Peace and Justice Post

By Mohammed A. Salih | Inter Press Service, May 23, 2008

WASHINGTON, May 23 (IPS) – While the future commander of U.S. military operations throughout South Asia and the Middle East assured lawmakers Thursday that the situation in Iraq is continuing to improve, the U.S. Senate approved an additional 165 billion dollars today to fund wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan at least through next winter.

The bill, which was approved by a margin of 70 to 26, did not impose any new conditions on how the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, who leaves office next January, can spend the money, much to the disappointment of Democrats and some Republicans who had worked hard in recent weeks to attach amendments to the appropriation.

But, pressed by both the White House and the Pentagon to approve the bill without conditions by Memorial Day — the national holiday that honours fallen war veterans — the Democratic leadership decided against a major fight with the administration over control of Iraq policy at this time.

Earlier this week, the Senate Appropriations Committee had approved a package of amendments, including one that would have required the administration to gain prior Congressional approval for any future security deals with Iraq’s government. Senators rejected the package, however, in a 63-34 vote.

“We can’t help but note the irony that, as the Senate leaves for its Memorial Day recess, they have ensured the needless deaths of hundreds of soldiers and thousands of innocent Iraqis by voting to expand the war and occupation for another full year,” said Michael McPhearson, co-chair of United for Peace and Justice, an anti-war group, after the vote.

“How many more fallen service men and women will we honour next year?” asked McPhearson, who also serves as executive director of Veterans for Peace.

Before passing the entire bill, however, the Senate approved an amendment by a veto-proof margin of 75-22 that would add nearly 50 billion dollars in education and other benefits for veterans.

Continued . . .

Socialist Worker, May 26, 2008

By Kathryn Weber

THE WELL-known Jewish academic and critic of Israel Norman Finkelstein was stopped at the airport on arriving in Israel May 23 and told he wouldn’t be allowed to enter because of “security concerns.”

Finkelstein was held and interrogated by Israeli security services for 24 hours before being put on a plane to return him to Amsterdam. His attorney in Israel, Michael Sfad, said this could mean a 10-year ban on Finkelstein entering Israel.

Finkelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors, is the author of numerous books protesting Israeli policies, including Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict and Beyond Chutzpah.

Several months ago, he went to Lebanon and met with officials of the Shia political party and militia Hezbollah, the target of Israel’s deadly assault on Lebanon in summer 2006. Finkelstein said he believed that Hezbollah, by fighting for their homeland against Israeli aggression, represented hope for Lebanon.

Israeli officials said Finkelstein was stopped at the airport “because of suspicions involving hostile elements in Lebanon” and “did not give a full accounting to interrogators with regard to these suspicions.”

But Finkelstein told the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz he gave “absolutely candid and comprehensive answers to all the questions put to me. I am confident that I have nothing to hide. Apart from my political views, and the supporting scholarship, there isn’t much more to say for myself: alas, no suicide missions or secret rendezvous with terrorist organizations.”

Continued . . .

By Joy Lo Dico | The Independent, Monday, 26 May 2008

The former US president Jimmy Carter has called for his country to resume trade relations with Iran, which he described as a “rational” nation. Speaking at the Hay Festival yesterday, Mr Carter also suggested the US should provide nuclear power technology and fuel to Iran as a show of goodwill.

“What happens if, in three years time, Iran has a nuclear weapon,” Mr Carter asked. “I’m not sure that is going to happen, but if it does, what do we do? They are rational people like all of us in this room. Do they want to commit suicide? I would guess not. So what we have to do is talk with them now and say to them we want to be their friends. The United States must let Iran know that we want to give them fuel and everything they need for a non-military nuclear programme. Twenty-five years ago we cut off trading with Iran. We’ve got to resume trading to show Iran we are friends.”

During the Carter administration , 52 American diplomats were held hostage by the Iranians for over a year, and only freed on the last day of his presidency in 1981.

Mr Carter also criticised President George Bush, saying it was a “serious mistake and terrible departure” from the actions of previous US presidents not to engage with countries with which they differed. “The president of the administration in Washington is the first one to have ever done this and I think we close off ourselves from any sort of rational accommodation of the views of other parties in order to reach out on major goals,” said Carter, in a further interview with Sky Arts, to be broadcast today.

Ex-president says EU is colluding in a human rights crime

• Jonathan Steele and Jonathan Freedland
• The Guardian, Monday May 26 2008

Former US President Jimmy Carter speaking at the 2008 Hay Festival. Photograph: Barry Batchelor/PA

Britain and other European governments should break from the US over the international embargo on Gaza, former US president Jimmy Carter told the Guardian yesterday. Carter, visiting the Welsh border town of Hay for the Guardian literary festival, described the EU’s position on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as “supine” and its failure to criticise the Israeli blockade of Gaza as “embarrassing”.

Referring to the possibility of Europe breaking with the US in an interview with the Guardian, he said: “Why not? They’re not our vassals. They occupy an equal position with the US.”

The blockade on Hamas-ruled Gaza, imposed by the US, EU, UN and Russia – the so-called Quartet – after the organisation’s election victory in 2006, was “one of the greatest human rights crimes on Earth,” since it meant the “imprisonment of 1.6 million people, 1 million of whom are refugees”. “Most families in Gaza are eating only one meal per day. To see Europeans going along with this is embarrassing,” Carter said.

He called on the EU to reassess its stance if Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza. “Let the Europeans lift the embargo and say we will protect the rights of Palestinians in Gaza, and even send observers to Rafah gate [Gaza’s crossing into Egypt] to ensure the Palestinians don’t violate it.”

Continued . . .

By Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers, May 24, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s fragile coalition government set itself on a collision course with the country’s U.S.-backed president Saturday with a plan to strip Pervez Musharraf of his powers.

The move could create further instability in the country and is likely to heighten US concerns that political infighting is taking attention away from the anti-terror fight. American officials have repeatedly warned that the next terrorist attack on U.S. soil is likely to come from extremists based in Pakistan’s wild tribal region.

The Pakistan People’s Party, which leads the coalition, announced a legislative package that would take power away from the presidency and return it to the prime minister, the directly elected official who is supposed to run the government under Pakistan’s original constitution.

Such a move would rob Musharraf of the authority that he currently holds to dismiss the government and also to appoint the head of the army.

“Democracy and dictatorship do not mix,” said Asif Zardari, who became head of the People’s Party following assassination of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, in December. “All powers will revert back to the parliament.”

He described Musharraf as a “relic of yesterday.”

The move was an abrupt change in Zardari’s stance towards the president, following months in which he and his party had sought an accommodation with Musharraf — under pressure from Washington, many believe.

Abida Hussain, a leading member of the People’s Party and a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States, said: “It is going to be a big nuisance for Washington if an American-friendly dictator falls on the eve of the presidential elections.”

Continued . . .

An Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi on Israel

By KATHLEEN M. BARRY | Counterpunch, May 24 / 25, 2008

Dear Nancy Pelosi,

Check your history books.

Celebration of the 60th Anniversary of the State of Israel is celebration of the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Palestine, the celebration of the expulsion of 750,000 Arabs who generations later still people the refugee camps of Lebanon, Syria, Jordon, who still mourn their families slaughtered by Zionists as they completely destroyed Arab villages in Palestine, who still hold keys to their homes that were seized by the new Israeli state in 1948.

I stand with Jews, with Palestinians, with every people who seek protection from persecution, but never with those who persecute others, who conduct well documented ethnic cleansing to gain their own protection which in six decades of Israeli wars has been no protection at all for Israelis.

I expected George Bush to align himself with the war mongering far right wing government of Israel. He after all provided most of the millions of laser guided smart bombs Israel directed at apartment buildings and cluster bombs that still take lives in the south of Lebanon. Israel’s crimes against humanity in the 2006 Israeli war against Lebanon go unnoticed by you and your delegation as you are only concerned with Hezbollah’s threat to Israel, kidnapping of three soldiers. In that war, the Israeli Air Force launched more than 7,000 air attacks on about 7,000 targets in Lebanon between 12 July and 14 August, while the Navy conducted an additional 2,500 bombardments. Does that sound at all proportional to the kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers? Neither are justified, but reason is required, although with your personal convictions override reason making you very dangerous in a position of leadership.

Are those the Israeli tags of kidnapped soldiers you carry from that war? Do you wonder at all about the families of the 1200 dead Lebanese while you worry for those soldiers? Check the details Nancy, Israel’s aggression of Lebanon’s borders has outnumbered Hezbollah’s.

Bathing in self-congratulations on Israel’s 60th anniversary, without any acknowledgment of the Naqba, the disaster wrought upon the Palestinians by Zionist in what was then Palestine, you have told me and all Americans clearly that as Speaker and therefore head of the people’s house, you are not representing Americans. You are representing the current Israeli government without ever questioning, in fact, implicitly condoning their crimes against humanity.

For a long time, many of us have been discouraged by the number of Senators and Representatives who have been bought by the Israeli Lobby in the US. Your press conference of May 20 on your return from celebrating Israel and hence its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians proved how wrong we have been. Your personal allegiance to Israel outstrips reason and aligns with George Bush’s Christian fundamentalist alliance with Israel. Americans must seriously question your fitness to represent us – all of us – in Congress.

Having fought for women’s rights for over three decades and campaigned around the globe against sexual exploitation of women, as a woman I was proud to see you assume the highest Congressional office in the United States. Having opposed the war in Iraq, and now writing on war and masculinity, I was relieved to see you and the Democrats retake control of the Congress in 2007. But watching you in your press conference tonight celebrate your return from Israel’s celebrations, I see that even though the US Congress was manipulated by George Bush in 2003 to support a war that should not have been fought, you stand with him today on the brink of another war. Your collusion with George Bush’s War on Terrorism may well be the biggest threat to peace in the Middle East.

It has been nearly eight years since George Bush’s violent disregard for human life, especially human life in the Arab world where he has chosen to make and support wars, made me ashamed to be an American. Listening to you, following your speech to the Knesset, I am deeply saddened that you have only reinforced that shame.

I long for the America who will not justify the persecution of ANY people, who will protect and defend the human rights of ALL human beings. I no longer imagine you as part of that possibility.

With regards,

Kathleen Barry, Ph.D.

Kathleen Barry is Professor Emerita of Penn State University. A feminist and sociologist, she is the author of Female Sexual Slavery, Prostitution of Sexuality: Global Exploitation of Women, and Susan B. Anthony: A Biography of a Singular Feminist and is now completing Expendable Lives, a new book on masculinity and

By Paul Craig Roberts | Information Clearing House, May 23, 2008

The US Senate has voted $165 billion to fund Bush’s wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq through next spring.

As the US is broke and deep in debt, every one of the $165 billion dollars will have to be borrowed. American consumers are also broke and deep in debt. Their zero saving rate means every one of the $165 billion dollars will have to be borrowed from foreigners.

The “world’s only superpower” is so broke it can’t even finance its own wars.

Each additional dollar that the irresponsible Bush Regime has to solicit from foreigners puts more downward pressure on the dollar’s value. During the eight wasted and extravagant years of the Bush Regime, the once mighty US dollar has lost about 60% of its value against the euro.

The dollar has lost even more of its value against gold and oil.

Before Bush began his wars of aggression, oil was $25 a barrel. Today it is $130 a barrel. Some of this rise may result from run-away speculation in the futures market. However, the main cause is the eroding value of the dollar. Oil is real, and unlike paper dollars is limited in supply. With US massive trade and budget deficits, the outpouring of dollar obligations mounts, thus driving down the value of the dollar.

Continued . . .

We live in a world that has the capacity to feed everyone in it. And yet, each day, hundreds of millions of people around the globe go to bed without enough to eat. Elizabeth Schulte explains why.

Socialist Worker, May 23, 2008 | Issue 672

THE DEPTH of the global food crisis is best expressed by what poor people are eating to survive.

In Burundi, it is farine noir, a mixture of black flour and moldy cassava. In Somalia, a thin gruel made from mashed thorn-tree branches called jerrin. In Haiti, it is a biscuit made of yellow dirt. Food inflation has sparked protests in Egypt, Haiti, Mexico and elsewhere. Tens of thousands protested earlier this month in Mogadishu, as the price of a corn meal rose twofold in four months.

And while the crisis seemed to come out of nowhere, the reality of hunger is a regular feature of life for millions of people. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 854 million people worldwide are undernourished.

Hunger isn’t simply the result of unpredictable incidents like the cyclone that struck Myanmar. In most cases, millions teeter on the edge of survival long before the natural disasters hit. According to UN Millennium Project Web site, of the 300 million children who go to bed hungry every day, only “8 percent are victims of famine or other emergency situations. More than 90 percent are suffering long-term malnourishment and micronutrient deficiency.”

The technology and know-how exist to make our capacity to produce food even greater–if this were made a priority. As part of a recent series on the global food crisis, the Washington Post described the damage being done by gnat-sized insects called “brown plant hoppers.” Billions of them are destroying rice crops in East Asia and putting millions of poor people at risk of going hungry.

Contineud . . .

Asia Times, May 24, 2008

Michael Schwartz

On February 15, 2003, ordinary citizens around the world poured into the streets to protest President George W Bush’s onrushing invasion of Iraq. Demonstrations took place in large cities and small towns globally, including a small but spirited protest at the McMurdo Station in Antarctica. Up to 30 million people, who sensed impending catastrophe, participated in what Rebecca Solnit, that apostle of popular hope, has called “the biggest and most widespread collective protest the world has ever seen”.

The first glancing assessment of history branded this remarkable planetary protest a record-breaking failure, since the Bush administration, less than one month later, ordered US troops across the Kuwaiti border and on to Baghdad.

And it has since largely been forgotten, or perhaps better put, obliterated from official and media memory. Yet popular protest is more like a river than a storm; it keeps flowing into new areas, carrying pieces of its earlier life into other realms. We rarely know its consequences until many years afterward, when, if we’re lucky, we finally sort out its meandering path. Speaking for the protesters back in May 2003, only a month after US troops entered the Iraqi capital, Solnit offered the following: We will likely never know, but it seems that the Bush administration decided against the “shock and awe” saturation bombing of Baghdad because we made it clear that the cost in world opinion and civil unrest would be too high. We millions may have saved a few thousand or a few tens of thousand of lives. The global debate about the war delayed it for months, months that perhaps gave many Iraqis time to lay in stores, evacuate, brace for the onslaught.

Continued . . .

By Vincent Bugliosi, Vanguard Press. Posted May 24, 2008.

Why do so many in the liberal media simply move on to another topic after stating that Bush took the nation to war based on a lie?

The following is an excerpt from Vincent Bugliosi’s new book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.

With respect to the position I take about the crimes of George Bush, I want to state at the outset that my motivation is not political. Although I’ve been a longtime Democrat (primarily because, unless there is some very compelling reason to be otherwise, I am always for “the little guy”), my political orientation is not rigid. For instance, I supported John McCain’s run for the presidency in 2000. More to the point, whether I’m giving a final summation to the jury or writing one of my true crime books, credibility has always meant everything to me. Therefore, my only master and my only mistress are the facts and objectivity. I have no others. This is why I can give you, the reader, a 100 percent guarantee that if a Democratic president had done what Bush did, I would be writing the same, identical piece you are about to read.

Perhaps the most amazing thing to me about the belief of many that George Bush lied to the American public in starting his war with Iraq is that the liberal columnists who have accused him of doing this merely make this point, and then go on to the next paragraph in their columns. Only very infrequently does a columnist add that because of it Bush should be impeached. If the charges are true, of course Bush should have been impeached, convicted, and removed from office. That’s almost too self-evident to state. But he deserves much more than impeachment. I mean, in America, we apparently impeach presidents for having consensual sex outside of marriage and trying to cover it up. If we impeach presidents for that, then if the president takes the country to war on a lie where thousands of American soldiers die horrible, violent deaths and over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, even babies are killed, the punishment obviously has to be much, much more severe. That’s just common sense. If Bush were impeached, convicted in the Senate, and removed from office, he’d still be a free man, still be able to wake up in the morning with his cup of coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice and read the morning paper, still travel widely and lead a life of privilege, still belong to his country club and get standing ovations whenever he chose to speak to the Republican faithful. This, for being responsible for over 100,000 horrible deaths?* For anyone interested in true justice, impeachment alone would be a joke for what Bush did.

Continued . . .