Peace and Justice Post

By Alexander Cockburn, Counterpunch, Dec 6, 2010

The American airwaves quiver with the screams of parlor assassins howling for Julian Assange’s head. Jonah Goldberg, contributor to the National Review, asks in his syndicated column, “Why wasn’t Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?” Sarah Palin wants him hunted down and brought to justice, saying: “He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands.”

Assange can survive these theatrical blusters. A tougher question is how he will fare at the hands of the US government, which is hopping mad. The US attorney general, Eric Holder,  has announced that the Justice Department and Pentagon are conducting “an active, ongoing criminal investigation” into the latest Assange-facilitated leak under Washington’s Espionage Act.
Asked how the US could prosecute Assange, a non-US citizen, Holder said, “Let me be clear. This is not saber-rattling,” and vowed “to swiftly close the gaps in current US legislation…”

In other words the espionage statute is being rewritten to target Assange, and in short order, if not already, President Obama – who as a candidate pledged “transparency” in government – will sign an order okaying the seizing of Assange and his transport into the US jurisdiction. Render first, fight the habeas corpus lawsuits later.

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By Omar Waraich in Islamabad, The Independent, Dec 4, 2010

AP

Protesters rally against Christian woman Aasia Bibi, accused of insulting Islam

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Politicians Lie

Information Clearing House,  December 03, 2010

Audio

Award winning journalist John Pilger speaks on Australian radio about the absurdities put forward by members of the American government.
John Pilger has a new documentary coming out in Britain on Dec. 12th called “The War You Don’t See” which features an interview with Julian Assange. To see the trailer, go to http://www.johnpilger.com/videos/the-war-you-dont-see-trailer

David Samuels, The Atlantic, Dec 3 2010

Getty Images 

High Court Overreaches in Barring Presidential Pardon

(New York) – A Pakistani court’s order to bar President Asif Ali Zardari from pardoning a woman sentenced to death for blasphemy contravenes Pakistan’s constitution and should be withdrawn immediately, Human Rights Watch said today.

The Lahore High Court in Punjab province issued an order on November 29, 2010, barring Zardari from exercising his constitutional authority to pardon Aasia Bibi, an illiterate farmhand who had been convicted by the Sheikhupura District Court of blasphemy and sentenced to death. Zardari had ordered a review of the case in mid-November, after domestic and international outrage over the sentence. A ministerial inquiry concluded on November 25 that the district court verdict was legally unsound.

Al Jazeera, December 2, 2010

US steps up alleged drone strikes saying Pakistan’s not dealing with armed groups in North Waziristan.

(/IDEM] The US has stepped up a campaign of alleged drone strikes in Pakistan, despite the Pakistani military refusing calls for an operation in the North Waziristan region. The US defence department says Pakistan is not acting swiftly enough against armed groups in the region, and officials say it is hurting US efforts to reverse the Taliban’s momentum in the Afghan War. Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr reports from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

SAIGON – The rain sheeted down, time washed away. I looked down from the rooftop in Saigon where, more than a generation ago, in the wake of the longest war of modern times, I had watched silent, sullen streets awash. The foreigners were gone, at last. Through the mist, like little phantoms, four children ran into view, their arms outstretched. They circled and weaved and dived; and one of them fell down, feigning death. They were bombers.

This was not unusual, for there is no place like Vietnam. Within my lifetime, Ho Chi Minh’s nationalists had fought and expelled the French, whose tree-lined boulevards, pink-washed villas and scaled-down replica of the Paris Opera, were facades for plunder and cruelty; then the Japanese, with whom the French colons collaborated; then the British who sought to reinstall the French; then the Americans, with whom Ho had repeatedly tried to forge an alliance against China; then Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, who attacked from the west; and finally the Chinese who, with a vengeful nod from Washington, came down from the north. All of them were seen off at immeasurable cost.

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The WikiLeaks avalanche has exposed floundering imperial rule to scrutiny – and its reliance on dictatorship and deceit

Seumas Milne, The Guardian, Dec 1, 2010

WikiLeaks’ disclosure of 250,000 US embassy cables have exposed an overstretched imperial system at work. Photograph: WikiLeaks

Official America’s reaction to the largest leak of confidential government files in history is tipping over towards derangement. What the White House initially denounced as a life-threatening “criminal” act and Hillary Clinton branded an “attack on the international community” has been taken a menacing stage further by the newly emboldened Republican right.

WikiLeaks’ release of 250,000 United States embassy cables – shared with the Guardian and other international newspapers – was an act of terrorism, congressman Peter King declared. Sarah Palin called for its founder Julian Assange to be hunted down as an “anti-American operative with blood on his hands“, while former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has demanded that whoever leaked the files should be executed for treason.

Not much truck with freedom of information, then, in the land of the free. In reality, most of the leaked material is fairly low-level diplomatic gossip, which naturally reflects the US government’s view of the world, and crucially doesn’t include reports with the highest security classification.

When it comes to actual criminality and blood, nothing quite matches WikiLeaks’ earlier revelations about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with their chilling records of US collusion with industrial-scale torture and death squads, and killings of Afghan civilians by rampaging Nato troops.

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