Peace and Justice Post

Prime Minister Should Overrule Army’s Objections

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(New York) – Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India should override the objections of the army and keep his 2004 promise to repeal the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), Human Rights Watch said today. The Indian defense establishment has opposed even minor amendments to the law, despite the findings of independent bodies in India and abroad that the law has resulted in numerous serious human rights violations over many years, Human Rights Watch said.

India’s Home Ministry has proposed amendments, but the army insists that it needs the law to operate in what it calls “disturbed areas.” News reports suggest that the army is blocking an effort to present the amendments for a vote during the upcoming winter session of parliament. . .

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by Jack A. Smith, Dissident Voice,  October 25th, 2011

The 10th anniversary of Washington’s invasion, occupation and seemingly endless war in Afghanistan was observed October 7, but despite President Barack Obama’s pledge to terminate the U.S. “combat mission” by the end of 2014, American military involvement will continue many years longer.

The Afghan war is expanding even further, not only with increasing drone attacks in neighboring Pakistani territory but because of U.S. threats to take far greater unilateral military action within Pakistan unless the Islamabad government roots out “extremists” and cracks down harder on cross-border fighters.

Washington’s tone was so threatening that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had to assure the Pakistani press October 21 that the U.S. did not plan a ground offensive against Pakistan. . .

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With Pakistan’s latest offensive in the Khyber Agency leading to violent clashes across several districts, civilians are once again on the move, with large numbers flocking to a refugee camp in the Khyber-Pakhtoonwhah Province.

The spokesman for the provincial “disaster management authority,” which mostly deals with influxes of refugees from the assorted offensives, confirmed that 18,000 people had arrived at the camp seeking aid.

A Khyber government said that the number who had fled the violence was actually quite a bit larger, and was probably above 20,000 including a number of civilians who fled to stay with relatives in the city of Peshawar.

The Khyber Agency is a key part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas as it is the route through which much of NATO’s traffic travels into neighboring Afghanistan. The offensives, meant to protect those supplies, tend to rile up insurgent factions, however, putting the route in even more peril.

Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct. 24 / Trend, A.Tagiyeva/

The unspoken message is also clear: that the judiciary can expect no help from the government for carrying out their sworn duty to uphold the laws of the land.

The government’s policy to appease the militant religious organizations and Jihadis is continued in the clear cut violation of the constitution and the law. Once again the government has revealed its impotency to fight against growing religious intolerance. The government has also exposed its powerlessness to provide security to its own citizens by sending a judge of the Sessions Court to Saudi Arabia with his family. This was the judge who awarded the death sentences in two cases to Mumtaz Qadri, the assassin of the Punjab Governor, Salaman Taseer. The judge has left for Saudi Arabia along with his family after receiving death threats from extremists.

According to a special prosecutor, Mr Saiful Malook, as reported in Daily Dawn, the death threats have forced Judge Pervez Ali Shah to leave the country along with his family. Malook said the government, on the reports of law enforcement agencies, opted to send him abroad. Judge Pervez Ali, as the Judge of Anti-Terrorist Court, handed down the death sentences to Qadri on October 1, 2011 following a trial that took place behind closed doors in the high-security Adiyala prison in Rawalpindi, Punjab province.

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By Rob Kall, opednews.com, Oct 25, 2011

I first heard the term, “Occupied Territories” from Vanessa, a press person and occupier living at Occupy Philly.

Occupied territories!!

It struck me as such a more powerful word than the words I had been using to describe the different Occupy Wall Street locales and communities.

Locales or communities exist. They are. But Occupied Territories, well that’s a term with some muscle in it, some fight, some power.

Sadly, it is often used to describe territories controlled by invading armies, like Israel occupying the Palestinian lands. israelis refer to the land as the “Occupied Territories” or “the territories.”

But here, in America, and throughout the world, the Occupy Wall Street movement represents a new kind of occupation– the kind that reared its head in Tunisia and Egypt’s Tahrir Square that led to a bottom up movement of the people waking up and taking back their land, their control of their nation and their lives.

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By Barry Grey , wsws.org, 25 October 2011

The response of the US government to the spread of anti-Wall Street protests in the US and internationally has been a marked increase in police repression and intimidation. Just last weekend, police attacked protest encampments in Chicago, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Phoenix, Dallas, Orlando and Tampa, arresting more than 200 people in all.

Similar attacks have taken place internationally, including the tearing down of protest encampments and mass arrests in Sydney and Melbourne.

Since the protests against social inequality and corporate power began more than five weeks ago in New York City, hundreds have been arrested in cities across the US, including more than 900 in New York alone.

In recent days, particularly since the global protests on October 15, police mobilizations to break up occupations have increased. The presence of police at protest sites has also been augmented, and various tactics have been employed to harass youth and workers expressing the anger of masses of people over the destruction of living standards and social conditions.

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By Nick Turse, Asia Times, October 26, 2011

They increasingly dot the planet. There’s a facility outside Las Vegas where “pilots” work in climate-controlled trailers, another at a dusty camp in Africa formerly used by the French Foreign Legion, a third at a big air base in Afghanistan where Air Force personnel sit in front of multiple computer screens, and a fourth at an air base in the United Arab Emirates that almost no one talks about.

And that leaves at least 56 more such facilities to mention in an expanding American empire of unmanned drone bases being set up worldwide. Despite frequent news reports on the drone assassination campaign launched in support of America’s ever-widening undeclared wars and a spate of stories on drone bases in Africa and the Middle East, most of these facilities have remained unnoted, uncounted, and remarkably anonymous – until now.

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