Peace and Justice Post

The mystery surrounding Raymond A. Davis, the American former Special Forces operative jailed in Lahore, Pakistan for the murder of two young motorcyclists, and his funky “security” company, Hyperion-Protective Consultants LLC, in the US continues to grow.

When Davis was arrested in the immediate aftermath of the double slaying in a busy business section of Lahore, after he had fatally shot two men in the back, claiming that he feared they might be threatening to rob him, police found business cards on him for a security company called Hyperion-Protective Consultants LLC, which listed as its address 5100 North Lane, Orlando, Florida.

A website for the company gave the same address, and listed the manager as a Gerald Richardson.

An investigation into the company done for Counterpunch Magazine that was published on Tuesday, disclosed that the address was actually for a vacant storefront in a run-down and almost completely empty strip mall in Orlando called North Lane Plaza. The 5100 shop was completely empty and barren, save for an empty Coke glass on a vacant counter.

Now Tom Johnson, executive of a property company called IB Green, owner of the strip mall property, says that the 5100 address was rented by a man named Gerald Richardson, who used it to sell clothing. “We made him move out in December 2009 for nonpayment of rent,” he says. Johnson recalls that at one point when Richardson was leasing the space for his clothing store, he told him, “Oh, I have another company called Hyperion which might get mail there.”

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By John Pilger, ZNet, Thursday, February 10, 2011

The uprising in Egypt is our theatre of the possible. It is what people across the world have struggled for and their thought controllers have feared.  Western commentators invariably misuse the words “we” and “us” to speak on behalf of those with power who see the rest of humanity as useful or expendable. The “we” and “us” are universal now. Tunisia came first, but the spectacle always promised to be Egyptian.

As a reporter, I have felt this over the years. In Cairo’s Tahrir (Liberation) Square in 1970, the coffin of the great nationalist Gamal Abdul Nasser bobbed on an ocean of people who, under him, had glimpsed freedom. One of them, a teacher, described the disgraced past as “grown men chasing cricket balls for the British at the Cairo Club”. The parable was for all Arabs and much of the world. Three years later, the Egyptian Third Army crossed the Suez Canal and overran Israel’s fortresses in Sinai. Returning from this battlefield to Cairo, I joined a million others in Liberation Square. Their restored respect was like a presence – until the United States rearmed the Israelis and beckoned an Egyptian defeat.

Thereafter, President Anwar Sadat became America’s man through the usual billion-dollar bribery and, for this, he was assassinated in 1980. Under his successor, Hosni Mubarak, dissenters came to Liberation Square at their peril. Enriched by Washington’s bag men, Mubarak latest American-Israeli project is the building of an underground wall behind which the Palestinians of Gaza are to be imprisoned forever.

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‘Only he knows what he’s going to do,’ President Barack Obama said of Mubarak on Sunday. | AP Photo Close

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With President Obama having long ago disavowed the 2011 date he pledged would be the beginning of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, its remained to be seen how quickly the 2014 date, confirmed most recently at Lisbon, would fall by the wayside.

It seems like it will be quite soon, as Afghan President Hamid Karzai confirmed today that the Obama Administration has been in secret talks with him to formalize a system of permanent military bases across the war torn nation, effectively pledging to keep the unpopular occupation a permanent aspect of life in Afghanistan.

Karzai said the permanent US military presence would bring “economic prosperity and an end to violence,” which seems an incredible claim to make nearly 10 years into such an occupation, and with the situation growing ever worse throughout that period.

Karzai did not indicate when the deal for the permanent occupation would be finalized, but did say he intended to submit the agreement to parliament. No word yet if the US Congress will get similar oversight, but the precedent set by the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement in Iraq suggests this will probably not be the case.

Day of Reckoning for the Republic

To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
(Modi).

I

The Special Investigation Team  entrusted by the Supreme Court of India to enquire into the culpabilities (including those of the Home Minister of Gujarat at the time of the carnage of February, 2002, namely one Narendra Modi) with respect especially to the gruesome killings at the Gulbarg Society where a Congress Member of Parliament, Ehsan Jaffri, was also hacked to smithereens alongwith the rest  has now submitted its report to the honourable Court.

Within days, the redoubtable Tehelka magazine found access to the 600 page document, consistent with the  era of leaks. Contrary to the propaganda machine of the proto-fascist Sangh Parivar which had been busy spreading the unfounded lie that Modi had been given a “clean chit,” the findings scooped by Tehelka must seem all too damning to any objective and conscientious citizen of the Republic.  Caveat: assuming that the magazine has given us the authentic text of the SIT report, something we have no reason to doubt.

Hereunder a quick wrap in direct quote  from the Report as published by Tehelka:

–“inspite of the fact that ghastly and violent attacks had taken place on Muslims at Gulbarg Society and elsewhere, the reaction of the government was not the type that would have been expected by anyone.  The Chief Minister had tried to water down the seriousness of the situation at Gulbarg Society, Naroda Patiya. . .by saying that every action has an equal and opposite reaction” (p,69);

–that Modi’s statement “accusing some elements in Godhra {where a coach of the Sabarmati Express train bringing back Hindutva volunteers from Ayodhya had gone up in flames, leading to the deaths of some 59 people; the Justice Bannerjee Committee deputed  by the then Railway minister to enquire into the burning had concluded that there was no way that the coach could have been set on fire from the outside, and that most likely a spark from a stove or a cigarette butt within the compartment had reached the cushions, leading to the smouldering before the fire spread} . . .as possessing a criminal tendency was sweeping and offensive, coming as it did from a Chief Minister, that too at a critical time when Hindu-Muslim tempers were running high” (p.13);

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By Ahmed Amr, ZNet, Feb 9, 2011

Source: Informed Comment

The campaign against the Egyptian protest movement by Egyptian officialdom, has been two-pronged. One tactic has been to attempt to neuter the foreign press. This step then allowed a propaganda campaign by the organs of the State-owned media, which has been shameless in distorting the realities on the ground. The employees of Egyptian government newspapers and television stations are nothing more than ruling party hacks but they are not without their talents. While some of the rumors they were circulating were marginally plausible, others were off the wall.

The general theme of the government’s propaganda assault has revolved around foreign agents organizing and deceiving the naïve anti-regime protesters. One concocted report in Al-Akhbar had 300 foreign saboteurs caught red handed in Suez. In government media accounts, alien provocateurs were everywhere to be found. The source of the mischief all depended on which hallucination you were reading. The agitators are apparently Israeli spies sponsored by Americans and Hamas activists financed by Iranians on a joint mission to turn Egypt into a striptease club ruled by a Shiite theocracy.

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AP

President Barack Obama meets with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in the White House last September.

(updated below)

One of the most revealing journalistic genres is the effort by establishment media outlets to explain to their American audiences why Those Other Countries — usually in the Middle East — are so bad and awful and plagued by severe political and societal corruption (see here and here for examples).  This morning, The New York Times has a classic entry, as it unironically details how Egypt is a cesspool of oligarchical favoritism and self-dealing.  The article focuses on Ahmed Ezz, a close friend of Hosni Mubarak’s son who has exploited his political connections to corner much of the nation’s steel market, triggering growing resentment by the public.  Along the way, we learn several disturbing things about Egypt, including this:

For many years, Mr. Ezz has represented the intersection of money, politics and power . . . . Public resentment at the wealth acquired by the politically powerful helped propel the uprising already reshaping the contours of power along the Nile. . . . Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt has long functioned as a state where wealth bought political power and political power bought great wealth.

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UNITED NATIONS – Former U.S. President George W. Bush may have mostly vanished from the headlines since January 2009, but the alleged crimes committed by his administration are not forgotten.

The former US president’s visit would have been his first to Europe since his waterboarding disclosure in Decision Points. (Photograph: Anne McQuary/Bloomberg) On Monday, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) released the ‘Preliminary Bush Torture Indictment‘, a document outlining the core aspects of the case against Bush for torture, and his violations of the Convention Against Torture to which the United States is a signatory.

The move by the CCR, in conjunction with over 60 other human rights and legal advocacy groups, including the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), coincides with the ninth anniversary of the day Bush decided that “enemy combatants” were no longer entitled to the fundamental protections granted to every human being by the Geneva Conventions.

On Monday morning, two torture victims in Geneva had been planning to file criminal complaints against the former U.S. president, who was scheduled to arrive in Switzerland on Feb. 12 to speak at an event there.

Since Swiss law requires the presence of a torturer on Swiss soil before the investigation can proceed, rights activists say this would have been the perfect opportunity to hold Switzerland to its obligations as a signatory to the Convention Against Torture and send a strong message to the ex-president that he is not eligible for special exemption under the law, even as a former head of state.

Ultimately, Bush canceled his travel plans.

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