Peace and Justice Post

Reuters, Nov 20, 2011

(Reuters) – Around 1,000 people, mostly students, took to the streets in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday to protest against plans for a long-term partnership deal with the United States, which they fear could lead to an extended presence of U.S. troops.

Afghan political and community leaders endorsed the idea of a strategic partnership, with some caveats, after a 2,000-strong national gathering, or loya jirga, which ended on Saturday.

The demonstrators gathered just outside the capital of eastern Nangarhar province and burnt an effigy of U.S. President Barack Obama as they protested against the prospect of U.S. troops remaining in Afghanistan.

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Security forces are expelled from the square by anti-SCAF protesters following two days of battles that many are calling the ’19th and 20th days’ of Egypt’s ongoing revolution

Yassin Gaber,   Ahram Online,   Monday 21 Nov 2011

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• Video: Police violently attempts to break up sit-in Sunday

• Recap: Calm prevails in Tahrir after night of bloody battles, truce holds into morning

• Updated: 22 dead as a result of Tahrir Clashes: Ministry of Health

Following a deadly standoff in Cairo’s Tahrir Square at sunset, thousands of protesters regained their ground, successfully expelling the military police and soldiers – dressed in riot gear and wielding bludgeons and electroshock weapons – who stood before rows of Central Security Forces (CSF) firing barrage after barrage of tear gas. The streets of downtown Cairo were filled with fleeing protesters, weaving their way through burning trees and thick clouds of the toxic gas.

When the square was finally reclaimed, at least three protesters had been reported killed, with a fourth death later reported from a makeshift field hospital.

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Socialist Worker, Nov 19, 2011
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An international appeal for solidarity has gone out today as tens of thousands of Egyptians face brutal repression in the streets of Cairo. Riot police and army forces attacked protestors after mass demonstrations calling for an end to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces’ military rule.

The Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions issued a call on Saturday 19 November to its 1.4 million members in affiliated unions to join the protests in Tahrir Square. The protestors are fighting for the future of the revolution.

Solidarity protests have already been called in Britain, Ireland, Canada, Sweden and Germany.

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by Fidel Castro, Dissident Voice,  November 19th, 2011

In order to give an idea of the potential of the USSR in its efforts to maintain parity with the United States in this sphere, we only need to point out that when its disintegration occurred in 1991, in Byelorussia there were 81 nuclear warheads, in Kazakhstan 1400 and in the Ukraine approximately 5000; all these went over to the Russian Federation, the only state capable of sustaining its immense cost, in order to maintain independence.

By virtue of the START and SORT treaties on the reduction of offensive weapons signed by the two great nuclear powers, the number of these was reduced to several thousand.

In 2010, a new treaty of this kind was signed by the two powers.

Since then the greatest efforts have been dedicated to improving direction, scope and precision and to the deception of adversary defence. Huge amounts of money have been invested in the military sphere.

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Part One

by Fidel Castro, Dissident Voice,  November 16th, 2011

No sane person, especially someone who has had access to the elementary knowledge acquired in primary school, would agree that our species, especially those who are children, teenagers or youth, should be deprived of the right to live, today, tomorrow and forever. Never have human beings, throughout their eventful history, as persons endowed with intelligence, ever heard of an experience like that.

I feel the duty to convey to those taking the trouble to read these Reflections the opinion that all of us, with no exception, are obliged to create awareness about the risks that humankind are running in an inexorable manner, towards a final and total catastrophe as the consequence of irresponsible decisions made by politicians who fate, rather than talent or merit, has placed the destiny of humankind in their hands.

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Saber-rattling for the sake of Big Labor and Big Oil

Declaring the US is “here to stay,” President Obama made his Asian trip the occasion for a renewed assertion of US hegemony in the region, announcing a new agreement with Australia that would see thousands of US marines stationed at a base in Australia. Dispelling any doubt about who or what this garrison is meant to guard against, the One declared China must “play by the rules.”

Who sets those rules? Washington does, of course. Which raises the question: what are the rules, anyway?

Actually, there’s only one: Washington is always right — even when it’s wrong, and you may apply it in any situation, no matter the specifics.

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BBC News,  Nov 20, 2011

 The BBC’s Yolande Knell said protesters were angry about the power held by the military

Two people have been killed and more than 600 injured in fierce clashes between protesters and security forces in Cairo and Alexandria.

The clashes came as police moved to prevent a long-term sit-in following a huge demonstration in Cairo against the military leadership on Friday.

Some protesters lobbed rocks and a police vehicle was set on fire.

The latest violence comes just over a week before parliamentary elections are scheduled to begin.

Protesters – mostly Islamists and young activists – have been holding demonstrations against a draft constitution that they say would allow the military to retain too much power after a new civilian government is elected.

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Many Washington pundits who championed the false tales about Iraq’s WMD have returned to center stage in the new accusations about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. And some of the Iran charges are falling apart just like the Iraq ones, as Gareth Porter reports.

By Gareth Porter,  Consortium News, Nov  19, 2011

A former inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repudiated its major new claim that Iran built an explosives chamber to test components of a nuclear weapon and carry out a simulated nuclear explosion.

The IAEA claim that a foreign scientist – identified in news reports as Vyacheslav Danilenko – had been involved in building the alleged containment chamber also has now been denied firmly by Danilenko himself in an interview with Radio Free Europe published on Friday.

The latest report by the IAEA cited “information provided by Member States” that Iran had constructed “a large explosives containment vessel in which to conduct hydrodynamic experiments” – meaning simulated explosions of nuclear weapons – in its Parchin military complex in 2000.

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