Peace and Justice Post

By Joe Kay | RINF.Com, May 19, 2008

A United Nations investigator released a preliminary report last week citing widespread civilian deaths in Afghanistan, often at the hands of unaccountable units led by the CIA or other foreign intelligence agencies.

The investigator is Philip Alston, a New York University professor serving as the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Human Rights Council on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary execution. His report provides a partial glimpse into the illegal actions of intelligence agencies, occupying forces, and Afghan police, as they seek to repress opposition to the US-led occupation and US-backed government.

A more detailed final report will be released later this year.

Alston focused on civilian killings by US and other international military forces, citing 200 reported deaths in the first four months of 2008. This figure, however, was based on tabulations by the United Nations and other international organizations, and is undoubtedly a serious underestimation.

In addition to civilians killed in air raids—often targeted indiscriminately at civilian dwellings—Alston reported on “a number of raids for which no state or military command appears ready to acknowledge responsibility.”

Continued . . .

International Jewish Solidarity Network

The year 2008 is the 60th anniversary of the Nakba, the catastrophe marked by the destruction or depopulation of more than 400 Palestinian villages and the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinian people from their lands, communities and homes. Since then, Palestinians have lived under occupation, as refugees, and as second class citizens on their own land; Israel’s assault against the indigenous Palestinian communities continues with unremitting brutality. In Gaza, with the support of the US government and its allies, Israel has effectively cut off food, water, electricity, humanitarian aid, medical supplies and the means of basic employment or trade, despite the pretence of ‘disengagement’ offered by Israeli withdrawal of settlements.

On the contrary, this withdrawal has facilitated Israel’s ever-increasing grip on the area. Israel controls entry and exit from this small, sealed internment camp. The people of Gaza have nowhere to go. Israel’s policy towards Gazans is inhumane and racist. How can it be otherwise, when Israel’s existence is predicated on ethnic cleansing? Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai’s vicious threat of a ‘shoah’, or holocaust, is an outrage yet unsurprisingly consistent with the military’s tactics and Israel’s historic designs for the region. The US and Europe are not just standing by indifferently: they are accomplices. As Western states honour the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel, the groundwork for the further expulsion of Palestinians into Egypt and for genocide is thus being laid.

As Jews, this anniversary also highlights other histories: sixty years of the hijacking of Jewish participation in liberation struggles; sixty years of dishonoring and exploiting the persecution, displacement and genocide of European Jews by using their memory to justify and perpetuate European racism and colonialism; and sixty years of extensive displacement and alienation of Mizrahi Jews (Jews of Arab and African descent) from indigenous identities, languages, histories, cultures and homelands. This anniversary implicates us in the oppression of the Palestinian people and in the debasement of our own heritages, struggles for justice and alliances with our fellow human beings.

Continued . . .

The Tennessean, May 18, 2008

Joe Parko

First, we went after nonexistent nuclear weapons in Iraq, and now we are consumed with the possibility that Iran might develop nuclear weapons sometime in the future.

Hillary Clinton has declared that she would obliterate Iran if it ever attacked Israel with a nuclear weapon. But what nobody wants to talk about is the fact that Israel has had a secret nuclear weapons program for more than 30 years that has produced well over 200 nuclear bombs.

Ever since Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear technician, confirmed the existence of Israel’s nuclear weapons program with his photographs of the secret underground bomb facility that were published in the London Sunday Times in 1986, the world has known that Israel has been making nuclear bombs but has pretended that they do not exist. Israel continues to publicly deny that it possesses nuclear weapons.

I talked with Vanunu in Jerusalem in 2005, and here are my notes from that interview:

“I worked from 1976 to 1985 at the Israeli secret underground nuclear weapons production facility at the Dimona nuclear plant in the Negev desert. During my time there, I was involved in processing plutonium for 10 nuclear bombs per year. I realized that my country had already processed enough plutonium for 200 nuclear weapons. I became really afraid when we started processing lithium 6, which is only used for the hydrogen bomb.

“I felt that I had to prevent a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East, so I took 60 pictures of the underground nuclear weapons processing plant, some 75 meters under the Dimona plant. I resigned my post and left Israel in 1986. I first went to Australia and then made a connection with the Times in London. After a group of nuclear scientists verified my photos as proving Israeli nuclear weapons production, my story was published in England. A few months later, I was kidnapped by the Israelis in Rome and sent secretly by ship to Israel, where I was subjected to a closed military trial without counsel. I was sentenced to 18 years in prison. I spent 12 years in solitary confinement.

“Now I am trapped inside Israel, and I’m being threatened with more prison time for speaking to people like you. I want to leave Israel and come to America where I can live as a free human being.”

(Vanunu was released from prison in April 2004 but was prohibited from leaving Israel. The Israeli government continues to keep him in Israel against his will. Criminal action is pending against him for speaking to journalists and foreigners.)

The fact of the matter is that Israel is using nuclear blackmail against the U.S. Essentially, Israel is saying that if we don’t agree to use our nuclear weapons against Iran, then they will use theirs. Israel is determined to keep its monopoly on nuclear weapons in the Middle East and is using its nuclear arsenal to force the U.S. to support its demand. It’s time for our politicians to refuse to be blackmailed into a policy that is detrimental to achieving our goal of a nuclear-free Middle East. Most importantly, the U.S. must resist being pushed into attacking Iran to preserve Israel’s nuclear monopoly.

It is time to deal openly with Israel’s nuclear weapons. We need to recognize that the epicenter of the nuclear arms race in the Middle East is Israel’s secret bomb factory, 250 feet underground in the Negev desert. The U.S. must join with the international community in opening Israel’s nuclear weapons program to inspection and monitoring.

The only way to secure a nuclear-free Middle East is to have every nation in the region play by the same book of rules, and this must include Israel.

Joe Parko is a retired college professor living in Crossville. He was the Quaker delegate on a peace mission to Israel and the Palestinian territories in 2005.

Socialist Worker, May 19, 2008

By Alex Schmaus and Sam Bernstein

SAN FRANCISCO–More than 1,000 supporters of Palestinian self-determination gathered in front of City Hall May 10 to take part in Nakba-60, a festival commemorating 60 years of Palestinian struggle and resistance on the anniversary of the 1948 expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians from their homes during the forming of state of Israel.

The gathering was multiracial, multi-generational and the largest and most confident display of Palestinian solidarity in San Francisco since the protests against the Israeli war on Lebanon in August 2006.

Building on the success of demonstrations outside the Israeli consulate this past spring in response to the Israeli siege of Gaza, the festival drew together many local organizations, including Al-Awda, the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, Middle East Children’s Alliance, the American Indian Movement and the International Jewish Solidarity Network.

Continued . . .

The Independent, May 18, 2008

By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem

President George Bush yesterday tried to reassure sceptical Arab leaders that by the end of the year he wanted a Palestinian state “defined”, after being criticised for missing an opportunity to highlight the matter when he lavished praise on Israel last week.

Speaking before Mr Bush met the President of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, in Sharm el-Sheikh, a leading Palestinian negotiator and moderate, Saeb Erekat, said: “He should have told the Israelis no one can be free at the expense of others. He missed this opportunity and we are disappointed.”

The US President, fresh from a trip to Saudi Arabia in which he failed to persuade King Abdullah to raise oil production by more than a token 300,000 barrels a day to ease US petrol prices, insisted that “we’ll work hard” to secure an outline agreement on a future Palestinian state by the end of his presidency.

The President’s Knesset speech on Thursday made no mention of the current negotiations between the teams of Mr Abbas and the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, on a putative “shelf agreement” on a two-state solution – to be implemented when Israel is satisfied that it will guarantee its security. Mr Bush acknowledged that, at his first meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt had “wanted to make sure that my approach toward the Middle Eastern peace is firm, and that we work hard to get the Palestinian state defined”.

Mr Bush’s speech made no mention of the occupation of Palestinian territory or of the continued expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, officially opposed by the US. It was ecstatically received by Israeli parliamentarians on the far right.

Zevulun Orlev, leader of the National Religious Party, which spearheads the settlement movement, declared: “His unconditional support for Israel is moving.”

by Dave Lindorff | The Smirking Chimp, May 17, 2008

Americans are in a panic over rising gas and heating oil prices, and with reason. For months, the price of a barrel of crude oil has been rising steadily, hitting a record $127 yesterday.

Analysts keep getting trotted out on TV and in print, attributing the dramatic price rise to everything from “peak oil” — the idea that producing countries have reached their peak of productive capacity, and that the only direction for oil supplies looking forward is down, while demand continues to rise — to increasing demand in China and India, to supply bottlenecks, to specific news events, like a pipeline break in Nigeria, or a closed refinery in California.

Politicians, like Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, have called for a two-month moratorium on federal gas taxes, but with taxes running at something on the order of 18 cents a gallon, this is not going to do much to bring prices down-in fact it might do nothing, since retailers would be free to just raise prices to match the tax break, and pocket the profits.

Continued . . .

BBC Sat, 17 May 2008 15:28:19 GMT

The flight crew were temporarily blinded by the explosions

The full truth about the destruction of an RAF Hercules aircraft was covered up by the Ministry of Defence to deny Iraqi insurgents a propaganda victory.

The MoD said the C-130J was involved in an “incident” on landing and there was no evidence of hostile action.

But the £30m plane was struck by bombs planted by militants next to a temporary runway in Maysan province, south-eastern Iraq on 12 February 2007.

The disclosure comes in a formal Board of Inquiry report.

The 58 passengers and six crew on board all escaped, but the plane was so badly damaged commanders decided they could not secure the area long enough to recover it and blew it up to stop it falling into enemy hands.

The incident followed the destruction of a British Hercules in Iraq in January 2005 when it was shot down near Baghdad, killing all 10 servicemen on board.

It crashed after being hit by ground fire which caused an explosion in the right wing fuel tank.

Continued . . .

Press TV, Sat, 17 May 2008

Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has dismissed claims that Iran is sending weapons into his country and called for strong Iran ties.

“Those who make such claims against Iran only express their personal views which don’t reflect those of the Iraqi government,” he said in interview with the Al-Arabiya TV on Friday.

“I, as the president of Iraq, do not agree with such views,” he added.

“Our Iranian brothers are ready for dialogue on any such issues,” Talabani said.

“As far as Iranian weapons are concerned it should be mentioned that during Saddam Hussein’s rule Iran provided weapons for the Iraqi opposition groups,” he added.

Talabani also called for enhanced ties between Iraq and Iran and said that “I strongly believe that the relations between Iran and Iraq in different fields could be further strengthened,” IRNA quoted him as saying.

MGH/HAR

OneWorld.net, May 17, 2008

WASHINGTON, May 16 (OneWorld) – Antiwar veterans of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan took their case to Capitol Hill Thursday, baring their souls with stories of killings of innocent civilians, torture, and wrongful detentions.

“On several occasions our convoys came upon bodies that had been lying on the road, sometimes for weeks,” said Marine Corps veteran Vincent Emanuele, who served in al-Qaim near the Syrian border in 2004 and 2005.

“When encountering these bodies standard procedure was to run over the corpses, sometimes even stopping and taking pictures, which was also standard practice when encountering the dead in Iraq,” he told the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which organized the hearing.

After killing this Iraqi insurgent, Emanuele said he and his patrol dragged the body from a ditch, took pictures, and left the man ‘to rot in a field.’ © Iraq Veterans Against the War

Emanuele also said that U.S. military personnel often took “pot shots” at cars passing by.

“Our rules of engagement stated that we should first fire warning shots into the ground in front of the car, then the engine block, and the windshield. That is if the car was even moving in the first place,” he said. “Many times cars that actually had pulled off to the side of the road were also shot at.”

Thursday’s hearing was an outgrowth of an event in Maryland earlier this year called “Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan – Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations.” For four days in March, dozens of veterans of the two wars testified about atrocities they personally committed or witnessed while deployed overseas.

Continued . . .

The Sunday Times, May 18, 2008

Six months after her aunt Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, Fatima Bhutto is fighting to reveal the truth surrounding the murder of her father in 1996 — and making some very dangerous enemies