Peace and Justice Post

Calls for the west to use force to restore its values in the face of radical Islam reveal a profound detachment from reality

Alastair Crooke | The Guardian, Monday March 24 2008

The French philosopher Michel Foucault notes that in all societies discourse is controlled – imperceptibly constrained, perhaps, but constrained nonetheless. We are not free to say exactly what we like. The norms set by institutions, convention and our need to keep within the boundaries of accepted behaviour and thought limit what may be touched upon. The Archbishop of Canterbury experienced the backlash from stepping outside these conventions when he spoke about aspects of Islamic law that might be imported into British life.

Once, a man was held to be mad if he strayed from this discourse – even if his utterings were credited with revealing some hidden truth. Today, he is called “naive”, or accused of having gone “native”. Recently, the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) marshalled former senior military and intelligence experts in order to assert such limits to expression by warning us that “deference” to multiculturalism was undermining the fight against Islamic “extremism” and threatening security.

Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, in a recent interview with a German magazine, embellished Rusi’s complaints of naivety and “flabby thinking”. Radical Islam won’t stop, he warned, and the “virus” would only become more virulent if the US were to withdraw from Iraq.

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Source: Lew Rockwell

By Sam Baker

On May 14, 2005 the Associated Press reported Bulgaria’s announcement that it would provide three new military bases to the US. General James Jones, the top commander of US and NATO troops in Europe, said that he would propose to the US Congress “four or five Bulgarian military facilities for use by US forces.” More recently, the US announced plans for new bases in Romania.

Why does the US need new military bases in Bulgaria and Romania? According to Chalmers Johnson, in his book “The Sorrows of Empire,” America already possesses more than 725 overseas bases. This incredible estimate comes from two official sources: The Department of Defense’s “Base Structure Report,” and “Worldwide Manpower Distribution by Geographical Area.” Johnson claims that the figure is actually an underestimate, because many bases are “secret” or otherwise not listed on official books. As an example, Johnson quotes several sources who cite at least six US installations in Israel which are either operating or are under construction.

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By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor

Reuters, March 24, 2008

PARIS (Reuters) – The Easter baptism of an Italian Muslim by Pope Benedict was a provocative act that raises questions about the Vatican’s approach to Islam, a leading participant in Christian-Muslim dialogue said on Monday.

Aref Ali Nayed, a key figure in a group of over 200 Muslim scholars launching discussion forums with Christian groups, said the Vatican had turned the baptism of Egyptian-born journalist Magdi Allam into “a triumphalist tool for scoring points.”

He said the Vatican should distance itself from a searing attack on Islam that Allam published on Sunday in the Milan daily Corriere della Sera, where he is deputy director.

Commentators in Algeria and Morocco echoed Nayed’s view, saying Allam’s conversion was a personal affair but his attacks on Islam and his headline-grabbing baptism by the pope strained relations between Muslims and the Catholic Church.

“The whole spectacle… provokes genuine questions about the motives, intentions and plans of some of the pope’s advisers on Islam,” Nayed, who is director of the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre in Amman, said in a statement.

“Nevertheless, we will not let this unfortunate episode distract us from our work on pursuing ‘A Common Word’ for the sake of humanity and world peace. Our basis for dialogue is not a tit-for-tat logic of reciprocity.”

Nayed was one of 138 Muslim scholars who last October issued an unprecedented appeal entitled “A Common Word” that urged a serious dialogue between Christians and Muslims on the basis of the shared values of love of God and neighbor. Dozens more scholars have since signed the appeal.

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Associated Press, 24 March 2008

BAGHDAD – A roadside bomb killed four US soldiers in Baghdad on Sunday, the military said, pushing the overall American death toll in the five-year war to at least 4,000.

The grim milestone came on the same day that rockets and mortars pounded the US-protected Green Zone, underscoring the fragile security situation and the resilience of both Sunni and Shia extremist groups despite an overall lull in violence.

A Multi-National Division – Baghdad soldier also was wounded in the roadside bombing, which struck the soldiers’ patrol vehicle about 10 p.m. in southern Baghdad, according to a statement.

Identities of those killed were withheld pending notification of relatives.

Navy Lt. Patrick Evans, a military spokesman, expressed condolences to all the families who have lost a loved one in Iraq, saying each death is ‘equally tragic.’

‘There have been some significant gains. However, this enemy is resilient and will not give up, nor will we,’ he said. ‘There’s still a lot of work to be done.’

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The Smirking Chimp, March 23, 2008

By Eric Margolis

The latest Tibetan rebellion against Chinese rule has captured world sympathy and horribly embarrassed China’s government just as Beijing has been pulling out all the stops preparing for its summer Olympic extravaganza.

But is there anything the world community can do besides issuing more platitudes?

First, some questions.

Is Tibet historically part of China, as Beijing claims? Yes and no. Tibet was spiritually linked to China from about 1370 in a “priest-ruler” relationship. Tibet’s Lamaist Buddhist theocracy recognized the ultimate temporal power of China’s emperor, while the emperor recognized Lhasa’s spiritual primacy and total autonomy. Lhasa became the Vatican for the Mongol Empire and its successor, China’s Ming Empire.

In 1913, while China was in chaos, Tibet, backed by the British Empire, declared independence. So it remained until October 1950, when the People’s Army invaded Tibet and declared it “reunited” to China. A year earlier, Chinese troops had invaded and crushed the independent Republic of East Turkistan — today called Xinjiang — whose Turkic-Mongol Uighurs, long fought Chinese rule and Han Chinese immigration.

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The Times, UK, March 24, 2008

by Peter Phillips | Dissident Voice, March 22nd, 2008

Will November 2008 bring a meaningful change to America? Will getting rid of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney without impeachment or indictment really make a difference? Will a 600 billion dollar war/defense budget be cut in half and used for desperately needed domestic spending? Will the ninety-three billion dollars profits in the private health insurance companies­­—those parasitic intermediates between you and your doctor—be used instead for full health care coverage for all? Will Habeas Corpus and Posse Comitatus be restored to the people? Will torture stop and the US withdraw from Iraq immediately? Will all students in public universities be able to enroll for free? Will the US national security agencies stop mass spying on our personal communications? Will the neo-conservative agenda of total military domination of the world be reversed?

The answer to these questions in the context of the current billion dollar presidential campaign is an absolute no. Instead we have a campaign of personalities and platitudes. There is a race candidate, a gender candidate and a tortured veteran candidate, each talking about change in America, national security, freedom, and the American way. The candidates are running with support of political parties so deeply embedded with the military industrial complex, the health insurance companies, Wall Street, and corporate media that it is undeterminable where the board rooms separate from the state rooms.

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CounterPunch, Weekend Edition, March 22 / 23, 2008

Worth the Sacrifice?

By RALPH NADER

On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of Bush’s illegal war of aggression in Iraq, the Fabricator-in-Chief made a speech at the Pentagon, whose muzzled army chiefs had opposed his costly, ruinous adventure from the start for strategic, tactical and logistical reasons.

As benefits the dictatorial monarch of yesteryear, evicted by America’s first patriots, this modern-day King George blistered the truth, somersaulted the facts and declared that a “strategic victory” in Iraq is near. He called the war “a just and noble cause.” Sugarcoating the terrible, impoverished state of daily life in Iraq, he acknowledged “the high cost in lives and treasure,” but said the recent situation in Iraq made it all worthwhile. “Worth the sacrifice” is how he put it often in previous statements.

At the same time, his V.P. his Prince Regent, Dick Cheney was having this exchange with ABC’s Martha Raddatz:

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Desert Peace, March 22, 2008 at 9:06 pm

By Khalid Amayreh

Israel and powerful Zionist circles in Europe and North America have been seeking of late to spread the message that criticizing Israel and her brutal policies and actions in occupied Palestine borders on anti-Semitism.

The ultimate purpose of this campaign is obviously to silence critics of Israel in order to allow the racist entity to murder Palestinians as quietly as possible and to steal their land as quietly as possible, and to get away with impunity.

Meanwhile, Israeli and Zionist hasbara doctors from Sydney to Los Angels are wasting no time inciting hatred against Islam and Muslims.

It is not difficult to figure out what these self-worshiping Zionists are up to. They simply want to demonize Muslims as much as it takes to prompt the Zionist-controlled American government to invade Muslim countries and murder millions of innocent people.

Demonizing a given racial or religious community is after all the penultimate step before extermination. one can safely argue that Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen and Treblinka wouldn’t have occurred if the decade-long anti-Jewish hysteria, including the publication and wide dissemination of a book by Adolph Hitler titled “My struggle,” had not taken place.

Today Zionist Jews are doing exactly what their Nazi mentors had done in the 1930s, with Arabs and Muslims being the target.

In Israel itself, the writing is on the wall: Arabs to the ovens! We will inflict on them a greater holocaust! Don’t spare their children! Don’t rent houses to the Arabs! Don’t buy from them or sell them!

And in North America, parts of Europe and Australia, the message is too clear and equally ugly: Kill the Muslims , kill the Arabs, kill the “terrorists”, the Muslims are coming, they are taking over Europe, the Judeo-Christian civilization is facing a mortal danger at the hands of the Islamofascists!!

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