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All aboard the atheist bus campaign

October 22, 2008

It’s real, it’s happening: you can sponsor the first atheist advert on a bus – and Richard Dawkins will match your money

Ariane Sherine's atheist bus advert

The godless move in mysterious ways: what the atheist bus campaign’s advert will look like.

The atheist bus campaign launches today thanks to Comment is free readers. Because of your enthusiastic response to the idea of a reassuring God-free advert being used to counter religious advertising, the slogan “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life” could now become an ad campaign on London buses – and leading secularists have jumped on board to help us raise the money.

The British Humanist Association will be administering all donations to the campaign, and Professor Richard Dawkins, bestselling author of The God Delusion, has generously agreed to match all contributions up to a maximum of £5,500, giving us a total of £11,000 if we raise the full amount. This will be enough to fund two sets of atheist adverts on 30 London buses for four weeks.

If the buses hit the road, this will be the UK’s first ever atheist advertising campaign. It’s an exciting development, which I never expected when I first proposed the idea on Cif in June. Back then, I was just keen to counter the religious ads running on public transport, which featured a URL to a website telling non-Christians they would spend “all eternity in torment in hell”, burning in “a lake of fire”. When I suggested the atheist counter-slogan (now shortened for readability), the response was extremely positive, and hundreds of you pledged your support after the follow-up article.

As you read this, a new advertising campaign for Alpha Courses is running on London buses. If you attend an Alpha Course, you will again be told that failing to believe in Jesus will condemn you to hell. There’s no doubt that advertising can be effective, and religious advertising works particularly well on those who are vulnerable, frightening them into believing. Religious organisations’ jobs are made easier because there’s no publicly visible counter-view to refute their threats of eternal damnation.

The atheist bus campaign aims to change this. In addition to the slogan, the adverts will feature the URLs of secular, humanist and atheist websites, so that readers can find out more about atheism as a positive and liberating alternative to religion. We’ve also set up an interactive campaign website and Facebook group, so that questions raised by the adverts can be publicly debated.

CBS Outdoor, the bus advertising company, will run the atheist adverts in January if the funds are raised – but we need your help to make this happen.

Your donations will give atheism a more visible presence in the UK, generate debate, brighten people’s day on the way to work, and hopefully encourage more people to come out as atheists. As Richard Dawkins says: “This campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think – and thinking is anathema to religion.”

To donate to the atheist bus campaign, please visit here.

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Pakistan refugee camps swell after battles

October 21, 2008

Refugees may be forced to spend the winter in tents

BY SAEED SHAH • MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS • October 21, 2008

TIMERGARA, Pakistan — A Pakistani military assault on Taliban and Al Qaeda extremists near the Afghan border has unleashed a flood of at least 190,000 displaced people who may be forced to spend the approaching winter in tents and could be marooned for years.

Pakistani authorities claim to have killed more than 1,000 militants in Bajaur, with 17 more reported killed in the last two days, but what was supposed to be a quick military assault against the Islamic extremists along the border with Afghanistan is now in its third month and could be Pakistan’s biggest offensive since 9/11.

Washington has criticized Pakistan for appeasing the extremists, but on Monday, Richard Boucher, a visiting U.S. assistant secretary of state, said: “I think it is good that Pakistan is taking serious action against terrorists.”

However, if the military extends the action to other areas, the streams of displaced people and the resentment of Pakistan’s cooperation with the United States in the war on terrorism are likely to grow.

Many of the newly displaced people are living in squalid, makeshift camps in the adjoining North West Frontier Province, where they have no running water, no electricity, no toilets and no heat. Aid workers and officials fear that they may be trapped for years. Others have fled to Afghanistan, according to the United Nations.

Bajaur has been virtually emptied of its inhabitants, officials said. At least 10 camps run by the government now house tens of thousands from Bajaur; others have taken shelter with family and friends, and as many as 100,000 have fled hundreds of miles to the southern port city of Karachi.

A grim settlement has taken shape on a hillside outside the town of Timergara, which borders Bajaur. The month-old camp there has just started a rudimentary open-air school for younger children, taught by the older kids, and a clinic has been established.

There now are 880 families at the Timergara camp, or about 6,260 individuals, most of them children, according to the official in charge. Most families are allotted one tent each, which means that eight or more people must share it.

“We don’t have enough water to drink, let alone the chance to bathe,” said Gul Mohammad, 25, who arrived with seven family members. “We brought nothing. We just came here to save our lives.”

Toilet facilities, so far, are a communal ditch or a trip to the nearby river. There’s no electricity, and water is trucked in. Food is distributed by the government and aid agencies, but the refugees said it was inadequate and that they had to scavenge or buy wood to cook it.

“First we thought this would be for a month. It looks like years to me now,” said Abdul Hameed, the Pakistani official who runs the facility. “We have stopped more coming in. There is no space left.”

Winter, now setting in, is bitterly cold in Timergara, but the refugees said they didn’t even have blankets. Their anger is directed mostly at the Pakistani authorities, not at the Taliban, for launching the operation and for the miserable conditions they now endure. They charge that Bajaur is being pounded indiscriminately by jet fighters and helicopter gunships and that most of the casualties are innocent civilians.

“Even when a 2-year-old dies in a strike,” the army says in the media that “he was Taliban or Al Qaeda,” said Rahim Gul, who had come from a village close to Damadola, an alleged hotbed of Islamic militancy.

Tribesmen rarely criticize the Taliban, probably out of fear, but the refugees report large-scale destruction of homes and civilian deaths from the army bombardment. The chief spokesman for the Pakistan army said he had no figures for civilian casualties.

“A missile struck my house.” The army even “hit the village mosque,” said Mohammed Jan. “They are willing to hit mosques, so what chance is there that they will spare poor people?”

“Houses are being used by the militants as bunkers. They’re firing from there. Therefore, all houses from where the firing is coming are being engaged by the security forces,” Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said. “To our knowledge, the civilians of this area have left.”

A man who gave his name only as Sherpao said: “It is the fault of both sides. The army throws bombs on us from above. The Taliban terrorize us on the ground. We just want peace. We don’t care who wins.”

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Pakistani Opposition Figure: 1,500 Civilians Killed in Bajaur Operation

October 21, 2008

Jason Ditz | Antiwar.com, October 19, 2008

Sahibzada Haroonur Rashid, a high ranking official in the Jamaat-e Islami (JI) party from Bajaur Agency, claimed today that 1,500 civilians have been killed since Pakistan’s military offensive in Bajaur began in August. He also condemned the operation for displacing hundreds of thousands of Bajauris, and accused the government of killing people in the tribal areas to ‘appease the United States.’

The military has claimed 1,000 militants killed and another 2,000 wounded in the heavy fighting of the past months, they have not provided any figures on the number of civilians killed. Relief agencies have reported that more than 400,000 people have been displaced in the tiny agency, whose entire population as of the most recent census was less than 600,000.

The Pakistani government has rejected calls by the militants for a ceasefire in the past, and has remained officially silent since last week’s offer by a TTP spokesman to lay down arms in return for an end to the offensives. Confusingly, the government announced a ceasefire of its own at the beginning of Ramadan, but continued to launch attacks throughout the Muslim holy month.

The Jamaat-e Islami is a religious political party in Pakistan. They have no MPs in the current Pakistani legislature, having boycotted the most recent elections over then-President Pervez Musharraf’s declaration of a state of emergency. They have long been outspoken critics of military offensives and supporters of peace talks with the various militant groups in Pakistan’s restive tribal areas. They have also been accused of links with al-Qaeda in the past.

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The Forgotten U.S. War on the Iraqi People

October 21, 2008


By Ghali Hassan | Axis of Logic,  Oct 16, 2008, 19:42

On October 3, 2008, the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon is paying $300 million to U.S. contractors to produce pro-U.S. propaganda for Iraqi audiences “in an effort to ‘engage and inspire’ the local population to support U.S. objectives and the puppet government”. The aim of this psychological warfare is to normalise the murderous Occupation and cover-up the slaughter of innocent Iraqi civilians.

As Iraqis continue to suffer, the war on has receded from mainstream media headlines in order to remove people’s historical memory and to provide the Republican Party with a fictitious victory and improves John McCain’s chances of winning the presidency. In the same way the decade-long genocidal sanctions that killed 2 million innocent Iraqi civilians were normalised, journalists and media outlets in the U.S. and in occupied Iraq are promoted and paid to write “good news” stories about the ongoing Occupation.

As a result, few Americans are against the war, and most of the US population still find it acceptable to perpetuate barbarism against defenceless population. The justification and rationalisations for the application of barbaric violence have been based on U.S. euphemistic doctrines with disregard to international law and civilised norms.  Despite the enormity of the atrocity in Iraq, Americans have re-elected George Bush in 2004 and continue paying $12 billion per month to propel a criminal war which is destroying an entire society.

Indeed, since World War II, the U.S. has committed unimaginable war crimes against defenceless civilian population, more than any other nation on earth. It is astonishing that a large segment of US society is proud of these horrendous war crimes, and violence continues to play an important role in the US psyche. Just take a look at how the bigoted John McCain is portrayed by the media as a “maverick” and a war “hero” (not a war criminal) and even allowed to (deceptively) distance himself from George Bush and his own Republican Party’s ideology. His incompetence in foreign policy, the economy, and his erratic character and criminal record in Vietnam and Iraq have largely been ignored in the media.

It is certain, if the Republicans are re-elected and John McCain become president, the U.S. will declare a police state and will embark on a war agenda reminiscent of Hitler’s war agenda. The Republican ideology is a Nazis’-like ideology seeking to dominate the world through violence, racism and propaganda. With thousands of U.S. troops have been deployed on U.S. streets to control the population, the people of the United States do not need more serious warnings.

The world ignores U.S. war crimes

Why is the world ignoring the U.S.-perpetuated war crimes and crimes against humanity in Iraq? The primary reasons are: Western media complicity in U.S. war crimes through disinformation and distortion of the situation on ground; and most importantly, Islamophobia. The U.S.-Zionist media play an important role in spreading anti-Muslims propaganda throughout the world, demonising Muslims and distorting Islam in order to manipulate public opinion and justify war crimes against Muslims at home and abroad. Additionally, a deep-seated and inherently widespread dehumanisation of Arabs and Muslims by Western media, the Western ruling classes and opportunist politicians encourages silence and moral bankruptcy.

Recall how in 2003 the US people and a large segment of Western population were manipulated and deceived to support an illegal war of aggression against an entirely defenceless Iraqi population. Deep silence prevailed despite it was well-known that Iraq had neither weapons of mass destruction nor any link to “terrorism”, and that the pretexts were outright lies fabricated in Washington and London. The aggression against Iraq was and still is a crime against humanity and those who supported the crimes have blood on their hands.

Pretexts used to justify the illegal war and occupation

Immediately after the pretexts to justify the invasion were exposed, the U.S. began to engineer and used countless pretexts to justify the ongoing Occupation, including the incitement of massive outbreak of violence. For instance, the U.S.-drafted “Iraqi Constitution” defines Iraqis according to their ethnicities and religious sects. It was designed to divide Iraqis and sow the seeds of hatred and division that defined Iraq today. Hence, the Occupation-generated violence is a deliberate strategy to justify the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq. It is the Bush regime’s strategy to “stay the course”. It has achieved what the U.S. regime has planned before the aggression; the destruction of Iraq’s unity and the establishment of a U.S. military foothold in Iraq.

More than five years of murderous Occupation, George Bush and his criminal accomplices remain unindicted. Moreover, the Bush regime is refusing to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and restore the Iraqi freedom and independence. Instead, the Bush regime is bribing and coercing members of the criminal puppet government – whose survival depends on the Occupation – to sign a deal to permanently station U.S. troops in Iraq against the will of the Iraqi people. It is now clear to everyone that the motives for the premeditated aggression and subsequent Occupation are:

  1. to establish a colonial dictatorship in Iraq through an open-ended military presence and use the country as a launching pad to attack other countries;
  2. enhance Israel’s Zionist expansion in Palestine and the Middle East in general; and
  3. guard Western multinational oil corporations seizing control of strategic Iraqi oil reserves.

The “surge” and ethnic cleansing in Iraq

Meanwhile, the propaganda for a new “victory” in Iraq is in full swing. The so-called “reduction” in violence against Iraqi civilians has much to do with the mass killing and widespread ethnic cleansing that have left less people to kill not the “surge” in troops number as the Bush’s regime alleges. According to the Pentagon Quarterly Report, Iraq has become a nation of ethnically cleansed neighbourhoods, separated by concrete walls dividing communities and preventing free movement. This so-called “neighbourhood homogenisation” has been achieved only through a U.S.-controlled reign of terror and mass murder of Iraqi civilians. Today, a large part of Baghdad’s neighbourhoods have been emptied of their original population. At least 5 million Iraqis are either internally displaced or refugees in neighbouring countries.

Other studies have also pointed out to the ethnic cleansing perpetuated by U.S. forces and U.S.-controlled death squads and militias in reducing some of the violence against Iraqi civilians and have rejected the Bush’s regime propaganda that the “surge” is responsible for the “reduction” in violence. One of these studies is the UCLA Study. While the Study found that “the surge has no observable effect”, it is also deliberately misleading. The Study suggestion that the “surge” designed “to improve the materials condition of life and create a breathing space for political compromise between major factions” in Baghdad is a falsehood. The “surge” is part of the Republicans propaganda campaign which is designed to mislead the American public and provides John McCain with something to say about a murderous Occupation. The reality is that the Occupation remains the root causes of violence and destruction in Iraq.

Furthermore, Iraqi sources reveal that conditions are worsening in the Baghdad once again ‘despite the heavy presence of Iraqi security forces and a surge in number of checkpoints’. U.S. officials say the “surge” is “success”, but they also called the situation “fragile” and “reversible”, means the Occupation will continue.

Another factor that has contributed to the “reduction” in violence is that the U.S. began paying militias, including the Kurdish militia and collaborators to collaborate and stop carrying out killings (executions) anti-Occupation civilians. Additionally, Iran role in restraining Iranian criminals and Iranian-controlled militias and encouraged them to collaborate with the Occupation must be acknowledged.

At the timing of this writing, U.S. troops killed 11 people from one family while conducting a dawn raid on a house in the Seventeen Tammuz neighbourhoods, west of Mosul. It is an established fact that the ongoing violence is controlled by U.S. forces and their collaborators. This has been the norm since 2003. Of course, every time U.S. forces perpetuated a massacre of Iraqi civilians, they cover-up their war crimes by alleging that they have killed “al-Qaeda” fighters. The phantom, which the U.S. created to justify terrorism, keeps growing wherever U.S. forces invade a foreign nation.

The unprovoked criminal invasion and subsequent Occupation of Iraq have resulted in deliberate mass killing and physical destruction of Iraq in whole or in part.  Every major population centre has been targeted by a campaign of terror and indiscriminate aerial bombings using all kinds of legally banned weapons of mass destruction. At least 1.3 million innocent Iraqi civilians, mostly women and children, have been killed since 2003. While this figure is a conservative figure, it is still much higher than the Rwandan genocide.

Only the U.S. and Israel (and their allies) could get away with such unimaginable war crimes against innocent civilians and terrorism. In every country the U.S. and its allies have invaded, they brought chaos and insecurity rather than “freedom” and “democracy”, they destroyed rather than build, they brought poverty rather than prosperity, and they sowed the seeds of violence rather than seeds of peace. The ongoing atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan are just the current examples.

According to the UN Convention on Genocide, there is an ongoing genocide in Iraq. Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group such as:

  • killing members of the group;
  • causing serious bodily or mental harm;
  • deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
  • imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and
  • forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Hence, there is overwhelming evidence to charge George Bush and his willing allies and accomplices with war crimes and genocide. An indictment of Western leaders with war crimes and crimes against humanity could pave the way for a peaceful and just world and reduce the eventuality of premeditated and unprovoked war of aggression.

Finally, the Pentagon-funded propaganda campaign is a psychological warfare designed to whitewash a murderous Occupation. The only way to end the colonial Occupation of Iraq and stop the mass slaughter of innocent Iraqi civilians is the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops and mercenaries from Iraq.

© Copyright 2008 by AxisofLogic.com

This material is available for republication as long as reprints include verbatim copy of the article its entirety, respecting its integrity. Reprints must cite the author and Axis of Logic as the original source including a “live link” to the article. Thank you!

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World Peace is More Than Just the Silencing of the Guns

October 21, 2008


By Peter Chamberlin | Information Clearing House, Oct 20, 2008


World peace is more than just the silencing of the guns, it is the elimination of the injustice that has compelled the men to reach for those guns in self-defense against the aggression. In the currently building world war (which is based on lies and deceptions), the mission is to identify all of the men who believe in self-defense and eliminate them. Both sides believe that everyone has the right to self-defense, but the aggressors in this war believe that they have a “divine right” (because of their intellectual superiority) to disarm and rule the rest.

The “war on terror” is the intellectual’s war, the neocon intellectuals. To them, most of the human race is an inferior species, sheep, to be led for their own good. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan, look at the economy, to see how smart they really are and just exactly where they are leading us.

We are standing at the edge of the abyss because we have gone along with all the lies. Without “acceptable” lies, the neocons are nothing but arrogant snobs. Without public acceptance of the “official version” of events, there would never have been a terror war. Without the attack upon our families in New York and Washington in 2001, we would not have been “tickled” into taking-up arms in self-defense against the henchmen and patsies our government offered-up to us to cover its own crimes.

For there to be peace in the midst of a war engineered by a would-be master race the cold penetrating light of reality must emasculate the acceptable lies agreed to in secret back room meetings, which allow sheer gangsterism and extortion from weaker adversaries to masquerade as “diplomacy and negotiations.”

The incessant lies emanating from the Pentagon, the White House and especially from the CIA have to be silenced. If the war of terror, based on lies is to be turned into a world at peace, based on simple truth, then we have to illuminate the secret killings in dark places that show the true face of the war against innocence being waged by Nazi-like regime.

It must be shown that we have been embracing the force of true evil that runs and ruins this Nation today. By exposing the accepted lie that the innocent Muslim people who are merely resisting our aggressions upon their homelands are “terrorists,” we remove the blinders we have accepted from the true authors of terror in the terror war. By accepting US and Pakistani military reports on “collateral” kills, we embrace the popular lie that only “militants and terrorists” were killed by the one-eyed “Terminator” drones. We dishonor ourselves and our ancestors by accepting the lies that babies were “militants!”

We have to get solid evidence out to the world. A good place to start would be to follow the wise example set by the Israeli human rights organization “B’Tselem,” by supplying camcorders to Pakistani families in North and South Waziristan, to document the indiscriminate killing of entire families, the “tickling” operations described so cleverly by CIA Director Michael Hayden. With video evidence (translated into English) of the aftermath of American genocidal attacks it would be much easier to organize resistance to those attacks and serve as evidence in later war crimes trials. It would be beautifully ironic if the American-adopted Israeli tactic of “targeted assassinations” with missiles is exposed by the same video tactic that has revealed Israeli brutality against the helpless in occupied Palestine.

According to Director Hayden, the real value of these attacks with “Hellfire” missiles upon mud-brick family dwellings and religious schools is in the reactions caused by the killings. In other words, the value of the attack is as much in the number of male family members who rise to avenge these terror attacks as it is in the “high value target” occasionally killed. The tactic described by Hayden is the latest manifestation of contemporary American “counter-insurgency” techniques.

The main idea involved in fighting an “insurgency” within a populated area in this manner is to find and co-opt local leaders, like Baitullah Mehsud, around which to create the impression of a growing shadowy “counter-insurgency.” These inept local “contras” get blamed for the ensuing wave of violence committed by US Special Ops, their in addition to the gangster-like attacks they carry-out on their own. These units perform the same task as the Terminator-drones, that of initiating the cycle of retribution. They bomb and murder civilians, in order to motivate their male relatives to take-up arms and avenge their relatives, focusing in particular upon killing of local Shia, to instigate inter-faith conflict.

The concept of fighting a global war by limited means is an evil idea, concocted by the vainest, most self-centered self-worshippers the planet has ever been plagued by. The idea that your intellect is so superior to every other human mind that the best thing that could ever happen to the human race would be for you to rule over them, no matter what it cost in human lives to place you in that position of power, is the idea that drove Adolf Hitler. The men who have brought us the neocon war plan of total world conquest, by limited means, are no less evil, nor less vain than Hitler (the neocon’s favorite bogeyman).

By choosing to fight “the long war,” on a limited basis, they have accepted the idea of killing a major portion of human life, even risking the destruction of the entire planet. The idea of a generational war serves as a sorting mechanism, a gory laboratory for identifying and separating those who will willingly accept the unfair suffering life forced upon them and their families under the new “matrix,” from those persistent independent-minded souls who will resist. The war of terror is to identify potential resisters and to eliminate them, leaving behind only docile malleable slave sheep, to serve as functional “copper-tops.”

The idea that there could ever be world peace as long as the matrix exists is part of the illusion that hinders the formation of a real resistance.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Martti Ahtisaari warned on Friday:

“world peace efforts hampered by credit crunch…The international financial crisis is hampering efforts towards world peace.”

The former Finnish president said a lack of economic development in war-torn countries would make it harder to resolve conflicts:

“It will not help us to solve conflict with no economic development in those countries. It is becoming more and more difficult…We are avoiding taking the tough decisions that are needed.”

This is pure B.S. Contributing to the war of aggression by aiding in reconstruction efforts, while hostilities continue will never bring anything like world peace. The whole idea of “good faith” re-construction by the same monstrous war machine from which the original devastation flowed is an exercise in propaganda and disinformation intended to distract those of us who would form an army of worldwide resistance.

This requires a change of attitude on the part of the aggressor, first, admitting that the US and its allies are the aggressors. The entire terror war has been a manufactured event designed to maintain the US position of global authority. We have to refute the acceptable lie that we have been a victim and that our great war plan simply failed, while we openly admit that the war has been a criminal act of aggression in every conceivable way, from the very beginning. We have committed the most serious crimes in pursuit of our plans to plunder and subjugate the earth, crimes against the human race, crimes against Our Creator, Himself.

We have destroyed entire nations in our mad rush to fend for ourselves and perpetuate our system of inequality that creates immense wealth for true believers by siphoning-off the bread of life from the rest. Until this warfare of greed stops decimating the human race there can never be world peace.

For their ever to be peace, there must be an end to the hostile force that drives men’s aggression and turns simple day-to-day existence into a daily fight for life. The forces that are driving the individual wars that are being merged into one big war, must be stopped. The lands and peoples devastated in their aggression must be rebuilt and compensated for the crimes committed upon them, out of the US Treasury, with money which would formerly have been allotted to further military aggression.

peter.chamberlin@yahoo.com

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Trade link to cross divided Kashmir

October 21, 2008

Al Jazeera, Oct 21, 2008

Recent months have seen some of the biggest anti-Indian protests in Kashmir for years [AFP]

India and Pakistan are set to open a historic trade link across divided Kashmir for the first time in six decades.

The route is set to open on Tuesday, and represents an attempt to solve the dispute over the region by creating “soft borders” allowing the free movement of goods and people.

Lorries will roll on both sides of the 170km Himalayan mountain highway which was the region’s vital and only surface link with the rest of the world before the partition of subcontinent in 1947.

For the time being, trade will take place just once a week, with a limited list of goods allowed.

Recent months have seen some of the biggest anti-Indian protests in Kashmir for years and the opening of the trade route goes towards meeting one of the demands of the groups behind those protests.

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chief of Kashmir’s All Parties Hurriyat Conference, a separatist alliance, said: “The trade between two Kashmirs is a good beginning. Our ultimate aim is the line of control between two parts is removed.”

Seven protesters were shot dead by Indian security forces in August when they marched to the border demanding the opening of the road to the Pakistani side.

At least 42 people have been killed by government forces and at least 1,000 wounded in the protests that followed.

Bureaucratic challenge

But analysts fear the history of war and mistrust between the two neighbours could lead to similar delays for cross-border trade.

A bus service between divided Kashmir, launched with much fanfare in 2005, has struggled to cope with the resulting bureaucracy.

Tuesday’s move will be the first time vehicles are allowed to cross the ceasefire line and the newly constructed Aman Setu or Peace Bridge since the 1948 war.

N N Vohra, Kashmir’s governor, said the opening of a trade route would be an “important milestone” in India-Pakistan relations.

India has moved slowly on opening up the borders, believing that the move could aid separatist attacks on Indian forces from bases in Pakistan.

The South Asian neighbours both claim Kashmir in full but rule it in parts.

They have fought two wars over the region and were on the verge of a third in 2002 before pulling back.

The opening is the latest in tentative peace moves that have done little to resolve the central territorial issue.

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Palestinian group says Israelis killed 68 children in Gaza in year

October 21, 2008

A prominent Palestinian human rights group says it has found evidence that 68 children were killed in the Gaza Strip in the 12 months to June this year as a result of “disproportionate and excessive lethal force” by the Israeli military.

The deaths are documented, with witness testimony, in a report published today by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. Many of the deaths resulted from an Israeli military incursion into Jabaliya, in eastern Gaza, in late February and early March, in which more than 100 Palestinians, at least half of them civilians, died in what Israel said was an operation to stop rockets being fired into southern Israeli towns.

Others were killed in smaller strikes before a ceasefire was reached in June between Gaza’s Hamas administration and Israel. Despite occasional breaches, the truce still holds. In the year to June, another 12 children were killed by Israeli troops in the West Bank.

The rights group said many of the deaths passed without investigation, and those internal Israeli military inquiries that were held did not meet international standards of independence and transparency.

Since the start of the second intifada in late 2000, around 4,800 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military, including nearly 900 children. More than 1,000 Israelis have been killed, including around 120 children.

The centre cited as one example an incident in April near the village of Juhor al-Dik, when a Reuters cameraman was killed by Israeli tank fire. The same tank shells killed two children: Ahmed Aaref Farajallah, 14, and Ghassan Abu Otaiwi, 17. The Israeli military said it investigated the incident and concluded that the tank crew reached a “reasonable conclusion” that the Palestinians gathered on the road were “hostile”, and said the decision to fire was “sound”.

The Israeli military did not respond to the criticisms last night, because of a Jewish religious holiday. However, it has in the past repeatedly defended its military actions in Gaza, saying it does not intentionally target civilians, and noting that Palestinian militants frequently fire from civilian areas.

The centre said the killing of unarmed civilians represented grave human rights violations, and called on Israel to establish an independent commission to investigate the deaths. It condemned Palestinian militant groups that recruited children to fight and said militants should not fire missiles from in or around residential areas.

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When Will India Quit Kashmir?

October 20, 2008

Kashmir Watch, Oct 19, 2008

Dr Abdul Ruff Colachal

After protesters thronged to United Nations Military Observer Group office in Srinagar demanding the resolution of Kashmir dispute, as it is already known, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is planning to visit India towards the end of this month or in early November.  Another important move in this regard is that United Nations Secretary General has informed the Security Council of his intention to appoint Major General Kim Moon Hwa of the Republic of Korea as Chief Military Observer in the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP). Major General Kim will replace Major General Dragutin Repinc of Croatia.

The historic opening of Srinagar-Muzaffarabad and Poonch-Rawalakote roads for trade would be supplemented by some more bold initiatives to facilitate Kashmir resolution process, both on bilateral and internal fronts. Kashmir resolution process involves not only various shades of political opinion but all sections of the society. In a historic decision, the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industries (KCCI), Chamber of Commerce and Industry Jammu (CCIJ) and Azad Jammu and Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry (AJKCCI) on Oct 14 formed a 32-member joint chamber of commerce. But the cross-LoC trade cannot be an alternative to Kashmir solution.

The latest developments in the State offer Government of India an opportunity to reinforce its resolve of working through peaceful means and through public participation towards the resolution of the problem.

Freedom Leader Geelani

Calling for a complete shutdown on October 24, the United Nations Raising Day, the Hurriyat Conference (G) chairman, Syed Ali Shah Geelani on Saturday urged masses to send emails, letters, faxes, telegrams and SMS to the UN’s New York headquarters to press for granting Right to self determination (RSD) to people of Kashmir to determine their fate.

Indian Terrorism

Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Patron Mufti Muhammad Sayeed claimed the State had started witnessing continuous changes of great importance and substance after the 2002 elections transforming its ground scenario positively and this had resulted in consistent increase of public participation in the democratic processes and his party contributed to it. Let that be. But he should enter now the freedom movement by actively involving himself with the freedom leaders fully committed to the cause of full and complete freedom from foreign occupation.

An international organization research on the Kashmir conflict, 7thspace.com, to assess experiences with violence and mental health status among the conflict-affected Kashmiri population, has reported that 85 per cent of Valley population have confrontation with the violence while 66 percent have witnessed torture. The survey reported that the civilian population in Kashmir is exposed to high levels of violence, as demonstrated by the high frequency of deliberate events as detention, hostage, and torture. Respondents reported frequent direct confrontations with violence since the start of conflict, including exposure to crossfire (85.7%), round up raids (82.7%), the witnessing of torture (66.9%), rape (13.3%), and self-experience of forced labor (33.7%), arrests/kidnapping (16.9%), torture (12.9%), and sexual violence (11.6%).The survey found high levels of psychological distress that impacts on daily life and places a burden on the health system. Ongoing feelings of personal vulnerability (not feeling safe) were associated with high levels of psychological distress. Over one-third of respondents were found to have symptoms of psychological distress, women scored significantly higher. A third of respondents had contemplated suicide.

India Destroys Medicinal Fauna of Kashmir

Kashmir is infested with Indian terror forces, agents and pro-India elements sabotaging the cause of freedom. India argues it has every right to heavily militarize Jammu Kashmir and kill the Kashmiri Muslims stock and barrel. Around 60,000 troops are posted in the Gurez which has a habitation of only 30,000 people. The ecology of Gurez is under threat as the army troopers deployed in the border area have been accused of vandalizing the environment by extracting valuable medicinal plants and minerals. Gurez has got vast resources of precious and costly medicinal plants and minerals, which were extracted legally by the locals till 1989 when armed rebellion broke out in Kashmir. After the turmoil, thousands of soldiers were deployed in Gurez and they continue to man each and every ridge.

The locals said that valuable medicinal plants like Kuth (Saussurea cosstus), Diosoriea (Dioscorea deltoidea), Mushki Bala( Veleriana wallichii) Guchies (Morchella esculenta), Black Zeera, Artimesia, Bellodona, Podophyllum (Banwangon) are found in abundance in Gurez. They said that had these natural resources been extracted by the state administration with the help of locals, the economy of the border area would have received a boost. They, however, alleged that the troopers are illegally extracting the natural resources, posing ecological and economic threat to the border area.  “There are legal, scientific and technological methods to extract the medicinal plants from the forests. However, troops during illegal extraction are not following these methods and destroy the precious and costly medicinal plants for their monetary benefits,” they said. “We were exporting medicinal plants legally worth crores of rupees to other parts of India and world before start of militancy. After the deployment of army personnel in Gurez, peaks encumbered with medicinal plants and minerals are now on the verge of extinction.

Continued . . .

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America’s National Strategy of Global Intervention

October 20, 2008

By William Pfaff | Information Clearing House, Oct 18, 2008

Paris, October 15, 2008 – Last June the U.S. Department of Defense unexpectedly issued a new version of its National Defense Strategy. It was unexpected because there will be a new administration in Washington in January which might be expected to issue a statement of its own ideas about military strategy.

Some in Washington speculated that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, only recently named to that office, a man who gets along with Democrats as well as Republications, might be bidding to keep his job under a new administration.

The new statement lacks the Bush administration’s unilateralism and triumphalism (as if there were anything left to be triumphal about), but it foresees a “Long War” of “promoting freedom, justice and human dignity by working to end tyranny, promote effective democracies and extend prosperity; and confronting the challenges of our time by leading a growing community of democracies.”

All that is straight Bush doctrine, drawn from his second inaugural address and Condoleezza Rice’s policy statement last summer predicting decades of a “new American realism” of “nation-building” to conquer “extremism.” By now the “Long War,” realistic or not, will have become orthodoxy for most of the Washington defense and strategic studies community.

The noteworthy thing about this National Defense Strategy statement is that it says nothing directly about American national defense. It is a strategy for intervening in other countries, and preventing others from blocking or resisting American interventions.

It states the responsibilities of America’s armed forces (summarizing the document’s introduction) as follows:

§ Conduct a global struggle against a violent extremist ideology that seeks to overturn the international system.

§ Deal with the threats of rogue-nation quests for nuclear weapons.

§ Confront the rising military power of other states.

These duties “[will require] the orchestration of national and international power over years or decades to come” to accomplish the following:

§ Long-term innovative approaches to counter al-Qaeda’s rejection of state sovereignty, violation of borders, and attempts to deny self-determination and human dignity.

§ Deal “with the inability of many states to police themselves effectively or work with their neighbors to ensure regional security.” Armed sub-national groups must be dealt with, “including but not limited to those inspired by violent extremism” which if left unchecked will threaten the stability and legitimacy of key states, and allow instability to spread “and threaten regions of interest to the United States, its allies and friends.”

§ Form local partnerships and creative approaches to deny extremists the opportunity to gain footholds in “ungoverned, under-governed, misgoverned, and contested areas” affecting local stability and regional stability.

§ Counter Iran’s pursuit of nuclear technology and enrichment capabilities, and deal with the ability of rogue states such as Iran and North Korea to threaten international order, sponsor terrorism, and disrupt fledgling democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

§ Meet possible challenges from (a) “more powerful states [that] might actively seek to counter the United States in some or all domains of traditional warfare or to gain an advantage in developing capabilities that offset our own,” as well as (b) nations that might “choose niche areas of military capability and competition in which they believe they can develop a strategic or operational advantage [even though] some of these potential competitors [may also be partners of the U.S. in] diplomatic, commercial or security efforts…”

§ For the foreseeable future, “hedge against China’s growing military modernization and the impact of its strategic choices on international security….The objective of this effort is to mitigate near-term challenges while preserving and enhancing U.S. national advantages over time.”

§ Recognize that Russia’s [pre-Georgian crisis] “retreat from openness and democracy,” “bullying of its neighbors,” and “more active military stance… and signaled increase in reliance on nuclear weapons as a foundation for its security …[are warnings of] a Russia exploring renewed influence” and a greater international role.

§ Prevent prospective adversaries, especially non-state actors and their state sponsors, from adopting “anti-access technology and weaponry [that can] restrict our future freedom of action,” and also from “making adversary use of traditional means of influence” such as by “manipulating global opinion using mass communications venues and exploiting international commitments and legal avenues.”

§ The global “commons [space, international waters, aerospace and cyberspace] must be secured and with them access to world markets and resources,” using military capabilities and alliances and coalitions, participating in international security and economic institutions, and employing “diplomacy and soft power to shape the behavior of individual states and the international system, using force when necessary.”

The principal preoccupation of the document is to protect American forces operating in foreign countries: to block measures by foreign states to “deny” American efforts to intervene in their countries, or to develop measures and technology to resist American intervention (or to send Americans to international criminal courts).

As for the United States itself, the document quotes the constitutional obligation of the government “to provide for the common defense,” but says that today, after more than 230 years, the U.S. “shoulders additional responsibilities on behalf of the world,…a beacon of light for those in dark places.” Yet the fear of those dark places that permeates the document compels the recommendation that American troops remain at home, where they will be safe from enemies and untrustworthy allies, and defend their own country.

William Pfaff is the author of eight books on American foreign policy, international relations, and contemporary history, including books on utopian thought, romanticism and violence, nationalism, and the impact of the West on the non-Western world. His newspaper column, featured in The International Herald Tribune for more than a quarter-century, and his globally syndicated articles, have given him the widest international influence of any American commentator.

© Copyright 2008 by Tribune Media Services International. All Rights Reserved.

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Nader and McKinney: “Wasting” a Vote for Lincoln’s “Radical” Ideal

October 20, 2008

Robert Weitzel, Oct 19, 2008

I had just pressed the “donate now” button on votenader.org when my email pinged. It was a rambling missive from Neil, a self-described “Grumpy Old Son Of A Beach” who’d read an article I’d written for the American Atheist magazine. Neil argued that atheists should vote against “Oduma” and for the McCain/Palin ticket. I’ll spare you the details . . . just imagine Hannity and O’Reilly and Limbaugh joined at their bums flapping their gums.

I wrote a short reply thanking him for sharing his views and telling him I plan to vote for Nader. Ralph did, after all, send me a signed copy of his book, “in pursuit of justice: collected writings 2000-2003” for my several donations—and all I really wanted was a yard sign.

Faster than I thought an electron could make the round trip, Neil was pinging again: “Well Bob, I’m sorry to read that. I guess you really have NO ‘F’ing clue as to what is at stake when you are going to waste your vote on someone who will not even make a dent.”

He added a postscript: “P.S. The Iraq war is FULLY Justified [sic] and I have a minimum of 18 FACTS which prove it.” Neil did not provide the “FACTS,” which is a real shame since my mood has plunged lower than the Dow as the economic meltdown continues to add “miles” to my career path. I could have used a chuckle.

However, the issue Neil raises about wasting a vote is nothing to chuckle about. It is as serious as Mutley, my neighbor’s Pit Bull.

Mutley, you should know, has been voted time and again the greatest threat to the physical and psychological wellbeing of the neighborhood children. Unfortunately, Mutley’s human friend is a brute named Cliff who can beat the crap out of the rest of us guys on the block. Talk about wasted votes. Our only hope is that either a guy tougher than Cliff who hates dogs moves in or Mutley—and/or Cliff— DIE.

If you’re fortunate enough not to have Mutley and Cliff in your neighborhood, the best example I can give of wasted votes is to continually vote for either the Democratic or Republican parties that are continually getting us into foreign policy debacles such as the Vietnam and Iraq wars, and whose hubris or stupidity or greed or [your best guess] or all of the above has led the country and the world into the current economic meltdown.

While a Democratic president lied to escalate the war in Vietnam, a Republican president lied to take America to war in Iraq. With a few notable exceptions, members of Congress from both sides of the aisle fell into formation with their American flag lapel pins unfurled and goose-stepped down Pennsylvania Avenue in time with President Bush’s war drums.

In 2006 the midterm vote gave Democrats a clear mandate to end the war and hold the Bush administration accountable. Predictably, Democratic pols stuck their mugs in front of the cameras and talked tough for a few days and then did nothing—politics as usual . . . wasted votes as usual.

In 1933, the Glass-Steagall Act was intended to prevent the kind of banking shenanigans that have helped to plunge the world into worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. But legislation written by Republicans Phil Gramm and James Leach and signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton repealed the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999.

To address the current economic crisis, the best a bipartisan effort can come up with is a $700 billion-plus bailout for their Wall Street cronies and ex-colleagues, which also includes over a billion dollars stuffed into the pork barrel for themselves but no provisions to help millions of homeowners renegotiate their mortgages, allowing them to remain in their homes and afford their monthly payments.

There is nothing like Glass-Steagall in this golden rescue plan, nothing to prevent Everyman (a.k.a. NASCAR dads and mall maven moms) from losing another trillion in the value of their 401Ks, nothing to prevent the privatized profits and socialized risks of corporate socialism from becoming institutionalized . . . nothing in this plan but politics as usual.

Neil is ranting about third party voters who “have NO ‘F’ing clue” when they waste their votes “on someone who will not even make a dent.” And yet the corporate-controlled political system in our country is supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans who time and again waste their votes on two parties with track records for little more than self-preservation, corrupt-crony politics and for not making a “dent” . . . unless, of course, it’s to total the entire country.

The campaigns of Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney are not the acts of spoilers or vanity candidates. They are the acts of third party candidates struggling for the magical 15 percent that will allow them to challenge the hegemony of the Democratic and Republican parties in televised debates viewed by over 70 million voters. They are the acts of American citizens who believe it is a constitution rather than a corporate charter that is the governing document of our Republic.

Nader and McKinney are not naïve enough to think they’ll need to keep millions of donors’ dollars in reserve for their inaugural balls. They are campaigning for something more important than the presidency. They are campaigning to bring about systemic changes in the “politics as usual” in America. They are campaigning to redeem Abraham Lincoln’s “radical” ideal of an American “government of the people, by the people, and for [ALL] the people.”

If the “Grumpy Old Son Of A Beach” is right and voters continue wasting their votes on two corporate-vetted political parties “who will not even make a dent,” in the domestic woes of “soccer moms” and “Joe the plumber” and whose foreign policy in the “war on terror” is dictated by the American representatives of a miniscule country on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, they should not be at all surprised to look out their window one morning to see Cliff taking Mutley for a stroll . . . and piles of dog pooh on their lawn.

_______

Robert Weitzel is a contributing editor to Media With a Conscience. His essays regularly appear in The Capital Times in Madison, WI.  He can be contacted at: robertweitzel@mac.com

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