Peace and Justice Post

U.S. President George W. Bush recently stated that he would be remembered for liberating 50 million people from the clutches of barbaric regimes. Bush represents a lineage of liars whose expert propaganda turns truth on its hinder for the sake of promoting the power interests which they serve.

It is time that these lies be exposed and translated for the people of the US who do not seem to understand what is being said. We hereby present this guide to understanding a few of the propaganda slogans and terms used by US politicians, puppets, pundits, and propagandists.

“Barbarians” are by definition people who destroy others with utter ruthlessness, mutilating, murdering and enslaving them. This, of course, describes the barbaric, brutal and savage regimes of the US, Britain, the Jewish settler state and Europe grabbing for control of the world.

“Civilization” means people who profess conscientious control of themselves and a reduction in violent impulses while at the same time torturing, mutilating, executing and enslaving those whose lands and resources they loot.

The “savages” are the rapacious bankers, weapons manufacturers and global corporate plunderers of the West, the very same Judaeo-Christian Crusaders who profess to be civilized and democratic.

“Liberation” means no rights or legal status for those conquered, no matter what their nationality, religion, race, or ethnic background.

“Democracy” means not rule “of, by and for the people” but the rule of the moneyed elites over the people.

“Freedom” means enslavement.

“Peace officers” are war makers.

“Rule of law” means locking up the poor.

“Preemptive war” means invasion, occupation, and expropriation.

The “terrorists” are the corpocracy-sponsored military industrial complex using every tactic possible to obtain control over all coveted resources.

The real “terrorist training camps” are U.S. military boot camps.

“Homicide bombers” and “suicide bombers” are infantrymen.

“Support the troops” means sacrificing your children to become trained terrorists, torturers and killers for the profit and power of bankers and industrialists.

“Interrogation” means torture.

Police “serve and protect” . . . the rich.

“Law enforcement” means locking up and lynching the poor and those who won’t shut up.

“Gangsters” include bankers, judges, CEOs, legislators and lobbyists.

“Globalization” means imperialism.

“Free market” means plunder and exploitation.

“Freedom of speech” means shut up or else.

“Fair and accurate” means with extreme malice and bias.

“Liberals” are fascists. “Fascists” are liberals.

“Conservatives” are for state control of everything except the rampagings of the rich.

“Neocons” are royalists and Zionists.

“Left” is right.

“Right” is wrong.

“Democrats and “Republicans” are imperialists.

“We’re not racist” means we are racist.

The “axis of evil” is actually the US, UK, the Zionist entity, the UN and the “International Community.”

Politicians, lawyers, teachers, social workers, consultants, facilitators, advisers, bank tellers, your children, your parents, your families and just about everybody in America are being intensively pressured to turn into informers and agents. Over 2 ½ million persons are in jail, almost all of them from the lowest classes and a preponderance of them black. Millions of paid informers, police and prison-related personnel and private-contracting gun thugs roam the country seeking their prey, while fatuous priests of all officially recognized religious denominations pray for their success and safety.

While there has been much barbarism throughout the world, the USA has emerged as the worst of all in the annals of history, presenting itself as “liberator” and harbinger of “democracy” while torturing, killing and plundering the world and exploiting and befuddling the hapless folks at home.

Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal

Human Rights organizations around the world marked today (Thursday) the ‘International Day of Identification with victims of torture’, which was created by the UN ten years ago. In Israel, the Israeli Committee against torture held a conference in Tel Aviv, attended by writers, academics and also soldiers who had witnessed the torture of prisoners, in which it presented a new report about torture in Israel.

The report presented at the conference painted a particularly grim picture of the situation in Israel. It reveals that IDF soldiers of varying ranks routinely abuse Palestinians from the moment of their detention until the time of their interrogation by the security forces. The abuse takes the form of beating prisoners, minors too, humiliating and cursing them. Furthermore, the writers of the report determined that the higher ranks of the IDF, the Ministry of Defense and the Law Enforcement system almost entirely disregard this phenomenon.

Among the participants of the conference held this evening by the Israeli committee against torture was Itzhak Ben Mocha, a former fighter with the paratroopers, who participated in arrests made in the Territories and observed abuse and torture of Palestinian prisoners. “I participated in many arrests during the course of my service” told Ben Mocha, “and there were always little abuses in the background: hits on the head, pushes. Abuses are not unusual”, he added. “They are always committed when the prisoners are tied and their eyes covered, although they present no danger to anyone.”

Ben Mocha said that on every trip he always had to sit between the prisoner and the soldiers to protect him with his body. “One time we were sent to perform an arrest in Nablus”, he stated. “After the arrest, before the trip, we got into the vehicle and took a nap. Suddenly we were awoken by a loud noise and when we got out we saw the prisoner lying on the ground and bleeding from the head. It turns out that two of the soldiers tied him up, covered his eyes, took a picture with him and then kicked him hard in the head. That was the noise that woke us up. These things occurred in the paratroopers, an elite troop. If it occurs there, it clearly occurs everywhere”, he concluded.

“They treated me like an animal”

Raami Mofid Jumaa, a Palestinian from the West Bank who was arrested in the past by the IDF and experienced a range of abuses could not participate in the conference, as the army did not allow him to get there. However his filmed testimony was shown.

Continued . . .

Iqbal Tamimi, Palestine Think Tank, July 4, 2008

When one Israeli person is killed or kidnapped, the media makes sure every single person hearing the news would know the name of that person, giving the incident a human dimension. But this has never been the case with Palestinians who have been killed, imprisoned or kidnapped by the Israeli authorities. Palestinians are considered as a demographically abundant population, it is alright not to know their names; they are ignored on a human level. Their names are never mentioned. When Palestinians are killed you only hear about numbers, their blood is diluted by the media manipulators who do not have the decency to respect human life on both sides. This is why I thought of mentioning the names of a few young Palestinian men who died inside Israeli prisons. When you read their names, remember that each one of them has a family and friends, and each of them has his own dreams and hopes, and his blood screams at you, “WILL YOU REMEMBER MY NAME?” And most of all, almost all of them were killed inside Israeli prisons during interrogations before being convicted or standing in a court to a fair trial. The majority are very young, this is another tactic of Israeli authorities to empty the country of its people as soon as possible. Fadi Abdellateef Abu Alrob, 19 years of age, born 1987 in the town of Qabatiya near the city of Jenin, has died inside the Israeli prison after 5 months of imprisonment. Jamal Elsaraheen, another young man from my hometown Hebron, died on the 16th of January 2006. Maher Dandan, from the city of Nablus died inside an Israeli prison on the 9th of June 2007. From the city of Tulkarm the young man Mohammad Elashqar, was shot by Israeli soldiers directly in the head at the Naqab prison on the 21st of October 2007!!!!!!! Does this seem reasonable, all those young men dying at such a young age, maybe as young as yourself, or as your own son! It would be total ignorance to think that all those young men died of natural causes. Fadi Abu Alrob, 19 years of age, was victim number 74 to die inside an Israeli prison since only December 1987 (those who I knew of). He died inside Jalbooaa Israeli prison after being denied treatment. This number does not include 193 prisoners killed while being arrested. Jalbooaa prison was built in 2004 to the north of Palestine, copying US high security prisons in structure and system, and not far from Shatta prison in Beesan area. The prison of Jalbooaa is the sardine tin where 800 Palestinian prisoners are waiting their turn to die of medical neglect or direct assault by the Israelis. Or to be used as a negotiating card when the need arises. Fadi Abdellateef was the second prisoner to die at Jalbbooaa prison, after Bashshar Arif Bany Oodeh 27 years of age, who died on the 23rd of June 2005 because of medical neglect as well. Bashshar is from the city of Tammoon. Those young people died before savouring life, not because they were driving fast cars, or because they had injured themselves while being drunk or while playing dangerous sports. They all died because they were not only imprisoned by the racist cruel Israeli government, but because they were denied access to medical aid when they needed it too. Please think of each of the following names as someone you know. For now, I have listed the names of only 42 young men only who were killed inside the Israeli prisons before even being tried, but the list is much longer than you would expect. 1- Khader Elias Fuad Altarzi, 19 years of age, from the Alsabra area in Gaza. Died in Soroka Hospital after a torture session on the 9th of February 1988. 2- Qandeel Kamel Ilwan, from Albraij Camp in Gaza, died on the 24th of February 1988 at Ashkelon Prison, of medical negligence. 3- Ibraheem Mahmood Mohammad Elraee, 28 years of age, from the city of Qalqeliya, died on the 11th of April 1988 of torture during the investigation. 4- Ayyad Mohammad Aql, 17 years of age, from Albraij camp in Gaza, died on the 2d of August 1988 after being kicked and hit severely during investigations. 5- Ata Yosif Ahmad Ayyad, 20 years of age, from Qalandya camp near Jerusalem, died on the 4th of August 1988 after being beaten and strangled during investigation. Continued . . .

By Gary Brecher, AlterNet. Posted July 2, 2008.

Fact number one about guerrilla wars: They’re not over until the guerrillas win. Mao set out the guerrilla’s viewpoint 80 years ago: “The enemy wants to fight a short war, but we simply will not let him.” The longer the guerrillas stay in the game, the sicker the occupying army gets. Sooner or later, they’ll go home — because they can. It’s that simple, and it works. So anyone who tells you it’s over is just plain ignorant. That’s one thing you can rule out instantly.

But people keep saying it. The most recent and ridiculous take is that “Moqtada al Sadr is renouncing violence.” Talk about naive! What led these geniuses to that conclusion is that on June 13, Moqtada al Sadr, leader of the biggest and toughest Shia militia, the Mahdi Army, sent out a big announcement: “From now on, the resistance will be exclusively conducted by only one group. … The weapons will be held exclusively by this group.” In other words, he’s switching from a big, sloppy, amateur force to a select group of professional guerrillas.

Also, there’ll be a non-military role for the civilian supporter, working on local politics to “liberate the minds from domination and globalization.”

The glass-half-full school of thought took Sadr’s announcement to mean that he’s getting out of the violence business, trying to marginalize the “special groups,” which is U.S. Army talk for hardcore Shia militias, and move his party to the good ol’ middle of the road. See, that’s classic misreading of Iraqi reality as if it were U.S. politics. It’s like we keep trying to pretend that Iraq under occupation is just a dusty version of Iowa. Sorry, but a country under enemy occupation doesn’t think or act like Des Moines. If you want a good analogy to what Sadr is actually doing, it’s easy to find one, but you can’t look at American politics. You need to go to research other countries occupied by enemy armies, where urban insurgencies started off like Sadr’s Mahdi Army did — as neighborhood defense groups protecting the locals against mobs from across the ethnic divide. And when you start thinking on those lines, there’s a really close, clear parallel between what Sadr is doing now and another insurgency that shifted from neighborhood-gang/paramilitary organization to small armed cells, with civilian support channeled into an above-ground political wing: the IRA back in the 1970s.

The basic parallels between Shia Iraqis and the IRA are clear enough: They’re both minorities that got stomped on by the dominant tribe — in Northern Ireland, Protestant mobs used to burn and stomp at will when they were in the mood; and in Shia Iraq, Sunni goons went on regular murder runs in Shia neighborhoods. So both places, Catholic Belfast and Shia Baghdad, got used to defending their own neighborhoods because nobody else was going to defend them. Then they were “saved” by foreign troops from countries that had always been their biggest enemy: The Ulster Catholics were occupied by the British Army, and Shia Iraq by the Americans. Of course, it was all supposed to be gratitude and happiness, the way the occupiers saw it. They expected the slum people to be grateful. Well, there haven’t been too many people in history who’ve been glad to be occupied by foreign troops. Even when the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia to root out the Khmer Rouge, a lot of Khmer were more angry at the foreigners than pleased to be rid of Pol Pot. And of course, in both of these cases the troops who arrived were hated alien types: British paratroopers in Belfast, American “crusaders” in Baghdad. A few trigger-happy troops firing on local crowds and boom! Gratitude season was over, and the insurgency was in da house. In both places, the local rebel groups were ready: The IRA in Belfast dated back to 1916, and Sadr City had the same tradition of organizing neighborhood defensive gangs.

The trouble is, when po’ folks organize, they have this fatal addiction to big, fancy titles and military fol-der-ol. It’s easy to understand: It helps stomped-on people feel braver, have a little pride. So these groups always go for show, a lot of pomp and uniforms, and a traditional military organizational chart. Pretty soon the guy next door is a colonel, the clerk in the corner store is a four-star general, and they’re strutting around in homemade uniforms feeling ready to take on Genghis Khan. Good for morale, but fatal to real urban guerrilla war. There are two reasons for that. First, these amateur armies get slaughtered when they go up against professional troops; and second, the traditional open organizational chart makes it very easy for the occupiers to identify everyone who’s anyone in the insurgency. When an organization starts out fighting mobs from the enemy tribe, that’s fine. So when the IRA tried to fight the British Army head to head in the 1970s, it got stomped; so did Sadr’s militia when it went up against U.S. troops in April 2004.

Continued . . .

SAPPORO, Japan – Indigenous communities from around the world urged G8 rich nations on Friday to help them participate in global climate change talks, saying they contributed least to but are most affected by global warming.

Clad in colorful traditional robes, 26 representatives from countries including the United States, Canada, and Japan, along with some 400 students, activists, and academics, met on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido.

The island is the venue of the July 7-9 Group of Eight summit and home to the indigenous Ainu ethnic group.

At the meeting, members of indigenous communities blamed the market-oriented economic model of the G8 nations as the main cause for climate change, a food crisis, and high oil prices. These are issues high on the discussion agenda at the G8 summit.

“As we all know, the G8 is composed of the most powerful and richest governments in the world. The G8 is the one which makes decisions … that have direct impact on us,” said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Chair of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

“As far as I am concerned … we have seen that many of these problems are actually caused by the G8 themselves,” added Tauli-Corpuz, also a representative of the Igorot people of the Philippines.

A declaration issued at the meeting’s end said the G8 leaders should pave the way for indigenous people to be included in global climate change talks led by the United Nations.

“Indigenous peoples need to be included in all levels of climate change negotiations, because they are the most affected, but also because they have the most to contribute,” said Ben Powless, a Mohawk from Canada.

Many sang and chanted prayers in their indigenous languages at the meeting.

The United Nations has estimated 370 million indigenous people were already exposed on the front line of climate change to more frequent floods, droughts, desertification, disease and rising seas.

At the meeting, indigenous communities highlighted the troubles they were also facing from the effects of measures intended to mitigate climate change.

For example, Tauli-Corpuz said people had been displaced when biofuel plantations were expanded in the Philippines and when forests were used as carbon sinks in Uganda.

“We are really pleading to the governments to ensure that in the process of undertaking programmes, they will not further (marginalize) and violate the basic rights of the indigenous peoples,” she told Reuters in an interview.

In their declaration, representatives also called for the governments of Canada, the United States and Russia to adopt the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The United States and Canada voted against the non-binding declaration while Russia abstained. Australia and New Zealand also voted against it, but it was passed overwhelmingly in the General Assembly in September 2007.

Representatives welcomed the move by the Japanese government last month to recognize Ainu as indigenous people, but called for an official apology for mistreatment of the Ainu and concrete steps, as well as including more Ainu representatives in an experts’ committee.

Only one Ainu was named to the eight-member committee formed by Japan’s government this month.

The declaration from the meeting will be handed over on Friday to Japanese lawmakers, who will pass it to Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda before the summit, meeting organizers said.

Declaring their love of the US is one of the most powerful weapons in the Republicans’ arsenal – and it’s forcing Obama on to the centre ground

The Independent, July 6, 2008

AP
Waving the flag: Obama and family celebrating the Fourth of July in the traditional style

On Independence Day weekends in presidential election years, the ritual is normally immutable. The candidates tour the heartland, dutifully down their hot dogs and hamburgers, and, on this most patriotic of national holidays, declare their undying love for America and all it stands for. The country, meanwhile, gets on with the barbecues, parades and fireworks, and pays not a blind bit of attention.

This time, though, there’s a difference. In American politics, patriotism is the most potent of issues – and in 2008, a number of Americans seem to harbour some doubt over whether the love of the US on the part of one candidate is quite as wholesome and undying as it should be. Which is why Barack Obama, Democrat and possibly the most liberal member of the US Senate, has spent the past week on a mission to plant his own flag in the safe, indisputably patriotic, political centre.

His travels have been as instructive geographically as ideologically. First was Independence, Missouri, heartland home town of Harry Truman, that most down-to-earth of American Presidents. There, Mr Obama proclaimed his “deep and abiding love for this country”. Then he was in Ohio, talking up faith-based social service, an issue so dear to America’s Christian “moral majority”.

Then on to Colorado Springs, a town that lives and breathes the US armed forces. In case anyone missed the point, the next day in North Dakota he was talking up the need to look after America’s veterans better. Rounding things off was Independence Day itself – 4 July, which he chose to spend in Montana, “Big Sky Country” and symbol of the mythical Old West, so tightly bound up with America’s image of itself.

Mr Obama’s precautions are wise. Dr Johnson described patriotism as the last refuge of the scoundrel; in the US it is the first resort of the Republicans come election time.

Continued . . .

by William Blum | Dissident Voice, July 5th, 2008

Most important thought: I’m sick and tired of this thing called “patriotism”.

The Japanese pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor were being patriotic. The German people who supported Hitler and his conquests were being patriotic, fighting for the Fatherland. All the Latin American military dictators who overthrew democratically-elected governments and routinely tortured people were being patriotic — saving their beloved country from “communism”.

General Augusto Pinochet of Chile: “I would like to be remembered as a man who served his country.”¹

P.W. Botha, former president of apartheid South Africa: “I am not going to repent. I am not going to ask for favours. What I did, I did for my country.”²

Pol Pot, mass murderer of Cambodia: “I want you to know that everything I did, I did for my country.”³

Tony Blair, former British prime minister, defending his role in the murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis: “I did what I thought was right for our country.”⁴

I won’t bore you with what George W. has said.

At the end of World War II, the United States gave moral lectures to their German prisoners and to the German people on the inadmissibility of pleading that their participation in the holocaust was in obedience to their legitimate government. To prove to them how legally inadmissable this defense was, the World War II allies hanged the leading examples of such patriotic loyalty.

I was once asked after a talk: “Do you love America?” I answered: “No”. After pausing for a few seconds to let that sink in amidst several nervous giggles in the audience, I continued with: “I don’t love any country. I’m a citizen of the world. I love certain principles, like human rights, civil liberties, democracy, an economy which puts people before profits.”

I don’t make much of a distinction between patriotism and nationalism. Some writers equate patriotism with allegiance to one’s country and government, while defining nationalism as sentiments of ethno-national superiority. However defined, in practice the psychological and behavioral manifestations of nationalism and patriotism — and the impact of such sentiments on actual policies — are not easily distinguishable.

Howard Zinn has called nationalism “a set of beliefs taught to each generation in which the Motherland or the Fatherland is an object of veneration and becomes a burning cause for which one becomes willing to kill the children of other Motherlands or Fatherlands.”⁵ … “Patriotism is used to create the illusion of a common interest that everybody in the country has.”⁶

Continued . . .

By Nora Barrows-Friedman and Dennis Bernstein | Consortiumnews.com, July 5, 2008

Editor’s Note: Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer recently traveled to Europe where he received an award given to reporters engaged in coverage of dangerous conflicts. However, Omer found the risk of returning to Gaza through Israel a hazard that he had not anticipated.

Below is a commentary expressing the outrage of two of Omer’s colleagues at the radio program, “Flashpoints,” followed by an interview with Omer about his ordeal:

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The U.S.-supported occupation violence against Palestine continues unchecked. The failure of major Western politicians and the Big Press to cover the story has given Israel an absolute free hand to prosecute its program of ethnic cleansing.

It is nearly impossible these days to get substantial, unbiased information out on punishing Israeli policies. The few reporters who have chosen to take on the story head-on oftentimes risk their life and their limbs to do their work.

A week ago Thursday, the Israeli occupation violence hit close to home as award-winning reporter and Flashpoints correspondent Mohammed Omer was detained and tortured trying to return back to his home in Gaza through Jordan.

Mohammed Omer was returning home from Europe with great pride, having been distinguished with the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. The prize is given every year with great fanfare to frontline reporters who take great risks to report their stories.

Omer, who is also the recipient of the New America Media’s Best Youth Voice Award, was detained on his way back from Europe, trying to cross back home into the Gaza Strip via Jordan and the West Bank.

Omer, knowing the dangers he would face going back to Gaza, had the assistance of the Dutch diplomatic core in the West Bank to escort him back through Israel into the northern Gaza Strip’s Erez crossing.

But even this proved to be a worthless effort – at the Allenby crossing between Jordan and the occupied West Bank, Omer was detained, humiliated, interrogated, beaten and tortured, according to Omer, by Israeli Shin Bet agents.

What follows is a Flashpoints interview with Mohammed Omer from his hospital bed in central Gaza, where he was finally transported after he received critical wounds, including fractured ribs and an injured trachea, from the Israeli forces.

The interview was broadcast on Pacifica Radio’s Flashpoints show on Monday, June 30.

Omer is a featured and regular correspondent for Flashpoints and a working colleague at Inter Press Service with Flashpoints Senior Producer Nora Barrows-Friedman, who herself has returned from Gaza and the West Bank.

Continued . . .

Spidered News, Fri, July 4, 2008

Venezuela’s President, Hugo Chavez

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez advises Washington to stop making threats against Iran and Venezuela in hopes of seeing lower oil prices.

Chavez suggested that wealthy nations, including the United States, can end the surge in oil prices by refraining from blaming crude exporting nations and by pulling their troops out of Iraq.

“They want to blame us: the Arabs and Venezuela. We are not to blame. Withdraw the troops from Iraq and you’ll see how oil prices will drop,” he said Thursday.

“Stop the threats against Iran and Venezuela, oil-producing countries, and you’ll see prices will tend to decline,” Chavez said in an address to visiting delegates from Non-Aligned Movement countries.

Oil prices surged to an all-time high of over $146 a barrel on Thursday. Brent peaked at $146.69 before falling back to $146.08; US crude jumped $1.72 to $145.29 after having hit $145.85.

Crude skyrocketed to nearly $144 on Monday over speculation that Israel plans to launch a military strike on Iran, the world’s fourth-largest oil exporter.

The New York Times recently quoted Pentagon officials as saying that over 100 Israeli F-16s and F-15s staged a maneuver over the eastern Mediterranean and Greece in early June.

As part of the maneuver, Israeli aircraft flew over 900 miles, roughly the distance from their airfields to a nuclear enrichment facility in the central Iranian city of Natanz.

Asked whether Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz if Israel launches a military strike on the country, Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Mohammad-Ali Jafari suggested June 28 that Tehran would consider all options.

“When a country comes under attack, it naturally uses all its capacities to confront the enemy,” said the Iranian commander.

The strategic 21-mile Strait of Hormuz waterway between Iran and Oman is a vital conduit for energy supplies. As much as 40 percent of the world’s sea-transited crude oil passes through the narrow Persian Gulf chokepoint.

Chavez warned last month that crude prices would hit $200 a barrel if the US continued to threaten Iran.

MK/AA