistan’s position instead of creating fissures and rifts. If they have proof of Al Qaeda and Taleban leadership operating in Pakistan, they should make haste in sharing ‘actionable intelligence’ with Pakistani authorities. Short of that, they should stop making accusations that serve only to splinter the already shaking coalition.