Peace and Justice Post

Canadian activist Michael Skinner looks at how the Western corporate interests are profiting off the occupation of Afghanistan.

Socialist Worker, January 7, 2011

Leaders of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India meeting to discuss the TAPI pipeline

MANY OF the Canadian military, police and civilian personnel who risk their lives in Afghanistan truly believe they are fighting a just war of good against evil. But America’s and Britain’s claims that the unsanctioned unilateral invasion of Afghanistan, which began the global war on terror, was justified by the terrorist attacks of 9/11 are as credible as claims the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian terrorist justified Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war against Serbia to begin the First World War.

It is time to look beyond faith in baseless beliefs to investigate facts. What interests are at stake in Afghanistan?

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What’s happening on the Korean peninsula? If you read the press or listen to the talking heads, your best guess would be that an insane North Korean regime is willing to risk war to manage its own internal political tensions. This conclusion would be hard to avoid because the media rarely provide any historical context or alternative explanations for North Korean actions. For example, much has been said about the March 2010 (alleged) North Korean torpedo attack on the Cheonan (a South Korean naval vessel) near Baengnyeong Island, and the November 2010 North Korean artillery attack on Yeonpyeong Island (which houses a South Korean military base). The conventional wisdom is that both attacks were motivated by North Korean elite efforts to smooth the leadership transition underway in their country. The take away: North Korea is an out-of-control country, definitely not to be trusted or engaged in negotiations.

But is that an adequate explanation for these events? Before examining the facts surrounding them, let’s introduce a bit of history. Take a look at the map below, which includes both Baengnyeong and Yeonpyeong Islands.

Contested seas. The NLL is represented by the blue A line. The MDL is represented by the red B line.

1: Yeonpyeong Island (artillery clas); 2: Baengnyeong Island (Cheonan sinking); 3: Daecheong Island. [source]

Demilitarized Zone

The armistice that ended the Korean War fighting established the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) which separates North Korea from South Korea. At that time, the U.S. government unilaterally established another dividing line, one intended to create a sea border between the two Koreas. That border is illustrated on the map by line A, the blue Northern Limit Line (NLL).

As you can see, instead of extending the DMZ westward into the sea, the U.S. line runs northward, limiting North Korea’s sea access. The line was drawn this way for two reasons: First, when the fighting stopped, South Korean forces were in control of the islands off the North Korean coast and the U.S. wanted to secure their position. Second, control over those islands enhanced the ability of U.S. forces to monitor and maintain military pressure on North Korea.

North Korea never accepted the NLL. It argued for an alternative border, illustrated by line B, the red West Sea Military Demarcation Line (MDL). Acknowledging the reality of Southern forces on the islands off its coast, North Korea sought recognition for a sea border that went around the islands but otherwise divided the sea by extending the DMZ line.

The critical point here is that the South Korean and U.S. promoted NLL is not recognized by international law; it has no legal standing. Don’t take my word for it. The following is from Bloomberg News:

“Then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote in a 1975 classified cable that the unilaterally drawn Northern Limit Line was ‘clearly contrary to international law.’ Two years before, the American ambassador said in another cable that many nations would view South Korea and its U.S. ally as ‘in the wrong’ if clashes occurred in disputed areas along the boundary. …

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By our correspondent, wsws.org, 6 January 2011

Recently the World Socialist Web Site spoke to a number of Tamil prisoners released from various detention centres as well as the relatives of detainees still held in camps run by the Sri Lankan military. They not only described the oppressive conditions inside the camps, but insisted that their detention was a violation of basic legal and democratic rights.

Following the collapse of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009, the military herded around 280,000 Tamil civilians—men, women and children—into huge “welfare villages”, which were surrounded by barbed wire and armed soldiers and run as virtual prisons. Anyone accused of being an “LTTE suspect” was held separately in undisclosed locations. The numbers grew to about 12,000 as military intelligence officers interrogated young men and women in the detention camps and dragged more “LTTE suspects” off to its secret prisons. The purpose was to intimidate and silence any opposition or dissent.

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IN THE first years after the Cold War ended, many Americans had a profound sense of optimism about the future of international politics. President Bill Clinton captured that mood when he told the UN General Assembly in September 1993:

It is clear that we live at a turning point in human history. Immense and promising changes seem to wash over us every day. The Cold War is over. The world is no longer divided into two armed and angry camps. Dozens of new democracies have been born. It is a moment of miracles.

The basis of all this good feeling was laid out at the time in two famous articles by prominent neoconservatives. In 1989, Francis Fukuyama argued in “The End of History?” that Western liberal democracy had won a decisive victory over communism and fascism and should be seen as the “final form of human government.”¹ One consequence of this “ideological evolution,” he argued, was that large-scale conflict between the great powers was “passing from the scene,” although “the vast bulk of the Third World remains very much mired in history, and will be a terrain of conflict for many years to come.” Nevertheless, liberal democracy and peace would eventually come to the Third World as well, because the sands of time were pushing inexorably in that direction.

One year later, Charles Krauthammer emphasized in “The Unipolar Moment” that the United States had emerged from the Cold War as by far the most powerful country on the planet.² He urged American leaders not to be reticent about using that power “to lead a unipolar world, unashamedly laying down the rules of world order and being prepared to enforce them.” Krauthammer’s advice fit neatly with Fukuyama’s vision of the future: the United States should take the lead in bringing democracy to less developed countries the world over. After all, that shouldn’t be an especially difficult task given that America had awesome power and the cunning of history on its side.

U.S. grand strategy has followed this basic prescription for the past twenty years, mainly because most policy makers inside the Beltway have agreed with the thrust of Fukuyama’s and Krauthammer’s early analyses.

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by: Jonathan Cook, AMEU.org,
November – December  2010
The Link – Volume 43, Issue 5

In the mid-1990s, I arrived in Jerusalem for the first time–then as a tourist–with the potent Western myth at the front of my consciousness: that of Israel as “a light unto the nations,” the plucky underdog facing a menacing Arab world. A series of later professional shocks as a freelance journalist reporting on Israel would shatter those assumptions.

These disillusioning experiences came in the early stages of the second intifada, the Palestinian uprising that began in late 2000. At the time I was often writing for Britain’s Guardian newspaper, first as a staff member based in the foreign department at its head office in London, then later as a freelance journalist in Nazareth. The Guardian has earned an international reputation—including in Israel—as the Western newspaper most critical of Israel’s actions. That may be true, but I quickly found that there were still very clear, and highly unusual, limitations on what could be written about Israel.

Particularly problematic for the Guardian—as with other news media —was anything that questioned Israel’s claim to being a democracy or highlighted the contradictions between that claim and Israel’s Jewish self-definition. The Guardian’s most famous editor, C P Scott, was a high-profile lobbyist for Jewish rights in what was then Palestine. He was also instrumental in bringing about the Balfour Declaration—the British government’s commitment to the Zionist movement in 1917 to create a “national home” in Palestine for Jews.

Thus, I was not entirely surprised that an account I submitted based on my investigations of an apparent shoot-to-kill policy by the Israeli police against its own Palestinian citizens at the start of the second intifada was sat on for months by the paper. After I made repeated queries, the features editor informed me that he could not run it because it was no longer “fresh.”

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The Israeli peace movement is coming back to life, supporting the Palestinian nonviolent resistance to the occupation. And the Israelis are proving themselves just as nonviolent. In fact, they’re becoming exceedingly polite and courteous.

The other day they found a bunch of things marked “Made in USA” lying on the ground. They figured some Americans must have lost them. To make sure those things got returned, the peace activists delivered them directly to James Cunningham, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, at his own residence, in the middle of the night, when they were sure to find him at home.

Apparently the ambassador did not appreciate the courteous gesture. The police quickly arrived, broke up the action, arrested eleven people, and found a way to keep them jailed on trumped up charges.

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by: Noam Chomsky, Op-Ed, TruthOut, January 3, 2011

Palestinian Abu Ayaesh picks his grape harvest downhill from the homes of the Karmi Zur settlement. (Photo: michaelramallah)

While intensively engaged in illegal settlement expansion, the government of Israel is also seeking to deal with two problems: a global campaign of what it perceives as “delegitimation” – that is, objections to its crimes and withdrawal of participation in them – and a parallel campaign of legitimation of Palestine.

The “delegitimation,” which is progressing rapidly, was carried forward in December by a Human Rights Watch call on the U.S. “to suspend financing to Israel in an amount equivalent to the costs of Israel’s spending in support of settlements,” and to monitor contributions to Israel from tax-exempt U.S. organizations that violate international law, “including prohibitions against discrimination” – which would cast a wide net. Amnesty International had already called for an arms embargo on Israel. The legitimation process also took a long step forward in December, when Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil recognized the State of Palestine (Gaza and the West Bank), bringing the number of supporting nations to more than 100.

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Les også:

Nye jagerfly vil koste 12 milliarder mer

Wikileaks: Israel har 100 bunkerknusere

En langdistanserakett av typen Shibab avfyrt under en øvelse på ukjent sted i Iran høsten 2009. To måneder senere uttrykte en israelsk general bekyming overfor en amerikansk kongressdelegasjon om at Iran har 300 slike raketter som kan nå Israel. 

Den 15. november 2009 hadde en amerikansk kongressdelegasjon under ledelse av demokraten Ike Skelton et møte med sjefen for den israelske generalstaben, Gabi Ashkenazi. Under møtet fastslo den israelske toppgeneralen at Iran har 300 Shihab-raketter som kan nå Israel.

Varslingstiden ved et iransk angrep vil ikke være mer enn 10-12 minutter.

– Rakettrusselen mot Israel er mer alvorlig enn noensinne. Derfor legger Israel så sterk vekt på rakettforsvar, sa Ashkenazi ifølge et hemmeligstemplet notat fra den amerikanske ambassaden i Tel Aviv til det amerikanske utenriksdepartementet.

Dokumentet fra samtalene mellom Ashkenazi og Skelton, samt et stort antall andre dokumenter fra samme tidsperiode som Aftenposten har fått tilgang til, etterlater ett klart budskap: Det israelske forsvaret er i full gang med å forberede seg på en ny krig i Midtøsten. Overfor amerikanske representanter slår toppledere innen Israels forsvar og etterretningsvesen fast at selv om trusselen fra Iran er alvorlig, er trusselen fra de iranskstøttede islamistgruppene Hamas og Hizbollah, henholdsvis på Gazastripen og i Libanon, den mest akutte. Rakettene fra de to islamistgruppene har langt større nøyaktighet enn det iranske ballistiske raketter vil ha, fremgår det.

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Keith Jones, wsws.org, January 3, 2011

The World Socialist Web Site today begins serialization of a statement issued by Marxist Voice, a Pakistani group that has expressed political agreement with the perspectives of the International Committee of the Fourth International and has undertaken to work with the ICFI to build it as the World Party of Socialist Revolution.

We very much welcome this statement. It represents an important advance in the elaboration of a revolutionary perspective and indicates a political development within the working class in Pakistan.

The utter incompatibility of bourgeois rule with the democratic and social aspirations of the workers and toilers of South Asia is ever more manifest. Six decades after the aspiring national bourgeoisies of India and Pakistan joined hands with British imperialism to suppress the anti-imperialist revolution and partition the subcontinent along communal lines, South Asia is home to the world’s largest concentration of malnourished and impoverished people.

Like the US-backed dictatorship of General Pervez Musharraf that preceded it, Pakistan’s current Pakistan Peoples Party-led government is imposing brutal austerity measures at the behest of the US- and Western-dominated International Monetary Fund. As for India’s much touted rise, the emergence of Indian-based transnationals and a small cluster of Indian billionaires has been propelled by the immiseration of much of the rural population and the emergence of a savagely exploited working class.

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