Peace and Justice Post

Telegraph, UK, June 4, 2008

uruknet, June 3, 2008
Khalid Amayreh

In order to obtain a certificate of good conduct from Israel and her guardian-ally, the United States, the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) is betraying the very people it claims to represent and its enduring national cause in ways unprecedented in living memory.

This scandalous betrayal assumes many forms, including brazen “security coordination” with the occupation army, arresting and torturing political opponents on Israel’s behalf and tacitly encouraging Israel to close down or seize Islamic-oriented orphanages and boarding schools in Hebron.

It is also widely believed that there is a deep collusion between Israel and the PA in maintaining and even tightening the year-long hermetic blockade Israel is imposing on Gaza, which has killed hundreds of people and pushed the estimated 1.5 million inhabitants of the coastal enclave to the brink of famine.

Former President Jimmy Carter and Rev. Desmond Tutu recently used strong words to describe the outrageous situation in Gaza.

The former Archbishop of Cape Town denounced the international community for its “silence and complicity,” saying the situation in Gaza “shames us all.” And President Carter called the nefarious blockade ” a horrible crime.”

It is really lamentable that not only the international community, including, disgracefully enough, key Arab states, is silent in the face of the Gaza outrage.

The PA, too, is actively conspiring to keep up the Nazi-like siege on Gaza while at the same time making strident public statements denouncing the blockade. This proves, if proof were needed, that PA hatred of Hamas exceeds by far whatever alleged concern the PA may have for the survival and welfare of the people of Gaza.

But, in any case, it is not important what the PA says; what is important is what it does, and what its does amounts to a national betrayal of Palestine and the Palestinians.

Continued . . .

mwcnews.net, June 2, 2008
Two Swiss scientists, Professors Daniele Ganser and Albert A. Stahel of the University of Zurich, reported in the largest Swiss newspaper, “Blick”, have seriously questioned the “official Bush version” of what happened on 9/11 (see: – “Je mehr wir forschen, desto mehr zweifeln wir”).

Of course Scholars for 9/11 and many other rational, eminent and technically expert people also have profound scepticism about the Bush version. Indeed the “penny has dropped” for even the long-suffering American people aka “mushrooms” (kept in the dark and fed manure) – recent polls indicate that one third of Americans believe that the US Government was involved (e.g. see: “More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll”.

Professor Ganser: “3,000 humans were sacrificed for strategic interests. The more we explore, the more we doubt the Bush version. It is conceivable that the Bush government was responsible. Bush has lied so much already! And we already know that the US government planned an operation in 1962 that was approved by the Pentagon that would have sacrificed innocent US citizens for the government’s own interests …We only ask questions.”

Continued . . .

All the arguments Australia marshalled to justify sending troops to fight in Iraq proved to be wrong, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said today, as the country’s 550 combat soldiers headed home.

by Nick Squires | Telegraph, UK, June 2, 2008

In an admission that will make uncomfortable reading in London and Washington, the Labour leader dismissed one-by-one the reasons used by his predecessor, John Howard, to join the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq five years ago.

“Have further terrorist attacks been prevented? No, they have not been, as the victims of the Madrid train bombing will attest,” Mr Rudd told parliament.

“Has any evidence of a link between weapons of mass destruction and the former Iraqi regime and terrorists been found? No.

“Have the actions of rogue states like Iran been moderated? No … Iran’s nuclear ambitions remain a fundamental challenge.

“After five years, has the humanitarian crisis in Iraq been removed? No it has not.”

Mr Rudd, whose campaign for election last November included a pledge to withdraw Australian combat forces from Iraq, said pre-war intelligence had been “abused” by the Howard government.

He said there had been a “failure to disclose to the Australian people the qualified nature of the intelligence – for example, the pre-war warning that an attack on Iraq would increase the terrorist threat, not decrease it”.

Mr Rudd, a former diplomat, also dismissed his predecessor’s argument that Australia had been obliged to send troops to Iraq because of its long-standing alliance with the United States.

He said while he valued the alliance highly, it did not mean that Canberra should automatically accede to US requests for military support.

His comments came a day after Australia’s 550-strong combat force began leaving its base at Tallil, 185 miles south of Baghdad.

Mr Howard, who has kept a low profile since being ousted from office six months ago, said he was still convinced that being part of the 2003 invasion of Iraq was justified.

“I firmly believe it was the right thing to have done,” he said, while acknowledging that it was the hardest decision he made as prime minister and that the cost of the war had been “very, very heavy and much greater than anybody would have liked”.

His decision to send troops was deeply influenced by the fact that he was in the US on an official visit on September 11, 2001, when terrorists struck New York and Washington.

Mr Howard was one of four leaders who supported the US-led coalition but who are all now out of office: Tony Blair, Jose Maria Aznar of Spain and Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski.

One of Mr Howard’s former senior officials said the government had been fully briefed on the fact that invading Iraq would damage US prestige, foster anti-Western sentiment, require a massive troop presence and destabilise the wider Middle East.

“All that was predictable and I don’t think the benefits of the West going in were worth the cost,” the official, who declined to be named, told the Sydney Morning Herald.

“That was my judgment at the time and that hasn’t changed.”

Australia will still have about 800 military personnel in and around Iraq, including a 110-strong diplomatic security detachment in Baghdad, sailors on board warships in the Persian Gulf and Royal Australian Air Force crew.

© 2008 The Telegraph

RINF.Com, Monday, June 2nd, 2008

ABC News | A legal brief has been sent to the International Criminal Court (ICC) alleging former prime minister John Howard committed a war crime by sending troops to Iraq. A loose alliance of peace activists, lawyers, academics and politicians is behind the brief, organised by the ICC Action group in Melbourne.

Organiser Glen Floyd says Mr Howard should be held accountable for sending troops to a war not sanctioned by the United Nations.

“We have produced a 52-page brief of evidence which states to the chief prosecutor of the criminal court that we allege John Howard’s actions are war crimes under article 8 of the Rome Statute,” he said.

Democrats Senator Lyn Allison says the legal brief sent to the ICC is justified.

Senator Allison, who is one of several eminent people supporting the move, says accountability is important.

“This action has been taken to hold those accountable for their action, so it’s essentially our prime minister – he was the one at the time [who] was the executive of government, made the decision,” she said.

‘It wasn’t put to the Parliament and as we all know, it turned out to be unjustified.”

A similar brief has been sent by a group from the United Kingdom regarding former prime minister Tony Blair. The United States is not a signatory to the court.

Canada.Com, June 2, 2008

Karzai has often criticised the Western conduct of the war in Afghanistan, saying civilian casualties must stop.

In turn, the president, who wants to stand for re-election next year, is often criticised at home for being overly influenced by the United States and Britain.

Hamid Karzai is often criticised at home for being overly influenced by the United States and Britain.

Shah Marai/AFP/Getty Images

In an interview to be aired on Indian television on Monday, he said foreign troops had failed to go after “the sanctuaries of the terrorists” which Afghan officials say exist over the border in Pakistan.

Karzai did not directly mention Pakistan but the Afghan government has said that the West should have done more to crack down on Taliban and al Qaeda bases in Pakistan.

“It was a serious neglect of that, in spite of our warning,” he told CNBC TV 18, adding that other former members of the Taliban who had given up arms were unfairly hunted down within Afghan territory.

“Some of the Taliban who have laid down their arms, who are living in the Afghan villages peacefully, who have accepted Afghanistan’s new order, they were chased, they were hunted for no reason, and they were forced to flee the country.”

Continued . . .

• 
• • George Monbiot
  • The Guardian, Tuesday June 3 2008

I realise now that I didn’t have a hope. I had almost reached the stage when two of the biggest gorillas I have ever seen swept me up and carried me out of the tent. It was humiliating, but it could have been worse. The guard on the other side of the stage, half hidden in the curtains, had spent the lecture touching something under his left armpit. Perhaps he had bubos.

I had no intention of arresting John Bolton, the former under-secretary of state at the US state department, when I arrived at the Hay festival. But during a panel discussion about the Iraq war, I remarked that the greatest crime of the 21st century had become so normalised that one of its authors was due to visit the festival to promote his book. I proposed that someone should attempt a citizens’ arrest, in the hope of instilling a fear of punishment among those who plan illegal wars. After the session I realised that I couldn’t call on other people to do something I wasn’t prepared to do myself.

I knew that I was more likely to be arrested and charged than Mr Bolton. I had no intention of harming him, or of acting in any way that could be interpreted as aggressive, but had I sought only to steer him gently towards the police I might have faced a range of exotic charges, from false imprisonment to aggravated assault. I was prepared to take this risk. It is not enough to demand that other people act, knowing that they will not. If the police, the courts and the state fail to prosecute what the Nuremberg tribunal described as “the supreme international crime”, I believe we have a duty to seek to advance the process.

The Nuremberg principles, which arose from the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, define as an international crime the “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances”. Bolton appears to have “participated in a common plan” to prepare for the war (also defined by the principles as a crime) by inserting the false claim that Iraq was seeking to procure uranium from Niger into a state department factsheet. He also organised the sacking of José Bustani, the head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, accusing him of bad management. Bustani had tried to broker a peaceful resolution of the dispute over Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Some of the most pungent criticisms of my feeble attempt to bring this man to justice have come from other writers for the Guardian. Michael White took a position of extraordinary generosity towards the instigators of the war. There are “arguments on both sides”, he contended on the Guardian politics blog. Bustani might have received compensation after his sacking by Bolton, “but Bolton says that does not mean much”. In fact, Bustani was not only compensated at his tribunal, he was completely exonerated of Bolton’s accusations and his employers were obliged to pay special damages.

Continued . . .

RINF, Monday, June 2nd, 2008

By Subodh Varma – TNN

The tale of massive fraud and embezzlement of millions of dollars by the US military in its operations in Iraq continues. Testifying before the US Congress Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on 22 May, Mary Ugone, deputy inspector general of accounts in the Pentagon said that an audit of $8.2 billion spending related to the Iraq war showed that $7.8 billion had been improperly spent.

Over 180,000 payments, mostly since the war started in 2003, were made by the defense department to contractors for everything from bottled water to vehicles to transportation services.

In her testimony, Ugone also revealed that $135 million were given to forces from three countries UK, South Korea and Poland to facilitate their participation in the war. This is the first time that the US has officially admitted paying its allies in the so-called Coalition of the Willing that invaded Iraq in March 2003.

In his opening statement, Henry Waxman, chairman of the committee, said that wounded soldiers are getting notices from the Pentagon to return signing bonuses with interest since they had not completed the full term. “There is something very wrong when our wounded troops have to fill out forms in triplicate for meal money while billions of dollars in cash are handed out in Iraq with no accountability,” he said.

In an earlier report released in November 2007, the Inspector General had concluded that the Defense Department couldn’t properly account for over $5 billion in taxpayer funds spent in support of the Iraq Security Forces. It said that thousands of weapons, including assault rifles, machine guns, and rocket-propelled grenade launchers were unaccounted for, and millions of dollars had been squandered on construction projects that did not exist.

Continued . . .