Peace and Justice Post

By Gareth Porter, Truthout, | Report, Sep 27, 2010

Furkan Dogan, a 19-year-old US citizen of Turkish descent, was aboard the Mavi Marmara when he was killed by Israeli commandos. (Photo: freegazaorg; Edited: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t)

The report of the fact-finding mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla released last week shows conclusively, for the first time, that US citizen Furkan Dogan and five Turkish citizens were murdered execution-style at point blank range by Israeli commandos.

The report reveals that Dogan, the 19-year-old US citizen of Turkish descent, was filming with a small video camera on the top deck of the Mavi Marmara when he was shot twice in the head, once in the back and in the left leg and foot and that he was shot in the face at point blank range while lying on the ground.

The report says Dogan had apparently been “lying on the deck in a conscious or semi-conscious, state for some time” before being shot in his face.

Continues >>

by Glenn Greenwald, CommonDreams.org, Sep 26, 2010

Prof. Angana Chatterji, Asian Human Rights commission, Sep 27, 2010

“Freedom” represents many things across rural and urban spaces in India-ruled Kashmir. These divergent meanings are steadfastly united in that freedom always signifies an end to India’s authoritarian governance.

In the administration of brutality, India, the post colony, has proven itself coequal to its former colonial masters. Kashmir is not about “Kashmir.” Governing Kashmir is about India’s coming of age as a power, its ability to disburse violence, to manipulate and dominate. Kashmir is about nostalgia, about resources, and buffer zones. The possession of Kashmir by India renders an imaginary past real, emblematic of India’s triumphant unification as a nation-state. Controlling Kashmir requires that Kashmiri demands for justice be depicted as threatening to India’s integrity. India’s contrived enemy in Kashmir is a plausible one – the Muslim “Other,” India’s historically manufactured nemesis.

What is at Stake?

Between June 11 and September 22 of 2010, Kashmir witnessed the execution of 109 youth, men, and women by India’s police, paramilitary, and military. Indian forces opened fire on crowds, tortured children, detained elders without explanation, and coerced false confessions. Since June 7, there have been 73 days of curfew and 75 days of strikes and agitation. On September 11, the day of Eid-ul-Fitr, the violence continued. The paramilitary and police verbally abused and physically attacked civil society dissenters. Summer 2010 was not unprecedented. Kashmir has been subjected to much, much worse.

The use of public and summary execution for civic torture has been held necessary to Kashmir’s subjugation by the Indian state. Militarisation has asserted vigilante jurisdiction over space and politics. The violence is staged, ritualistic, and performative, used to re-assert India’s power over Kashmir’s body. The fabrications of the military — fake encounters, escalating perceptions of cross-border threat — function as the truth-making apparatus of the nation. We are witness to the paradox of history, as calibrated punishment — the lynching of the Muslim body, the object of criminality — enforces submission of a stateless nation (Kashmir) to the once-subaltern postcolony (India).

Kashmir is about the spectacle. The Indian state’s violence functions as an intervention, to discipline and punish, to provoke and dominate. The summer of 2010 evidenced India’s manoeuvring against Kashmir’s determination to decide its future. The use of violence by the Indian forces was deliberate, their tactics cruel and precise, amidst the groundswell of public dissent. This was the third summer, since 2008, of indefatigable civil society uprisings for “Azaadi” (freedom).

Continues >>

Associated Press in Cyprus, The Guardian, Sep 26, 2010

Imperialism, its character, means and ends has changed over time and place. Historically, western imperialism, has taken the form of tributary, mercantile, industrial, financial and in the contemporary period, a unique ‘militarist-barbaric’ form of empire building.

James Petras, James Petras Website, Sep 19, 2010

Within each ‘period’, elements of past and future forms of imperial domination and exploitation ‘co-exist’ with the dominant mode. For example, in the ancient Greek and Roman empires, commercial and trade privileges complemented the extraction of tributary payments. Mercantile imperialism, was preceded and accompanied initially by the plunder of wealth and the extraction of tribute, sometimes referred to as “primitive accumulation”, where political and military power decimated the local population and forcibly removed and transferred wealth to the imperial capitals.

Read essay [PDF]

The Guilt Shall Haunt to The Graves

By Yvonne Ridley, Opinion Maker, Sep 26, 2010

Dr Aafia

Obfuscation, is an awkward word but it essentially sums up the behaviour of all of the Pakistan government ministers, diplomats and politicians who have had a hand in the case of Dr Aafia Siddiqui.

Now they’re scrambling over each others backs like a bucket of frogs clawing their way to the top in a bid to speak to the media to feign shock at the silly sentence dished out by New York judge Richard Berman a few days ago.

And on top of all of this over-acting that other major obfuscator America has said Pakistan will have to sign two international treaties dealing with the exchange of prisoners to enable the return from the US of Aafia.

Poppycock!

Why don’t these spineless chumps in Islamabad grow a backbone and their gin-soaked counterparts in the US State Department to get stuffed.

Exactly what difference would it make if Pakistan were a signatory to the Council of Europe Treaty and the OAS Treaty? Please don’t tell me US Administration would abide by these? Of course they wouldn’t. The USA has continually violated and ignored the Geneva Conventions and still a serial offender by keeping open Guantanamo Bay and other secret detention centres.

And in Aafia’s case it has also thrown the Vienna Conventions out of the window.

The shameless, outgoing US Ambassador Anne Patterson based in Pakistan lied to the world from her barbed wire bunker in Islamabad when she claimed Dr Aafia Siddiqui was given full consular access at all times – I can prove Aafia wasn’t.

Continues >>

Former UN official demands investigation into coalition link to deaths revealed by WikiLeaks