Peace and Justice Post

Socialist Worker, May 13, 2008
David Barsamian

David Barsamian has been working in radio since 1978 and is the founder and director of Alternative Radio, the independent award-winning weekly series based in Boulder, Colo. He is the author of several books, including Propaganda and the Public Mind: Conversations with Noam Chomsky and The Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting.

The following is a speech Barsamian presented in April at The Attic, a “space for the living arts” in New Delhi, India.

PAKISTAN IS routinely quoted in the American media as “the world’s most dangerous country.” You can turn to Newsweek, USA Today, Business Week and other magazines and newspapers, and it’s always described in those dire terms. How it became that way is never explained. It just happened. It may be something in the genes of Pakistanis, that they are naturally inclined to be dangerous.

But I think it’s important to talk about U.S. involvement in Pakistan. Because that explains a lot of why Pakistan is the way it is today. According to the Human Rights Commission of that country, which just issued its annual report, Pakistan is a nation that is “half alive.” And 2007 is called “one of the worst years in Pakistan’s history, if not the worst.”

So I think it’s crucial to know a little bit about the background of the country. And it’s interesting how India factors in this and especially the U.S. When Pakistan was created out of British India in 1947, the U.S. was at that time kind of dividing the world into different regions that it would seek to dominate. South Asia was part of that focus. The major focus was West Asia for obvious reasons: oil. But South Asia was also of great interest to Washington.

Continued . . .

This is a statement first crafted by Harold Pinter and other British Jews and recently endorsed by those listed below.

TO ADD YOUR NAME CLICK HERE MAKE SUBJECT: ENDORSE JEWISH STATEMENT or send an email to mail@thestruggle.org

The Guardian,  April 30, 2008

We Are  Not Celebrating Israel’s Anniversary

In May, Jewish organizations will be celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel. This is understandable in the context of centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, we are Jews who will not be celebrating. Surely it is now time to acknowledge the narrative of the other, the price paid by another people for European anti-Semitism and Hitler’s genocidal policies. As Edward Said emphasized, what the Holocaust is to the Jews, the Nakba is to the Palestinians.

In April 1948, the same month as the infamous massacre at Deir Yassin and the mortar attack on Palestinian civilians in Haifa’s market square, Plan Dalet was put into operation. This authorized the destruction of Palestinian villages and the expulsion of the indigenous population outside the borders of the state. We will not be celebrating.

In July 1948, 70,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes in Lydda and Ramleh in the heat of the summer with no food or water. Hundreds died. It was known as the Death March. We will not be celebrating.

In all, 750,000 Palestinians became refugees. Some 400 villages were wiped off the map. That did not end the ethnic cleansing. Many thousands more when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. Under international law and sanctioned by UN resolution 194, refugees from war have a right to return or compensation. Israel has never accepted that right. We will not be celebrating.

We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land. We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state that even now engages in ethnic cleansing, that violates international law, that is inflicting a monstrous collective punishment on the civilian population of Gaza and that continues to deny to Palestinians their human rights and national aspirations.

We will celebrate when Arab and Jew live as equals in a peaceful Middle East.

Paula Abrams-Hourani
Vienna, Austria

Miriam Adams
Albuquerque NM

Keren Batiyov
Jew of Conscience
Arlington, VA

Maya Beasley,
Professor, CT

Aja Beasley,
designer, Chevy Chase, MD

Prof. Daniel Boyarin,
UC Berkeley

Hanna Braun; teacher (retired)
London; UK

Lenni Brenner,
author, Manhattan

Dan Burnstein,
lawyer, Boston, MA

Paola Canarutto

Ellen Cantarow
writer, musician, teacher

Smadar Carmon
Not in Our Name
Toronto

Ruth Clark

Judith Deutsch,
Toronto, Canada
Psychoanalyst, Vice-President Science for Peace

Shraga Elam
journalist, Zurich, Switzerland.

Dror Feiler
Stockholm
Sweden

Judith Fieldstone,
Chevy Chase, MD

Joel R Finkel
Jewish Voice for Peace-Chicago

Ruth Fruchtman
Malmöer Str. 25
10439 Berlin
Germany

Sherna Berger Gluck
California, Professor Emerita,
Member of SWANA (South and West Asia and North AFrica) Collective of KPFK/Pacifica

Sue Goldstein
artist and anti-zionist activist
Toronto

Jepke Goudsmit
Coogee, Australia

Andy Griggs
California, teacher; union and human rights/social justice activist;

Freda Guttman
International Middle East Media Centre
Beit Sahour, West Bank, Occupied Palestine

Yael Korin,
UCLA Research Scientist, Los Angeles, Ca

Carole LaFlamme, Women in Black-Los Angeles

Barbara Harvey
Attorney
Detroit, Michigan

Iris Hefets
student, berlin, Germany

Batya Hecker
bernran@aol.com

Adam M. Helfgott
Substitute Teacher, Middletown, CT

Stanley Heller
host “The Struggle” TV News
Connecticut

Louis Hirsch

Philippe Jacob

Stephen Kamnitzer

Mark Kaswan
Doctoral Candidate in Political Science, Los Angeles, CA

Jenny Kastner
I am a grandmother, retired community organizer, and anti-zionist activist.

Alisa Klein,
Israeli and U.S. Citizen, Public Policy Consultant, Northampton, MA

Jason Kunin, teacher
Educators for Peace and Justice
Toronto, Canada

Fey Kurd

Howard Lenow
Vice Chair, Jewish Voice for Peace

Joseph Levine
Dept. of Philosophy
Univ. of Mass

Micki Ezri Longum
Teacher/counsellor
Oslo/Norway

Jennifer Lowenstein

Barbara Lubin
Middle East Children’s Alliance
http://www.mecaforpeace.org

Hilda Meers
(UK)

Peter Melvyn
Vienna, Austria

Hajo G. Meyer, Ph D (theor. Physics)
survivor of Auschwitz for 10 months,
former Director of Research, Philips Electronics Cy in the Netherlands,
Author of The End of Judaism and
Tragic Fate, The German Jews, Paragon and Victim of the Effects of Forces in History,

Roirand Michele
France

Linda Milazzo
Writer/Educator/Activist
Los Angeles, CA

Mark B. Miller

Rachella Mizrachi.

dorinda moreno,
usa
fuerzamundial/we are the ones
sybersysters for peace in the mideast

Dorothy Naor
American-Israeli (residing in Herzliah, Israel)
activist against Israel’s occupation of Palestinians and Palestine

Alex Nissen
Victoria, Australia

Dr. Marcy Newman,
Associate Professor of English, Boise State University

Henry Norr
Berkeley, California, USA

Prof. Bertell Ollman,
NYU

Norah Orlow,
Jerusalem
political activist

Jean Pauline
Oakland, California
Bay Area Women in Black,

Lillian Pollak

Karin Pally
Santa Monica, CA

Karen Platt
member of Jewish Voice for Peace, Albany, CA

Vivienne Porzsolt
Sydney, Australia

Dr. Alice Powell, psychologist and peace activist

Stewart Robinson,
retired professor of Mathematics, Cleveland Ohio

Marta Romer
Sydney, Australia

Lori Rudolph
Visiting Professor
New Mexico Highlands University

Carol Sanders
Activist with Jewish Voice for Peace
Bay Area, California

MARGOT SALOM
Retired Social Worker, Writer
Brisbane Australia

Ellen L Shifrin

John Sigler
Jewish Friends of Palestine
http://wwwjewishfriendspalestine.org
One State Bibliography Project
http://www.onestate.org

Phyllis Solomon, senior citizen and great-grandmother,
Seal Beach Leisure World in California.

Vera Szoke
Pro-Palestinian activist (Jewish)

Roger Tucker,
webmaster of http://www.one-state.net , Hillsborough, NC

Darlene Wallach, San Jose, California, substitute high school teacher,
working with the Free Gaza Movement to break the siege of Gaza summer
2008.

Donna Wallach,
Anti-Zionist Activist, San Jose, CA

Bill Weinberg,
writer, radio producer, WBAI, New York City

Eric Weissberg
Musician
Woodstock NY

Saria Idana J. Young
Los Angeles CA

The Clintons have never understood how to exit the stage gracefully.

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” said Mrs. Clinton.

There is, indeed. There was a name for it when the Republicans were using that kind of lousy rhetoric to good effect: it was called the Southern strategy, although it was hardly limited to the South. Now the Clintons, in their desperation to find some way — any way — back to the White House, have leapt aboard that sorry train.

He can’t win! Don’t you understand? He’s black! He’s black!

The Clintons have been trying to embed that gruesomely destructive message in the brains of white voters and superdelegates for the longest time. It’s a grotesque insult to African-Americans, who have given so much support to both Bill and Hillary over the years.

Continued . . .

Israelis and Palestinians must share the land. Equally.

The Los Angeles Times, May 11, 2008
By Saree Makdisi

 There is no longer a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Forget the endless arguments about who offered what and who spurned whom and whether the Oslo peace process died when Yasser Arafat walked away from the bargaining table or whether it was Ariel Sharon’s stroll through the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem that did it in.

All that matters are the facts on the ground, of which the most important is that — after four decades of intensive Jewish settlement in the Palestinian territories it occupied during the 1967 war — Israel has irreversibly cemented its grip on the land on which a Palestinian state might have been created.

Sixty years after Israel was created and Palestine was destroyed, then, we are back to where we started: Two populations inhabiting one piece of land. And if the land cannot be divided, it must be shared. Equally.

This is a position, I realize, which may take many Americans by surprise. After years of pursuing a two-state solution, and feeling perhaps that the conflict had nearly been solved, it’s hard to give up the idea as unworkable.

But unworkable it is. A report published last summer by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs found that almost 40% of the West Bank is now taken up by Israeli infrastructure — roads, settlements, military bases and so on — largely off-limits to Palestinians. Israel has methodically broken the remainder of the territory into dozens of enclaves separated from each other and the outside world by zones that it alone controls (including, at last count, 612 checkpoints and roadblocks).

Moreover, according to the report, the Jewish settler population in the occupied territories, already approaching half a million, not only continues to grow but is growing at a rate three times greater than the rate of Israel’s population increase. If the current rate continues, the settler population will double to almost 1 million people in just 12 years. Many are heavily armed and ideologically driven, unlikely to walk away voluntarily from the land they have declared to be their God-given home.

These facts alone render the status of the peace process academic.

Continued . . .

Neither side will ever agree on the narrative of the conflict, and the prospects for peace in the Middle East are slim

Ahmad Samih Khalidi
The Guardian, Monday May 12 2008

As Israel celebrates the 60th anniversary of its establishment, an inescapable counter-reality lingers over the occasion that is inextricably twinned with it. It is the nakba or catastrophe, the 60th anniversary of the destruction of Arab Palestine in 1948.

Despite a public discourse that often claimed the opposite, the Zionist movement set out to build a Jewish state in Palestine with a Jewish majority. This could only come about at the expense of the local inhabitants, the vast majority of whom were Palestinian Arabs – both Muslim and Christian. From this perspective, neither the Zionists’ intentions nor the reactions of the Palestinians are at issue: Israel could not have been built as a Jewish state except on the ruins of Arab Palestine.

In 1948, about 750,000 Palestinians fled or were forcibly driven out of their homeland, creating what still stands today as the world’s largest and most longstanding refugee problem. The nakba created an entirely new politico-demographic reality. From a longstanding majority on their own soil, the Palestinians became a small, vulnerable minority and a tattered, broken nation living in exile or under foreign rule.

Continued . . .

Source: Consortiumnews. Com

By Ivan Eland, May 2, 2008

Editor’s Note: George W. Bush, who once saw himself as a modern-day Alexander bestride the Middle East, now presides over two military quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan – and has to scrounge around for Americans willing to fight.

The growing unpopularity of Bush’s open-ended wars, especially the one in Iraq, has forced the U.S. military to recruit more and more felons with potentially disastrous consequences, as the Independent Institute’s Ivan Eland notes in this guest essay:

Enmeshed in two military occupations that have turned into well-publicized quagmires, the Army and Marines are understandably having trouble enlisting new recruits. Their answer: vastly increase the number of convicted felons and other societal miscreants accepted into their ranks.

According to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, from 2006 to 2007 the Army more than doubled its felonious recruits and the Marine Corps increased its share by more than two-thirds.

For example, some entrants had convictions for crimes of dishonesty—including burglary, robbery, and grand larceny—crimes of violence—such as aggravated assault, arson, and “terroristic” threats, including bomb threats—and sex crimes, such as rape, sexual assault, sexual abuse, molestation, and indecent acts with a child.

In addition, the two services dramatically increased their “conduct waivers” for people convicted of misdemeanors. Astonishingly, in fiscal year 2007, nearly one in five Army recruits were brought in under waivers for felonies and misdemeanors.

Continued . . .

Charles J. Hanley, Pulitzer winner for the Associated Press, uncovered abuses at the infamous prison months before the scandal really exploded. Why were so many others so slow to act?

By Greg Mitchell | Editor & Publisher, May 8, 2008

Four years ago this month, as May unfolded, each day brought fresh horrors, images, or details about the Abu Ghraib prison abuses in Iraq. Pictures of shackled and hooded prisoners gave way to detainees on leashes, cowering before snarling dogs, or just plain beaten and bruised. On May 10, 2004, an Iraqi human rights official charged that American overseer Paul Bremer had been repeatedly informed about abuses at Abu Ghraib. The New Yorker revealed that Donald Rumsfeld personally okayed a set of procedures that led to the abuses. Several major newspapers called for Rumsfeld to quit.At that time, in a column, I disclosed how Pulitzer-winning correspondent Charles J. Hanley at The Associated Press had actually “broken” the Abu Ghraib story months before it came out via The New Yorker and other outlets—but the rest of the media had paid it little mind. This led me to ask, Is the press trying to make up for lost time once again?

The media was now bursting with accounts of prison abuse at Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi prisons, but where were they the previous fall when evidence of wrongdoing started to emerge—when a public accounting might have halted what turned out to be the worst of the incidents? “It was not an officially sanctioned story that begins with a handout from an official source,” Hanley told me.

Continued . . .

The New York Times, May 9, 2008
The Editorial

Congress is finally moving to shut one of the more egregious forms of Iraq war profiteering: defense contractors using offshore shell companies to avoid paying their fair share of payroll taxes. The practice is widespread and Congressional investigators have been dispatched to one of the prime tax refuges, the Cayman Islands, to seek a firsthand estimate of how much the Treasury is being shorted.

No one will be surprised to hear that one of the suspected prime offenders is KBR, the Texas-based defense contractor, formerly a part of the Halliburton conglomerate allied with Vice President Dick Cheney. According to a report in The Boston Globe, KBR, which has landed billions in Iraq contracts, has used two Cayman shell companies to avoid paying hundreds of millions in payroll, Medicare and unemployment taxes.

Unfortunately right now there is nothing illegal about this. The House has approved legislation to plug the dodge by treating foreign subsidiaries of defense contractors as what they are — American employers required to pay taxes. The Senate must quickly follow suit and not buy the contractors’ line that listing American workers at offshore companies is a cost saving passed on patriotically to the war effort. No less insulting, the Cayman dodge has been blocking Americans from the protection of labor and anti-discrimination laws.

The House has taken on another shamefully common abuse: voting to deny future government contracts to any company that fails to pay its corporate taxes, including an estimated 25,000 defense contractors keeping billions due the Treasury. The Senate should approve that legislation as well.

Companies enriched by taxpayers in the war boom should not be able to compound their profits by not paying their fair share of taxes. Congress must do far more to bring them to a full accounting.

The Sunday Times, May 11, 2008

Simon Jenkins

What are we waiting for? Where now is liberal interventionism? More than 100,000 people are dead after a cyclone in the Irrawaddy delta and the United Nations has declared that up to 2m people, deprived of aid for a week, are at risk of death. Barely 10% are reported to have received any help. The world stands ready to save them. The warehouses of Asia are crammed with supplies. Ships and planes are on station. Nothing happens.

Anyone who has visited this exquisite part of the world will know how avoidable is further catastrophe to the delta people. They are resourceful, peaceable and hugely resilient. Like those of lowlying Bangladesh next door, they are used to extreme weather. Their agriculture is fertile and they are self-sufficient in most things. But no one can survive instant starvation and disease.

They need not wait. There are three giant C130s loaded and ready in Thailand. There are American and French ships in the area, fortuitously on a disaster relief exercise, with shelters, clothing, latrines, medicines and water decontamination equipment. Above all there are helicopters, vital in an area where roads are impassable by flooding and fallen trees.

The aid agency World Vision has 600 staff in Burma and tons of supplies waiting in Dubai. The world cannot prevent natural calamities, but since the tsunami of 2004 it has learnt how to cope with their aftermath.

Nothing can be done because the Burmese military regime refuses to permit it. Instead it is wasting time this weekend holding a nationwide referendum, devoid of open debate, to legitimise its hold on power and exclude the opposition, led by Aung San Suu Kyi.

Continued . . .