Peace and Justice Post

On August 6, 1945, President Harry S Truman announced: “Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T.  It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British ‘Grand Slam’ which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare.”

When Truman lied to America that Hiroshima was a military base rather than a city full of civilians, people no doubt wanted to believe him. Who would want the shame of belonging to the nation that commits a whole new kind of atrocity? (Will naming lower Manhattan “ground zero” erase the guilt?)  And when we learned the truth, we wanted and still want desperately to believe that war is peace, that violence is salvation, that our government dropped nuclear bombs in order to save lives, or at least to save American lives.

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Five Years On, Government Unwilling to Prosecute Soldiers, Police

(New York) – The Sri Lankan government’s failure to bring to justice those responsible for the execution-style slaying of 17 aid workers five years ago highlights a broader lack of will to prosecute soldiers and police for rights abuses, Human Rights Watch said today. Despite strong evidence of involvement by the security forces in the killings, government inquiries have languished and no one has been arrested for the crime.

On August 4, 2006, gunmen murdered the 17 Sri Lankan aid workers – 16 ethnic Tamils and one Muslim – with the Paris-based international humanitarian agency Action Contre La Faim (Action Against Hunger, ACF) in their office compound in the town of Mutur, Trincomalee district. The killings followed a battle between Sri Lankan government forces and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for control of the town.

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Years have been wasted making concessions to their colonisers. Palestinians were right to call for a secular state at the outset

Sam Bahour, The Guardian, August 4, 2011

The Palestinian national liberation movement has reached its end. As the Palestinian leadership – if there is such a legitimate body today – prepares to bring the issue of statehood to the UN this September, the weeks and months ahead will witness the last desperate attempt to get the international community to assume their responsibilities and ensure that a Palestinian state becomes a reality in the occupied territories.

The reasons for the failure of the Palestinian national liberation movement are many. First and foremost, the shellshock that the creation of Israel caused among Palestinians in 1948 has never really gone away. Half of the Palestinian population at the time were displaced from their homes.

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By Agencies, MWC News, Aug. 6. 2011

Experts have questioned the Chinese government’s claim that recent attacks in the Xinjiang region were planned abroad by “Islamic extremists”.

Analysts and Xinjiang experts said on Friday there is no evidence that Chinese Muslim groups had been trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan to carry out the attacks.

Last weekend, ethnic Uighur assailants stormed a restaurant in the city of Kashgar, a city in Xinjiang, killing the owner and a waiter, and then hacking four people to death on a nearby street.

According to state media, at least 14 people were killed and 42 injured in two separate incidents.

The attacks were the latest in several bursts of violence that have jolted Xinjiang – where many Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim Turkic-speaking people, resent the influx of Han Chinese.

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by James Petras, Dissident Voice,  August 8th, 2011

We live in a time of great destruction and grand economic opportunities and Latin America is no exception. In the global context, the US Empire is engaged in destructive wars (Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Haiti). In contrast China, India, Brazil, Argentina and other “emerging economies” are expanding trade, investments and reducing poverty. The European Union (EU) and the United States (USA) are in deep economic crises. The EU “periphery” (Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain) are totally bankrupt. The US “dependencies” in North America (Mexico), Central America and the Caribbean are virtual narco-states plagued by mass poverty, astronomical crime rates and economic stagnation. The US dependencies are plundered by foreign multi-nationals, local oligarchs and corrupt politicians.

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by Paul Craig Roberts, LewRockwell. com, Aug. 8, 2011

Recently by Paul Craig Roberts: Creating Evidence Where There Is None

In my recent article, “Creating Evidence Where There Is None,” about the alleged killing of Osama bin Laden by a commando team of US Seals in Abbottabad, Pakistan, I provided a link to a Pakistani National TV interview with Muhammad Bashir, who lives next door to the alleged “compound” of Osama bin Laden. I described the story that Bashir gave of the “attack” and its enormous difference from the one told by the US government. In Bashair’s account, every member of the landing party and anyone brought from the house died when the helicopter exploded on lift-off. I wrote that a qualified person could easily provide a translation of the interview, but that no American print or TV news organization had investigated Bashir’s account.

An attorney with a British Master of Laws degree in international law and diplomacy, who was born in Pakistan, provided the translation below. He writes: “I have no problem with being identified as the translator, but would prefer to remain anonymous.”

The translator provides these definitions and clarifications:

“Gulley” is generally referred (in Urdu) to a sidewalk or pavement. Also for the space between two houses.

“kanal” is a traditional unit of land area, so that one kanal equals exactly 605 square yards or 1/8 Acre; this is equivalent to about 505.857 square meters.

Muhammad Bashir refers to himself as “We.” This is common respectable language for the self; to use the plural term instead of singular. The English language equivalent would be the “Royal, We.”

Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan.

The translator:

I have translated the entire text of the video.

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By Stephen Lendman, opednews.com,   Aug. 7. 2011

Judge nations by how they treat all people, whether equally, or advantaging some over others. Judge them harshly if they persecute some for political advantage.

In America, people of color and Muslims are fair game. It’s longstanding policy based on prejudicial attitudes, stereotypes, deep-seated racism, and notions of corrupted Western values, high-mindedness, and moral superiority.

Post-9/11, in fact, Muslims are perceived as barbaric, violent, uncivilized, gun-toting terrorists, easily targeted, accused, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned – not for wrongdoing, for their faith in American at the wrong time. As a result, it’s no surprise that when suspects are named, media reports automatically convict them in the court of public opinion.

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The carnage inflicted on Japan on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945, marked a dark turning point in American history. Having achieved victory over Nazism in Europe and the strategic defeat of fascist Japan, the United States took the unprecedented step of dropping atomic bombs on two nearly defenseless cities, an act which has since been wrapped in mythology, writes Gary G. Kohls.

By Gary G. Kohls, Consortium News, Aug. 7, 2011

Aug. 6 was the 66^th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, the whole truth of which has been heavily censored and mythologized ever since the news of the event was broadcast to the millions of war-weary Americans who were justifiably happy that the awful war was finally over.

Of course, those millions – and hundreds of millions of gullible children who may have read about the war in school – also understandably swallowed the post-war propaganda in their history books as they “learned” about the glorious end of the war.

We now know that the narrative contained false information that was orchestrated by war-justifying militarists (and assorted uber-patiotic historians) starting with General Douglas MacArthur.

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Yahoo! News, Aug. 5, 2011

Source: AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US officials and their counterparts in Bahrain, which crushed month-long protests in mid-March, have renewed a defense pact, officials said Friday.

The two countries inked a 10-year defense agreement on October 28, 1991, seven months after the Gulf War, that was renewed in October 2001 for the same duration.

As early as 2002, the administration of former US president George W. Bush and the Bahraini regime secretly extended the accord for another five years, to 2016, The Washington Post reported. But Pentagon officials declined to confirm those dates to AFP.

A US official who requested anonymity, however, said that “it would be accurate to say that it goes beyond that date” of October 2011.

Yet the official cautioned that: “Obviously, it’s a very delicate situation over there right now, so you never know what could change.”

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Interior ministry’s approval marks final planning stage for project that has garnered fierce criticism from Palestinians, international community.

Middle East Online, Aug.4, 2011

Expanding at the expense of Palestinian land JERUSALEM – Israel’s interior ministry has given final approval for the construction of 900 new homes in the east Jerusalem settlement neighbourhood of Har Homa, a ministry spokeswoman said on Thursday. “This is a programme which was approved by the regional (planning and construction) committee two years ago,” spokeswoman Efrat Orbach said. “According to the planning process in Israel, (it) needed the completion of amendments, therefore it was finally approved today.” The approval marks the final planning stage for a project that has garnered fierce criticism from the Palestinians and the international community. Continues >>