Peace and Justice Post

By Rob Kall, opednews.com,  Oct. 8, 2011

When participants in a peaceful, non-violent march which departed from the Freedom Square Occupy Washington DC staging area attempted to enter the National Air and Space Museum, guards and police responded violently, throwing people to the ground, pepper-spraying a journalist and protesters so the doors outside were surrounded by people choking, wheezing, prostrated on the ground, eyes blinded or tearing from direct and indirect exposure to pepper spray.

I had gone ahead of the group of 700-1500 protesters, carrying signs opposing the use of drones to indiscriminately kill. The National Air and Space Museum had been targeted because it is celebrating the use of drones.

After less than a dozen people had entered the foyer of the museum, and just a handful of activists had entered the actual museum, guards rushed to the doors and blocked further entry.

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Israel’s right-wing leaders feel they can count on U.S. politicians to rubber-stamp pretty much whatever Israel does to the Palestinians, with some extremist rabbis even glorifying the racist mass murderer Baruch Goldstein. Which leaves Lawrence Davidson wondering what it will take to change behavior in Washington and Tel Aviv.

By Lawrence Davidson, Consortium News, October 8, 2011

In his speech to Congress on May 24, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted that “of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights.”

This is, of course, a variation on the oft-cited claim that Israel is “the only democracy in the Middle East.” Leaving aside places like Lebanon and now potentially Tunisia and Egypt, one can ask just how “real” are these democratic rights the Prime Minister claims for Israel’s Arabs? Here is some recent evidence that speaks to this question.

–At the end of September, the Israeli government announced “a plan to displace 30,000 native Bedouin Arabs [all of whom are Israeli citizens] … from their homes [in the Negev].”

This would constitute “the biggest dispossession plan of Palestinians issued by Israel since 1948. It would forcibly relocate about half of the Bedouin population from their existing villages, which are older than the State of Israel itself.”

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Friday was a good day for waking up in Freedom Plaza and for occupying the headquarters of the drone manufacturers.  Fast forward to minute 44 on this video http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/17729809 Their intelligence about which way we were coming from was no better at keeping us out of their building than the CIA’s intelligence is at making sure the “right” people are murdered with the drones.

Friday was a good day for marching to the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial and talking about his opposition to militarism, racism, and consumerism.

And finally Friday night, the people of Freedom Plaza hesitantly found their democratic voice.  Nobody despises touchy-feely process discussions more than I do.  I prefer majority rule to pseudo-consensus any day, and I only wiggle my fingers when the air gets below zero and I need to keep them warm.  But after enough process had been processed, our crowd began to hold informative discussions and make informed decisions.

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By Peter Symonds, wsws.org, 8 October 2011

Yesterday marked a decade since the US and Britain launched military operations against Afghanistan, initiating a bloody and protracted war of neo-colonial conquest. The war has been a disaster for the Afghan people and a tragic waste of the lives of American and allied soldiers. It has profoundly destabilised regional and world politics.

In its statement of October 9, 2001, the World Socialist Web Site editorial board condemned the US-led assault on Afghanistan and exposed the Bush administration’s claims to be conducting a “war on terror” to defend the American people against Al Qaeda. The statement identified Washington’s real objective as the transformation of the country into a permanent US base of operations to extend its hegemony over the adjacent energy-rich region of Central Asia.

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By Kate Randall, wsws.org, 8 October 2011

Anti-Wall Street protests continued to spread yesterday to cities across the US. According to the web site Occupy Together, as of Friday evening “Meetups” to plan protests had been established in more than 900 cities.

The Occupy Wall Street movement, which began last month in New York, has expanded now to dozens of towns, including Tampa, Florida; Norfolk, Virginia; Washington, DC; Boston; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Chicago; St. Louis, Missouri; Minneapolis; Houston, San Antonio and Austin, Texas; Nashville; Portland, Oregon; Anchorage, Alaska; and a number of California cities.

The demonstrations—fueled by anger over social inequality, unemployment and a vast decline in living standards for the overwhelming majority—are also gaining international support. There are calls on Facebook for a global demonstration on October 15 in cities in more than 15 countries, from Dublin to Madrid, Buenos Aires to Hong Kong.

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CBS New York, Oct.8, 2011

A Wall Street protester wakes up at Zuccotti Park that she and hundreds of other activists are occupying on October 3, 2011 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) — Saturday marks exactly three weeks since the Occupy Wall Street protest began at Zuccotti Park and with the numbers swelling by the day, the movement has outgrown the area.

As the protesters awakened to begin their day, a change of venue was on the agenda. The demonstrators feel it’s time to expand and will march to Washington Square Park Saturday afternoon.

“The size of the crowd has quadrupled since a week ago and there’s no more room for people who are trickling in from all over the country every day to join us, so we need elbow room,” said protestor Bill Steyert from Queens.

Showing no signs of diminishing, the Zuccotti Park campout has Mayor Michael Bloomberg also searching for solutions.

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by Stephen Lendman, uruknet.info, October 6, 2011

Israel treats Palestinian prisoners horrifically. In detention, interrogations include torture, intimidation and other abuses.

“Security prisoners” are punitively isolated for extended periods. Others for any reason or none at all face similar short or longer-term treatment.

Administrative detainees are held indefinitely without charges or trial. Children are treated like adults.

Horrific conditions include severe overcrowding; poor ventilation and sanitation; no change of clothes or adequate clothing; wooden planks with thin mattresses for beds; filthy blankets; inadequate food in terms of quality, quantity or conformance with dietary requirements; poor medical care; and hindered access to family members and counsel, among other abuses.

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The failure to uphold Britain’s obligations towards universal jurisdiction were demonstrated this week when Tzipi Livni met with Foreign Secretary William Hague in London and managed to avoid arrest for alleged war crimes. Livni’s previous, disrupted, visit to London in late 2009 was the catalyst for the British government’s move to change the law on universal jurisdiction. The then Labour government began to make changes to universal jurisdiction and these were put into effect by the Coalition with the recent Royal Assent for the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill. The changes to the law mean that the Director of Public Prosecutions has to give consent to any application for an arrest warrant with prima facie evidence, whereby previously any citizen could apply to Westminster Magistrates Court for such a warrant.

Livni and other suspected war criminals have postponed visits to London for fear of arrest and, backed by the influential pro-Israel Lobby, had pushed the British government to effect changes to the law on universal jurisdiction. With both the Coalition Government and the Labour Party supporting these changes, ex-Foreign Minister Livni’s visit to London was inevitable. William Hague said that he was “delighted” to welcome Ms Livni to London at a critical moment for the Middle East. “It was an appalling situation when political abuse of our legal procedures prevented people like Mrs Livni from travelling legitimately to the UK,” he added. “We have dealt with this urgently as we promised to on coming to office.”

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To paraphrase one of Bob Dylan’s songs of youthful protest, “Something’s happening here, and you don’t know what it is, do you Ms. Bellafante?”

A New York Times writer, Ginia Bellafante, is but one of many establishment reporters and pundits who’ve been covering the fledgling “Occupy Wall Street” movement — but completely missing the story. Instead of really digging into what’s “happening here,” they’ve resorted to fuddy-duddy mockery of an important populist protest that has sprouted right in Wall Street’s own neighborhood.

In a September article, Bellafante dismissed the young people’s effort as “fractured and airy,” calling it a “carnival” in an “intellectual vacuum.” Their cause is so “diffuse and leaderless,” she wrote, that its purpose is “virtually impossible to decipher.” No wonder, she concluded, that participation in the movement is “dwindling.”

Whew — so snide! Yet, so wrong.

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