Peace and Justice Post

Neil Gray | Varient Issue 32

“Communal politics is essentially the manipulation of social consciousness based on religion for political purposes.”
K.N.Pannikar¹
“The danger to India, mark you, is not communism. It is Hindu right-wing communalism”.
Jawaharlal Nehru 1963²

Hindutva is a communalist Hindu Nationalist ideology seeking to equate the very idea of ‘Indian-ness’ with ‘Hindu-ness’. The chief exponents of Hindutva are organised under the umbrella of the Sangh Parivar organisation, avowedly inspired and influenced by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a “social and cultural organization” with a known fascist pedigree and a Hindu majoritarian political agenda. The importance of this movement can be gauged by the presence within its ranks of the former ruling party of India, now the main party of opposition, the Bharitiya Janata Party (BJP), and the fact that over 80% of the Indian population identify themselves as Hindu (when asked to proffer a religious identity). This represents a potentially enormous vote-bank for Hindu fundamentalist groups to draw from. The undoubted crucible of Hindutva hegemony in India is the state of Gujarat, “a laboratory of hate”³, held by the notorious BJP Chief Minister Narendra Modi. For many people, a religiously communalised Gujarat represents, in microcosm, the deeply problematic “Face of India’s future”⁴.
Evangelical neo-liberal advocates and boosters, fronted by the bought media worldwide, are busy extolling the ‘competitive’ and ‘dynamic’ virtues of India’s de-regulated economy, boasting year on year 9% growth rates, while leaving (in a less celebrated statistic) 77% of the population living on less than half a dollar a day. Disavowal is a necessity for the perpetuation of neo-liberal narratives, and the concomitant emergence of this virulent form of ultra Hindu Nationalism (Hindutva) has been largely neglected in the celebratory discourses surrounding the Indian economy.
The horrific pogrom of over 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat (December 2002) by Sangh Parivar activists, assisted and abetted at all levels of the state, has gone down in infamy. Investigations by NGOs and Indian State Commissions have revealed complicity and culpability in the highest levels of state government, right up to Modi himself. The state courts however, under Modi’s tenure and reportedly at his behest, have so far failed to satisfy civil rights groups’ demands for justice. The issue recently erupted again after the celebrated ‘sting’ of late October 2007 by Tehelka magazine. A Tehelka reporter managed to infiltrate a rightwing Hindu organisation for six months, to obtain damning spycam video footage of Hindu activists bragging about killing Muslims and detailing the support they received from the highest echelons of state government.

Continued . . .

Bush Administration Weighs Striking Iran’s Nuclear Complex, Which Could Trigger 3rd War In Region

CBS News, June 24, 2008

Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen leaves Tuesday night on an overseas trip that will take him to Israel, reports CBS News national security correspondent David Martin. The trip has been scheduled for some time but U.S. officials say it comes just as the Israelis are mounting a full court press to get the Bush administration to strike Iran’s nuclear complex.

CBS consultant Michael Oren says Israel doesn’t want to wait for a new administration.

“The Israelis have been assured by the Bush administration that the Bush administration will not allow Iran to nuclearize,” Oren said. “Israelis are uncertain about what would be the policies of the next administration vis-à-vis Iran.”

Israel’s message is simple: If you don’t, we will. Israel held a dress rehearsal for a strike earlier this month, but military analysts say Israel can not do it alone.

“Keep in mind that Israel does not have strategic bombers,” Oren said. “The Israeli Air Force is not the American Air Force. Israel can not eliminate Iran’s nuclear program.”

The U.S. with its stealth bombers and cruise missiles has a much greater capability. Vice President Cheney is said to favor a strike, but both Mullen and Defense Secretary Gates are opposed to an attack which could touch off a third war in the region.

U.S. intelligence estimates Iran won’t be able to build a weapon until sometime early in the next decade. But Israel is operating on a much shorter timetable.

“The Iranians, according to Israeli security sources, will have an operable nuclear weapon by 2009. That’s not a very long time,” Oren said.

For now, the Bush administration is counting on new economic sanctions which took effect Tuesday to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear program. But nobody’s counting on it.

JAMES GLANZ | The New York Times, June 24, 2008

Beyond the declines in overall violence in Iraq, several crucial measures the Bush administration uses to demonstrate economic, political and security progress are either incorrect or far more mixed than the administration has acknowledged, according to a report released Monday by the Government Accountability Office.

Over all, the report says, the American plan for a stable Iraq lacks a strategic framework that meshes with the administration’s goals, is falling out of touch with the realities on the ground and contains serious flaws in its operational guidelines.

Newly declassified data in the report on countrywide attacks in May shows that increases in violence during March and April that were touched off by an Iraqi government assault on militias in Basra have given way to a calmer period. Numbers of daily attacks have been comparable to those earlier in the year, representing about a 70 percent decline since June 2007, the data shows.

While those figures confirm the assessments by American military commanders that many of the security improvements that first became apparent last fall are still holding, a number of the figures that have been used to show broader progress in Iraq are either misleading or simply incorrect, the report says.

Continued . . .

The finishing touches on several contingency plans for attacking Iran
By David DeBatto

24/06/08 — – Global Research Editor’s note
We bring to the attention of our readers David DeBatto’s scenario as to what might occur if one of the several contingency plans to attack Iran, with the participation of Israel and NATO, were to be carried out. While one may disagree with certain elements of detail of the author’s text, the thrust of this analysis must be taken seriously.

“Israel has said a strike on Iran will be “unavoidable” if the Islamic regime continues to press ahead with alleged plans for building an atom-bomb.” (London Daily Telegraph, 6/11/2008)

“Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany joined President Bush on Wednesday in calling for further sanctions against Iran if it does not suspend its uranium enrichment program.” Mr. Bush stressed again that “all options are on the table,” which would include military force. (New York Times, 6/11/2008)

We are fast approaching the final six months of the Bush administration. The quagmire in Iraq is in its sixth painful year with no real end in sight and the forgotten war in Afghanistan is well into its seventh year. The “dead enders” and other armed factions are still alive and well in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan again controls most of that country. Gas prices have now reached an average of $4.00 a gallon nationally and several analysts predict the price will rise to $5.00-$6.00 dollars per gallon at the pump by Labor Day. This, despite assurances by some major supporters of the decision to invade Iraq that the Iraq war “will pay for itself” (Paul Wolfowitz) or that we will see “$20.00 per barrel” oil prices if we invade Iraq (Rupert Murdoch).

One thing the Pentagon routinely does (and does very well) is conduct war games. Top brass there are constantly developing strategies for conducting any number of theoretical missions based on real or perceived threats to our national security or vital interests. This was also done prior to the invasion of Iraq, but the Bush administration chose not to listen to the dire warnings about that mission given to him by Pentagon leaders, or for that matter, by his own senior intelligence officials. Nevertheless, war gaming is in full swing again right now with the bullseye just to the right of our current mess – Iran.

It’s no secret that the U.S. is currently putting the finishing touches on several contingency plans for attacking Iranian nuclear and military facilities. With our ground forces stretched to the breaking point in Iraq and Afghanistan, none of the most likely scenarios involve a ground invasion. Not that this administration wouldn’t prefer to march into the seat of Shiite Islam behind a solid, moving line of M1 Abrams tanks and proclaim the country for democracy. The fact is that even the President knows we can’t pull that off any more so he and the neo-cons will have to settle for Shock and Awe Lite.

Continued . . .

John Bolton, the former American ambassador to the United Nations, has predicted that Israel could attack Iran after the November presidential election but before George W Bush’s successor is sworn in.

Toby Harnden in Washington | Telegraph.co.uk June 24, 2008

PA

Bolton: ‘the argument for military action is sooner rather than later’

The Arab world would be “pleased” by Israeli strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, he said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.

“It [the reaction] will be positive privately. I think there’ll be public denunciations but no action,” he said.

Mr Bolton, an unflinching hawk who proposes military action to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons, bemoaned what he sees as a lack of will by the Bush administration to itself contemplate military strikes.

“It’s clear that the administration has essentially given up that possibility,” he said. “I don’t think it’s serious any more. If you had asked me a year ago I would have said I thought it was a real possibility. I just don’t think it’s in the cards.”

Israel, however, still had a determination to prevent a nuclear Iran, he argued. The “optimal window” for strikes would be between the November 4 election and the inauguration on January 20, 2009.

“The Israelis have one eye on the calendar because of the pace at which the Iranians are proceeding both to develop their nuclear weapons capability and to do things like increase their defences by buying new Russian anti-aircraft systems and further harden the nuclear installations .

“They’re also obviously looking at the American election calendar. My judgement is they would not want to do anything before our election because there’s no telling what impact it could have on the election.”

But waiting for either Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate, or his Republican opponent John McCain to be installed in the White House could preclude military action happening for the next four years or at least delay it.

“An Obama victory would rule out military action by the Israelis because they would fear the consequences given the approach Obama has taken to foreign policy,” said Mr Bolton, who was Mr Bush’s ambassador to the UN from 2005 to 2006.

Continued . . .

Grammy-winning American stand-up comedian, actor, author and anti-establishment icon George Carlin has passed away in LA aged 71.

Carlin died of heart failure after being admitted to St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon. The Comedian had a long history of heart trouble. His last performance was last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas.

Always outspoken and never a man to hide his opinions, Carlin most recently hit the headlines after speaking of his doubts about the official 9/11 story during an appearance at Borders bookstore in New York City last October, just a few blocks away from ground zero.

Asked what he thought of the 9/11 truth movement and how Bill Maher’s show was interrupted by truthers at the time, Carlin responded, “I always question the received reality.”

“The consensus reality is often intentionally misleading,” he added.

Asked if he would support a new investigation into 9/11, Carlin was skeptical, stating, “They don’t investigate themselves in this country – it would be a whitewash, it would be like the Kennedy thing, it would be like everything.”

“The people who are in charge do what they want and they will always do what they want, power does what it wants to and I wouldn’t trust an investigation,” Carlin concluded.

Watch the video.

(Article continues )

The battle lines for America’s controversial anti-missile missile shield in central-eastern Europe have been drawn across the Czech Republic, with the pro-base Prague government fast losing the fight for Czech hearts and minds.

Military police have forcibly ended a six-week-old Greenham Common-style “occupation” by Czech Greenpeace activists of Height 718, the planned site of America’s missile-tracking high-speed radar base in the Brdy military district southwest of Prague.

Following the centre-right Prague government’s signing of the US-Czech missile base agreement last month, a wave of mass protests and “rolling” hunger strikes demonstrated the level of public disquiet over the siting of the US base on Czech soil.

The ranks of environmental protesters, leftist anti-missile activists and the usual rent-a-crowd have recently been boosted by prominent public figures on symbolic, short hunger strikes at Brdy to show their opposition to the American base.

They are being backed by Bruce Gagnon, one of America’s leading anti-nuclear protesters. Gagnon, an activist of the US-based Global Network against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, spent two weeks on sympathy hunger strike with the Czechs in his Maine home. He explained to Radio Prague that, having recently been invited to Prague by the No to Bases Coalition, it was “very clear” to him that there was “overwhelming opposition to the US radar in the Czech Republic”.

The protesters are demanding the government of Mirek Topolanek halts the parliamentary ratification of the base accord, scheduled for the autumn.

According to the latest opinion poll by Prague’s CVVM agency, 66% of Czechs now oppose the siting of the American base in their county, with those backing it down to 24%.

Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, pictured below, is flying to Prague early next month to formally sign the accord. Reflecting the government’s alarm over the public’s mounting anti-base mood, Karel Schwarzenberg, the Czech foreign minister, has threatened to resign if parliament rejects the US radar base accord.

“I really think I would have to go to the prime minister and hand in my resignation,” Schwarzenberg said. “If I don’t succeed, I have to give the prime minister a chance to find someone better.”

Right on cue, a leading Czech Greenpeace activist countered the foreign minister’s pro-base arguments.

Jiri Tutter, leader of the Czech chapter of the environmental protection group, explained the reasons for the Greenpeace protests and the six-week-long occupation of Height 718 at Brdy: “We do not believe that the US radar and the Czech national missile defence are the best tools to secure international peace.”

Meanwhile, prime minister Topolanek, and defence minister Vlasta Parkanova condemned the planned hunger strikes as a “political tool unfit to a democracy”. President Vaclav Klaus has also condemned the planned “chain of hunger strikes” to stop the government from ratifying the radar base accord.

He rejected a call from Jan Toma and Jan Bedna, two prominent activists, who recently ended a three-week hunger strike, to discuss the American base issue. Calling the hunger strike “blackmail”, president Klaus said that such practices had no place in a modern democracy.

The hunger strikes are to be joined by prominent Czech public figures, including former anti-communist dissident Petr Uhl and actress Anna Geislerová. They have announced they would hold one-day hunger strikes at the Brdy base.

The earlier protests were mainly mass demonstrations. Greenpeace organised a protest against the US base accord outside government offices in Prague; and the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia staged the biggest anti-base demonstration to date, attended by 2000 people, along the perimeter of Brdy.

“The ratification of the Czech-American base treaty in Parliament will not be easy,” Klaus has ruefully admitted. The once-supine Czech public is now too vocal for that.

©2008 newsquest (Sunday Herald)

Both Reuters via Yahoonews.com and the New York Times reported Friday that Israel carried out a major military exercise this month, described by unnamed American officials as a rehearsal for mayhem, i.e., a powerful attack on Iran’s nuclear uranium enrichment plant at Natanz.

As described, more than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 (American made) fighters engaged in exercises over the eastern Mediterranean and Greece in the first week of June. The point of the workout, it seemed, was to hone in on long-range strikes on Iran’s uranium facilities, American officials said.

The kicker is that since much of the facility is buried deeply underground in extremely fortified facilities, there’s no guaranty that a surface attack would cripple the facility. Ergo, if Iran is, indeed, at the weapons grade uranium enrichment point, one could plan for a counterstrike and an aggregate response from other Middle and Far Eastern Muslim and Asian nuclear powers.

Of course, Israeli officials, the Times said, would not discuss the exercise. Nor, needless to say, would they be willing to discuss their Dimona nuclear plant that has existed since the early 1960s, enriching uranium, and stockpiling by now some 200 nuclear warheads, as America has quietly looked the other way and, indeed, aided Israel with some $3 billion in military aid each year, in addition to millions more in unsecured loans, and hundreds of millions from pro-Israel Jewish-American groups.

Furthermore, Iran has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but Israel has never done so. In fact, they did their best to keep Dimona’s subbasement nuclear reactor a secret. So much so that when Americans visited in the ’60s, Israel built a wall to conceal the elevators and stairways to the reactor.

In fact, Israel’s 60 years of nuclear proliferation is documented in my linked story from Online Journal. It states that “Of course, by 1958, the Dimona plant, alternately called a manganese and/or textile plant, was photographed by US U-2 spy planes and identified as a likely site of a reactor complex. The French, swarming like ants about the complex, were hard to hide, as well as in Beersheba, so much so that Charles DeGaulle, France’s president, wanted a promise from Israel not to make nuclear weapons, and to announce the “project” to the world. Before Israel did that, they were preempted by the US State Department announcing the secret plant. Even the NY Times announced on December 21, 1960 that Ben-Gurion was building a 24-megawatt reactor “for peaceful purposes.”

Continued . . .

By Juan Cole | Information Clearing House, June 23, 2008

American television loves natural disasters. The Burmese cyclones that may have carried off as many as 200,000 people offered the cameras high drama.

The floods in Wisconsin, Iowa and Missouri along the Mississippi River, which have wiped out thousands of homes, have been carefully detailed hour by hour.

But American television is little interested in the massive disaster blithely visited upon Iraq by Washington. Oh, there is the occasional human interest story. Angelina Jolie’s visit sparked a headline or two. Briefly.

By now, summer of 2008, excess deaths from violence in Iraq since March of 2003 must be at least a million. This conclusion can be reached more than one way. There is not much controversy about it in the scientific community. Some 310,000 of those were probably killed by US troops or by the US Air Force, with the bulk dying in bombing raids by US fighter jets and helicopter gunships on densely populated city and town quarters.

In absolute numbers, that would be like bombing to death everyone in Pittsburgh, Pa. Or Cincinnati, Oh.

Only, the US is 11 times more populous than Iraq, so 310,000 Iraqi corpses would equal 3.4 million dead Americans. So proportionally it would be like firebombing to death everyone in Chicago.

The one million number includes not just war-related deaths but all killings beyond what you would have expected from the 2000-2002 baseline. That is, if tribal feuds got out of hand and killed a lot of people because the Baath police were demobilized or disarmed and so no longer intervened, those deaths go into the mix. All the Sunnis killed in the north of Hilla Province (the ‘triangle of death’) when Shiite clans displaced from the area by Saddam came back up to reclaim their farms would be included. The kidnap victims killed when the ransom did not arrive in time would be included. And, of course, the sectarian, ethnic and militia violence, even if Iraqi on Iraqi, would count. And it hasn’t been just hot spots like Baghdad, Basra, Mosul and Kirkuk. The rate of excess violent death has been pretty standard across Arab Iraq.

As for the Iraqis killed by Americans, like the 24 civilians in Haditha, the survivors are not going to be pro-American any time soon. The US can always find politicians to come out and say nice things on a visit to the Rose Garden. But the people. I don’t think the people are saying nice things in Arabic behind our backs.

Continued . . .