Peace and Justice Post

By Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service

WASHINGTON, Oct 18, 2010 (IPS) – New information on the Central Intelligence Agency’s campaign of drone strikes in northwest Pakistan directly contradicts the image the Barack Obama administration and the CIA have sought to establish in the news media of a programme based on highly accurate targeting that is effective in disrupting al Qaeda’s terrorist plots against the United States.

A new report on civilian casualties in the war in Pakistan has revealed direct evidence that a house was targeted for a drone attack merely because it had been visited by a group of Taliban soldiers.

The report came shortly after publication of the results of a survey of opinion within the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan showing overwhelming popular opposition to the drone strikes and majority support for suicide attacks on U.S. forces under some circumstances.

Meanwhile, data on targeting of the drone strikes in Pakistan indicate that they have now become primarily an adjunct of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, targeting almost entirely militant groups involved in the Afghan insurgency rather than al Qaeda officials involved in plotting global terrorism.

The new report published by the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) last week offers the first glimpse of the drone strikes based on actual interviews with civilian victims of the strikes.

In an interview with a researcher for CIVIC, a civilian victim of a drone strike in North Waziristan carried out during the Obama administration recounted how his home had been visited by Taliban troops asking for lunch. He said he had agreed out of fear of refusing them.

The very next day, he recalled, the house was destroyed by a missile from a drone, killing his only son.

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by Stuart Littlewood, intifada-palestine.com,  Oct 18, 2010

The UK is to become a safe haven for Israeli psychopaths while they continue their brutal military occupation, colonization and ethnic cleansing of the Holy Land, and carry on bombarding blockaded Gaza and executing or abducting anyone bringing humanitarian help

That’s the British government’s latest contribution of Middle East peace.

The Zionist entity’s Trojan Horse at the heart of our government – otherwise known as the Conservative Friends of Israel – held a reception recently attended by our foreign secretary William Hague.

Hague told the 400 guests: “We have had good discussions with Israeli ministers on universal jurisdiction where the last government left us with an appalling situation where a politician like Mrs Livni could be threatened with arrest on coming to the UK…

“We have agreed in the coalition about putting it right, we will put it right through legislation that will be introduced… The Justice Secretary will bring into the House of Commons adding to legislation going through the House of Commons later this year and I phoned Mrs Livni amongst others to tell her about that and received a very warm welcome for our proposals”.

Who can forget that Tzipi Livni, Israel’s former foreign minister, was largely responsible for the terror that brought unspeakable death and destruction to Gaza’s civilians nearly 2 years ago?

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The drones have killed some jihadis. But the evidence suggests they create far more jihadis than they kill – and make an attack on me or you more likely with each bomb

The Independent, Oct 15, 2010

Repeated alterations in the constitution to suit different military rulers have left little opportunity for democracy to take root

Bilal Hussain, The Guardian, October 16, 2010

Recalling the last 63 years of Pakistan‘s history, democracy is found only as an interval before the arrival of the next military regime. Democracy was doomed when Liaquat Ali Khan, the first elected prime minister, was shot at a public gathering.

From there onwards, the balance of power shifted in the favour of the military. An interesting comparison reveals this shift: from 1951 to 1957 India had one prime minister and several army chiefs while during the same period Pakistan had one army chief and several prime ministers.

From Ayub Khan to Pervez Musharraf, military rule ruined the state structure of Pakistan as a whole, with only the elite benefiting from the system and no benefit being passed to the general public. Military policies have given the country cross-border and internal terrorism, millions of internally displaced people and a bankrupt national economy. Ironically we are always ready to welcome them again.

Although every person in Pakistan, whether in a position of power or not, is very vocal about the very idea of democracy, no collective effort is seen to establish it as an institution. As the political and government culture in Pakistan is a product of its links to the pre-partition British rule, Pakistan’s leaders knew best from this inheritance the vice-regal system that made little or no provision for popular awareness or involvement. Consequently, even after more than half a century of the country’s independence, we are still entangled in age-old feudal, tribal and panchayat systems.

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M&C.com, Oct 16, 2010

Amnesty International, Oct 15, 2010

Over 600 Palestinians had their homes demolished in the West Bank last year

© Amnesty International

Paul Craig Roberts, LewRockwell.com, Oct 18, 2010

Does anyone remember the “cakewalk war” that would last six weeks, cost $50–60 billion, and be paid for out of Iraqi oil revenues?

Does anyone remember that White House economist Lawrence Lindsey was fired by Dubya because Lindsey estimated that the Iraq war could cost as much as $200 billion?

Lindsey was fired for over-estimating the cost of a war that, according to Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, has cost 15 times more than Lindsey estimated. And the US still has 50,000 troops in Iraq.

Does anyone remember that just prior to the US invasion of Iraq, the US government declared victory over the Taliban in Afghanistan?

Does anyone remember that the reason Dubya gave for invading Iraq was Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, weapons that the US government knew did not exist?

Are Americans aware that the same neoconservatives who made these fantastic mistakes, or told these fabulous lies, are still in control of the government in Washington?

The “war on terror” is now in its tenth year. What is it really all about?

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By MUSTAFA BARGHOUTHI, The New York Times,  October 14, 2010

Negotiations between two unequal parties cannot succeed. Success in Palestinian-Israeli negotiations requires a reasonable balance of power, clear terms of reference and abstention of both sides from imposing unilateral facts on the ground. None of that existed in the talks that were re-initiated in September.

Much like previous rounds of talks, these negotiations were dominated on one side by an Israeli government that controls the land, roads, airspace, borders, water and electricity, as well as the trade and economy of the Palestinian side, while possessing a powerful military establishment (now the third military exporter in the world) and a robust gross domestic product, which has tripled in the last decade.

This same Israeli “partner” now also boasts a general public that has shifted dramatically to the right, and to which an apartheid system for Palestinians has become an acceptable norm.

On the other side is the Palestinian Authority — one that paradoxically holds little real authority, and exists as a sort of fiefdom within the Israeli matrix of control. Further debilitating the P.A. is a protracted internal Palestinian division, total dependence on foreign aid and a decline of democracy and human rights. Finally, the Palestinian Authority is constantly pressured to provide security for its occupier while failing to provide any protection whatsoever to its own people from that same occupier.

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