Peace and Justice Post

Why has the United States government supported counterinsurgency in Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, and many other places around the world, at such a loss of human life to the populations of those nations? Why did it invade tiny Grenada and then Panama? Why did it support mercenary wars against progressive governments in Nicaragua, Mozambique, Angola, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Indonesia, East Timor, Western Sahara, South Yemen, and elsewhere?

Is it because our leaders want to save democracy? Are they concerned about the well-being of these defenseless peoples? Is our national security threatened? I shall try to show that the arguments given to justify U.S. policies are false ones.

But this does not mean the policies themselves are senseless. American intervention may seem “wrongheaded” but, in fact, it is fairly consistent and horribly successful.

The history of the United States has been one of territorial and economic expansionism, with the benefits going mostly to the U.S. business class in the form of growing investments and markets, access to rich natural resources and cheap labor, and the accumulation of enormous profits.

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Truthdig.com, July 3, 2011

Flickr / Defence Images

An armed unmanned aerial vehicle prepares for takeoff in Afghanistan early this year.

Pakistani lawyer and human rights champion Mirza Shahzad Akbar, who has aided the U.S. government in legal counterterrorism efforts, was banned from traveling to the States to speak at Columbia Law School after suing the CIA about drone strikes that have killed civilians in his country.

In an open letter, Akbar describes the plight of nonmilitant Pakistanis who have lost family and friends and suffered severe injuries in such attacks, and suggests the U.S. government—which purports to value justice and the rule of law—should honor those who have sought to redress their losses through legal rather than violent means. It is difficult to know exactly how many civilians have been killed by drones, but the Brookings Institution has put the number at more than 600, with 10 civilian deaths for every militant killed. —ARK

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By Jamal Elshayyal, MWC News, July 2, 2011

When you’re all but down and out you usually try and make as many fiends as possible, in the hope that one of them will rescue you.

Greece has been brought to its knees because of the global economic recession which arguably hit it harder than any other country in Europe, but its new found friends will do little to help it stand back on its feet.

Since last year’s Freedom Flotilla, and the outcry cause by Israel’s murder of nine innocent civilians in international waters, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been doing his best to prevent a similar expedition of humanitarians exposing Israel’s true nature.

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By Senator Mike Gravel, Countercurrents.org, July 4, 2011

As each anniversary of 9/11 rolls by, the import of this tragedy looms ever larger in our history. Especially looming like storm clouds on the horizon of American politics are the unanswered questions about these events. And as new evidence and new whistleblowers come forward seemingly every week, the import of the 9/11 truth movement multiplies in historic significance. All of this points to the urgent need for a new, independent investigation with subpoena and other grand jury powers—a citizen’s commission that is truly free of partisan political interference.

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Yahoo News, July 3, 2011

Souce: AFP

ATHENS (AFP) – The captain of a US vessel intercepted after it tried to defy a ban and sail for Gaza from Greece was being held in “shocking conditions” Sunday and has not received consular assistance, a lawyer said.

Captain John Klusmer was arrested when the US boat Audacity of Hope — the flagship in a flotilla of pro-Palestinian activists — attempted to leave Greek waters on Friday after Athens banned all Gaza-bound ships from setting sail.

Klusmer was charged with felony and ordered to appear in court on Tuesday. The US Boat to Gaza organisation said he was being held in jail in “shocking conditions” and as far as it was aware, had not yet received consular assistance.

New York lawyer Richard Levy — a passenger on the boat who has visited Klusmer in jail in a port town near Athens — told enraged US activists that “he had no bed or toilet in his cell, and is receiving no food or water”.

“We’ve offered to pay his bail,” said passenger Robert Naiman, from the Washington-based Just Foreign Policy organisation. “But we have had no indication at all that he will be allowed out of jail before Tuesday.”

The US embassy in Athens was not available for comment.

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ATHENS, Greece – 235 years after the American colonies declared independence from Britain, the passenegers on the U.S. Boat to Gaza call for a new American Declaration of Independence, this time from Israel.

The passengers issued their call from the decks of the U.S.-flagged boat, The Audacity of Hope, which is currently confined to a Greek military pier near Athens, while its captain sits in jail.

Like the Founders in Philadelphia, the passengers in Athens recognize that “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them to another, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separataion.”

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By Frank Schaeffer, opedenews.com, July 3, 2011

The deluded religious belief that any people or nation or church is a “chosen” people is the root of almost all our troubles.

The earth bursts with life. Far right exclusionary religion bursts with death. If there is a creator of life He/She/It must hate fundamentalist religion.

The countries in the world that are the most fundamentalist and religious, and/or those whose identity is most religion-based, are the world’s greatest troublemakers. Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the USA, Vatican City and the state of Israel come to mind.

If the rest of the human race could find a time machine to roll back the clock and make a world where these countries/city states had never existed we’d live in a better world.
Just take one example of religion’s baleful influence: President Woodrow Wilson’s messianic religion-inspired intervention in World War One. “My life would not be worth living” Wilson wrote, “if it were not for the driving power of religion, for faith, pure and simple.” (Letter to Nancy Toy, 1915.)

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By Daily Mail Reporter, Daily Mail, July 2, 2011

A former CIA operative has revealed his methods for extracting information from detainees and the secret prison they were taken to.

Glenn Carle, who has written a tell-all memoir about his time with the agency, said some people would call him a ‘torturer.’

He maintains he carried out all his duties within the law and within the boundaries of what he believed was morally right.

In The Interrogator Carle recalls the time after 9/11 when he was assigned to get information out of a suspected senior member of Al Qaeda.

At first Carle tries to build a rapport with the man he refers to in the book as CAPTUS.

When this doesn’t work the agency send the pair to ‘Hotel California,’ a so-called ‘black site’ or secret prison in an undisclosed foreign country, according to the book.

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Shortly after news came that the US aid ship “The Audacity of Hope” had departed from port and was attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, the vessel was attacked by heavily armed Greek commandos and forced to return to port.

US aid ship The Audacity of Hope with a Greek military vessel in the foreground

The activists on board the ship have been forced into a military dockyard surrounded with barbed wire, and report that after expelling the journalists who were on the ship, they have so far not let anyone else leave.

The move was quickly followed with an announcement from the Greek government that all ships hoping to deliver aid to Gaza have been banned from leaving port to “prevent breach of Israel’s naval blockade.” This has a number of aid vessels from myriad countries stuck in Greece for the foreseeable future. The Greek Hellenic Coast Guard is also said to be monitoring the sea to track other ships potentially trying to deliver goods to Gaza.

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Richard Falk, MWC News, July 2, 2011

The reports that two of the foreign flagged ships planning to be part of the ten vessel Freedom Flotilla II experienced similar forms of disabling sabotage creates strong circumstantial evidence of Israeli responsibility.

It stretches the imagination to suppose that a sophisticated cutting of the propeller shafts of both ships is a coincidence with no involvement by Israel’s Mossad, long infamous for its overseas criminal acts in support of contested Israeli national interests. Recalling the lethal encounter in international waters with Freedom Flotilla I that took place on May 31, 2010 and the frantic diplomatic campaign by Tel Aviv to prevent this second challenge to the Gaza blockade by peace activists and humanitarian aid workers, such conduct by a state against this latest civil society initiative, if further validated by incriminating evidence, should be formally condemned as a form of ‘state terrorism’ or even as an act of war by a state against global civil society.

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