Peace and Justice Post

Are we really having discussions about whether or not to participate in the 2008 Olympics? Are people actually sitting in coffee shops discussing whether the civil rights violations in China warrant a U.S. boycott of the opening ceremonies or even the games themselves?

Man, this country really cracks me up.

Extraordinary men and women, the absolute cream of our athletic crop, who have — for likely as long as they’ve walked — trained for the moment when they could participate in the Olympic Games, have now become the political pawns of our human rights discussions. And I’m not just talking about discussions with China; but discussions about China by a country that has no right to talk.

Remember us? We invaded a sovereign nation and blew it to smithereens. And according to a BBC report last week we have more than 28,000 Iraqis detained without charges. An earlier report in the international journal The Guardian states that in 2006, “several detainees reportedly died … and some of their bodies bore injuries consistent with torture.”

So we’re invaders and we detain people, again from The Guardian, in a manner that is “arbitrary and indefinite.” On top of that, some die while in our custody and there is evidence that the detention itself may have caused their deaths.

Yeah, let’s just preach to other countries about human rights.

Continued . . .

Jim Lobe | Antiwar, April 16, 2008 (Inter Press Service)

A new group of prominent U.S. Jews who believe that the so-called “Israel Lobby” has been dominated for too long by neoconservatives and other Likud-oriented hawks has launched a new organization to help fund political candidates who favor a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a stronger U.S. role in achieving it.

Almost two years in the making, the J Street project plans to spend some $1.5 million – about half of which has been pledged to date – in its first year of operation, a portion of which will go to supporting half a dozen congressional campaigns for candidates who share its pro-peace and pro-Israel views.

“For too long, the loudest American voices on Israel have come from the far Right,” noted Jeremy Ben-Ami, a founder and director of both J Street and its political-action affiliate, JStreetPac.

“Those voices have claimed that the only way to be pro-Israel is to support military responses to political problems, to refuse to engage one’s adversaries in dialogue and to put off the day of reckoning when hard compromises will be required to achieve a peaceful and secure future for Israel and the entire Middle East,” he told reporters via teleconference Tuesday.

“These are not the kind of smart, tough views that serve the long-term interests of the state of Israel, of the United States – or frankly, the American Jewish community,” he added.

Continued . . .

CRAWFORD – The US rationale for war in Iraq has morphed from ousting strongman Saddam Hussein, to countering Al-Qaeda militants to its latest incarnation — facing down what officials in President George W. Bush’s administration call the Iranian “threat”.

“Iraq is the convergence point for two of the greatest threats to America in this new century: Al-Qaeda and Iran,” Bush said last week, renewing accusations that the Islamic republic is backing Iraqi militias hostile to US forces and covertly seeking nuclear weapons.

“If we succeed in Iraq after all that Al-Qaeda and Iran have invested there, it would be a historic blow to the global terrorist movement and a severe setback for Iran,” he said.

With Saddam dead and Al-Qaeda weakened — according to Bush — Iranian-financed extremists, which top US commander in Iraq David Petraeus has called “special groups,” have emerged as a key reason for maintaining US troop levels in Iraq.

“Unchecked, the ’special groups’ pose the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq,” Petraeus said last week as he told US lawmakers of military strategy in Iraq for the coming months.

However, exactly what steps the United States may take to counter this “threat” remain unclear, and depend largely on Bush’s decisions in his remaining nine months in the White House.

Continued . . .

By Brad Reed, AlterNet. Posted April 14, 2008

This country can’t afford to have another election decided by the idea that a member of the ruling class is “genuine” and others are “elitist.”

Millionaire lawyers, politicians and journalists are all savaging Barack Obama for being an elitist.

Obama’s particular crime in this case was saying that Democrats have done a lousy job of dealing with the concerns of working-class Americans, thus allowing the Republicans to swoop in with their God-Guns-n-Gays brand of politics that scapegoats homosexuals, illegal immigrants and George Clooney as the prime culprits behind blue-collar woes. This is not a particularly new argument, and has been a popular theme in mainstream discourse ever since author Thomas Frank published his excellent book What’s the Matter With Kansas? in 2004. Nevertheless, both the media and the rival candidates pounced on Obama’s statements and accused him of making “outrageous San Francisco remarks” and of “offending small town America.” Worst of all, Obama’s words rendered him an “elitist” in the eyes of his critics, which in American political discourse is akin to being a child molester or a Frenchman.

But is Barack Obama really an elitist as his opponents claim? Well of course he is — he’s running for president of the United States! He wouldn’t have gotten this far in life if he’d spent the past 20 years driving a truck or moonlighting as a fry cook at Arby’s. Like every other successful politician in the United States, Obama is a member of America’s political ruling class, which means that like every other presidential candidate in recent memory, he is typically insulated from the lives of ordinary people. Does Obama really have any idea what it’s like to live like a “Real American?” Of course he doesn’t, and neither do John McCain and Hillary Clinton! Does any rational person out there believe that Obama, Clinton and McCain spend their free time away from the campaign trail hanging out at Jimmy Ray’s Chicken’n’Beer Depot playing darts with the common folk?

Continued . . .

The Independent, UK, April 15, 2008
By Nigel Morris, Home Affairs Correspondent

Nearly 400 prisoners will be put to death across China while the world’s elite athletes compete for Olympic glory in Beijing, a leading human rights organisation warns today. Amnesty International disclosed that China used capital punishment far more than any other country, executing an estimated 8,000 offenders every year. That is equivalent to 22 prisoners being killed every day, or 374 executions during the 17 days of the Beijing Olympics in August.

Amnesty called for the world community, including the International Olympics Committee (IOC), to use the games to press the Chinese government to reduce the use of capital punishment, and urged Beijing to end its secrecy over the issue.

Kate Allen, Amnesty’s UK director, said: “Yet again China has executed more people than any country in the world and even now, in Olympics year, China is secretly executing people after unfair trials and alleged torture. As the world’s biggest executioner, China gets the ‘gold medal’ for global executions.”

Continued . . .

Jason Leopold | Consortiumnews. Com, April 15, 2008

President George W. Bush’s comment to ABC News – that he approved discussions that his top aides held about harsh interrogation techniques – adds credence to claims from senior FBI agents in Iraq in 2004 that Bush had signed an Executive Order approving the use of military dogs, sleep deprivation and other tactics to intimidate Iraqi detainees.

When the American Civil Liberties Union released the FBI e-mail in December 2004 – after obtaining it through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit – the White House emphatically denied that any such presidential Executive Order existed, calling the unnamed FBI official who wrote the e-mail “mistaken.”

President Bush and his representatives also have denied repeatedly that the administration condones “torture,” although senior administration officials have acknowledged subjecting “high-value” terror suspects to aggressive interrogation techniques, including the “waterboarding” – or simulated drowning – of three al-Qaeda detainees.

But the emerging public evidence suggests that Bush’s denials about “torture” amount to a semantic argument, with the administration applying a narrow definition that contradicts widely accepted standards contained in international law, including Geneva and other human rights conventions.

The FBI e-mail – dated May 22, 2004 – followed disclosures about abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and sought guidance on whether FBI agents in Iraq were obligated to report the U.S. military’s harsh interrogation of inmates when that treatment violated FBI standards but fit within the guidelines of a presidential Executive Order.

According to the e-mail, Bush’s Executive Order authorized interrogators to use military dogs, “stress positions,” sleep “management,” loud music and “sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc.” to extract information from detainees in Iraq.

Continued . . .

By William K. Tabb | Monthly Review, March 2007

Imperialism is the system by which a dominant power is able to control the trade, investment, labor, and natural resources of other peoples. It takes different forms in different stages of capitalist development and has elements in common with the imperium of ancient empires. I want to lay out these structural elements, contrast them with the mainstream economists’ view of exchange regulated by free market principles, and then discuss the specific form imperialism takes in our own time. Any essay on this subject written from the left must acknowledge the influence of the writing of Harry Magdoff and on this occasion his influence is highlighted.

Empire and the Stages of Imperialism

Within an imperial system there may be one or more empires, which directly or indirectly control territories, their people, and their resources through the deployment or threat of military force. Different empires may compete within a larger imperial order; domination may be informal and control indirect. There were of course empires before there was capitalism. Athens exercised imperial control through the Delian League in an imperium financed in part by its tribute-paying allies who were formally sovereign governments, generally with their own democratic assemblies. The decisions that mattered with regard to foreign policy and even their significant domestic matters were decided by the Athenians. These allies employed the Athenian currency in their commercial dealings and Athens installed garrisons among the allies to keep them in line.

Continued . . .

China View, April 14, 2008

ISLAMABAD, April 14 (Xinhua) — The National Assembly on Monday adopted a resolution calling for United Nations (UN) probe into the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, official Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

The resolution, moved by minister for Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Farooq H Naik and adopted unanimously, urged the government to approach the UN for forming an international investigation commission called Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Commission.

The commission should seek to probe and identify the culprits, perpetrators organizers and financiers behind this heinous crime and bring them to justice, said the resolution.

The NA, through the resolution, also mourned the tragic assassination of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto which it said, resulted in colossal loss to the people of Pakistan as well as the world.

Benazir Bhutto was killed in gunshots and suicide blast, which occurred when Benazir was going out of the Liaquat Bagh park after an election rally on Dec. 27 last year.

The Pakistan People’s Party, led by Benazir’s widower Asif Ali Zardari, has been seeking UN probe into Benazir’s death.

International Socialist Review, ISR Issue 58, March-April 2008

A speech by WILLIAM BLUM, author of Rogue State

UP UNTIL recently I had been in effect banned from speaking on college campuses. This ban lasted for a full year, ever since January of last year when Osama bin Laden, in one of his audiotapes, recommended that Americans read my book Rogue State. With this announcement I was swamped by the media—CNN, C-SPAN, MSNBC, and many others. People who called in to the TV and radio programs I was on attacked me as if I and bin Laden were friends and I had asked him for the endorsement. I had to point out that he and I were not really friends; in fact, I hadn’t spoken to him in more than a month.

Interviewers pressed me to repudiate bin Laden’s support. Wolf Blitzer on CNN was genuinely annoyed with me because I wouldn’t do so.

My reply was this: “There are two elements involved here: On the one hand, I totally despise any kind of religious fundamentalism and the societies spawned by such, like the Taliban in Afghanistan. On the other hand, I’m a member of a movement that has the very ambitious goal of slowing down, if not stopping, the American Empire, to keep it from continuing to go around the world doing things like bombings, invasions, overthrowing governments, and torture. To have any success, we need to reach the American people with our message. And to reach the American people we need to have access to the mass media. What has just happened has given me the opportunity to reach millions of people I would otherwise never reach. Why should I not be glad about that? How could I let such an opportunity go to waste?”

Continued . . .