Peace and Justice Post

By Elizabeth Whitman, IPS News,

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 16, 2011 (IPS) – When reports of protests and subsequent civilian deaths as security forces fired on protestors began filtering in from the southern Syrian city of Dera‘a in March, many wondered what turn events would take in both Syria and the international community in the wake of earlier uprisings during the ‘Arab Spring’.

Since then, events have continued taking turns for the worse, but this week has marked a crucial point in both the increasingly dire humanitarian crisis and the lack of response from the United Nations Security Council.

On Sunday, Syrian forces moved into the northwestern town of Jisr al-Shughur, after the government claimed that “armed gangs” had killed at least 120 security forces and soldiers there in early June.

Now, at least 7,000 Syrians from the town and surrounding areas have fled to Turkey seeking safety, according to the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Reports from other sources ranged from 5,000 to 8,500.

The OHCHR stated in a preliminary report that helicopter gunships were said to have been used on Jisr al-Shughur and its population of approximately 50,000.

Continues >>

By JAMES RISEN, The New York Times, June 15, 2011

Arturo Rodriguez for the New York Times

Juan Cole, a professor, blogger and Iraq war critic, said he would have been a disappointing target for the Bush White House.

Glenn L. Carle, a former C.I.A. officer, said he was “intensely disturbed” by what he said was an effort against Professor Cole.

Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said the White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information on Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who writes an influential blog that criticized the war.

Continues >>

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other Bush-43 holdovers are pressing President Barack Obama to delay a meaningful drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and continue the counterinsurgency war, but the Independent Institute’s Ivan Eland argues that a rapid withdrawal is in the best interests of the United States and the region.

By Ivan Eland,  Consortium News, June 15, 2011

The jockeying for position on troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq continues.

Recently, departing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the U.S. military have tried to box the Obama administration into leaving as many troops in Afghanistan as possible. Gates argued that a rapid withdrawal would threaten the gains accrued from the surge of 30,000 troops.

Gates opined, “I would try to maximize my combat capability as long as this process goes on — I think that’s a no-brainer.”

He has argued for a modest withdrawal, which other sources have pegged at between 3,000 and 5,000 troops; in other words, only a token pullout to fulfill President Obama’s pledge to begin withdrawing troops this summer.

Pushing back are Vice President Joe Biden and the White House staff, including National Security Adviser Tom Donilon. Biden and Donilon were initially skeptical of the troop surge and are pushing for a more rapid withdrawal.

Continues >>

By Sam Smith, Counterpunch, June 16, 2011

For the next year and a half you will be subjected to the latest developments in the great contemporary American fairy tale: a presidential campaign.

True, we will get to pick who we want to be Goldilocks and who the big bad bears, but citizen participation in a fantasy doesn’t make it any more real.

There has been over the past few decades a steady deterioration of the political difference between national Democratic and Republican politics, most notably with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Today it is hard to define that difference given the strong bipartisan support for several illegal wars, the unconstitutional Patriot Act, and a bottomless desire to bail out Wall Street, and a stunning indifference to the financial problems of everyone else. On some days it seems like the only thing that stand between Obama and the Republican Party is his voter registration card. Even on his better days he is just – to borrow a favorite term of his White House a “distraction from the real issues.”

Continues >>

It is hard to see the Europeans refusing to vote for the resolution (for formal recognition of Palestinian statehood by the UN General Assembly). We could easily arrive at a vote with only Israel, the US, and a very few tiny countries voting against, and perhaps a few abstentions, notes Immanuel Wallerstein.

Middle East Online, June 15, 2011

The Palestinians are pursuing their project of seeking a formal recognition of their statehood by the United Nations when the General Assembly convenes in the fall. They intend to request a statement that the state exists within the boundary lines as they existed in 1967 before the Israeli-Palestinian war. It is almost certain that the vote will be favorable. The only question at the moment is how favorable.

The Israeli political leadership is well aware of this. There are three different responses that are being discussed by them. The dominant position seems to be that of Prime Minister Netanyahu. He proposes ignoring such a resolution totally and simply continuing to pursue the Israeli government’s present policies. Netanyahu believes that, for a very long time, there have been resolutions adopted by the U.N. General Assembly that have been unfavorable to Israel, all of which Israel has successfully ignored. Why should this one be any different?

Continues >>

by Maidhc Ó Cathail, Foreign Policy Journal, June 11, 2011

The recent call by U.S. Senator Charles Schumer for increased rail safety funding and the creation of a “no-ride” list for Amtrak trains is yet another reminder of just who is stoking fear of Muslims in America.

In an interview last year with a Jewish radio talk show in New York, Senator Schumer said he believed that HaShem (an Orthodox Jewish term for “God”) gave him the name “Schumer” — which means “guardian” — so that he could fulfill his “very important” role in the U.S. Senate as a “guardian of Israel.” Presumably, Schumer’s God-given role also includes turning the country he is actually paid to represent — the United States — into an Islamophobic police state.

Continues >>

John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney, Monthly Review, March 2011

The United States and the world are now a good two decades into the Internet revolution, or what was once called the information age. The past generation has seen a blizzard of mind-boggling developments in communication, ranging from the World Wide Web and broadband, to ubiquitous cell phones that are quickly becoming high-powered wireless computers in their own right. Firms such as Google, Amazon, Craigslist, and Facebook have become iconic. Immersion in the digital world is now or soon to be a requirement for successful participation in society. The subject for debate is no longer whether the Internet can be regarded as a technological development in the same class as television or the telephone. Increasingly, the debate is turning to whether this is a communication revolution closer to the advent of the printing press.1

Continues >>

by Kourosh Ziabari
Global Research, June 15, 2011
Email this article to a friend Print this article

You might have frequently heard of the Western mainstream media’s claims that Iran is pursuing a military nuclear program which is aimed at developing atomic weapons. Actually, spreading falsehood and untruth about the nature of Iran’s peaceful nuclear program has been a constant, unchanging and recurring theme of the Western corporate media’s coverage of Iran’s events.

Over the past years, the world mainstream media, funded and fueled by certain Western governments to derail Iran’s sublime position in the international community through their unyielding black propaganda have laboriously and persistently attempted to pretend that Iran’s nuclear program poses a serious threat to the global peace and security and that Tehran is taking steps to create atomic bombs to drop on Israel and European countries.

Unfortunately, the people who believe such claims are credulously unaware of the fact that those who accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons are themselves the largest possessors of the state-of-the-art nuclear weapons and other types of weapons of mass destruction.

Continues >>

Stephen Lendman, MWC News, June 14, 2011

Defense contractor giants like Boeing, Lockeed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and others, as well as smaller rivals compete for growing demand for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). They include remote control operated killer drones, also called unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs).

It’s America’s newest sport. From distant command centers, far from target sights, sounds, and smells, operators dismissively ignore human carnage showing up as computer screen blips little different from video game images. The difference, of course, is people die, mostly noncombatants.

Continues >>

by James Petras, Dissident Voice,  June 14th, 2011

The radical “Bolivarian Socialist” government of Hugo Chavez has arrested a number of Colombian guerrilla leaders and a radical journalist with Swedish citizenship and handed them over to the right-wing regime of President Juan Manuel Santos, earning the Colombian government’s praise and gratitude. The close on-going collaboration between a leftist President with a regime with a notorious history of human rights violations, torture and disappearance of political prisoners has led to widespread protests among civil liberty advocates, leftists and populists throughout Latin America and Europe, while pleasing the Euro-American imperial establishment.

Continues >>