Peace and Justice Post

Dr George Barnsby, Nov 21, 2008

The great divide between those who oppose the war in Iraq and the war criminals who continue to justify the slaughter and mayhem of a war which is illegal, racist and unwinnable continues to grow. Today is the 7th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan but no one would know it from the coverage of the so-called premier press or the news casts of Kirsty Wark and others today. We shall have to wait for tomorrow’s Morning Star to find out what happened, certainly not the Guardian which boasts of being the paper of the year.

John Pilger was a lone voice in 1997 warning that Blair was a
dangerous fraud, a neocon in sheep’s clothing.  Blair’s Vichy like
devotion to Washington was well-known. His devotion to Rupert Murdock, who flew him and Cherie around the world first class was known. His devotion to an extreme neoliberal Thatcherite economics was known. As Pilger pointed out the media could hardly plead ignorance.

Then there was the evidence of Media Lens  on the reception of Barak Obama. Perhaps Matthew Parris a conservative figure who wrote in The Times. ‘Here we have a handsome, dashing, intelligent man with generous instincts and a silver tongue; but a man with no distinctive plan of government that he has seen fit to  share with us; a daring opportunist; somebody  who might some day be judged as a Tony Blair with brains. And here we go again hook, line and sinker. Calm down, he’s not president of the world.

DEMONSTRATE AT NATO’S 60TH ANNIVERSARY CONFERENCE – NO TO NATO. NO TO WAR.
NATO has become the main vehicle for the US to pursue its wars and it is responsible for the devastating occupation of Afghanistan where the carnage and destruction are escalating daily. Anti-war and peace movements across Europe have called for mass protests at NATO’s 60th Anniversary conference in Strasbourg . But Sunday 5th April will be the main day of the counter-summit which will be addressed by Noam Chomsky among many others. Stop the War Campaign is supporting the protests and details of transport and other information can be found on its Website at stopthewar.org.uk

Kashmir Watch, November 22, 2008

Despite overwhelming boycott India manages to show long queues of people waiting for their turn to cast vote through its biased print and electronic media and sells this to outside world by its strong propaganda mill. The pro-freedom rallies witnessed during the last few months in which millions of people participated willingly is a clear referendum in favour of the birth and inalienable right of self- determination.

By Shah Waseem Yousuf

The first phase of election is over, though it witnessed brisk turnout of 64% as claimed by Election Commission. The state-runned ‘Kashir’ channel in its post election report regarding this first phase was quick to claim that this voter turnout was a clear verdict of people between separatism and development. Though majority of voters voted only for developmental related issues and not for any particular ideology as was reported by media. All the major big guns of “mainstream” camp played safe by de-linking elections from Kashmir dispute apart from Mufti Sayed who in his few speeches had said that he will solve Kashmir dispute if he comes to power.

Is the claim of report by ‘Kashir’ channel based on facts and has Mufti Sayed or any other “mainstream” leader mandate for resolving this lingering dispute. The answer is big ‘NO’. What they call Separatism and development are entirely different aspects and there can’t be made tussle between these two. It has been clearly laid down in 1957 UN Security council resolution that the “Administration of Jammu and Kashmir cannot take any decision which may change the status of territory of Jammu and Kashmir”. Its powers are restricted only for developmental works and have no powers more than that of Municipal Corporation. How can so called elected representatives claim that they will solve Kashmir dispute? When they have no mandate for this at all. So elections have no effect and bearing on the future status of Kashmir and hence can’t be substitute to right of self determination this point has even acknowledged by Nehru as well. So the argument of India recently in UN that by participating in elections people of JK have exercised their right of self determination looses ground.  Furthermore present JK is under three administrations one at Srinagar second at Muzaffarabad and third at Gilgit, Baltistan and if for the sake of argument this Indian view point about elections is accepted how can be elections in only one administration be construed as exercise of right of self determination by the people of entire JK.

In the first phase although about minimum allegations of coercion have been reported but in the words of famous human rights’ activist Ms. Arundati Roy presence of 700, 000 troops is in itself a coercion and when the voice of dissent is silenced by putting almost entire top pro-freedom leadership behind bars and others have been under house arrest and newspapers barred to publish statements of these leaders about elections through written orders. Pro-freedom leadership rather than usual calls of boycott should evolve new methodology and strategy and educate people about the real status of elections and limitations of these “mainstream” leaders because as seen in the past despite overwhelming boycott India manages to show long queues of people waiting for their turn to cast vote through its biased print and electronic media and sells this to outside world by its strong propaganda mill. The pro-freedom rallies witnessed during the last few months in which millions of people participated willingly is a clear referendum in favour of the birth and inalienable right of self determination. It is only for India to fathom the ground reality.

The author can be reached at: waseemyousuf72@gmail.com,
www.unitedkashmir.co.cc

The News International, Saturday, November 22, 2008

HELD SRINAGAR: Nearly 50 people were hurt in clashes between government forces and anti-India demonstrators in occupied Kashmir on Friday, after troops sealed off neighbourhoods to stifle protests against the New Delhi’s rule.

Kashmiris could not offer Juma prayers at Jamia Masjid as the authorities sealed all entry points preventing the Muslims to enter the mosque. Media reports quoting official sources in Srinagar said no Friday prayers could be offered at the Jamia Masjid due to imposition of undeclared curfew.

Separatist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq had called on Kashmiris to stage a strike and hold anti-India demonstrations to “protest the arrest and harassment of pro-freedom leaders”. Afterwards, hundreds of Muslims hit the streets in major towns of Muslim-majority Kashmir valley, following Friday prayers.

Police used batons and teargas and eventually fired shots to disperse the protesters who were chanting, “We want freedom” and “Go, India go,” witnesses and doctors said. “Nearly 50 people were injured across the valley, including some security personnel,” a police officer said, demanding not to be named.

He said one of the protesters was shot in the legs. The clashes came after authorities overnight deployed troops in Srinagar and told residents to stay indoors. “We’re restricting civilian movement to prevent any law and order problems,” police officer Pervez Ahmed told AFP. The authorities have detained over the past six weeks more than two dozen prominent separatists and scores of activists to prevent demonstrations against state elections being held in occupied Kashmir.

It’s argued that Hinduism and terrorism are incompatible

A new and highly controversial phrase has entered the sometimes cliche-riddled Indian press: “Hindu terrorism”.

As with the term “Islamic terrorism” and “Christian fundamentalism”, this latest addition to the media lexicon is highly emotive.

It was in the aftermath of the 29 September bomb blast in the predominantly Muslim town of Malegaon in the western state of Maharashtra that the term “Hindu terrorism” or “saffron terrorism” came to be used widely.

That was because the state police’s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) arrested 10 Hindus following the blasts and has said that it wants to arrest several more.

Little-known

One of those detained was a female priest, Sadhwi Pragya Singh Thakur, aged 38, who has been accused by the ATS of being involved in the Malegaon blast. Her detention shocked members of the faith.

So too did the arrest of a serving Indian army officer, Lt-Col Prasad Srikant Purohit, who the ATS says is the prime accused in the case.

Police said the Malegaon attacks were the work of ‘terrorists’

Police are investigating whether some of those arrested are members of a little-known Hindu outfit called Abhinav Bharat (Young India).

At least three of those held have some links with a prestigious college in the city of Nasik, the Bhonsala Military Academy.

ATS investigators have questioned two of the academy’s former office bearers several times.

One of them was Col Raikar, who retired from the Indian army some months ago.

Both he and Col Purohit served in the same unit of the army and became friends.

The ATS claims the meeting in which the plan for the bomb blast was hatched was held in the Bhonsala school.

Another retired army officer, Maj Prabhakar Kulkarni, is also under arrest. He too was an office bearer at the school.

In addition, the ATS says that at least one of the 10 suspects received military training here.

Sadhwi Pragya Singh Thakur, Col Purohit, Maj Kulkarni and Col Raikar have denied any connection with terrorism, as has the Bhonsala Military Academy and its parent organisation, the Central Hindu Military Education Society (CHMES).

Founded in 1937, the sprawling Bhonsala campus is run by the CHMES, an organisation established in the 1930s by Dr BS Moonje, a former president of the militant Hindu Mahasabha (Hindu Assembly) organisation.

His vision was to militarise India to fight the British Raj.

Military-style training

As the name suggests, this is not an ordinary college.

Its aim, as its website claims, is to “encourage students to take up careers in the armed forces of the country”.

Many Hindus are bemused at claims their faith is linked to terrorism

Military training involves teaching students how to fire guns.

The students are prepared for the National Defence Academy, the central government’s premier military college.

The branch of the academy in the city of Nasik has many impressive buildings.

One of them is used to impart military-style training to students, aged 10-16 years.

Its secretary, Divakar Kulkarni, laments the fact that his school is getting a bad press these days.

He says that besides military training, students are taught Hindu philosophy and scriptures.

Mr Kulkarni accepts it’s primarily a school for Hindus, but he adds that there are two or three Muslim and Christian children in every class of 45 students.

‘Tea and biscuits’

“Even Muslim students study the Bhagwat Gita and the Ramayana [Hindu scriptures],” he says proudly.

So how does he respond to the ATS allegation that the bomb plot was hatched at a meeting in the academy?

Mr Kulkarni concedes his school has recently had ‘bad press’

“Col Raikar let out a hall to Abhinav Bharat for a meeting for two hours, but we don’t know what transpired in the meeting,” Mr Kulkarni said.

The ATS believes Col Raikar was also present in the meeting. But according to Mr Kulkarni he went there just for a few minutes “to ask if they wanted tea and biscuits”.

The ATS says that it has also found the aims and objectives of Abhinav Bharat downloaded on the computers of the two men.

Mr Kulkarni insisted that there was a perfectly innocent explanation for this: “They downloaded the outfit’s aims and objectives without knowing much about its work,” he said.

Meanwhile, most Hindu organisations believe India’s Congress party-led government is playing politics by defaming Hindus.

They argue that the very term “Hindu terrorist” is not only a creation of the media but also a contradiction in terms – because the faith explicitly renounces violence.

“The government, with an eye on the general election next year, is trying to woo Muslims by maligning Hindus,” says Datta Gaikward, chief of the right-wing Hindu Shiv Sena party in Nasik.

Hindu political parties are also staunchly defending Sadhwi Pragya Singh Thakur, the arrested female priest.

They have hired lawyers to represent her and at every legal hearing in Nasik supporters of right-wing parties gather outside the court and shout anti-government slogans.

All eyes will be now be on the court proceedings – whenever they start in earnest – to find out whether “Hindu terrorism” really has taken root or not.

Changing With Retreads

By RALPH NADER| Counterpunch, Nov 22 / 23, 2008

While the liberal intelligentsia was swooning over Barack Obama during his presidential campaign, I counseled “prepare to be disappointed.” His record as a Illinois state and U.S. Senator, together with the many progressive and long overdue courses of action he opposed during his campaign, rendered such a prediction unfortunate but obvious.

Now this same intelligentsia is beginning to howl over Obama’s transition team and early choices to run his Administration. Having defeated Senator Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Primaries, he now is busily installing Bill Clinton’s old guard. Thirty one out of forty seven people that he has named so far for transition or appointments have ties to the Clinton Administration, according to Politico. One Clintonite is quoted in the Washington Post as saying – “This isn’t lightly flavored with Clintons. This is all Clintons, all the time.”

Obama’s “foreign policy team is now dominated by the Hawkish, old-guard Democrats of the 1990,” writes Jeremy Scahill. Obama’s transition team reviewing intelligence agencies and recommending appointments is headed by John Brennan and Jami Miscik, who worked under George Tenet when the CIA was involved in politicizing intelligence for, among other officials, Secretary of State Colin Powell’s erroneous address before the United Nations calling for war against Iraq.

Mr. Brennan, as a government official, supported warrantless wiretapping and extraordinary rendition to torturing countries. National Public Radio reported that Obama’s reversal when he voted for the revised FISA this year relied on John Brennan’s advise.

For more detail on these two advisers and others recruited by Obama from the dark old days, see Democracy Now, November 17, 2008 and Jeremy Scahill, AlterNet, Nov. 20, 2008 “This is Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons to Watch for in Obama’s White House.”

The top choice as White House chief of staff is Rahm Emanuel—the ultimate hard-nosed corporate Democrat, military-foreign policy hawk and Clinton White House promoter of corporate globalization, as in NAFTA and the World Trade Organization.

Now, recall Obama’s words during the bucolic “hope and change” campaign months: “The American people…understand the real gamble is having the same old folks doing things over and over and over again and somehow expecting a different result.” Thunderous applause followed these remarks.

“This is more ‘Groundhog Day’ then a fresh start,” asserted Peter Wehner, a former Bush adviser who is now at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

The signs are amassing that Barack Obama put a political con job over on the American people. He is now daily buying into the entrenched military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned Americans about in his farewell address.

With Robert Rubin on his side during his first photo opportunity after the election, he signaled to Wall Street that his vote for the $750 billion bailout of those speculators and crooks was no fluke (Rubin was Clinton’s financial deregulation architect in 1999 as Secretary of the Treasury before he became one of the hugely paid co-directors tanking Citigroup.)

Obama’s apologists say that his picks show he wants to get things done, so he wants people who know their way around Washington. Moreover, they say, the change comes only from the president who sets the priorities and the courses of action, not from his subordinates. This explanation assumes that a president’s appointments are not mirror images of the boss’s expected directions but only functionaries to carry out the Obama changes.

If you are inclined to believe this improbable scenario, perhaps you may wish to review Obama’s record compiled by Matt Gonzalez at Counterpunch.

Ralph Nader is the author of The Seventeen Traditions.

The Morning Star Online, Nov 4, 2008

JEREMY CORBYN on what the crisis in the Congo says of the West.

THE tragedy in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) goes on. The most marginalised people on Earth continue to suffer as a result.

Over five million people have already died from the fighting and its fallout over the past decade, yet this tragedy is barely reported by most of the media.

Even at the height of fighting around Goma, the capital of the eastern North Kivu province, the BBC was still leading with the nonsense surrounding Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross’s prank phone calls. The following day, with the honourable exception of the Morning Star, every daily paper splashed on this BBC navel-gazing.

The media’s treatment of the Congolese is a stark reminder of the way in which Africa is ignored and sends a clear signal that, in the eyes of Western broadcasters, Africans are less valuable than Europeans or US citizens.

But responsibility for much of the current situation lies in the West.
The DRC was a creation of colonial greed in the 19th century and mining, logging and mineral interests continue to create huge wealth globally.

In 1884, the country became the personal colony of Belgian King Leopold.
It gained independence in 1961, but iconic prime minister Patrice Lumumba was assassinated within two years. Successive dictatorships then took over, before the election of President Joseph Kabila and a national assembly two years ago raised hopes of peace.

But this remained elusive and the corruption-ridden army has proven itself incapable of controlling the situation in the east. The tragedy of poverty, rape and murder continues.

North Kivu province contains huge mineral wealth. Mines run on technology that would have been out of date in Europe 200 years ago, extracting coltan and other valuable metals which are eventually sold on to metal dealers and finally exported to the rest of the world to be used in the manufacturing of mobile phones and high-tech equipment.

These mines are run by militias or the Congolese army and are sustained by money from the West, underlining the direct link between the killing of thousands of civilians and the “respectable” metal exchanges of western Europe and north America.

Western countries have also happily sold arms and military equipment to Congo, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi.

Nkunda’s forces are relatively well equipped and have proved to be more than a match for the Congolese army. The UN has managed to broker a temporary ceasefire, but nothing more.

So, millions continue to live in fear and poverty amid massive potential wealth.

The DRC manages to provide education for only half of its children and minimal health care. The streets of the capital Kinshasa are dominated by disabled victims of the years of fighting and thousands of orphan children simply trying to survive.

Thousands of men have been killed in fighting and large numbers of women have been raped and mutilated as a weapon of war.

A refugee camp that I visited there last April was completely ravaged by forces loyal to Nkunda last week. The tens of thousands of people that lived in it have fled to the hills and forests, where there is little food and no medicine. Without urgent aid, these people will die.

The absolute and immediate priority must be ensuring that the UN can get sufficient food, medicine and water purification facilities through to the former inhabitants of the refugee camps and the displaced. But the eventual solution has to be political.

It is essential to create a stable society where militia members do not believe that their security lies in continued civil war.

The appointment of former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo as the UN mediator for the region must be followed up by sustained economic aid and help so that the crisis of the last three weeks does not return in a few months.

And it’s about time that the world’s media rethought its news agenda and started looking at the lives of people in Africa.

Channel 4 News has produced some excellent reports on on the Congo. The BBC, though, needs to look very carefully at its own output.

Learning it the hard way

THE Prime Minister and Chancellor Alistair Darling are finding out the hard way that, despite investing £37 billion of public money in the major banks, these institutions are refusing to change their behaviour, pass on interest rate cuts or restart mortgage lending.

Mysteriously, the Treasury has now announced plans to set up an independent holding company to manage its massive level of public investment in the banks along private-sector lines.

Public investment is meant to be for the public good, yet Brown and Darling appear to have decided that the priority is to save the banking system in its existing form rather than forcing it to refocus on social priorities.
There is an urgent case for introducing socialist principles into government policy.

The Tories offer nothing more than a return to 1980s Thatcherism. Now is the golden opportunity for Labour to embark on an era of true social justice.

GORDON Brown had a strange weekend. He spent it travelling around the Gulf states trying to persuade them to put money into the IMF to bail out the European economy. It appears that the needs of the world’s poor majority are being ignored as the IMF refocuses itself on bailing out the West.

Jeremy Corbyn is Labour MP for Islington North. He can be contacted at corbynj@parliament.uk

The Women’s International Perspective,November 21, 2008

by Nancy Van Ness
– USA –

Their hats adorned with artificial flowers identify them at many of the protests in which I participate. The Grannies also show up on New York City’s Union Square to sing their signature anti-war lyrics to well known tunes.

I hold in mind a vivid image of some of them who were arrested for trying to stop military recruitment, onstage in Philadelphia, outside Constitution Hall the Saturday after the 2006 elections. Behind them stood young Iraq Veterans Against the War – two of the bravest groups of patriots in the United States, standing together, opposing US aggression.

• The Granny Peace Brigade protests regularly in New York and walked this Plank for Peace to the DNC headquarters in August. Photograph by Eva-Lee Baird, courtesy of the GPB. •

Earlier this month I joined these valiant women and their colleagues of all ages, races, and both sexes at their teach-in about US global militarization in Manhattan.”This series of teach-ins began,” explained Nydia Leaf, the Granny who introduced the program, “when some of our members attended the Women’s International Democratic Federation in Caracas. They were surprised when delegates from Japan said that something must be done to close the US military bases there.” When delegates from Germany, Italy and Korea expressed the same desire, the New York Grannies realized that they needed to go home and begin raising awareness of the level of resentment of US military presence abroad.

The speakers at this event included Maria Fernanda Espinosa, Ambassador to the United Nations from the Republic of Ecuador; Greg Grandin, Professor of History at NYU and author of Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism and Ann Wright, retired US Army colonel, former member of the US Foreign Service who resigned that post in protest of the US invasion of Iraq, and activist against US aggression ever since.

Granny Leaf concluded her introduction by quoting Noam Chomsky and set the tone for the speakers, “During the past decade, Latin America has become the most exciting region of the world.”

• Teach-in presenters Maria Fernanda Espinosa, Greg Grandin and Ann Wright discussed militarization in Latin America and the need to close US military bases worldwide. Photograph by C. Gerald Fraser, courtesy of the GPB. •

In her previous position as Foreign Minister, it was Espinosa’s job to tell the United States that the agreement governing the presence of a US airbase at Manta would not be renewed at the end of 2009. “Ecuador is a sovereign and peaceful country,” she says. “Our new constitution forbids territory for military bases and constellations.” She read the Spanish text of the Constitution approved in September of this year addressing this issue. “We also recognize that peace is more than the absence of war. It means being democratic, inclusive, just and equitable.” The new constitution is “the dream not just of President Correa, but of all the people of Ecuador.”Espinosa says that there is currently discussion at the UN on the concepts of preemptive war and the “responsibility to protect.” Ecuador is opposed to both of these, including the generally less objectionable responsibility to protect, which Ambassador Espinosa says is often “an excuse to establish a military presence” by a powerful country in a weaker one. “Responsibility to protect does not respect the sovereignty of nations,” she objects.

Continued  >>