AHRC, Oct 11, 2011
Urgent Appeal Case : We have received information regarding the arbitrary arrest and torture of 15 Papuan villagers, including several minors, in Horas Skyline village, Jayapura, Papua, committed by a joint team of Jayapura city district police and Cenderawasih military area command on 31 August 2011. Until now, there is no investigation into the incident.
And we’re never giving it back. Our permit for Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., expired, we refused to leave, and the Park Police has just proposed to let us stay for four more months.
We’ve agreed. We have not said that when the four months are over and the American Spring is here we will leave.
In fact, we intend to make it possible for anyone to visit D.C. with free accommodations. Just bring a sleeping bag and agree to work with us to pressure Congress, the White House, K Street, the Pentagon, and all the lobbyists and profiteers for peace and justice. We have free food, we have free drink, we have free trainings and seminars, we have tents, we have peace keepers, we have a big victory under out belts, and we welcome all peace makers for they shall inherit Freedom Plaza. We own it. It is ours. It shall remain ours world without end.
By Habib Zohori | McClatchy Newspapers, Oct 10, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan — The United Nations on Monday said that suspected Taliban detainees are routinely beaten and tortured in detention centers run by Afghanistan’s police and spy agency.
The U.N. said it based its findings on interviews conducted with 379 pre-trial detainees and convicted prisoners at 47 detention centers in 22 provinces between October 2010 to August 2011.
The 74-page report said the interviews uncovered evidence of “the use of interrogation techniques that constitute torture under international law and crimes under Afghan law, as well as other forms of mistreatment.”
It said beating and torture was applied “systemically” in detentions centers run by the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan’s spy agency.
Forty-six percent of 273 detainees interviewed in the Afghan spy agency’s detention centers told U.N. interviewers that they had been subjected to different forms of torture while the were interrogated. The abuse often included sexual humiliation.
Richard Falk, Richardfalk.com, Oct 8, 2011
This post consists of my responses to questions put to me by a Greek journalist, C.J Polychroniou, who long followed intellectual thought in the West, and is a keen analyst of the current European economic crisis.
1. What prompted the Palestinian Authority to seek UN recognition for Palestine at this historical juncture in the struggle for justice and the creation of an independent Palestinian state?
I think the essential motivating feature was long overdue disillusionment with the ‘peace process’ as derived from the Oslo Framework of Principles agreed upon in 1993, and looking toward the resolution of final status issues (borders, refugees, Jerusalem, settlements, security, water) within five years. More recently Obama in his 2011 speech to the UN General Assembly appeared committed to the establishment of a Palestinian state within a year, but awkwardly backed away from this kind of assessment in 2012 when he merely declared that it was difficult to achieve peace, and that only hope was direct negotiations without any preconditions. The published Palestine Papers on confidential negotiations behind closed doors between representatives of Israel and of the Palestine Authority, leaked to Al Jazeera several months ago, reinforced the impression that the Israeli leadership was not at all interested in a negotiated end to the conflict even when offered far reaching concessions by Palestinian interlocutors. Negotiations that lead no where serve Israel’s interests far better than would a clear declaration that acknowledges Palestinian rights under international law as the necessary foundation of a peaceful resolution of the conflict.
By Ariel Dorfman, NationofChange.org
Share Link: 
President Bush’s “preventive war” strategy in the Middle East not only “comported with what most Americans believed to be desirable at the time” but followed a bipartisan American tradition in such actions, historian Melvyn Leffler writes in the current “Foreign Affairs” magazine.
Much of what President Bush did “was consistent with long-term trends in U.S foreign policy, and much has been continued by President Barack Obama,” Leffler writes in an article titled “9/11 in Retrospect.” Leffler is a professor of history at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville.
He writes those who would heap scorn solely on Bush for his attack on Iraq may have, for example, conveniently overlooked the position of then Senator Joseph Biden who said in 2002, “One way or another, Saddam (Hussein) has got to go, and it is likely to be required to have U.S. force to have him go, and the question is how to do it in my view, not if to do it.”
Introduction
There are two views of Obama’s speech to the General Assembly on September 21, 2011, and his opposition to the recognition of Palestine as a sovereign state and its admission to the UN. The common opinion of foreign policy experts was that Obama led the US to an ignominious diplomatic defeat, deepening US isolation in the international system.
The White House’s blatant parroting of Israel’s position to continue bilateral negotiations, while Tel Aviv continued to colonize Palestinian land and forcibly evict its residents, alienated the 1.5 billion Muslims throughout the world. Obama’s refusal to even mention the return to the 1967 borders as a basis for a “peace settlement”, totally undermined any pretext that the US could act as an “honest broker” in Mid-East peace negotiations, even in the eyes of its most slavish supporters in the PLO. His one-sided reference to Israel’s minimal casualties in maintaining the Occupation, while omitting any mention of the 12,000 Palestinian political prisoners, thousands of assassinations, everyday humiliation, routine torture of suspects and frequent defacement of Palestinian religious centers (mosques and churches, cemeteries and shrines), undermined any US effort to win favor among the millions of people involved in the pro-democracy social movements sweeping the Arab world from Tunisia, Egypt to the Gulf states.
“Gold is most excellent; gold constitutes treasure; and he who has it does all he wants in the world, and can even lift souls up to Paradise.”
– Christopher Columbus, 1503 letter to the king and queen of Spain.
“Christopher Columbus not only opened the door to a New World, but also set an example for us all by showing what monumental feats can be accomplished through perseverance and faith.”
– George H.W. Bush, 1989 speech
If you fly over the country of Haiti on the island of Hispaniola, the island on which Columbus landed, it looks like somebody took a blowtorch and burned away anything green. Even the ocean around the port capital of Port au Prince is choked for miles with the brown of human sewage and eroded topsoil. From the air, it looks like a lava flow spilling out into the sea.
The history of this small island is, in many ways, a microcosm for what’s happening in the whole world.
When Columbus first landed on Hispaniola in 1492, virtually the entire island was covered by lush forest. The Taino “Indians” who loved there had an apparently idyllic life prior to Columbus, from the reports left to us by literate members of Columbus’s crew such as Miguel Cuneo.
Conn Hallinan, Information Clearing House, Oct. 9, 2011
Lost in debate over whether the Obama administration had the right to carry out the extra-legal execution of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born Yemini cleric and al-Qaeda member, is who pulled the trigger? It is not a minor question, and it lies at the heart of the 1907 Hague Convention, the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and the 1977 additions to the ‘49 agreement: civilians cannot engage in war.
In the main, laws of war focus on the protection of civilians. For instance, Article 48, the “Basic Rule” of Part IV of the 1977 Geneva Conventions, states, “In order to ensure respect for and protection of civilian populations and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between civilian populations and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives.”
What follows in the 1977 Conventions are nine articles specifying what the general rule means, ranging from prohibitions against attacking power plants and water sources and spreading “terror among civilian populations” to destroying the “natural environment.” There are many civilian-related sections in other parts of the Conventions, but the 10 articles that make up Chapter I, Section I, Part IV on “Civilian Population” are the clearest guidelines about what is allowed when civilians are caught up in war.
A shift from country-wide military occupation to targeted special ops strategy could justify another decade of war in Afghanistan
by John Glaser, Antiwar.com, October 08, 2011
Even as the Obama administration promises to end the Afghan war in 2014, their plans to shift the war from one of military occupation to one of targeted violence by CIA and Joint Special Operations forces note a continuing military presence in Afghanistan that could stretch another decade.
Still, even the broader military’s role in Afghanistan is likely to remain past the 2014 deadline. But CIA and JSOC forces were the first to be put on the ground in Afghanistan in the weeks following the September 11th attacks, and Obama administration plans will have them be the last to leave as well.
In addition to these special forces continuing to conduct what are called counter-terrorism operations – but are not different from simply terror operations – US “trainers” will also remain to assist the Afghan security forces in their aims of having a monopoly of force in Afghanistan.
Peace and Justice Post 