Peace and Justice Post

Khaleej Times Online, May 31, 2008

By Afzal Khan (Our correspondent)

ISLAMABAD — Speculation about President Pervez Musharraf being under immense pressure to step down has failed to fade despite denials and clarifications from concerned quarters.

Political observers citing sources close to the government and the army said Musharraf’s exit was inevitable. “It is no more a question of if but when and in what way,” said an influential source.

Officials confirmed that Senate chairman Mohammad Mian Soomro has been requested to return but said he had to fly to London for medical treatment. He would be back any time. The chairman is constitutionally designated to take over as acting president if the presidential office falls vacant for any reason.

These sources also confirmed that a special wide-bodied airbus A-310 plane that had landed at the Chaklala air base here on Thursday remains parked there. Media reports said it is ready to carry “special passengers”.

President Musharraf denied during a speech at a dinner he hosted for former Punjab governor Khalid Maqbool that he was stepping down. He described these reports as rumours designed to harm the country. But observers noted that he did not repeat the usual refrain that he is a constitutionally-elected president and would complete his five-year term. His spokesman Maj-Gen. Rashid Qureshi also spoke in the same vein to various TV channels and blamed a section of the media for launching an anti-Musharraf campaign.

Continued . . .

Press TV, Wed, 28 May 2008

By Hedieh Ghavidel

Statue of Mani, china

Manichaeism, presumably an offshoot of Zoroastrianism, was not only an inspiration for various heretical movements in Christianity but also dominated the religious life of Central and Eastern Asia for centuries.

Through the four centuries of Sassanid rule over Persia (224-651 CE) Zoroastrianism was the official state religion. Historians, however, have spoken of several heretical sects. One such cult was that of the Manicheans, founded by Mani at the beginning of the Sassanid era.

The founder of the new religion believed to have been the culmination of Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Buddhism was born in 216 CE in southern Babylonia of noble Persian stock.

He grew up under the careful guidance of his father who was a religious leader of a Jewish-Christian baptizing sect. At the age of twelve, Mani claimed that an angel named The Twin had instructed him in a vision to withdraw from the sect and purify himself through asceticism. The Angel later returned to young Mani, this time calling upon him to preach a new religion.

Ardashir receives the ring of power from Ahuramazda, Naqsh-e Rostam

The Sassanid founding father Ardashir came from a long line of priests and successfully united the nation under the call of religion, the restoration of which he believed to be the only means to establish a stable rule.

After his death in 242 CE, his son Shapur I inherited the new empire built on the solid foundation of faith.

In their struggle to achieve solidarity through the uniformity of belief, the Sassanids naturally favored the priesthood of one particular religion and placed special importance on its beliefs which gave rise to intolerance for other faiths.

It was at this time that Mani proclaimed a new syncretic religion which combined Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism along with elements of Greek philosophy and Indian Jainism, at the court of the Persian monarch Shapur I in 242 CE. He was not well received and was forced to flee the country.

Continued . . .

On Friday, 111 nations, including major NATO allies, adopted a treaty that sets an eight-year deadline to eliminate stockpiles of cluster arms — pernicious weapons that scatter thousands of small bombs across a wide area, where they pose a long-term deadly threat to innocents. The Bush administration not only failed to sign the treaty but vigorously opposed it.

After marching in lockstep for years, even Britain broke with America’s position and agreed to withdraw its weapons from use. That dealt a much-needed blow to Washington’s long-standing opposition to this sort of sensible arms control, and in particular to this treaty-averse administration.

The campaign to ban cluster munitions, pressed by human rights activists, never attained quite the high profile of the one to ban land mines, a treaty that Washington also refused to sign. But the two weapons have this in common: Both wreak more damage on civilians than soldiers and present a threat long after war ends.

Cluster munitions, fired from aircraft or artillery, spray small “bomblets” over an expanse the size of two or three football fields. Many do not explode on impact but can be easily triggered by unsuspecting civilians. The most appalling of these devices can look like a desired object — a can of food or a toy.

No one has more invested in cluster munitions than the United States, which Human Rights Watch says has been the largest producer, stockpiler and user, using them in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Others that have used them include Britain, France, Sudan, NATO, Israel and Hezbollah.

United States officials insist the Pentagon must have such munitions. That is what the Clinton administration said when it opposed the land-mine treaty in 1997. It is a weak argument: cluster bombs are weapons for conventional wars with conventional battlefields. America is less likely to fight big conventional wars than counterinsurgency conflicts in population centers, no place for munitions that kill indiscriminately.

Continued . . .

Soldier’s loot turned away

Aftenposten, Oslo, May 30, 2008

A Norwegian soldier came home from duty in Afghanistan with a horde of cultural treasures, which he offered to an Oslo museum. He was summarily rebuffed and told to take the treasures back to their country of origin.The solider, who wasn’t identified, is believed to have violated laws against spiriting national treasures out of their homeland. His case wasn’t unique. Museum officials say they’re often offered such items brought back to Norway by military personnel, aid workers and tourists.

“In Afghanistan, the laws can be different from Norway’s, but such old items would almost certainly be covered by export restrictions,” said Christopher Prescott, an archaeology professor at the University of Oslo.

In this case, the soldier had a pile of ancient coins and a small metal bottle. Håkon Ingvaldsen, responsible for collections at Norway’s Historical Museum (Kulturhistorisk museum) in Oslo, told periodical Ny Tid that the coins were up to 2,000 years old.

“The museum can’t take into possession things that belong to another country’s cultural heritage,” Ingvaldsen said.

Neither Norway’s economic crimes unit Økokrim, the Ministry of Culture nor Norwegian customs officials know what happened to the items offered by the soldier. Museum officials aren’t obliged to report cases of suspected illegal imports, but Økokrim officials are trying to track the extent of such activity.

Richard L. Armitage, who served from 2001 to 2005 as Deputy Secretary of State, was a rarity in the Bush administration: an official who delighted in talking to the press. Reporters loved him for his withering criticism of the neoconservative zealots around President George W. Bush and in part because he fed them tidbits about the White House they could obtain nowhere else. His accidental disclosure to conservative columnist Robert Novak that Valerie Plame, the wife of Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson, was working undercover for the Central Intelligence Agency remains one of the most notorious leaks of the Bush era.

But perhaps because of his cozy ties to the Washington press corps and the media’s obsession with Plamegate, very little has been written about Armitage’s extensive business dealings. In fact, Armitage is one of the most successful capitalists in Washington. He has successfully parlayed his experience in covert operations and secret diplomacy into a thriving career as a consultant and adviser to some of the biggest players in America’s Intelligence Industrial Complex — corporations that are working at the heart of U.S. national security and profiting handsomely from it.

Armitage, currently an adviser to presidential candidate John McCain, had once been Colin Powell’s closest ally during the bitter disputes inside the Bush administration over the invasion and occupation of Iraq. According to the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, Armitage advised Powell on more than one occasion to tell the neocons to “go fuck themselves,” and, at one point, even refused to deliver a speech about Iraq drafted for him by Vice President Dick Cheney’s office.

Yet, three years after those epic battles, Armitage is enjoying life as a stakeholder in a dozen private companies that are making money directly from the war started by his former nemeses.

Continued . . .

Press TV, May 31, 2008

Joschka Fischer

Former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer says Israel is planning to attack Iran in the near future over its nuclear program.

He wrote a piece that appeared in today’s Daily Star, an English-language Lebanese newspaper, arguing that President Bush’s recent visit to the Middle East was a precursor to a war against Iran.

“The Middle East is drifting toward a new great confrontation in 2008. Iran must understand that without a diplomatic solution in the coming months, a dangerous military conflict is very likely to erupt. It is high time for serious negotiations to begin,” he said.

Fischer said Bush’s speech during his address to the Israeli Knesset, or parliament, this month indicated a coming Israeli-US attack on Iran’s nuclear program.

“He (Bush) seemed to be planning, together with Israel, to end the Iranian nuclear program — and to do so by military, rather than by diplomatic, means…. Although it is acknowledged in Israel that an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would involve grave and hard-to-assess risks, the choice between acceptance of a nuclear Iran and an attempt at its military destruction, with all the attendant consequences, is clear. Israel won’t stand by and wait for matters to take their course,” Fischer said.

Fischer was German’s top diplomat from 1998 to 2005 and is a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

Al-Ahram Weekly Online, May 29 – June 4, 2008

It is not just government forces, the resistance and sectarian strife that have wrought chaos in Iraq. The US invasion of Iraq and subsequent policies were what triggered the security breakdown and unleashed the chaos. To make matters worse, on the heels of the occupying forces followed thousands of personnel from private firms that offer military services for hire. The corporate mercenary business is a relatively recent phenomenon and this article attempts to probe what function it plays and how it operates in Iraq and elsewhere.

Click to view caption

There are now more than 50 private security firms currently operating in Iraq and their number is likely to increase, according to recent reports. Officially their function is to protect vital facilities (from government buildings to oil wells) and important persons (the US ambassador, for example). Some of these companies have special information gathering and analysis departments whose staff has access to state-of-the-art military and security technologies. Global Risks is one such company. Charged with protecting Baghdad International Airport, it has hired for this purpose 500 Nepalese and 500 Fijian soldiers who are apparently the cheapest of the 30 nationalities of mercenaries currently in Iraq.

The existence of these types of firms in Iraq was first brought to public attention by the London Times, which reported in May 2004 that the number of British employees such firms posted to Iraq had doubled to 1,500 since the previous year. Among these employees were former British police, navy and paratrooper officers and soldiers. Iraqi officials at the time admitted to having no idea of how many mercenaries were operating in the country. A year later, former US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld stated that they were by then in the neighbourhood of 100,000 and that they were needed because coalition forces were unable to supply the number of forces necessary to protect foreign diplomats and businessmen. He added that about ¨1 billion was paid out annually to such private security firms.

Continued . . .

Asia Times, May 31, 2008

By Frida Berrigan

A full-fledged cottage industry is already focused on those who eagerly await the end of the George W Bush administration, offering calendars, magnets and t-shirts for sale as well as counters and graphics to download onto blogs and websites. But when the countdown ends and Bush vacates the Oval Office, he will leave a legacy to contend with. Certainly, he wills to his successor a world marred by war and battered by deprivation, but perhaps his most enduring legacy is now deeply embedded in Washington-area politics – a Pentagon metastasized almost beyond recognition.

The Pentagon’s massive bulk-up these past seven years will not be easily unbuilt, no matter who dons the presidential mantle on January 19, 2009. “The Pentagon” is now so much more than a five-sided building across the Potomac from Washington or even the seat of the Department of Defense. In many ways, it defies description or labeling.

Who, today, even remembers the debate at the end of the Cold War about what role US military power should play in a “unipolar” world? Was US supremacy so well established, pundits were then asking, that Washington could rely on softer economic and cultural power, with military power no more than a backup (and a domestic “peace dividend” thrown into the bargain)? Or was the US to strap on the six-guns of a global sheriff and police the world as the fountainhead of “humanitarian interventions”? Or was it the moment to boldly declare ourselves the world’s sole superpower and wield a high-tech military comparable to none, actively discouraging any other power or power bloc from even considering future rivalry?

The attacks of September 11, 2001, decisively ended that debate. The Bush administration promptly declared total war on every front – against peoples, ideologies, and, above all, “terrorism” (a tactic of the weak). That very September, administration officials proudly leaked the information that they were ready to “target” up to 60 other nations and the terrorist movements within them.

The Pentagon’s “footprint” was to be firmly planted, military base by military base, across the planet, with a special emphasis on its energy heartlands. Top administration officials began preparing the Pentagon to go anywhere and do anything, while rewriting, shredding, or ignoring whatever laws, national or international, stood in the way. In 2002, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld officially articulated a new US military posture that, in conception, was little short of revolutionary. It was called – in classic Pentagon shorthand – the 1-4-2-1 Defense Strategy (replacing the Bill Clinton administration’s already none-too-modest plan to be prepared to fight two major wars – in the Middle East and Northeast Asia – simultaneously).

Continued . . .

The Sunday Times, June 1, 2008