Peace and Justice Post

By Ray McGovern (about the author),  OpEdNews, March 28, 2011

“Let me be clear,” President Barack Obama is fond of saying. And his desire was on full display two years ago when he announced a “comprehensive, new strategy” for the war in Afghanistan — but only in the rhetoric.

Obama laced his speech of March 27, 2009, with nine uses of the words “clear” or “clearly,” but his protestations about clarity looked more like a smokescreen to obscure the image of him lurching naively into a Vietnam-style quagmire.

After his first “clearly” and just before the first “let me be clear,” Obama posed two rhetorical questions to which he promised a clear answer:

“What is our purpose in Afghanistan? … Why do our men and women still fight and die there? The [American people] deserve a straightforward answer.”

But we didn’t get one. As a substitute for explanation, we got alliteration — “a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country.”

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Hosni Mubarak was only the visible tip of an iceberg of corruption – the state he created in his image remains

Amira Nowair, The Guardian, March 29, 2011

Hosni Mubarak left power in Egypt following the popular uprising. Photograph: Charles Dharapak/AP

Socialist Worker, March 28, 2011

A U.S. soldier posing with an Afghan civilian murdered by members of his unit

PHOTOS OF soldiers from the 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Army infantry division, posing with the dead and mutilated bodies of three Afghan civilians have shocked the world.

Released in the March 21 issue of the German magazine Der Spiegel, only three of the photos have so far been made public, despite the magazine’s claim to have more than 4,000 images and videos taken by the “kill team,” as the group called itself, in its possession.

In the pictures, soldiers pose gleefully with dead Afghan civilians who have been stripped naked and bound by the wrists, and who display signs of torture.

But while the U.S. military is attempting to claim the atrocities were carried out by a few “bad apples,” the responsibility for these crimes rests not only with the soldiers themselves, but with the architects of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq–all the way up to the president.

The U.S. military has reportedly had the images in question since May 2010. Officials at the Lewis McChord Criminal Investigation Division reportedly attempted to keep the photos under a tight lid, and Der Speigel has not said how it obtained the images.

Twelve soldiers from the “kill team” platoon were charged in connection with the murder of the unarmed civilians, and five face murder charges. All together, the soldiers were charged with 76 crimes.

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The Naxal Problem

I

I must confess to be rather serenly unsurprised by the Wikileaks pertaining to India.

This for the reason that for the most part in everything we have seen revealed thus far, the US embassy cables emphatically confirm all the main coordinates of  the critique that the Indian Left has been voicing through the life of the two UPA regimes (2004 to date).  Be it the shifts in India’s foreign policy, or defence and security related issues, or the broad preferences of economic doctrine,  at every point the criticisms voiced by the Left can be now seen to have been not Pavlovian reflexes shorn of content but indeed borne out everywhere as facts.  And official denials just pathetic and disingenuous refusals of the truth.

The Iran vote in the IAEA in September, 2005, the plethora of Defence-related purchase  and the many US dictated stipulations accompanying such purchase, or the close embrace of the US and Israeli security agencies and apparatuses, the sharing of Intelligence and access given to  spooky outfits to innermost Indian  sanctorums, or Cabinet reshuffles (including the shameful ouster of Mani Shankar Aiyar from the Petroleum ministry and his substitution by the US- corporate friendly Murli Deoria) effected by Manmohan Singh, the Wikileaks lay out a scenario of capitulation that the Left has been repeatedly  underscoring.

Here is what the cables gloss on some of these episodes:

on the Iran vote:  “the most important signal so far of the UPA’s commitment to building a stronger US-India relationship”;

same with respect to coordinating policy towards Nepal, Srilanka, Bangladesh;

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By Haroon Siddiqui Editorial Page, thestar.com, March 27, 2011

When we allow ourselves to be pushed into thinking about a people and a region as a monolith, sans diversity and differences, we view them only in stark stereotypes. We allow racist notions to become respectable.

Thus “the Arab street,” a contemptuous phrase the media dare not use for public opinion elsewhere. There is no “Canadian street.” No “American street.” No “British street.” No “French street.” But Arab public opinion, emanating in the street — emotional and irrational — is to be dismissed.

Similarly, we are told that all Arabs/Muslims are hard-wired to mistreat women. Like blacks being prone to violence and Catholics to abusing boys.

And in the middle of this glorious Arab spring, we are instructed to keep our enthusiasm in check and ponder instead that democracy may not be part of the Arab DNA.

These crude formulations do serve a purpose. They keep the focus of Arab troubles exclusively on Arabs, as though we have had no part in the mess.

For decades, Arabs have been denied democracy mostly by client regimes of the United States and Europe that financed and trained the dictators’ security set-ups. The mandate of these dreaded outfits has been to keep “the street” quiet, lest it resonate with what we did not want to hear.

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The uprisings in the Middle East, the unrest that is tearing apart nations such as the Ivory Coast, the bubbling discontent in Greece, Ireland and Britain and the labor disputes in states such as Wisconsin and Ohio presage the collapse of globalization. They presage a world where vital resources, including food and water, jobs and security, are becoming scarcer and harder to obtain. They presage growing misery for hundreds of millions of people who find themselves trapped in failed states, suffering escalating violence and crippling poverty. They presage increasingly draconian controls and force—take a look at what is being done to Pfc. Bradley Manning—used to protect the corporate elite who are orchestrating our demise. Demonstrators carry an effigy of Ronald McDonald. (AP / Jacques Brinon)

We must embrace, and embrace rapidly, a radical new ethic of simplicity and rigorous protection of our ecosystem—especially the climate—or we will all be holding on to life by our fingertips. We must rebuild radical socialist movements that demand that the resources of the state and the nation provide for the welfare of all citizens and the heavy hand of state power be employed to prohibit the plunder by the corporate power elite. We must view the corporate capitalists who have seized control of our money, our food, our energy, our education, our press, our health care system and our governance as mortal enemies to be vanquished.

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by Prof. Marjorie Cohn
Global Research, March 25, 2011
American Constitution Society Book Talk

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is facing court-martial for leaking military reports and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, is being held in solitary confinement in Quantico brig in Virginia. Each night, he is forced to strip naked and sleep in a gown made of coarse material. He has been made to stand naked in the morning as other inmates walked by and looked. As journalist Lance Tapley documents in his chapter on torture in the supermax prisons in The United States and Torture, solitary confinement can lead to hallucinations and suicide; it is considered to be torture. Manning’s forced nudity amounts to humiliating and degrading treatment, in violation of U.S. and international law.

Nevertheless, President Barack Obama defended Manning’s treatment, saying, “I’ve actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures . . . are appropriate. They assured me they are.” Obama’s deference is reminiscent of President George W. Bush, who asked “the most senior legal officers in the U.S. government” to review the interrogation techniques. “They assured me they did not constitute torture,” Bush said.

The order for Manning’s nudity apparently followed what he described as a sarcastic comment he made to guards after their repeated harassment of him regarding how he was to salute them. Manning said that if he were intent on strangling himself, he could use his underwear or flip-flops.

“In my 40 years of hospital psychiatric practice, I’ve never heard of something like this,” said Dr. Steven Sharfstein, a former president of the American Psychiatric Association. “In some very unusual circumstances, when people are intensely suicidal, you might put them in a hospital gown. … But it’s very, very unusual to be in that kind of suicide watch for this long a period of time.”

Sharfstein also was concerned that military officials appeared to defy the recommendations of mental health professionals. “He’s been examined by psychiatrists who said he’s not suicidal. … They are making medical judgments in the face of medical evaluations to the contrary,” Sharfstein noted.

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Reports of many killed as marchers take to streets, plus confrontations in Jordan, Yemen and Bahrain

Katherine Marsh in Damascus, Tom Finn in Sana’a and Martin Chulov in Beirut

The Guardian, March 26, 2011

Protesters shout anti-government slogans after Friday prayers at Omayyad mosque, in Damascus, Syria. Photograph: Muzaffar Salman/AP

By Musa Hattar, uruknet.info, March 25, 2011

AMMAN (AFP) — More than 100 people were injured Friday as pro-reform protesters and government supporters clashed in Amman, prompting police to use water cannons to disperse them.

Anti-riot police also broke up a protest camp for students and arrested several of them, a security official told AFP.

“There are more than 100 people injured, including policemen. Two of the injured are in critical condition,” a medical source at the scene said.

An AFP journalist at the scene said police used water cannons to break up clashes between the students protesting to demand reforms and government supporters.

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