Peace and Justice Post

Consortiumnews.com, Feb 10, 2008

By Morgan Strong

Editor’s Note: When Americans wonder how the arrogant and corrupt Bush family managed to seize so much power for so long, part of the answer is that the electorate lost control of its history during the long Cold War and into a new era of secrecy called “the war on terror.”

Cold War secrecy gave the rich and powerful extraordinary abilities to hide information from the American people, including the unsavory history of the Bush family, as journalist/historian Morgan Strong observes in this guest essay:

To fully understand the present manifestation of the Bush family and its excesses, one must consider its history over several generations, a difficult and painful undertaking since it reveals so much about the self-destructive apathy of the American people.

James Madison wrote passionately in the Federalist Papers that in order for a democracy to function and not descend into a tyranny of the wealthy and the well-connected, the citizenry must stay well informed. In Madison’s view, a democratic society was wholly dependent on an informed citizenry.

Much of the responsibility to inform was placed on the press and the educational system. Indeed, the Founders gave the press the unchallenged right to seek out and publish information under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In recent years, however, the U.S. press has failed in that responsibility dreadfully. Education in this country also has been a dismal failure. But in the end, it is the citizens who bear the principal duty to make themselves informed.

Below, in a bleak and foreboding history, is what occurs when the citizenry is deprived of meaningful information and then fails in its obligation to find out the facts and exercise the critical judgment required for self governance.

The Bushes

In the late 19th Century, Samuel Bush moved to Ohio from Orange, New Jersey, where he had attended the nearby Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken. He made the first big move in his manufacturing career as an engineer with Buckeye Steel Castings Company, which produced gun barrels and railroad parts.

Samuel Bush became a confidante of the company’s president, Frank Rockefeller, a brother of the enormously wealthy and powerful John D. Rockefeller, who owned Standard Oil. Another participant in Buckeye Steel was railroad baron E.H. Harriman.

Continued . . .

By Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers, February 14, 2008

Human Rights Watch said a journalist made the recording during a telephone interview with Attorney General Malik Qayyum when Qayyum took a second call without disconnecting the first, allowing his end of the second conversation to be overheard and recorded.

In the recording, Qayyum, Pakistan’s top legal officer, can be heard advising the caller to accept a ticket he is being offered by an unidentified political party for a seat, Human Rights Watch said.

“They will massively rig to get their own people to win,” Qayyum said, according to a transcript released by Human Rights Watch. “If you get a ticket from these guys, take it.”

Continued . . .

wsws.org

By Jean Shaoul

15 February 2008

Israeli armed forces are engaged in a sustained offensive against the Gaza Strip with the aim of eliminating Hamas’s military and political leadership. Tzahi Hanegbi, chairman of the Israeli parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, said Israel should go after Hamas’s political leaders, and not just its gunmen. Israeli defence officials said they were considering stepping up their air strikes to target Hamas political leaders in Gaza.

In another announcement, Defence Minister Ehud Barak ordered the army to prepare for a major operation to end rocket fire from Gaza. Vice premier Haim Ramon said Israel would maintain its blockade on Gaza and reduce supplies of electricity and fuel, tightening once again its grip on Gaza.

Continued . . .

uruknet.info,

John Tirman, E & P

The author commissioned the “Lancet” study recently attacked in a National Journal report and by the Wall Street Journal. He calls the criticism a “hatchet job,” fraudulent or based on innuendo. (February 14, 2008) — (Commentary) One puzzling aspect of the news media’s coverage of the Iraq war is their squeamish treatment of Iraqi casualties. The scale of fatalities and wounded is a difficult number to calculate, but its importance should be obvious. Yet, apart from some rare and sporadic attention to mortality figures, the topic is virtually absent from the airwaves and news pages of America. This absence leaves the field to gross misunderstandings, ideological agendas, and political vendettas. The upshot is that the American public—and U.S. policy makers, for that matter—are badly informed on a vital dimension of the war effort. As an academic interested in the war’s violence, I commissioned a household survey in October 2005 to gauge mortality, and I naturally turned to the best professionals available—the Johns Hopkins University epidemiologists who had conducted such surveys before in Iraq, Congo, and elsewhere. Their survey of 1,850 households resulted in a shocking number: 600,000 dead by violence in the first 40 months of the war. The survey was extensively peer reviewed and published in the British medical journal, the Lancet, in October 2006. The findings caused a ripple of interest (in part because President Bush, during a press conference, called the results “not credible”) and stirred a very lively debate among the few people interested in the methods. By and large, however, the survey passed from public view fairly quickly, and the news media continued to cite the very low numbers produced by the Iraq Body Count, a U.K.-based NGO that counts civilian deaths through English-language newspaper reports. Continued . . .

Xinhuanet

GAZA, Feb. 14 (Xinhua) — Israeli special forces arrested 30Palestinians in southeast Gaza Strip early Thursday, an Israeli army spokesman said.

The forces infiltrated into area around the destroyed airport at southern Gaza’s Rafah town after midnight and took away 30Palestinians for interrogation in the security operation there, according to the spokesman.

Palestinian residents at the area also confirmed the reports. Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Israeli forces arrested 13Palestinians during operations conducted last night, Israeli radio reported.

The radio quoted military sources as saying that most of the detainees were arrested in Hebron and other West Bank cities, adding that they were held for being wanted by the Israeli army. The soldiers also found weapons and ammunition with some of the detainees, according to the radio.

Talking to A Wall

By KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON | Counterpunch, Feb 14, 2008

You would think that showing maps clearly delineating the truncated, obviously non-viable area available for a possible Palestinian state and showing pictures that define Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories would have some kind of impact on an audience of astute but, on this issue, generally uninformed Americans. We recently spoke to a small foreign affairs discussion group and devoted much of our presentation to these images of oppression — images that never appear in the U.S. media — in the probably naïve hope of making some kind of dent in the impassive American attitude toward Israel’s 40-year occupation of Palestinian territory.

But our expectations that these people would listen and perhaps learn something were sadly misplaced. Few among the elite seminar-style discussion group seemed concerned about, or even particularly interested in, what is happening on the ground in Palestine-Israel, and the event stands as starkly emblematic of American apathy about the oppressive Israeli regime in the occupied territories that the United States is enabling and in many instances actively encouraging.

Continued . . .

• guardian.co.uk, February 15 2008
• Ewen MacAskill in Washington

US president George Bush at the White House in Washington. Photograph: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

President George Bush cited the July 7 bombings in London to justify his support for waterboarding, an interrogation technique widely regarded as torture.

In an interview with the BBC broadcast yesterday, he said information obtained from alleged terrorists helped save lives and the families of the July 7 victims would understand that.
Bush claims that waterboarding, which simulates drowning, is not torture and is threatening to veto a congressional bill that would ban it.

Bush defended the existence of the Guantanamo Bay prison, where many of those caught in the US ‘war on terrorism’ are held, and claimed that the US was a defender of human rights. He insisted the US still occupied the moral high ground worldwide.

He was more forthcoming than normal in defence of his legacy, reflecting that he has less than a year to go. He stood by the decision to remove Saddam Hussein and claimed he would be vindicated as long as the US did not leave Iraq prematurely.

Continued . . .

by Cindy Sheehan / Dissident Voice, February 14th, 2008

The U.S. House of Representatives under the so-called leadership of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-SF) is failing We the People at an alarming rate.

She has not only taken impeachment off of the table for her cohorts, George Bush and Dick Cheney, but she has taken ending the illegal, immoral and unconscionable occupation of Iraq off the table, too. Along with an almost daily onslaught of fresh assaults on our liberties, these things are clearly not acceptable.

I am running against Ms. Pelosi to challenge her lack of leadership and her abandonment of the good people of the 8th District. As a “Decline to State,” my “party” affiliation, I cannot get on the ballot in California until August for the November General Election. In a perfect world, a credible Democrat will take her on in the primaries to make her answer to her constituents on certain charges: ie: if she knew BushCo was torturing human beings as early as 2002, why did she remain silent? Why does she continue to fund the war crimes of the Bush Regime? Why will she not advocate for the decontamination of Bay View/Hunter’s Point and for affordable housing, not just there, but all over San Francisco? Why did she exclude our transgender brothers and sisters from the ENDA legislation? Why does she support “Free” Trade agreements that hurt workers and unions all over the world? These are just a few questions that need to be urgently asked and answered because many of her policies directly contradict the values of San Francisco.

Cindy for Congress is not opposed to the idea of a Democratic challenger to Pelosi in the June primaries. We will still be continuing our challenge as we gather signatures to appear on the ballot and consolidate support for our general election victory in November. The bigger the tent, the more people can fit!

The more voices, the better the Democracy!

Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Spc. Casey Sheehan who was killed in Bush’s war of terror on 04/04/04. Sheehan is a congressional candidate running against Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco. You can visit her campaign website at CindyforCongress.org She is the co-founder and president of Gold Star Families for Peace and The Camp Casey Peace Institute. Read other articles by Cindy.

Foreign Policy In Focus, February 13, 2008

Stephen Zunes

Many Americans would be surprised to learn that among the most important constituencies backing the Bush administration’s disastrous agenda in the Middle East and promoting anti-Arab policies has been the one million-strong American Federation of Teachers (AFT). The AFT leadership has gone so far as to make a series of public statements and push through resolutions with demonstrably inaccurate assertions in its defense of administration policy. A key constituent union of the AFL-CIO, the AFT – which also represents a significant number of health care and other public service workers – gives over $5 million in contributions to congressional candidates each election cycle.

In January 2003, as anti-war activists were scrambling to prevent a U.S. invasion of Iraq war by challenging the Bush administration’s claims about Iraq having reconstituted its chemical and biological weapons capability, offensive delivery system, and nuclear weapons program, the AFT’s executive council decided to weigh in on the debate.

The AFT executive council issued a public statement claiming that Iraq at that time posed “a unique threat to the peace and stability of the Middle East” and “to the national security interests of the United States.” This decision to parrot the Bush administration’s rhetoric regarding Iraq’s alleged military capabilities flew in the face of substantial evidence gathered from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN Special Commission on Iraq, and the UN Monitoring and Verification Commission. In addition, testimony by former UN arms inspectors, articles in scholarly journals by arms control experts, reports by investigative journalists, and analyses by independent research institutes available at that time cast serious doubts on such allegations.

Continued . . .

reland.com, 12/02/2008Four million Iraqis are struggling to feed themselves, and 40 per cent of the country’s 27 million people have no safe water, the UN said today.

Iraq has annual economic growth of around 7 per cent, according to UN estimates, and a national budget of €33 billion, buoyed by oil exports of 1.6 million barrels per day.

But insurgency and sectarian attacks have displaced more than two million people and left nearly twice as many hungry.

“Four million Iraqis cannot guarantee they’re going to have food on their table tomorrow,” the United Nations humanitarian co-ordinator for Iraq, David Shearer, said as he unveiled a €182 million appeal to donor governments for 2008.

The United Nations says the number of displaced people has roughly doubled since 2006 to nearly 2.5 million. High unemployment has left many others unable to feed themselves.

The Iraqi government said it would for the first time give €27.5 million from its own coffers to the aid appeal.