Peace and Justice Post

“In what is supposed to be a free country the Stop the War Coalition has every right to express its views peacefully and openly. This ban is outrageous and makes the term ‘democracy’ laughable,” Pinter said today.

Lindsey German, a leader of the Stop the War Coalition, said: “It seems that when George W Bush visits this country traditional rights of assembly are to be removed from the people. We are calling on those who care for our democratic rights to come to Parliament Square at 5pm on Sunday 15 June. Some of those who signed statements accusing Bush of war crimes will be leading this protest.

“George Bush has been dictating British foreign policy for many years. Now it appears his security services are determining our rights of protest. This is a disgrace and we will challenge the ban.”

The anti-nuclear campaign CND said it believed the British government was allowing security operations to be directed by White House officials. Previous demonstrations have been allowed along Whitehall, but Bush’s presence in Downing Street – he is due to have dinner with Gordon Brown – means protesters are to be banned from a police ‘exclusion zone’.

Kate Hudson, CND chair, warned that protesters might ignore the police. She said: “Previous attempts to deprive us of our rights to protest have come to nothing. In February 2003 we were told we couldn’t go on the grass in Hyde Park and what happened? Two million people joined us in Hyde Park to oppose the war on Iraq.

“Last October we were told we couldn’t protest in Parliament Square to demand the withdrawal of British troops. What happened then? The morning of the protest we were given the go-ahead. We have a proud record of peaceful democratic protest and we mean to continue – lift the ban now.”

© 2008 First Post/UK

Adri Nieuwhof, The Electronic Intifada, 11 June 2008

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and US President George W. Bush follow contradictory policy tracks. In the major media offensive accompanying last November’s US-sponsored Annapolis peace conference both leaders presented themselves as the peace makers of the region. In Annapolis, Olmert committed to freezing settlement expansion. However, since that time according to numerous sources ranging from Israeli newspapers, to Peace Now, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, as well as the websites of the Israeli Central Bureau, and the Ministry of Construction and Housing, Olmert’s government has been accelerating illegal settlement expansion on occupied Palestinian land.

Six months since Annapolis the planning of settlements has accelerated. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak approved the construction of almost 1,000 housing units in several settlements in the West Bank. Furthermore the Israeli authorities announced plans, approved by Olmert, for the construction of an additional 2,900 units in settlements in the West Bank, including 750 units in Giv’at Zeev, and 1,900 housing units to be built this year for settlers who had to leave Gaza in 2005. In addition, Israel worked on the advancement of another 9,500 housing units in and around East Jerusalem, of which over 5,000 units have already been submitted for public review. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz the municipality of Jerusalem started the process of approving a plan for a new settlement complex with a synagogue in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan.

The website of the Israeli Ministry of Construction and Housing reports current construction projects for almost 4,900 housing units in at least nine “urban” settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Almost all of the construction takes place in the Jerusalem area, with over 2,000 housing units in Har Homa alone. Data from the same ministry show that the Israeli government began the construction of almost 300 housing units in West Bank settlements in the first three months after Annapolis.

Continued . . .

Haretz, Israel, June 11, 2008

By Haaretz Service and News Agencies

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Wednesday that a future Palestinian state must be established according to Israel’s security needs, including supervision of border crossings and the disarming of militants.

According to Army Radio, Livni told U.S. envoy James Jones on Monday that as long as Palestinian territory remained a nest of terror activities, it would be harmful to the interests of both the Israelis and the Americans.

Meanwhile, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said on Wednesday he believed it would be impossible to reach a peace deal with Israel this year.

Talks on Palestinian statehood have shown little progress since their launch at a conference in Annapolis, Maryland, in November. Washington has said it hoped for a framework deal before U.S. President George Bush leaves office in January 2009.

But Fayyad cited Israeli settlement-building in the West Bank as an obstacle to progress in the negotiations.

“I have a strong feeling that is tantamount to certainty that a solution won’t be achieved this year,” Fayyad told reporters, ahead of a planned visit to the region this weekend by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The Western-backed economist’s comments echoed remarks last week by Palestinian chief negotiator Ahmed Qureia, who said it would “take a miracle” to reach an agreement in 2008.

Asked about Qureia’s comments, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said last week that in the turbulent Middle East “a realist is someone who believes in miracles.

Fayyad angered Israel when he sent a letter to the European Union last month accusing the Israeli government of “flagrant disregard” of Palestinian rights by continuing to build Jewish settlements in the West Bank and refusing to remove checkpoints that hamper economic development.

Israel says it intends to keep major settlement blocs in the West Bank under any future peace deal with the Palestinians and that its network of roadblocks and checkpoints in the West Bank helps to prevent attacks on Israelis.

“Even if achieving a deal this year was possible, we cannot accept the continuation of settlement activity,” Fayyad told Reuters.

The talks also have been marred by violence in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and a corruption scandal that threatens to force Olmert from office.

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Lee Sustar explains that Barack Obama’s hard-line speech at the AIPAC conference wasn’t just pandering to the pro-Israel lobby, but a statement of his real position on foreign policy issues.

Socialist Worker, June 11, 2008

IS BARACK Obama to the right of George W. Bush on Israel-Palestine?

That was the question across the Arab and Muslim world following Obama’s declaration of support for an “undivided” Jerusalem at the annual meeting of the main pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington.

As Obama said to a meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on June 4:

Israel’s security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable. The Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive, and that allows them to prosper. But any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.

This hawkish statement contradicts official U.S. policy. Under the U.S.-brokered Oslo Accords of 1993 that launched an Israeli-Palestinian “peace process,” the fate of Arab and mainly Muslim East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel since the 1967 Middle East war, is to be decided through “permanent status” negotiations between Israel and Palestinian leaders. Since then, the Palestinian Authority has insisted that East Jerusalem must be the capital of the Palestinian mini-state envisioned under the Oslo agreement.

By appeasing the Israeli–and U.S.–right wing with his comments on Jerusalem, Obama was signaling that his administration wouldn’t change the course set by George Bush.

That means further construction of the apartheid wall in the West Bank to Palestinians into ghettos, more carve-ups of the West Bank to consolidate Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands, and continued support for the genocidal combination of sanctions and military strikes aimed at Gaza, one of the world’s most densely populated areas.

This isn’t speculation. Obama spelled it out for the AIPAC audience:

I will bring to the White House an unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security. That starts with ensuring Israel’s qualitative military advantage. I will ensure that Israel can defend itself from any threat–from Gaza to Tehran.

Defense cooperation between the United States and Israel is a model of success, and must be deepened. As president, I will implement a Memorandum of Understanding that provides $30 billion in assistance to Israel over the next decade–investments to Israel’s security that will not be tied to any other nation.

Obama’s blank check for Israel is part of a plan to ensure that the Middle East remains thoroughly militarized under U.S. domination, even if some U.S. troops are shifted out of Iraq.

Continued . . .

The Independent, June 12, 2008

By Omar Waraich in Islamabad

GETTY IMAGES
Mourners in the city of Peshawar at the funeral of one of the 11 soldiers killed in the US air strike

Relations between Washington and the new government in Islamabad have been dealt a severe blow after Pakistan angrily denounced the “unprovoked and cowardly” killing of 11 soldiers in a US air strike near the Afghan border.

The attack, which took place in the volatile tribal areas and is believed to have been carried out by a pilotless drone, is likely to sour ties between the Pakistani and American military and deepen public resentment of Pakistan’s role in the so-called war on terror.

In its most vocal protest yet, Pakistan’s military said the strike in Mohmand, which killed members of a paramilitary border force “had hit at the very basis of co-operation” in the fight against terrorism. It said it reserved “the right to protect our citizens and soldiers against aggression”.

Yousaf Raza Gillani, the recently elected prime minister who leads a fragile coalition government, told Pakistan’s parliament: “We will take a stand for sovereignty, integrity and self-respect, and we will not allow our soil [to be attacked].”

Continued . . .

By Chris Hedges, Tomdispatch.com. Posted June 6, 2008.

Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians

by Chris Hedges and Laila al-Arian (Nation Books, 2008).

This piece has been adapted from the introduction to the just-published book, Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians by Chris Hedges and Laila al-Arian (Nation Books, 2008).

Troops, when they battle insurgent forces, as in Iraq, or Gaza or Vietnam, are placed in “atrocity producing situations.” Being surrounded by a hostile population makes simple acts, such as going to a store to buy a can of Coke, dangerous. The fear and stress push troops to view everyone around them as the enemy. The hostility is compounded when the enemy, as in Iraq, is elusive, shadowy and hard to find. The rage soldiers feel after a roadside bomb explodes, killing or maiming their comrades, is one that is easily directed, over time, to innocent civilians who are seen to support the insurgents.

Civilians and combatants, in the eyes of the beleaguered troops, merge into one entity. These civilians, who rarely interact with soldiers or Marines, are to most of the occupation troops in Iraq nameless, faceless, and easily turned into abstractions of hate. They are dismissed as less than human. It is a short psychological leap, but a massive moral leap. It is a leap from killing — the shooting of someone who has the capacity to do you harm — to murder — the deadly assault against someone who cannot harm you.

The war in Iraq is now primarily about murder. There is very little killing. The savagery and brutality of the occupation is tearing apart those who have been deployed to Iraq. As news reports have just informed us, 115 American soldiers committed suicide in 2007. This is a 13% increase in suicides over 2006. And the suicides, as they did in the Vietnam War years, will only rise as distraught veterans come home, unwrap the self-protective layers of cotton wool that keep them from feeling, and face the awful reality of what they did to innocents in Iraq.

Continued . . .

Tuesday 10 June 2008

by: J. Sri Raman, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Nepalese students protesting.
(Photo: AFP / Getty Images)

Celebrations continue in two South Asian countries, which have just witnessed the defeat of dictatorships. The war for democracy, however, is yet to be fully and finally won in Nepal and Pakistan.

In both cases, popular movements and mandates have yet to put a period to issues involving personalities that symbolize a discredited past.

And, in both, the survival and stabilization of hard-won democracy will hinge crucially on the role of a distant superpower that claims to be the supreme savior of the system, though it has been among the dear friends of the overthrown dictators.

Take the more recent and more dramatic case of Nepal, first. In theory, Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev is a totally defeated dictator with his famous palace in Kathmandu about to be turned into a museum and a 240-year-old monarchy into a fossil of feudal history. The people and the political forces of Nepal, however, are not ready as yet to treat the former king as just a reminder of a predemocracy past.

Continued . . .