Peace and Justice Post

The Way of Empire

by Kim Petersen, Dissident Voice,  November 18th, 2011

Not that you lied to me but that I no longer believe you has shaken me.

– Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“This morning we reminded the Israeli ambassador how much we deplore the consequences of this raid for the head of our consulate and his family,” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said.

Immediately a pretext was added: “While we recognize Israel’s need to ensure its security, …”

Why is it that the security of the perpetrator of violence is emphasized but the victim of the violence’s security is not mentioned? Why is the violence deplored when one’s own group members die at the hands of violence but so little is said when out-group victims die? Many would call this racism.

Gaza is under a siege that is illegal and immoral. It is immoral because of the principle which holds that any actions against an enemy must be targeted solely against that enemy such that civilians are not put at risk. The Israeli actions target indiscriminately — not separating combatants from non-combatants.

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By Aidan Foster-Carter, Asia Times,  Oct 26, 2011

Joseph McCarthy was a sorry specimen. An alcoholic, he was dead at 48. Yet like Captain Charles Boycott, his name lives on. So, alas, do his bad habits – and I don’t mean the booze.

For five years (1950-1954) before the United States Senate finally came to its senses and censured him, the senator from Wisconsin mesmerized and terrorized Washington with wild accusations that the US government, especially the State Department, was riddled with communists.

Almost none of this stood up, but a climate of fear was created. Those who resisted saw their careers destroyed; some even fledtheir country. My own university gained from this. One of the bully’s victims, the distinguished Mongolist Owen Lattimore, was founding professor of Chinese at Leeds University, where it was my privilege to know him, from 1963 until 1975.

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Paul D’Amato, Socialist Worker,  November 11, 2011

KARL MARX and Frederick Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto that the “history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle.”

They meant written history of course. They weren’t referring to early human societies of small bands, where humans lived by sharing whatever they gathered or hunted. But once people began to produce a surplus–a period tied to the invention of agriculture and the domestication of animals–society split into classes.

Engels argued that class society arose at a certain point “because human labor was still so little productive that it provided but a small surplus over and above the necessary means of subsistence.

Therefore, he argued, “any increase of the productive forces…was possible only by means of a greater division of labor. And the necessary basis for this was the great division of labor between the masses discharging simple manual labor and the few privileged persons directing labor.”

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AHRC, Nov 18, 2011

Urgent Appeal Case : The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information from human rights groups in Manipur concerning the state government’s forced eviction of families living on Loktak Lake since 15 November 2011. The state police has used brute force to chase people away from their homes, including burning nearly 200 huts. Government security agencies for some time have been accusing the settlers of being illegal, and there have been reported cases of armed militant groups operating in Manipur and neighbouring states seeking the settlements as their refuge. It is alleged that the present eviction is in fact a security operation, and not to preserve the environment under the controversial Loktak Lake (Protection) Act, 2006, as claimed.

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Ulrich Rippert and Alex Lantier, wsws.org,  Nov 18, 2011

Over the last two weeks, the German press has carried extensive reports on the operations of a group of three neo-Nazis in the city of Jena over the last 13 years. The gang murdered at least 10 Turkish and Greek immigrants, and carried out other violent crimes under the noses of German domestic intelligence agencies that were actively involved in building the broader far-right networks within which the Jena group operated.

The three neo-Nazis emerged in the 1990s from the ultra-right Thuringian Homeland Security (THS) outfit, whose leader, Tino Brandt, was unmasked as an undercover agent in 2001. He told Der Spiegel that he had received more than 200,000 marks over seven years as an informer for the BVS intelligence service. He claimed to have spent every cent of this money to finance ultra-right groups.

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by Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss,  November 15, 2011

In Saturday night’s Republican debate, Mitt Romney gave a defiant statement about Iran: he will stop it from getting nukes by any means, Obama won’t. Yesterday Obama sought to parry Romney, saying that he is taking no option off the table.

Are we witnessing a primary between Romney and Obama right now, for the support of the Israel lobby?

I think so. Romney’s braintrust includes neocons like Robert Kagan and Dan Senor, while David Brooks, David Frum and Bill Kristol have all said good things about Romney. Dennis Ross and Stuart Levey have both left the Obama administration, hurting his standing in the Israel lobby. Don’t forget, the lobby defected from Bush to Clinton in ’91 over settlements; and its fundraising abilities helped assure Clinton’s election over the incumbent (as Max Blumenthal’s post at AlAkhbar today points out).

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The Nation, Nov 16, 2011

PESHAWAR – At least 18 persons were killed when a barrage of US missiles targeted two houses in South Wazirsitan on Wednesday. Sources said five US drones fired up to 10 missiles into two suspected compounds of militants in Bobar Ghar area of South Waziristan Agency, killing 18 persons including four prominent Taliban commanders. There were reports that “some foreigners” were also killed.

The militants who died in the attacks were identified as Maulvi Mukhlis, Abu Nasir, Abdul Saleem and Arab national Zobian. It was not confirmed that the rest of the killed were Taliban militants or innocent people.

Sources said the compound was owned by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan which was a base camp of the militia and was completely destroyed in the strike.

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U.S. security sources quoted by The Daily Beast claim Israeli forces plan to use electronic warfare to shut down Iranian electrical grid, cellphone networks.

By Haaretz, Nov 17, 2011

Israel intends to electronic warfare on Iranian civilian infrastructures in the event of a strike against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities, The Daily Beast reported on Thursday, amid ongoing fallout from a damning report by the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog.

Last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released a report stating that Iran was working to gain nuclear weapons’ capabilities, a claim that has been made by both Israel and the United States for several years.

	A reactor at the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran on August 21, 2010.
	Photo by: AP

The report prompted Israel to urge the international community to act at once to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions using harsher sanctions, with some estimating that the report gave Israel the backing it needed to undertake a military strike of Tehran’s nuclear facilities.

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By James Cogan, wsws.org, 17 November 2011

US President Barack Obama has used his brief state visit to Australia over the past 24 hours to underscore that his administration’s aggressive intervention into the Asia-Pacific region is aimed at undercutting China’s growing influence. The Labor government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard has unconditionally aligned itself with the US as the means for advancing Australian corporate and strategic interests within the region.

At a press conference yesterday evening, Obama and Gillard announced that the American military will boost its operations in the north and west of the Australian continent. The country’s Northern Territory and its capital city Darwin, which is closer to Indonesia than Australia’s major southern cities, will be developed into a major US staging base.

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The Raw Story, Nov 15, 2011

By Agence France-Presse

WASHINGTON — The US Air Force has a new 30,000-pound bomb in its arsenal designed to penetrate targets buried deep underground, a spokesman said Tuesday.

The Air Force started taking delivery of the giant bomb, the “Massive Ordnance Penetrator,” in September, said Lieutenant Colonel Jack Miller.

Under an August 2 contract worth $32 million, the aerospace firm Boeing is due to produce eight of the giant MOP bombs to fulfil the Air Force’s “operational needs,” according to Miller.

The Air Force could not say how many of the conventional bombs have been delivered so far, but the MOP is seen as a weapon made for going after underground bunkers and tunnels in North Korea or Iran.

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