Peace and Justice Post

By M K Bhadrakumar, Asia Times, April 19, 2011

Twice during the past week senior United States officials have let it be known that the Barack Obama administration has chosen to adopt a highly selective approach to the ferment in the Middle East.

The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton couched the message in appropriate diplomatic idiom in Washington last Tuesday in a speech at a gala dinner celebrating the US-Islamic World Forum before an audience of dignitaries from the Middle East includingthe foreign ministers of Qatar and Jordan and the secretary-general of the Organization of Islamic Conference.

Clinton acknowledged that the ”long Arab winter has begun to thaw” and after many decades, a ”real opportunity for lasting change” has appeared before the Arab people. It, in turn, raises ”significant questions” but it is not for the US to provide all the answers. ”In fact, here in Washington we’re struggling to thrash out answers to our own difficult political and economic questions,” she said.

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In 2007, Netanyahu said he would agree to join Ehud Olmert’s government if Israel attacked Iran, a WikiLeaks document shows.

By Ofer Aderet and Yossi Melman, Haaretz, April 21, 2011

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed willingness to join Ehud Olmert’s government in 2007 if Israel initiated an attack on Iran, a document from the Israeli WikiLeaks collection has revealed.

On July 20, 2007, Marc J. Sievers, the political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, sent a telegram to the State Department in Washington on the matter. The telegram was classified “Confidential,” the level between “Unclassified” and “Secret.”

	Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu, March 31, 2009.
	Photo by: AP

Sievers’ message dealt with the formation of a new Israeli government and was written on the eve of the release of the state comptroller’s report on the Second Lebanon War, a year after it started. Ehud Olmert was still prime minister and headed the Kadima party. The Labor Party was his senior partner in the ruling coalition. Two days before Sievers sent his message, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, the head of Labor, resigned as defense minister and deputy prime minister.

Part of the telegram was devoted to the possibility of the establishment of a national unity government, in which the Likud Party would join Kadima, with Olmert as prime minister.

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The Times of India, April 19, 2011

“There is a perception that there is a lot of money going to Pakistan,” Shaikh told the Woodrow Wilson Center policy think-tank.

“It is largely a myth that Pakistan is a beneficiary of tens of billions of dollars. The truth is that in the Kerry-Lugar-Berman arrangement this year we have not even received $300 million,” he added.

Pakistan is dependent on foreign aid and plagued by political instability and violence. Massive floods last year, the worst natural disaster the country has ever seen, affected three million people, destroyed crops and swept away roads and bridges, causing over $10 billion in damage and wiping out about 2 percentage points of gross domestic product.

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The Egyptian junta has released a report detailing the violent crackdown against protesters in February, leading up to the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak and his replacement with the current interim military government. The report says 846 civilians were killed in the crackdowns.

The report said that snipers and police shot protesters with live ammunition, and a disproportionate number were shot in the eyes. Hundreds of protesters also survived but lost their sight in the attacks.

Egyptian Judge Omar Marwan said President Mubarak was definitely complicit in the attacks, explaining that the use of live fire on protesters would’ve required his direct permission. Either that permission was given or Mubarak simply chose not to hold anyone accountable, but the attacks continued for days.

Mubarak was arrested late last week as protesters continued to demand he be held accountable for his crimes. The president’s sons were also arrested and are accused of being involved in efforts to syphon off government funds into their family’s personal accounts.

EU, US Leaders Should Publicly Condemn Human Rights Violations

(Munich) – Saudi authorities have arrested over 160 peaceful dissidents in violation of international human rights law since February 2011, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch urged the interior minister, Prince Nayef bin Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa’ud, to order the immediate release of peaceful dissidents, including Nadhir al-Majid, a writer and teacher arrested on April 17.

Allies of Saudi Arabia have not publicly protested these serious and systematic violations. The European Union foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, said on April 18 that she had been “very pleased” with her two-day visit to Riyadh and made no public comments about the political prisoners. Neither Tom Donilon, the US national security adviser who visited Riyadh on April 13, nor Robert Gates, US defense secretary who visited on April 6, publicly commented on the kingdom’s human rights violations.

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brianjmatis/Flickr

Why a janitor ends up with a higher tax rate than a millionaire, and seven more charts that show how the richest Americans beat the IRS.

— By Dave Gilson, Plutocracy Now, April 18, 2011

“We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes,” billionaire hotelier Leona Helmsley famously (and allegedly) sniffed. She wasn’t entirely correct: The superrich do still pay taxes. The wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers pay 32 percent of all income tax collected by the federal government.

But the superrich don’t pay as much as they used to—and thanks to a combination of tax cuts and preferential tax policies, their tax obligations can be less demanding than the so-called little people’s. In fact, the very wealthiest Americans’ tax burden has been steadily dropping for years, even as they’ve enjoyed astounding income growth not seen by the vast majority of Americans.

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By Steven Thomma, McClatchy Newspapers, April 18, 2011

WASHINGTON — He ran as the anti-Bush.

Silver-tongued, not tongue-tied. A team player on the world stage, not a lone cowboy. A man who’d put a stop to reckless Bush policies at home and abroad. In short, Barack Obama represented Change.

Well, that was then. Now, on one major policy after another, President Barack Obama seems to be morphing into George W. Bush.

On the nation’s finances, the man who once ripped Bush as a failed leader for seeking to raise the nation’s debt ceiling now wants to do it himself.

On terrorism, he criticized Bush for sending suspected terrorists to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and denying them access to U.S. civilian courts. Now he says he’ll do the same.

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Khaleej Times, April 19, 2011

(AFP)

While there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Israel’s blockade means there is extensive poverty, endemic unemployment and that 80 percent of Gazans are dependent on aid handouts, said UNICEF spokeswoman Catherine Weibel.

Children under 18, around half the estimated 1.5 million population of the territory controlled by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, are the most affected, the United Nations children’s agency spokeswoman told journalists.

While 90 percent of Gazan children are educated, largely thanks to UNICEF and UN Relief and Works Agency schools, poverty still obliges many to work.

They work often in “danger zones” such as smuggling tunnels running under the border from Egypt aimed at defying the Israeli blockade.

To keep working in the tunnels, which could collapse, be bombed or gassed, many youths take Tramadol painkillers, Weibel said.

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By Bill Van Auken, wsws.org, 19 April 2011

A series of bombings have signaled the beginning of a spring offensive by the Afghan resistance forces, while inflicting the greatest single-day casualties on US-led occupation forces in nearly a year.

Two separate attacks last Saturday claimed the lives of eight NATO soldiers, the deadliest day for the occupation since June of last year.

The bloodiest attack was at a desert base near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. A man wearing the uniform of the Afghan army walked into a room where about 40 US and Afghan troops were meeting and detonated an explosive vest he was wearing. Five US soldiers were killed together with four Afghan troops and an interpreter. A number of others were wounded.

A spokesman for the Taliban said that the attacker was a soldier who had been in contact with the armed resistance for a “long time” and had been assigned to the base where the bombing took place about a month ago.

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CommonDreams.org, April 19, 2011

NEW YORK – The US worked behind the scenes to help Israel contain United Nations probes into possible war crimes committed during the 2008/’09 Gaza war, Foreign Policy reported today.

According to one cable, US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice (right) spoke with UN chief Ban Ki-moon three times on May 4, 2009 to urge him to remove recommendations for a wider investigation from a board of inquiry report into attacks on UN sites in Gaza. The online foreign affairs magazine cited exclusive WikiLeaks cables, detailing moves by Washington’s UN ambassador Susan Rice to prevent a more thorough UN investigation of alleged abuses in the conflict.

Some 1400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed during the three-week Israeli offensive in December 2008 and January 2009, which was aimed at halting Palestinian rocket attacks.

According to one cable, Rice spoke with UN chief Ban Ki-moon three times on May 4, 2009 to urge him to remove recommendations for a wider investigation from a board of inquiry report into attacks on UN sites in Gaza.

Rice “underscored the importance of having a strong cover letter that made clear that no further action was needed and would close out this issue,” the US diplomatic cable said.

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