Peace and Justice Post

by Stephen Lendman, Dissident Voice,  September 24th, 2010

On September 23 in federal court, US District Court Judge, Richard Berman sentenced political prisoner, Aafia Siddiqui, to 86 years in prison. Outrage most accurately expresses this gross miscarriage of justice, compounding what she’s already endured following her March 30, 2003 abduction, imprisonment, torture, prosecution, and conviction on bogus charges.¹

In modern times, she’s one of American depravity’s most aggrieved victims, now given a virtual life sentence for a crime she didn’t, and couldn’t have, committed, explained in the above articles.

In recent months, she’s been in New York’s Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in maximum security solitary confinement, during her trial, conviction and September 23 sentencing. Importantly, her life was effectively destroyed by years of horrific tortures, repeated rapings, and other abuses in Bagram Prison at America’s Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan.

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By Bill Van Auken, wsws.org, Sep 24, 2010

President Barack Obama used his speech at the United Nations General Assembly Thursday to defend US wars and state terror abroad and to proclaim that the economic crisis has been resolved thanks to his Wall Street bailout.

The US president received a noticeably tepid response from the assembled UN delegates. While in his first address to the body last year, he was able to pose as a fresh alternative to the crimes carried out by the Bush administration, by now it has become clear to most on the international stage that his administration’s policies are largely in continuity with those of its predecessor.

In its tone and its content, the Obama speech was the authentic and arrogant voice of US imperialism.

Parroting remarks delivered by George W. Bush from the same podium, Obama began by invoking September 11, 2001, once again exploiting the terrorist attacks of that day to justify the acts of military aggression committed by both US administrations in the intervening nine years.

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I

One of my most soothing childhood memories is of my mother reading aloud the  Ram Katha (the  story of the ancient, mythical or not, King of Ayodhya).

A woman of the most extraordinarily acute practical intelligence, never  easily

fibbed or taken in, and always watchful of the disingenuous or scheming charlatan, I recall how that act of reading melted the sharp and mistrusting edges of her intellect, brought tears to her eyes, and transformed her into the semblance of an all-forgiving saint.  The radiance from those readings was often such that those in the room that included our Muslim helpers along the periphery forgot we were Hindus or Muslims and were rendered naked human beings struggling for love and understanding.

As I look back, my own socialization in Hinduism resides in those early contexts in which, after all, stories about gods and deities  had but one object-to disable  hatred and selfishness, and engender a warm empathy towards  all things animate and inanimate.  The gods seemed mere instruments to furnish enlightened human purposes.

And I believe this would go for most people in India who call themselves Hindus.

All that was sought to be changed in 1990 as India’s party of the Hindu right set out to make of Ram a political icon around whom a new State was to be forged-informed not by love or understanding or accommodation, but hatred, exclusivity and physical force.  Leading within two years of Advani’s  abrasively menacing Rath Yatra (travels atop a warlike chariot, with cut-outs of Ram not as my mother saw him but now as a Shatriya warrior with an arrow stretched in the bow) to the  water-shed desecration and demolition of  a more than four hundred year old mosque.  And leading, let it be remembered, to the gratuitous killing of some two thousand Indians who  were no part of that politics.

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More than 20 million people are impacted by the floods in Pakistan and more than 1.2 million homes destroyed. The media has highlighted a growing concern that the floods could strengthen militant groups that are engaged in relief efforts. However, the Pakistani military is in a greater position to benefit, particularly in the absence of a strong democratic leadership as their rescue efforts are glorified over the work of progressive organizations, and even the government.

It is for these reasons the international community must support the work of progressive grassroots Pakistani groups. These are organizations that have ties to the flood affected regions where they have worked with famers, laborer, women and children to bring about the much needed social change. They will be there working for long term rehabilitation as waters recede, and after the international relief organizations are gone, and individual efforts diminish.

In addition to progressive organizations, the international community must compel the government at provincial, district, and local levels to remain accountable by strengthening the National Disaster Management Authority (which provides updates of affectees), and ask for oversight and coordination between thousands of individuals and NGOs. Instead of an unceasing focus on the corruption of top level bureaucrats and politicians, there is a need to build grassroots institutions.

The Sindh Rural Support Organization <http://www.srso.com.pk/>(SRSO) loosely collaborates with the government. Through a World Food Program, the SRSO targets to deliver one month ration to about 42,000 families in five districts in Sindh. It is also collaborating with USAID and UNICEF. It has been installing hand pumps and dry toilets. “Camps need drinking water supply, toilets and food supplies – the very basics which are somehow missed by our government,” wrote Saqib Khan, an SRSO volunteer, from a relief camp in Sukkur, Sindh. Established in 2003, SRSO’s mandate is to alleviate poverty by harnessing the people’s potential and to undertake development activities in nine districts of Sindh.

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Evidence of Extensive War Crimes Committed by a British Prime Minister

by Dr. David Halpin, Global Research, Sep 19, 2010

Your ‘Journey’ has been long on miles but absent of humanity, reason and law. ‘It can only get better’.  Could it have got any worse?

Your vapour trails have left millions weeping.  One million of those are widows in Iraq, at least 1.2 million humans with their Allah, five million orphans and four million refugees.  We will leave out the blood and the mayhem you have left in Afghanistan, Somalia and the Yemen.  You sprang from each jet with strange eyes ablaze, with more lies and plans for yet more Muslim decimation.  You had been re-fuelled at high altitude by your fellow psychopath Campbell and other ‘advisers’ like Manning.

You joined the dummy Bush over blood-oozing steaks in April 2002.

The false flag of 9/11 had been repeated by the media megaphones of the UK/US/Israel axis and the absence of a judicial inquiry ensured the ‘big lie, oft repeated’ sank into irrational, Mammon possessed populations.  All that was modelled in the ‘think’ tanks with the aim of breaking Iraq, the Arab bastion, for ever.  You, and another three of the mafiosi, Aznar, Barroso and Dubya met for an hour in the Azores 16 March. Two of these mafiosi have fascist connections.  The capo, Dick Cheney, was home pushing buttons and pulling strings for shocking and awing and burning and blasting.  In your ‘book’ you wrote that Cheney wanted a wholesale reorganization of the political map of the Middle East after 9/11. The vice president “would have worked through the whole lot, Iraq, Syria, Iran, dealing with all their surrogates in the course of it — Hezbollah, Hamas, etc,”. [1]

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By Mel Frykberg, Inter Press Service,

RAMALLAH, Sep 18, 2010 (IPS) – Controversy is building up over a 91-year-old man, his 17-year-old grandson and a 20-year-old neighbour, all farmers, who were killed by Israeli shelling and gunfire as they tried to tend their land 700 metres from northern Gaza’s border with Israel.

The narrative according to the Israeli and foreign media is one of “self- defence”. During the last few weeks a number of crude missiles have been fired at the Jewish state by Gaza-based Palestinian fighters, causing little damage and no casualties or injuries.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) claimed the three were “terrorists” trying to shoot rockets at southern Israel.

Israel has declared a 300-metre “security zone” within Gaza and next to the Israeli border, no-man’s land. This buffer area is where some of Gaza’s most fertile land is situated. The Gaza strip is approximately 40 km long and eight km wide, and home to 1.5 million.

The exclusion zone has been strictly enforced by the IDF since the takeover of the coastal territory by the Islamic movement Hamas in 2007.

Since the blockade a number of Gazan farmers and shepherds have been killed by the IDF as they tried to farm their land and attend to their livestock. More have been injured and maimed. Some of the deaths and injuries took place outside of the buffer zone.

Controversy has been raging on the Internet between Palestinians and their supporters and supporters of Israel, over the way events were presented by the mainstream media.

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Azzaman, September 13, 2010

One in every six Iraqis is an orphan. That is the toll Iraqi children are paying in a country which is supposedly under the occupation and protection of the world’s only superpower.

Not all the orphans are the result of the violence that swept the country in the aftermath of the 2003-U.S. invasion.

But the invasion has caused untold miseries for Iraqis, surpassing those inflicted on them by their former tormentors, the clique that ruled Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

There were unconfirmed reports that Iraq has turned into a country of orphans. But the exact figure only became a reality recently, when the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs made public its own statistics.

The statistics points to dangerous demographics with grave social, health and economic consequences for a country which still lacks basic infrastructure.

These are the voiceless Iraqis. Their U.S. occupiers have almost cut and run and their Iraqi rulers are not so much concerned about their livelihood and well-being.

In a violent country like Iraq, where U.S. marines with bullet-proof jackets and thick armor, cannot feel safe, there is not so much room for an orphan.

Hundreds of thousands of them live on the street. There is no social security system to look after them.

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The Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are reported to be going well — or as well as they can go with the United States maintaining its insistence that no attempts at Palestinian unity are made.

This is Israel’s demand, conveyed to the lobby, enforced by President and Congress, and then rammed down the throat of even the forces within the Palestinian Authority who want to coordinate with Hamas.

But, forgetting that for a moment, the big worry about the current talks continues to be what will happen after September 26th, when Israel’s partial settlement freeze ends. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu says that he won’t continue the freeze while President Mahmoud Abbas says he will end the talks if the freeze lapses.

The whole settlement freeze issue is one of the three most unnecessary obstacles to peace . The other two are the belief, on the part of some Palestinians, that the 1948 refugees and their progeny are returning to Israel (rather than to a Palestinian state) and Netanyahu’s insistence that Palestinians recognize Israel “as a Jewish state.”

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Indian troops shot dead on Friday two more people in Kashmir in firing on demonstrators who condemned army killings and India after the calls for new protests outside Indian army garrisons next week.

One of Kashmir’s most influential leaders, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, has called for peaceful sit-in protests on Tuesday outside army camps across Kashmir, defying threats of Indian troops to “shoot on sight” in a three-month long uprising in one of the world’s most militarised regions.

Indian troops killed more than 90 Kashmiri civlians in a summer of protests that Kashmiris says peaceful, fuelling anti-India anger in the Muslim-majority valley.

Kashmiris see India as an “occupier” and has called for independence since decades.

In 1948, the United Nations adopted a resolution calling for a referendum for Kashmir to determine whether the Himalayan region should be part of India and Pakistan. But India has rejected to hold referendum in Kashmiri territory.

“The sit-in protests have never been peaceful … I would appeal to the Hurriyat (the separatist grouping) to call off its call,” army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel J. S. Brar told reporters late on Thursday.

The death toll so far includes children, women and teenagers, nearly all killed by police bullets.

Hours after the army statement troops shot dead two protesters and wounded at least eight. Hundreds of protesters defied curfew in west and north Kashmir, police said.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, faced with criticism of not dealing with the protests seriously, held a meeting with the government and opposition parties on Wednesday, but all it decided was only to send a delegation of politicians to Kashmir.

Geelani, a leader of the umbrella grouping All Parties Hurriyat Conference, has demanded India declare Kashmir an international dispute, withdraw hundreds of thousands of troops from the region and release all political prisoners as a precondition for talks.

“It seems both Srinagar and New Delhi are clueless, there is no end to the violence. Indians should act sincerely before it is too late,” Mohammad Shafi, a former Kashmiri lawmaker, said.

The continuing police shootings, imposed curfews and the cycle of strikes and as a response has shut down schools, colleges and offices, stopped newspapers from being printed, and made food and medicine scarce.

Reuters

Kashmir Watch, Sep 16, 2010

By Zaheerul Hassan

Despite curfew massive protests which started on Eid Day from Srinagar have extended to all over the Kashmir including major districts Anantnag, Pampore and Sopore towns. The masses refused to obey occupied forces and defied the curfew. Since last  Saturday (September 11,2010)  till today death toll rose up  to 95, more than 2000  injured and about  3000 freedom fighters have been abducted by Indian occupied forces. The properties of innocent Kashmiri’s people are being burnt by the local police with the help of extremists Hindus in Jamu valley and all other parts of Hindu’s dominated areas. In this regard occupied Indian forces are providing them fully support.

The army aggression in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) is even worst than Israeli brutality in Palestine.  Pakistan, China and Arab countries have strongly condemned the ongoing Indian barbarism against women, children, young’s and old individuals. Cries of women and children can be heard from every second house of the valley. Thus in retaliation, young girls and boys whenever find chance fight back the forces with stone throwing. As Parvaiz Bukhari, a journalist, said early this week that  the stones flung randomly by protestors have become “the voice of a neglected people” convinced that the world deliberately ignores heir plight There only demand now is “liberation of Kashmir and it accession to Pakistan”. Pakistani and Iranian news channels have been banned by state authorities, reported a Koran desecration in the United States.  It is also notable here that local authorities have forcefully stopped the publishing of newspaper since September 13, 2010.

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