Peace and Justice Post

Saeed Kamali Dehghan, The Guardian, April 18, 2011

Nobel peace prize laureate Shirin Ebadi wrote to the UN commissioner for human rights over the treatment of the Sunni minority in Iran. Photograph: Caren Firouz /Reuters

At least 12 people who are believed to belong to Iran‘s Sunni minority have been killed in clashes between security forces and anti-government protesters in the south-western city of Ahwaz since Friday.

On Monday, Shirin Ebadi, Iran’s Nobel peace prize laureate, wrote a letter to the UN high commissioner for human rights, in which she said “more than 12” Sunni protesters had been killed in Iran’s oil-rich province of Khuzestan, home to many Arabic-speaking Sunni Iranians.

According to Ebadi, hundreds of people in Ahwaz had gathered for a peaceful demonstration against the Islamic regime’s discrimination towards its Sunni minority.

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Leaked report talks of ‘credible allegations’ against troops

By Andrew Buncombe, Asia Correspondent, The Independent, Apr 17, 2011

afp/getty imagesSri Lankan Tamils captured by government forces and held in a camp for displaced people in the northern district of Vavuniya in 2009. Some were not allowed home for a year

By Lawrence Davidson, Consortium News, April 17, 2011

Editor’s Note: Today’s neoconservative dominance of Official Washington has further pushed outside the realm of acceptable debate any evenhanded discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. There is deep-seated fear that criticism of Israel will bring accusations of anti-Semitism.

Even selective criticism of some Likud policies by J Street, a liberal Jewish organization, recently prompted retribution from Israel, a Knesset hearing decrying J Street as “anti-Israel.” It is in that context of intolerance that Lawrence Davidson assesses a congressional hearing:

Lobbification is a word I have just coined for the corruptive process that bends politicians to the will of special interests – that is to the will of lobbies.

The result of lobbification can be seen in the stilted and fawning behavior ofthe lobbified political brain. Politicians with lobbified brains become the obedient instruments of the lobbies which have captured their political souls. Below are a few examples of the results of lobbification.

The majority of the politicians who sit on the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee are victims of lobbification. Among the major lobbies that have, over the decades, carried out this corrupting process are the Zionist organizations in their various Jewish and Christian manifestations.

In their present state, the lobbified minds of these committee members, so influential in the foreign policy formulation process of our country, are utterly incapable of questioning, much less defying, the hypnotic power of either American Zionists or the Israelis.

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And Why They Must Be Debunked

Here are the Three Sacred Commandments for Americans who shape the public conversation on Israel:

1. For politicians, especially at the federal level: As soon as you say the word “Israel,” you must also say the word “security” and promise that the United States will always, always, always be committed to Israel’s security. If you occasionally label an action by the Israeli government “unhelpful,” you must immediately reaffirm the eternal U.S. commitment to Israel’s security.

2. For TV talking heads and op-ed pundits: If you criticize any policies or actions of the Israeli government, you must immediately add that Israel does, of course, have very real and serious security needs that have to be addressed.

3. For journalists covering the Israel-Palestine conflict for major American news outlets: You must live in Jewish Jerusalem or in Tel Aviv and take only occasional day trips into the Occupied Territories. So your reporting must inevitably be slanted toward the perspective of the Jews you live among. And you must indicate in every report that Jewish Israeli life is dominated by anxiety about security.

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Socialist Unity, April 17, 2011

Cuba staged a massive military parade on Saturday to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1961 defeat of CIA-backed exiles at the Bay of Pigs.

President Raul Castro hosted the parade, which also marked 50 years since his brother Fidel proclaimed the socialist character of the Cuban revolution.

Raul Castro, the former head of Cuba’s armed forces before taking over the presidency from his brother Fidel, donned military fatigues for the occasion. He looked on with other dignitaries from a dais, waving and saluting the troops. There was no sign of Fidel Castro.

The parade opened with a brief speech by Maydel Gomez, president of the Federation of University Students, who said “young people will not fail to continue to support the socialist revolution.”

The first part of the parade was a “symbolic journey” throughout the Cuban military history, including a “Mambi” cavalry with 128 riders and a replica of the Granma yacht in which Fidel Castro and his followers arrived in Cuba in 1956.

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De 7000 grådige prinsers land

Prinsene i Saudi-Arabia skjelver for at opprøret skal ramme dem. De har stjålet en million oljefat daglig, røvet og ødslet vekk milliarder av dollar, viser Wikileaks-notater.

56 år gamle prins Al-Walid bin Talal, hans kone og to barn har 320 rom i sitt sandfargede palass av italiensk marmor i Riyadh. I tillegg kommer tre innendørs svømmebasseng, tennisbane, 250 TV-er, kinosal og fem kjøkken som kan lage middag til 2000 gjester. I garasjen står prinsens 200 biler, deriblant to Rolls-Royce Phantom, flere Infinti FX45, Hummer H-1, en håndfull Ferrarier og en diamantbelagt Mercedes-Benz SL 600.

Jordens rikeste araber ble verdenskjent da han betalte comebacket til Michael Jackson i 1996. Med en formue på 107 milliarder kroner er han på 26. plass på listen over verdens velstående. «Self made», ifølge Forbes og han selv.

I sitt flyvende palass – en luksuriøst innredet Airbus A321 til 1,7 milliarder kroner – flyr prinsen mellom London, New York, Paris, Singapore og Riyadh. Samtidig skriver han leserinnlegg i New York Times og etterlyser reformer for kvinnene og de fattige. Han er en sjeik etter Vestens smak. De mektige religiøse imamene i landet er ikke like begeistret. De har fordømt ham fordi han lar sin vakre kone kjøre bil i utlandet, noe som er forbudt i Saudi-Arabia. Den egenrådige prinsen har også støttet president Nicolas Sarkozys forbud mot heldekkende hodeplagg på offentlige steder.

Fortsetter >>

By Bill Van Auken, wsws.org, 16 April 2011

Hundreds protested in Saudi Arabia Friday demanding an end to the Saudi occupation of Bahrain and the release of the dictatorial kingdom’s political prisoners.

It was the second day of mass protests, which have been concentrated in the predominantly Shiite eastern region of the country, the center of Saudi Arabia’s oilfields and refineries.

Friday’s demonstrations also saw protesters rally outside the interior ministry in Riyadh in support of individuals they referred to as the “forgotten political prisoners,” who in some cases have been imprisoned for as long as 16 years without charges or trials for daring to demand political rights.

The larger demonstrations took place in the eastern city of Qatif and nearby villages, where demonstrators marched through the streets carrying banners and candles to denounce the Saudi military’s intervention in neighboring Bahrain and to demand the release of over 100 people, including children, who have been arrested in the area during protests over the last month.

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by Jeremy R. Hammond, Foreign Policy Journal, April 17, 2011

The U.S. Senate on April 14 passed a resolution “calling on the United Nations to rescind the Goldstone report”, the popular name for the report of a U.N. fact-finding mission chaired by Richard Goldstone that was charged with investigating Israel’s full-scale military assault on the Gaza Strip in 2008-09, code-named “Operation Cast Lead”.

The report of the fact-finding mission concluded that there was evidence that both Israel and the Palestinian authority in Gaza, Hamas, committed war crimes during the course of the assault.

S.RES.138 states that “Justice Richard Goldstone publicly retracted the central claims of the report he authored in an op-ed in The Washington Post on April 2, 2011″ and “also conceded that the number of civilian casualties was far smaller than the report alleged”.

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In the capital Riyadh, the protesters gathered outside the interior ministry and urged Saudi authorities to release what they called “forgotten political prisoners” who have been detained for demanding reforms in their country, a Press TV correspondent reported.

Protesters say prisoners are being held unjustly and without trial, some for as long as 16 years.

In the eastern city of Qatif, protesters poured into the streets, condemning Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in Bahrain.

Expressing solidarity with anti-government protesters in Bahrain, the Saudis urged the immediate withdrawal of the Kingdom’s troops from the neighboring country.

Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in Bahrain comes despite the convention of the [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council, which bans any interference in the regional countries’ domestic affairs.

They also called for the release of political prisoners and an end to human rights violations in the country.

Saudi Arabia’s oil-producing east has been the scene of anti-government protests over the past weeks.

According to a Saudi-based human rights group, Saudi authorities have arrested one hundred protesters for taking part or organizing anti-government demonstrations.

Human Rights First Society (HRFS) also revealed that some of the detainees were subject to torture both physically and mentally.

In Saudi Arabia, protest rallies and any public displays of dissent are forbidden and are considered illegal. Senior Wahhabi clerics in the kingdom have also censured opposition demonstrations as “un-Islamic.”

HM/MMN