Peace and Justice Post

Stephen Lendman, MWC News, Aug. 29, 2011

Washington wages wars multiple ways, including militarily, financially, and politically by supporting wrong over right each time.

For decades, it subverted peace negotiations and Palestine’s bid for statehood. The Obama administration’s now doing it again, besides waging multiple wars and undermining freedom wherever it surfaces, abroad and at home.

On August 26, Haaretz headlined: “US: We will stop aid to Palestinians if UN bid proceeds,” saying:

America “will stop all financial aid to the Palestinian Authority if they” pursue statehood and de jure UN membership In September.

US Consul General Daniel Rubenstein told chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat that Washington will veto a UN Security Council resolution if it’s sought unilaterally within June 1967 borders, despite its illegality under international law and its pledge not to do so against any state seeking UN membership.

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Much of the capitulation of the State to the Anna putsch is to be understood in terms of a recognition of the corporate power behind the  putsch

Badri Raina Delhi, Hard News, Aug. 2011

It should be obvious by now that a majority of Dalit and Muslim organizations are opposed to the sort of denigration of parliament that seems inherent in the Anna putsch as it has developed over the last few days.  Add to that most Other Backward Classes as well whose leaderships may make opportunist statements but who also remain staunchly wedded to parliamentary supremacy against the claims of  “direct democracy” made by Anna’s well-endowed backers.

The social character of this polarization is of the highest significance, and must interest all those for whom Indian democracy is a work-in-progress towards the enhancement of equity and non-discriminatory justice.

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Mass grave sights in Kashmir offer only one solution to India and Pakistan

by David Wolfe, Foreign Policy Journal, September 1, 2011

The recent acknowledgement by authorities of the mass graves discovered in Indian Administered Kashmir over three years ago by Dr. Angana Chatterji and her colleagues initially brought hope to a region that the truth of the last 60 years in this troubled region will finally come to light. Additionally, there is recognition that the graves are in fact civilians who had “disappeared”, and not, as the Indian Military claimed, “foreign combatants from Pakistan”, by not only local officials, but groups such as Amnesty International, as well as Hindu-based groups in both India and the Kashmir region.  The recognition by Hindu-based organizations not only grants a greater sense of legitimacy, but highlights a fundamental complexity that the outside world continues to misunderstand with regards to the historical and ethnic complexities of the region. In fact, the mass graves reveal that local issues are at the heart of the matter, and that to some, that a terrorist from Pakistan and Indian Military Personnel are one in the same. It is through this recognition along communal lines that South African style ‘truth and reconciliation’ may be the ultimate way forward to solving this six decade long conflict.

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William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed, Aug. 31, 2011

Vice President Dick Cheney in a June 20, 2007 file photo. (Photo: Doug Mills / The New York Times)