Peace and Justice Post

By Marjorie Cohn, ZNet, July 19, 2011

The torture of prisoners in U.S. custody isn’t confined to foreign countries. For more than two weeks, inmates at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison have been on a hunger strike to protest torturous conditions in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) there. Prisoners have been held for years in solitary confinement, which can amount to torture. Thousands of inmates throughout California’s prison system have refused food in solidarity with the Pelican Bay prisoners, bringing the total of hunger strikers to more than 1,700.

Inmates in the SHU are confined to their cells for 22 ½ hours a day, mostly for administrative convenience. They are released for only one hour to walk in a small area with high walls. The cells in the SHU are eight feet by 10 feet with no windows. Fluorescent lights are often kept on 24 hours per day.

Solitary confinement can lead to hallucinations, catatonia and even suicide, particularly in mentally ill prisoners. It is considered torture, as journalist Lance Tapley explains in his chapter in The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse.

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By Catrina Stewart in Jerusalem, The Independent, July 18, 2011

Born in Haifa in 1957, General Avi Mizrahi was drafted into the IDF in 1975. He has been head of Israeli Central Command since October 2009

A senior Israeli army commander has warned that unchecked “Jewish terror” against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank threatens to plunge the territory into another conflict.

In unusually outspoken comments, Major General Avi Mizrahi took aim at extremist Israeli settlers, and said the yeshiva, or religious seminary, in Yitzhar, one of the most radical Jewish strongholds in the West Bank, should be closed, calling it a source of terror against Palestinians.

The general’s comments are likely to put him at odds with Israel’s pro-settler government, which has resisted US-led efforts to curb settlement expansion in a bid to revive stalled peace talks. The foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, himself lives in a West Bank settlement. All settlements are regarded as illegal under international law.

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No country in the world has been more in the forefront in trying to facilitate peace and settle conflicts than Norway

HDS Greenway, Global Post, July 17, 2011

The morning sun cuts through the frost smoke hanging over the Oslo fjord, on Dec. 9, 2010. (Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images)

OSLO, Norway — No country in the world has been more in the forefront in trying to facilitate peace and settle conflicts than Norway. Being a small Scandinavian country with no ax to grind, and no colonial history, Norway is ideally positioned in its chosen task.

Strong civil society and labor movements in Norway have “traditionally emphasized international solidarity, which joined forces with Christian movements that underscore compassion,” says Jan Egeland, a former diplomat and now director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.

Egeland spent a long career trying to facilitate peace among combatants. He recently summed up his thoughts in a paper delivered last month at a cultural biennale in Venice.

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Middle East Online, July 18, 2011

Ethnic clashes

DAMASCUS – At least 30 people were killed in 24 hours in the central Syrian city of Homs in clashes between supporters and opponents of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, a human rights activist said on Sunday.

The deaths came as the army moved in on two border towns in the east and west seeking to quell anti-regime protest.

“More than 30 civilians have been killed over the past 24 hours in Homs in clashes that broke out late on Saturday between the opposition and supporters of the regime,” said Rami Abdel Rahman of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

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by Dr. Reza Pankhurst, Foreign Policy Journal, July 18, 2011

Arbitrary extrajudicial executions, carried out at the press of a button from CIA locations in California, with no transparency or accountability, are undoubtedly a violation of international law possibly constituting war crimes. And yet in 2009 alone, American predator drone attacks killed a reported 708 people in Pakistan —a clear violation of the norms of international sovereignty, especially given the fact that the Pakistani government has spoken out against them (at least in public).

According to the Brooking Institution more than 90 percent of those killed have been civilians. Noor Behram, who has been documenting the aftermath of drone strikes in Waziristan on-site  for the last three years concurs that “for every 10 to 15 people killed, maybe they get one militant”.

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Saeed Shah in Islamabad and Peter Beaumont, Guardian, July 17, 2011

US drone strikes in Pakistan are condemned by protesters at a rally in Waziristan along the Afghanistan border. Photograph: Khalid Tanveer/AP

For the past three years, Noor Behram has hurried to the site of drone strikes in his native Waziristan. His purpose: to photograph and document the impact of missiles controlled by a joystick thousands of miles away, on US air force bases in Nevada and elsewhere. The drones are America’s only weapon for hunting al-Qaida and the Taliban in what is supposed to be the most dangerous place in the world.

Sometimes arriving on the scene just minutes after the explosion, he first has to put his camera aside and start digging through the debris to see if there are any survivors. It’s dangerous, unpleasant work. The drones frequently hit the same place again, a few minutes after the first strike, so looking for the injured is risky. . . .

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Trafficking in people for prostitution and forced labour is one of the fastest growing areas of international criminal activity and the overwhelming majority of victims are women and children. More than 700,000 people are believed to be trafficked each year worldwide. Trafficking is now considered the third largest source of profit for organised crime, behind only drugs and weapons, generating billions of dollars annually.

Trafficking affects virtually every country around the world. The largest number of victims come from Asia, with over 225,000 victims each year from Southeast Asia and over 150,000 from South Asia. The former Soviet Union is now believed to be the largest new source of trafficking with over 100,000 trafficked each year from that region alone. An additional 75,000 or more are trafficked from Central and Eastern Europe. Over 100,000 come from Latin America and the Caribbean, and over 50,000 victims are from Africa. Most of the victims are sent to Asia, the Middle East, Western Europe and North America.

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Stephen Lendman, MWC News, July 16, 2011

Largely ignored by Washington, Western governments, and America’s media, the ruling Al Khalifa monarchy continues cracking down brutally against nonviolent protesters since civil resistance began last February.

On July 14, UK Telegraph writer Richard Spencer headlined, “Bahraini woman poet tells of torture while in custody,” saying:

Incarcerated after reciting a poem critical of government policies, “Ayat al-Qurmezi (age 20) became one of the symbols of the (ongoing) protests….After she was arrested….she was beaten, electro(shocked) and threatened with sexual assault while in custody.”

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