Peace and Justice Post

Most solidarity activists in this country would agree that the PSC (Palestine Solidarity Campaign)  is potentially an invaluable institution. Yet, the National Office, under its current leadership, has made some serious mistakes.

The PSC’s task is not easy. We all operate in a Zionised environment and we’re subject to constant pressure and abuse. Moreover, it’s not always clear what we should do for Palestine. It is obvious that Palestinian resistance is more than just single political perception or a vision of conflict resolution.

Palestine is basically a dynamic discourse of negation with Palestinians themselves divided on different issues to do with their struggle and their fate. Consequently, Palestinian solidarity is also far from being a rigid or monolithic discourse. Furthermore, the enemy also is far from being any obviously singular identity or monolithic political discourse.

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By Mark Tablack, opednews.com, Dec 1, 2011

Republicans or Democrat, are really both the Same.
Conspiring together for an advantage in the Game.
They Steal all the money, yet still crave all the Fame.
Praying to an Indifferent God and Killing in his Name.
Don’t speak against the Government, don’t even make a peep.
The whole world is Flooded, the Bullshit’s way too Deep.
Will the people ever wake up, or are they fast Asleep?
The Masses are so stupid, they’re just a bunch of Sheep.
When they take to the Streets you sit and wonder WHY.
You show their faces on TV but still IGNORE their Cry.
You just keep on repeating the same old tired LIE.
“Greed is Good” you scream, so just “Shut-up and Die.”
We owe these leaders everything, so let us all say Thanks.
By occupying Wall street and have a run on all the Banks.
Then batten down your hatches and tighten up your Flanks.
They’ll be sending in the Army and rolling out the Tanks.
So Stand up all Ye Patriots, there’s nothing left to Fear.
Stock up on your Ammo, the Global War is Near.
Start hoarding bottled water, Twenty-Twelve will be the Year.
But most of all remember, DON’T BELIEVE ANYTHING YOU HEAR.

Breivik probably has a pyschopath’s lack of affective empathy. But that alone cannot explain his terrible cruelty

• 
• • Simon Baron-Cohen
  • guardian.co.uk, Thursday 1 December 2011 21.59 GMT

Anders Breivik is transported from the courthouse in Oslo shortly after his killing spree. Photograph: Scanpix Norway/REUTERS

We can all remember where we were when we heard that Anders Breivik had gone to a summer camp on Utoya island in Norway, dressed as a police officer, and shot and killed 69 people, mainly teenagers. Psychologists call this a flashbulb memory: although it may not have exceptional detail, the memory has a vividness that derives from the emotional shock around it.

As bystanders to this tragedy, we heard one question repeatedly voiced as we sat glued to our TV screens: why? If we had asked Breivik why he murdered all those young people, he would have said it was to draw attention to his manifesto aimed at saving Europe from the Muslims. Indeed he emailed his deeply disturbing “2083: A European Declaration of Independence”, to more than a thousand people 90 minutes before he bombed the government buildings in Oslo and just before he went out and shot all those people on the island camp.

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Seven years after the U.S. invasion of Fallujah, there are reports of an alarming rise in the rates of birth defects and cancer. But the crisis, and its possible connection to weapons deployed by the United States during the war, remains woefully under-examined.

On November 8, 2004, U.S. military forces launched Operation Phantom Fury 50 miles west of Baghdad in Fallujah, a city of 350,000 people known for its opposition to the Saddam regime.

The United States did not expect to encounter resistance in Fallujah, nor did it initially face any in the early days of the war. The first sign of serious hostility appeared in April 2003, after U.S. soldiers from the 82nd Airborne division fired into a crowd of protesters demonstrating against the occupation and the closure of their local school building, killing 17 civilians and injuring 70. . .

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by Eric Walberg, Dissident Voice,  December 1st, 2011

It’s hard to imagine a greater provocation than your bosom buddy killing 28 of your own soldiers. NATO helicopters violated the air space of Pakistan from Afghanistan on Friday and opened unprovoked fire on a check post in Mohmand, northwest Pakistan at midnight. Presumably the pilots got the wrong coordinates from MacDill Air Force Central Command in Florida or took too many army-prescribed uppers. The attack continued even after Pakistani commanders pleaded with coalition forces to stop.

As a show of anger, Pakistan ordered the CIA to vacate drone operations at Shamsi Air Base in southwestern Baluchistan and closed both the Khyber and Baluchistan supply routes into Afghanistan, cutting off 70 per cent of NATO’s supplies. It was the worst such incident since 9/11.

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Editor’s Note: This is Petras’ grey matter and quill at their best. Nearly every day someone says something like this to me, “What a crazy world we live in.” Well yes, insanity rules at the top, with fear, chaos and a sense of impotence trickling down fracture any order that could form a threat against the oligarchy. Petras’ treatise puts it all into an understandable perspective with refreshing insight into the enemy’s mind and plans for the rest of us. With that knowledge comes power. If I may borrow from E.F. Shumacher’s famous book, this essay could be titled, a “Guide for the Perplexed.”

– Les Blough, Editor

Introduction

We live in a time of dynamic, regressive, regime changes. A period in which major political transformations and the dramatic roll back of a half century of socio-economic legislation are accelerated by a prolonged and deepening economic crises and a world-wide financier led offensive. This essay explores major ongoing regime changes that have a profound impact on governance, the class structures, economic institutions, political freedom and national sovereignty. We delineate a two-stage process of political regression. The first stage involves the transition from a decaying democracy to an oligarchical democracy; the second stage currently unfolding in Europe involves the transition from oligarchical democracy to colonial-technocratic dictatorship. We will identify the specific features of each regime focusing on the specific conditions and socio-economic forces behind each “transition”. We will proceed to clarify the key concepts, their operative meaning: specifically the nature and dynamics of “decaying democracies” (DD), oligarchical democracies (OD) and “colonial technocratic dictatorship” (CTD).

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Palestine solidarity has become increasingly visible in the UK trade union movement. (Rod Leon)

Over the last few years, UK trade unions have expressed solidarity with Palestine more and more explicitly. Union after union has overturned a previous orthodoxy of balance between “two sides” when it comes to policy on Israel and the Palestinians. So many unions have now passed motions in support of the Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement that even the often conservative Trades Union Congress (TUC) has been compelled to change policy.

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In my piece today on the gradual drawdown of NATO troops in Afghanistan, I provided plenty of evidence supporting the notion that we are not getting out of Afghanistan in 2014, as the Obama administration claims. By the end of next year, 40,000 will have been withdrawn, from the approximately 140,000 there now.

I’ve written before about how actual military and defense officials repeatedly explain that 2014 will not be the end of the occupation. As just one example, in a recent talk at the Council on Foreign Relations from under secretary of defense for policy at the Department of Defense Michèle Flournoy, she explained that “2014 is not a withdrawal date—it’s an inflection point.” And now Afghan President Hamid Karzai has tacitly approved a robust strategic agreement and U.S. military presence through 2024 at his council of over 2,000 tribal elders.

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Former civil servant Filep Karma is currently serving a 15-year prison sentence after taking part in an annual ceremony where the “Morning Star” flag, a banned symbol of Papuan independence was raised. He was one of 200 people who took part in the peaceful ceremony in Abepura, Papua Province, in December 2004.

Police arrested Filep Karma at the site of the ceremony and subsequently charged him with “rebellion”. In 2005 he was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment.

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