Peace and Justice Post

by David Hillstrom, Foreign Policy Journal, September 20, 2011

At the end of the Second World War, the colonial age in modern history had come to a close.  The colonial period is a blemish on the nations of Europe, the US, and Japan, although none of them have practiced policies of sincere regret, let alone compensation.  Rather, many opinion leaders from the former colonial powers have pointed to the legacy of organization and infrastructure that they left in the colonized world.  Many also have remarked that the new, independent states that emerged were more often than not dictatorial and corrupt.  Of course, there have been countries that have failed to produce either economic well-being or open political institutions for their people.  That is regrettable; but the lesson to global powers (and former colonial powers) should be that direct intervention is neither justifiable nor morally warranted.  The only appropriate policy is to engage developing nations with fair trade deals and incentives to develop both economically and politically.

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Gideon Levy, Veterns Today, Sept. 18, 2011

How is it that the supposedly new America is continuing to sing the same old songs from its evil past??

What is the American president going to say to his citizens? What will he say to the citizens of the world? How will he rationalize his country’s opposition to recognizing a Palestinian state? How will he explain his position, which runs counter to the position of the enlightened – and less enlightened – world?

And above all, what will Barack Obama say to himself before he goes to bed? That the Palestinians don’t deserve a state? That they have a chance to get it through negotiations with Israel? That they do not have equal rights in the new world that we thought he was going to establish? Will he admit to himself that, because of opportunistic election considerations – yes, Obama is now being exposed as quite an opportunist – he is also harming his country’s interests as well as the (real ) interests of Israel, and is acting against his own conscience too?

It is difficult now to understand Obama’s America. The man who promised change is turning out to be the father of American conservatives. With regard to Israel, there is no difference between him and the last of the celebrants at the Tea Party. We did not expect a great deal from Hillary Clinton; she can continue to recite hollow speeches about negotiations-shmegotiations – but Obama?

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by Richard Wilcox, Dissident Voice,  September 19th, 2011

If nuclear power is so ‘safe,’ why is it that nuclear power stations are not placed where the power is most needed – in or very near large cities? Because they are dangerous. OK, if they’re dangerous, why is it the operators are not terribly interested in safety measures?

– Tony Boys, Can Do Better Blog¹

Over six months have passed since the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan. What progress if any has been made to deal with what is surely one the worst industrial accidents in history?

The situation at the Fukushima No.1 power station site is far from being resolved. Although Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) has said a “cold shutdown” of some of the reactors may be “within reach.”² Although a drastic reduction from the trillions of becquerals of radiation that were released during the darkest days of March, retired nuclear engineer Arnie Gunderson who has supplied us with a steady source of reliable analyses, roughly estimates that the damaged reactors are still emitting a billion becquerals per day.^{3 . . .}

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Exclusive: When President George W. Bush took aim at Iraq in 2002-03, the smart career play in the U.S. news media was to jump on the pro-war bandwagon and cheer on propaganda about WMD and other excuses for war. Belatedly, the New York Times’ Bill Keller admits that mistakes were made, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry, Consortium News, Sept. 12, 2011

In commemoration of 9/11, former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller penned a handwringing article in the Sunday magazine explaining why he supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq, while admitting that Iraq “had in the literal sense, almost nothing to do with 9/11” and recognizing that the war has resulted in untold death and misery of its own.

The article, “My Unfinished 9/11 Business,” is filled with rationalizations about his post-9/11 feelings and those of other members of what Keller dubbed the “I-Can’t-Believe-I’m-a-Hawk Club,” pundits and intellectuals who rallied to President George W. Bush’s conquest of Iraq as a more fitting response to 9/11 than simply occupying Afghanistan or hunting down al-Qaeda.

Yet what is perhaps most striking about Keller’s article is what’s not in it. There is not a single reference to international law, or to the fact that Bush undertook the invasion in defiance of a majority on the United Nations Security Council and in violation of longstanding U.S.-enunciated principles against aggressive war.

At the Nuremberg Tribunals after World War II, the chief U.S. prosecutor, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, called a war of aggression “not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

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It is common sense that the massive death toll over the eight years of occupation in Iraq would create more widows. A new study by the humanitarian aid organization Relief International has found the problem far greater than anyone likely imagined, however.

The study found that some 10 percent of the women in Iraq are widows, about 1.5 million of them. Of these, 59 percent lost their husbands during the period since the US occupation began in 2003.

Just a quick bit of math shows that to be some 900,000 women who lost their husbands since 2003, an enormous number that once again points to the civilian death toll since 2003 being much larger than the US ever cared to admit.

But while this shows the enormity of the past violence, the report isn’t about that, but rather about pointing out the major current problem. Being a widow in war-torn Iraq is tough, and those widows are likely to be desperate and vulnerable to recruitment for terror attacks. 900,000 more desperate Iraqis point again to a war that is far from over.

By WILLIAM FISHER, opednews.com, Sept. 18, 2011

On August 14, two young bloggers, Asma Mahfouz and Loay Nagaty, were arrested on charges of defaming Egypt’s military rulers. In a blogpost that went viral on YouTube, Mahfouz called them a “council of dogs.”

Both were referred to a military court. That prompted activists, as well as presidential hopefuls including Mohamed ElBaradei and Ayman Nour, to protest their being charged in a military court.

(To date, more than 12,000 Egyptians have been charged before military courts, whose use has become the subject of a major point of conflict and contention between the pro-democracy forces and the military council.)

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Mr Netanyahu said his government was working with the US to make sure that the push for a two-state peace settlement is rejected by the UN security council.

He was responding to a speech delivered by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on Saturday in which he said he would hand the request for full status to UN secretary-general Ban Ki Moon on Friday.

Mr Abbas said “extensive and sincere” Palestinian peace efforts had been scuppered by “Israeli intransigence.”

“We seek to gain membership in the UN on the basis of the 1967 borders so that we could afterwards return to the negotiations on a clear and internationally recognised reference.”

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For andre år på rad rammes Pakistan av en voldsom flom. Ifølge pakistanske myndigheter er syv millioner mennesker rammet, 342 er bekreftet omkommet, skriver NTB.

Mange mennesker mister alt de eier for andre gang på et år. Andre rammede er fra områder som normalt ikke er utsatt for flom.

De helsemessige utfordringene i området er svært store.

– Verre

Pakistans Røde Halvmåne, med 70.000 ansatte, driver et omfattende arbeid i flomområdene. De får støtte fra Røde Kors nasjonalforeninger fra andre land.

Norges Røde Kors Olaf Røsset er i Pakistan nå.

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“Now we can see [success in Vietnam] clearly, like the light at the end of a tunnel”

–Gen. Henri Navarre, commander French forces in Vietnam, May 20, 1953

“A new phase is starting…we have reached an important point when the end begins to come into view…there is a light at the end of the tunnel.”

–Gen. William Westmoreland, commander U.S. forces in Vietnam, November 1967

“Yesterday’s attack [in Kabul] was a fleeting event; it came and it went. The insurgents are on the defensive.” The performance of Afghan security forces should tell Afghans “they can sleep well at night.”

–Gen. John Allen, North Atlantic Treaty Commander in Afghanistan, Sept. 14, 2011

Dear Lord, what is about generals that seem to make them so particularly immune to history’s lessons?

Gen. Navarre had a sure-fire plan to draw the Vietnamese insurgents into a great battle that would end the war. Worked like a charm. On May 7, 1954 the French army surrendered at Dien Bien Phu.

In November 1967, Gen. Westmoreland was making the rounds in Washington, talking up “body counts” and “pacification,” and how the U.S would have this little matter in Vietnam wrapped up pretty quickly. Ten weeks later, on Jan.31, 1968, the National Liberation Front and the North Vietnamese launched the Tet offensive that put the U.S. Embassy in Saigon under siege, seized the city of Hue, and shattered the myth that the U.S. was winning the war in Vietnam.

And now Gen. Allen says the attack on Kabul indicates the Taliban are on their last legs.

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Not quite.  The Palestinian Authority (PA) says it will ask the United Nations General Assembly to upgrade from being a non-voting “observer entity” to an “observer state.”   This bureaucratic-sounding change hardly seems earthshaking.  The Vatican is an “observer state.”

But the earth is shaking.  A majority of the world’s nations are fed up by the endless suffering of the stateless Palestinians and support creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza.

Turkey’s increasingly influential premier, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, went to Cairo last week and spoke for the world: “Let’s raise the Palestinian flag and let that flag be the symbol of peace and justice in the Middle East.”

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