Peace and Justice Post

by Aizaz Mohmand, CommonDreams.org, April 24, 2011

Reuters

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – – The main supply route for NATO troops in Afghanistan was temporarily closed on Sunday after thousands of people blocked a key highway in Pakistan to protest against U.S. drone strikes, officials said.

Pakistani cricket legend-turned politician Imran Khan addresses the crowd during a rally against the U.S. drone strikes in Pakistani tribal areas, Saturday, April 23, 2011, in Peshawar, Pakistan. Pakistan stopped NATO supplies from traveling to Afghanistan on Saturday as thousands of protesters rallied on the main road leading to the border, demanding U.S. Washington stop firing missiles inside the country. (AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad) The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul, however, said the two-day blockade would have no impact on the alliance’s operations in Afghanistan.

“Coordination with Pakistani government officials has been conducted and we understand the government will maintain security,” an ISAF spokesman said. “There is no impact on ISAF sustainment.”

The routes through Pakistan bring in 40 percent of supplies for NATO forces in Afghanistan, according to the United States Transportation Command. Of the remainder, 40 percent come through Afghanistan’s neighbors in the north and 20 percent by air.

The call for blocking the supply line came from cricket-turn-politician Imran Khan after U.S. officials rejected Pakistan’s demand for sharp cuts in drone strikes in its tribal regions where al Qaeda and Taliban militants are based.

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By the Rev. Howard Bess,  Consortimum News, April 23, 2011

Editor’s Note: Because Western civilization embraced Christianity as the ruling religion, the teachings of Jesus lost much of their insurrectionist, pacifistic and egalitarian origins. In effect, Christianity was bent to the interests of kings, politicians, generals and the rich.

Similarly, the story of Jesus’s fateful last week in Jerusalem has been reshaped to minimize perhaps its central event, his overturning of the money tables at the temple, a direct challenge to the merging of religious and political power of his day, as the Rev. Howard Bess recounts in this guest essay:

 Christians have special celebrations for the key events of Holy Week, but they often overlook one of the most important.

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Palm Sunday celebrates the entry of Jesus into the city of Jerusalem. Maunday Thursday is a solemn replay of his last meal with his disciples. Good Friday takes us through his mock trial and his death of horror on a Roman Cross. Easter is the Christians’ triumphant celebration of Jesus’s resurrection from the dead.

But there is a missing piece. The incident that gives sense to the week’s climactic events is Jesus’s overturning of the money tables at the temple.

Tradition says that the incident was a ceremonial cleansing of the temple of its commercial enterprises because those in charge of the temple had turned a house of worship into a commercial enterprise.

Jesus disrupted the commercial operation by upsetting the tables where the temple lackeys sold required animals for sacrifice.

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By Anthony Dimaggio, ZNet,  April 24, 2011

Despite a 2008 U.S.-Iraqi agreement requiring a total withdrawal from Iraq by the end of 2011, U.S. Admiral and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen is now “warning” Iraqi leaders that they only have a few weeks to decide if they want troops to remain in the country past the formal withdrawal date.  In recent weeks, Democrats and Republicans have also recently taken up “debate” over Obama’s alleged plan for “withdrawal” from Afghanistan.  U.S. military planners love to frame their violent occupations as necessary “humanitarian” interventions, aimed at “saving” the poor and downtrodden of the third world.  These claims have always been disingenuous, and the gravity of recent evidence suggests that efforts to entertain the humanitarian myth amount to little more than propaganda.   

 Take for example, Iraq and Afghanistan.  Both occupations were vehemently defended by liberal and conservative political officials, as well as their counterparts in the mass media under the guise of pure intentions and selfless sacrifice.  Both occupations are opposed by the majority of Americans, Afghans and Iraqis on the grounds that the destruction they’ve caused leave countries worse off than if the U.S. had simply not intervened in the first place. 

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Socialist Worker, April 21, 2011,

THE SYRIAN Intifada has simmered and effervesced intermittently for decades. On March 12 of this year, the revolutionary mood prevalent in the Middle East stirred the town of Qamishli to sedition anew.

Qamishli is the largest town in the Northern Hassake province of Syria. Many non-Arab inhabitants of that region, like Sunni Kurds and native Christian Assyrians, regard it as their communities’ secret capital. The city is renowned for throwing parades around Christmas time, and celebrating Newroz, a Kurdish spring festival, every year in March.

In March 2004, during a soccer match, hooligans started raising Kurdish flags and hailing U.S. President George W. Bush–who is perceived as liberator of the Kurds in neighboring Iraq. This triggered riots that gained momentum outside the stadium and led to what became known as the Qamishli Massacre. Thirty Kurds were killed by the security services.

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Winners of Israel’s highest honour call for end of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Middle East Online, April 4, 2011 Among the prominent signatories is painter and sculptor Danny Karavan

JERUSALEM – A group of 17 winners of the prestigious Israel Prize are calling for the creation of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, according to a copy of a petition on Wednesday.

The laureates plan to sign the petition, also inked by several dozen other Israeli artists and intellectuals, on Thursday, in a symbolic ceremony in front of the building where the state of Israel was proclaimed on May 14, 1948.

Among the petition’s prominent signatories are Menachem Yaari, the former president of Israel Academy of Sciences, Shulamit Aloni, the founder of the leftist Meretz party and Danny Karavan, a painter and sculptor.

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By Mac McKinney, OpEdNews, April 23, 2011

Once you have to start mass-murdering your citizens to crush dissension, that is the beginning of the end. The emotions that led to mass protest within the body politic only become more inflamed with each death, and even if the State can drive everyone into stony silence, strong emotions remain, repressed and festering, someday to again erupt, be that in a number of days, weeks, months or years.

The Syrian government has descended into the same maelstrom of violent State repression by authoritarian regimes that we have seen engulfing Yemen, Bahrain and, of course Libya. It remains to be seen how horrific the violence will become, and whether it will force the nationwide Syrian protest movement to take up armed struggle. Right now, however, things are looking more polarized than ever, as the regional pro-democracy movement manifest in Syria locks horns with yet another Ancien Régime in the Middle East, as shown in this al Jazeera photo and the following videos:

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The ongoing crisis at the Fukushima No.1 Nuclear Power Plant has sharply raised concerns regarding the Japanese nuclear power policy that promoted the construction of nuclear power plants with a fundamental lack of concern for safety measures. Since the beginning of the massive development of nuclear power plants, the Japanese Communist Party has called on all successive governments to make a drastic change in the atomic energy administration and has opposed additional construction plans together with concerned citizens. The JCP’s consistent stance is crucial for Japan to take appropriate measures following the latest nuclear accident as well as to prevent future accidents at nuclear power plants.

Expose “safety myth”

The biggest issue of Japan’s nuclear power administration is that it is based on the “safety myth,” a lie that instills the belief that serious accidents emitting a vast amount of radiation are unlikely to occur. No other country in the world has clung to this myth so blindly and built so many nuclear power plants in earthquake zones.

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The protest movement in Syria delivered on a promised record turnout on Friday, with massive rallies reported in virtually every city nationwide. The regime’s security forces were also out in force, however, shooting massive numbers of demonstrators.

A very preliminary count has at least 88 protesters killed and several hundred others wounded. The toll is almost certain to rise in what has been dubbed by opposition members the “Good Friday Massacre.”

Syria’s state media was largely mum on the protests, but accused “armed groups” (the regime’s chosen term for demonstrators) of injuring firemen in an attack in Damascus. Interestingly for an “armed” group, the attackers were said to have thrown stones at the firemen. They also accused al-Jazeera of “distorting facts” in covering the protests, saying it amounted to “incitement.”

The protesters were by far the most widespread Syria has seen, and the death toll was likewise much larger than in previous days. Each Friday has seen a larger rally than the last, with a tiny demonstration along the Jordan border five weeks ago swelling to a massive rebellion calling for regime change.

Leaders of the protest movement issued a statement today demanding the abolition of the Ba’ath Party’s system of single party rule in favor of full democracy. They also demanded that political prisoners be released and the existing security state replaced.

The purpose for which Afghanistan was invaded — to secure safe passage for a gas and oil pipeline from Central Asia and lay hands on the rich mineral deposits of Afghanistan — has not been achieved so far. Yet there is growing anxiety among ordinary Americans over the extended military mission that has nearly bankrupted America. Unemployment is high, the debt is rising and American cities are crumbling while the US pours billions of dollars into a war that appears to have no end or any identifiable benchmarks by which to measure progress. US officials talk optimistically about training Afghan police and army but the targets they have set have not been met so far.

Even as American officials optimistically talk about starting troop withdrawal from Afghanistan according to schedule in July, news about their atrocities continue to send shock waves globally. Recent reports and photos of torture and mutilation of Afghan civilians make Abu Ghraib look like a mild affair. These crimes are compounded by denials that the Americans have done or are capable of doing anything wrong since these are contrary to American “standards and values.” Their victims know better.

This past winter, American troops murdered even more Afghan civilians than in previous years. And true to form, they routinely claim the attacks were aimed at militants and that no civilians were killed . . .

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by Alex Kane, uruknet.info, April 23, 2011

Source: Mondoweiss ,

It was a shocking event in a twenty-two day assault filled with them:  the Israeli military shelled a United Nations compound in Gaza City January 15, where humanitarian aid like fuel and water pumping stations were stationed as well as hundreds of Palestinians displaced by the Israeli bombardment.  John Ging, the Gaza Director of Operations of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) described the scene on Democracy Now! This morning, there were three rounds of white phosphorus which landed in our compound in Gaza. That set ablaze the main warehouse and the big workshop we have there for vehicles. At the time, there were 700, also, people displaced from the fighting. There were full fuel tankers there. The Israeli army have been given all the coordinates of all our facilities, including this one. They also knew that there were fuel tankers laden with fuel in the compound, and they would have known that there were hundreds of people who had taken refuge. Continues