Peace and Justice Post

by Richard Falk, Foreign Policy Journal, June 3, 2011

It is expected that at the end of June, Freedom Flotilla 2 will set sail for Gaza carrying various forms of humanitarian aid, including medical, educational, and construction materials. This second flotilla will consist of 15 ships, including the Mavi Marmara sailing from Istanbul, but also vessels departing from several European countries, and carrying as many as 1,500 humanitarian activists as passengers. If these plans are carried out, as seems likely, it means that the second flotilla will be about double the size of the first that was so violently and unlawfully intercepted by Israeli commandos in international waters on May 31, 2010, resulting in nine deaths on the Turkish lead ship.

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Another security official confirmed the strike and casualties but said the “identities of those killed in the attack were not immediately known.” – File Photo by Reuters

One of the strikes took place in Ghwakhwa area, 10 kilometres west of Wana, the main town of South Waziristan.

“A US drone fired three missiles on a militant compound, killing five rebels,” a senior security official in the area told AFP.

Another security official confirmed the strike and casualties but said the “identities of those killed in the attack were not immediately known”.

Friday’s attack was the ninth to be reported in Pakistan’s tribal areas, close to the Afghan border, since US commandos killed Osama bin Laden in a raid in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad on May 2.

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Stephen Lendman, MWC News, June 3, 2011

On March 7, Palestinian Prisoners Society head Qadura Fares presented a paper to the UN International Meeting on the Question of Palestine, addressing the plight of political prisoners in Israeli prisons and detention facilities, saying:

Palestine “has been under criminal occupation for 44 years. During that time, (Israel) committed the worst crimes against humanity, violating every international instrument. The occupier has killed tens of thousands of our struggling people, most of them defenseless civilians. There have been over 800,000 instances of imprisonment. Tens of thousands of people have been injured,” 30% left with permanent disabilities.

Moreover, thousands of homes, crops, and other property have been destroyed. “All this has been done in full view of the world.” Even Israeli rabbis “legitimized the slaughter of Palestinian babies (claiming they’ll) grow up to become enemies.”

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Speaking today on National Public Radio (NPR), Secretary of Defense Robert Gates addressed soaring costs for the military, saying it is vital for them to get health care and other costs “under control” so they can continue to grow in the future.

Gates also said that even though he “hopes” the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will eventually wind down, the US military “has never been at a loss in being told to find things to do,” seeing a number of potential conflicts on the horizon.

To that end Gates tapped three nations is likely targets for the ominous “things to do” list. Two were predictably Iran and North Korea, two nations he has often discussed attacking in public comments. The other was China.

Gates cited a “very aggressive weapons building program in China” as something for the military to address. Though officials have often presented China as an upcoming threat, it does not appear to be based on anything practical, and indeed the US military budget is still many times what their Chinese counterparts are.

William Blum, Information Clearing House, June 4, 2011

When they bombed Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, El Salvador and Nicaragua I said nothing because I wasn’t a communist.

When they bombed China, Guatemala, Indonesia, Cuba, and the Congo I said nothing because I didn’t know about it.

When they bombed Lebanon and Grenada I said nothing because I didn’t understand it.

When they bombed Panama I said nothing because I wasn’t a drug dealer.

When they bombed Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen I said nothing because I wasn’t a terrorist.

When they bombed Yugoslavia and Libya for “humanitarian” reasons I said nothing because it sounded so honorable.

Then they bombed my house and there was no one left to speak out for me. But it didn’t really matter. I was dead.

The Targets

It’s become a commonplace to accuse the United States of choosing as its bombing targets only people of color, those of the Third World, or Muslims. But it must be remembered that one of the most sustained and ferocious American bombing campaigns of modern times — 78 consecutive days — was carried out against the people of the former Yugoslavia: white, European, Christians. The United States is an equal-opportunity bomber. The only qualifications for a country to become a target are: (A) It poses an obstacle — could be anything — to the desires of the American Empire; (B) It is virtually defenseless against aerial attack.

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 By Jean Shaoul and Chris Marsden,uruknet.info, June 2, 2011

Source: WSWS

Israelis youth dance and wave national flags during celebrations marking Jerusalem Day near the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in East Jerusalem June 1, 2011. Yesterday’s Jerusalem Day was an extraordinary political provocation, even by the normal standards of the event. The celebration, marking 44 years since the “reunification” of Jerusalem, or more properly its seizure during the 1967 War, saw a heavily-policed march of thousands—composed predominantly of ultra-orthodox religious layers and right-wing settlers—through the Jewish enclave of Sheikh Jarrah, located in the Arab east of the city. The Palestinian Authority wants East Jerusalem to be the capital of any Palestinian state. Sheikh Jarrah has been the location of repeated clashes. Over 3,000 officers, including border police and undercover units, were on patrol across Jerusalem. Continues >>

The killing of Osama bin Laden and reports of peace talks with the Afghan Taliban have raised U.S. hopes that the long war in Afghanistan might finally be heading toward a conclusion, but some sources suggest that there is less to these openings than meet the eye, Gareth Porter reports.

By Gareth Porter, Consortium News, June 1, 2011

Leaked reports over the past two weeks of a series of meetings between U.S. officials and a Taliban figure close to leader Mullah Omar seemed to point to real progress toward a negotiated settlement of the war in Afghanistan.

But the talks are actually part of the Obama administration’s strategy to put pressure on the Taliban leadership, in part, by dividing it from Pakistan as well as an effort to bolster President Barack Obama’s domestic support for the war.

Senior administration officials hope to use the talks to sow suspicion between the Taliban and their main ally, thus weakening the Taliban demand that a peace settlement must include a timetable for a U.S. troop withdrawal.

Afghan and German officials have said U.S. officials met three times in Qatar and Germany in recent months with Tayyeb Agha, an aide of the top Taliban leader Mullah Omar, according to reports in the Washington Post and Der Spiegel.

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By Eric Walberg, opednews.com, June 2, 2011

Ratko Mladic , the most wanted fugitive of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia ( ICTY ), was arrested last week after 16 years on the run. As former commander of the Republika Srpska Army from 1992–96, he was indicted by the ICTY following the capture of Srebrenica in July 1995, and charged by ICTY Judge Richard Goldstone with genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of laws and practices of warfare from 1992 to 1995 in Bosnia and Herzegovina . The same indictment charged Radovan Karadzic , president of the Republika Srpska and Mladic’s supreme commander.

From May 1992, Bosnian Serb forces under the command of Mladic
Mladic by henryjacksonsociety.org
took control of the self-proclaimed Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (since renamed Republika Srpska). Thousands of Muslims fled to Bosnia and Herzegovina government-controlled territory including Srebrenica and Sarajevo, and by 1995, after attacks on these areas, 8,000 Bosniaks, primarily Muslim, had been killed.

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By Naveed Qazi, Countercurents.org, May 31, 2011

Kashmir has been transformed from a beautiful vale to a wretched conflict, like a despondent poet, blossoming in pain, reciting ballads of war and violence. It has been torn to pieces by the many ill facets of ghastly wars. Only failures have made a political history here, awakening the memory of death and suffering every hour amidst the countless helpless victims of the conflict.

Kashmir is a land of failed political conjectures, broken dreams and frenzied mistrust. Words like ‘hope’, ‘agreements’, ‘developments’ have existed here, but only as rich rhetoric, through various political commentators and stillborn leaders. Ever since the conflict intensified, Kashmir has become the literary obsession of various observers, historians and activists, whose dissent has been faced with strong confrontation. The scope for visionary introspection has been weakening, like a senile old man struggling to resist.

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(New York) – Systematic killings and torture by Syrian security forces in the city of Daraa since protests began there on March 18, 2011, strongly suggest that these qualify as crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The 54-page report, “‘We’ve Never Seen Such Horror’: Crimes against Humanity in Daraa,” is based on more than 50 interviews with victims and witnesses to abuses. The report focuses on violations in Daraa governorate, where some of the worst violence took place after protests seeking greater freedoms began in various parts of the country. The specifics went largely unreported due to the information blockade imposed by the Syrian authorities. Victims and witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch described systematic killings, beatings, torture using electroshock devices, and detention of people seeking medical care.

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