Peace and Justice Post

By William deB. Mills, opednews.com, June 9, 2011

The Arab Spring is heating up, Egypt is gingerly opening the Rafah Gate, Syria is in crisis, the Palestinians are gearing up for a fall U.N. victory. Meanwhile, Tel Aviv, in deep denial, is murdering civilian demonstrators in neighboring countries for approaching its borders, refusing to negotiate sincerely even with its West Bank clients, and searching for a way to continue its campaign of expansion and ethnic cleansing. Are the extremist leaders of Israel crazy enough to launch a regional war, using the specter of an eventual Iranian nuclear bomb as the excuse?

The recently retired chief of Mossad has just warned that they may be. This is a serious warning; Dagan has wrecked any hopes of a peaceful retirement as an Israeli hero he may have had; he has no doubt destroyed all his contacts with the Netanyahu regime, as well. He will be persona non grata in official Tel Aviv, a tough price for a man who managed all the state’s secrets. He is being pilloried in the halls of government and much of the nation’s media. But he has been supported by the other top Israeli spy chief (also recently retired and thus free to speak honestly to his country’s people). What do they know or suspect about the private calculations of the extremist (shall we, for simplicity, call them the “Israeli neo-con”???) faction whose bloody flag has brought it into power?

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Hedy Epstein is an 86-year-old US Boat to Gaza passenger whose parents died in the Holocaust. (Photo: marx21de)

Editor’s Note: Robert Naiman will be a passenger aboard the Audacity of Hope boat, which sets sail for Gaza this month. – ms/TO

According to The New York Times, a quarter of the passengers on the upcoming US Boat to Gaza are Jewish.

What does it mean that the US Boat to Gaza is a quarter Jewish? According to the noted American Jewish commentator Adam Sandler, a quarter Jewish is “not too shabby!” Maybe the US Boat to Gaza will be mentioned in Adam’s next Hanukkah song.

What does it mean that the US Boat to Gaza is a quarter Jewish? Maybe it means that the Israeli authorities will have some compunction about shooting up our boat. After all, isn’t the official story of Zionism all about making a “safe harbor” for Jews in Palestine? We’re not trying to make aliyah. We just want to visit. Should we be shot for trying to do so? Wouldn’t it be a mitzvah to let us pass unharmed?

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Syria in turmoil as resistance turns to insurrection

AFP/GETTY IMAGESSyrian protesters hold a national flag as they demonstrate in Hama, north of Damascus

Even more serious for Assad’s still-powerful supporters, there is growing evidence that individual Syrian soldiers are revolting against his forces. The whole edifice of Assad’s Alawi dictatorship is now in the gravest of danger.

In 1980, Assad’s father, Hafez, faced an armed uprising in the central city of Hama, which was put down by the Special Forces of Hafez’s brother Rifaat – who is currently living, for the benefit of war crimes investigators, in central London – at a cost of up to 20,000 lives. . . .

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Stephen Lendman, opednews.com, June 8, 2011

For months, courageous Bahrainis protested peacefully against the Al Khalifa monarchy’s repressive brutality, corruption, and discrimination, as well as unemployment, poverty, and other unaddressed social justice issues.

The response has been ruthless state terrorism against anyone challenging regime control, no matter how lawless, barbaric, and unresponsive to basic human rights and needs.

Since the mid-February uprising began, America’s media largely ignored it, especially extreme repression Washington supports. Complicit in helping a key ally, Bahrain is home to the Navy’s Fifth Fleet, strategically located in the heart of the Persian Gulf.

On June 6, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) highlighted the mistreatment of doctors and nurses, explaining their arrests, detentions, torture and upcoming military trials for doing their job.

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The International Defense Exhibition, otherwise known as IDEX, has been held bi-annually in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) since 1993. It is the largest defense expo in the Middle East and North Africa and one of the biggest in the world. But far from being a one-off, it highlights the UAE’s growing stature as a global arms buyer.

This year’s IDEX took place in the glistening Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre. Its high ceilings and massive rooms displayed a diverse array of high-tech weaponry against the backdrop of heavily illuminated signboards like the ones you see in the showrooms of luxury car dealerships. All the big Western defense corporations were there — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Dyncorp, Northrup Grumman, European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. — as well as Chinese companies, including China North. There were also a host of local companies including Arabian Aerospace, Abu Dhabi Ship Building Company, and the state-owned Mubadala. Like all of these events, it was a heavily male enterprise. The exhibitors wore suits. The visitors wore either the military uniform of the UAE or traditional Arab dress.

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The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA), which is an official organisation to monitor electronic media, has issued notices to four television channels, Geo News, Dawn News, News One and Dunya News, for being irresponsible and provoking anti-national sentiments among viewers by ‘over sensitizing’ events unnecessarily. These notices were issued after the incident of the terrorist attack on PNS Mehran, a naval base in Karachi, Sindh province, where terrorists, with the help of naval officers, entered the base and killed more than seven persons, destroyed sensitive installation equipment including aircraft and fought for 13 hours.

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Ignoring fate of 6000 Palestinian captives

Khalid Amayreh, MWC News, June 7, 2011

                               Gilad Shalit

Commenting on the latest French “initiative” for the resumption of the moribund peace process, the Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu sought to outsmart himself.

A visionless politician who thinks that political spin, hasbara and sound-bites can suffice as a main tool of leadership, Netanyahu demanded that Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic liberation movement, show good-will by releasing an Israeli occupation soldier taken prisoner in battle near Gaza a few years ago.

“I have made it clear to the French FM that Hamas must adopt the Quartet principles. If the claim that a new wind is blowing from Hamas, that could be proven by freeing Gilad Shalit,” the PM added, saying that if [Abbas] is on such good relations with Hamas, he could pressure Hamas to free Gilad.”

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Imperialism

US Latin Americanist Cold Warriors and their far-right allies in the region kicked off a propaganda campaign in May to influence Congress and US citizens against Venezuela and fellow ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas) countries. With declining attention being paid to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, neoconservatives and neoliberals want to turn our attention to rolling back social and economic advances in Latin America.

The campaign began with a Sunday, May 22, 2011, opinion piece in the Miami Herald penned by Reagan administration chief propagandist Otto Reich and continued with a Congressional briefing that he moderated on May 26. His premise in the Miami Herald article: “Dictatorships are being established in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua by an alliance of self-avowed ‘21st-century socialist’ leaders who utilize free elections to reach power and then set about destroying the very institutions of democracy that put them there.”

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By Baseer Naweed

After the killing of Professor Saba Dashtyari, a renowned scholar of Balochistan, a question commonly asked by the people is: What is the latest score in Balochistan? The killings, whether extrajudicial or through target killings, have become so common that not one day passes when one or two bullet riddled bodies are not found dumped on the roads. The Baloch nationalist and political activists claim that the state intelligence agencies abducted the victims and held them for some days incommunicado and then killed them. Killing the abductees after interrogation is the easiest method for law enforcement agencies, the military, Frontier Corps and invisible soldiers of intelligence agencies, to destroy all evidence of such acts against humanity. On the other hand the government and law enforcement agencies never produce a clear statement or try to deny these claims, they prefer to keep silent to enforce the idea that this is their ruthless way of dealing with persons they see as a threat. It would also appear that the provincial government of Balochistan has been instructed by these ‘forces’, to keep their mouths shut.

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Palestinian security: hardline Jewish settlers spray anti-Arab slogans on mosque walls in occupied West Bank.

Middle East Online, June 7, 2011

The persecution continues

RAMALLAH, West Bank – Vandals tried to set fire to a mosque in the northern West Bank, causing damage to the inside, Palestinian security sources said on Tuesday, blaming Jewish settlers.

The attackers set fire to a number of tyres inside the mosque in al-Mughayyir village, some 20 kilometres (12 miles) northeast of Ramallah, which damaged prayer mats inside the building.

They also spraypainted “Alei Ayin” on the walls, which is the name of a nearby settlement outpost demolished by Israeli police last week, sparking fierce clashes with the settlers.

They also sprayed anti-Arab slogans on the walls, the soures said.

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