Peace and Justice Post

Le Monde Diplomatique, Exclusive 17 December, by Heidi Morrison

Seeking an explanation for tragic violence, we often turn to history and ask ourselves how we got to this point.  Writing the historical narrative for the forces that led to the horrific elementary school massacre of 28 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook has already begun. Commentators correctly place Sandy Hook in a recent line of similar incidents (Aurora, Fort Hood, Virginia Tech…) — all testimony for America’s lack of dialogue on gun control and commitment to mental health services. The narrative holds that American culture is becoming increasingly violent.

In the last decade, children in places like Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq and Gaza have also died at the hands of America’s culture of violence. Yet, there is no national outpouring of grief and outrage in America for these children.  There is a disconnect in the American psyche between what causes our own children to die and what causes other children abroad to die.

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Anita Joshua,  The Hindu, Dec 17, 2012

Pakistan’s Shias are so regularly killed in targeted attacks that counting the numbers who were thus killed in 2012 is an uphill task. But just to give an idea, even before the start of the Muharram month, when anti-Shia violence is usually routinely anticipated and accepted as a given, the numbers killed had crossed 389 — the number of people the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says died in sectarian violence in 2011.

This time, the terrorists were emboldened enough to announce their intent. Ahead of Muharram, a number of Shias received text messages saying ‘Kill, Kill Shias.’ Sure enough, the self-appointed deciders of who is or is not a Muslim struck, killing 23 in two separate bomb blasts early on in the Muharram month.

Relentless targeting

Through the year, terrorists have been relentless in going after Shias; be it in Parachinar along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Gilgit-Baltistan, Quetta, Karachi or the garrison town of Rawalpindi. The clinical manner in which the terrorists have been going about their “mission” has been chilling, generating enough disquiet among the members of the community to take to the streets on December 8 outside the United Nations headquarters in New York protesting the “genocide in Pakistan.”

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Barack Obama’s tears for the children of Newtown are in stark contrast to his silence over the children murdered by his drones

• • George Monbiot
  • The Guardian, Monday 17 December 2012 20.30 GMT

A memorial to the victims of the Sandy Hook school shootings in Connecticut. The children killed by US drones in north-west Pakistan ‘have no names, no pictures, no memorials of candles and teddy bears’. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty

“Mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts … These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.” Every parent can connect with what President Barack Obama said about the murder of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut. There can scarcely be a person on earth with access to the media who is untouched by the grief of the people of that town.

It must follow that what applies to the children murdered there by a deranged young man also applies to the children murdered in Pakistan by a sombre American president. These children are just as important, just as real, just as deserving of the world’s concern. Yet there are no presidential speeches or presidential tears for them, no pictures on the front pages of the world’s newspapers, no interviews with grieving relatives, no minute analysis of what happened and why.

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Editorial

Nasir  Khan, December 16, 2012

Dr Kazerooni, I agree with your viewpoint. I also ventured to console myself with the thought that perhaps a tragic incident like the present school shooting in America may lead to some sort of soul searching and people may turn away from violence. But I know it is only an escapist illusion because the reality is something much different than our wishful reveries. America is a country where violence is glorified and it is regarded not something primitive and inhuman which civilised human beings ought to reject and seek other ways of dealing with conflicts and social tensions. The culture of violence, gun-toting, fast shooting, random killings and uncouth cowboyism provide the deep undercurrents that shape American psyche and outlook. Such a psyche and outlook at state level becomes a force utilised by American plutocrats for militarism and global hegemony of the American Empire. In short, America will continue to follow its traditional path as it has done in the past both at home and in foreign countries as long as it wields power and influence.
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Nasir Khan: That is a fact. We all are witness to what happens when American drones kill Pakistani children. We have never seen any large-scale sympathy for such victims or demonstrations in America against such killings by the American State. But when a lone American lunatic murders children in America, and that happens often in schools and colleges, then the conscience of the American people is stirred and public anger and remorse engulf the whole nation.

NB: My reply to Dr Ibrahim Kazerooni is  published as Editorial to  the post.

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Torture. Secret prisons. Rape. Incessant murder of civilians. Military-enforced curfew. Suppression of information. Kidnapings. Property destruction. Ethnic cleansing. Scorched earth policies. Protests. Mass graves. Humiliation. Beatings. Missing persons. Intimidation. Occupation. No, this is not a description of the life of Palestinians under the 62 year occupation of the Zionist entity. No, this is not a description of the life of civilians living under brutal US-UK military occupation in Iraq or Afghanistan. This is a description of the life of civilians in Kashmir, under the despicable, savage and inhumane Indian occupation which has been in place for 63 years. Palestine has been politicized over and over by corrupt Arab and Muslim leaders. It has been used for propaganda by Western politicians vying for support from the Zionist lobby by bowing down to Israel, as well as the Zionist media to disseminate the ‘Israel is the victim’ theme and smear Palestinian Resistance. Kashmir however, isn’t even mentioned at all. It is disregarded by the dictators and monarchies of the Middle East. It is disregarded by the Zionist puppets and demagogues of the West. Kashmir has become a forgotten occupation (1).

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“Nothing Can Justify Torture”

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by ERIC BAILEY, Counterpunch, Dec 12, 2012

Professor Noam Chomsky is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was educated at the University of Philadelphia and at Harvard University as a Harvard Junior Fellow. He earned his PhD in Linguistics from the University of Philadelphia in 1955. He has spent the 57 years since then teaching at MIT. In addition to his academic work in linguistics, Professor Chomsky has been a noted political activist and philosopher, gaining national recognition in 1967 over his opposition to the Vietnam War and since then has regularly spoken out against US foreign and domestic policies and mainstream American mass media. Between his academic career and his work as a political activist and dissident, he has published over 100 books. On the eve of the 2012 US presidential election, he discussed with Eric Bailey of Torture Magazine America’s human rights record under the administration of President Obama and the military intervention policies that have seen increased use during the Arab Spring.

EB: The US presidential elections are almost upon us and the last four years have seen significant changes in American Federal policy in regards to human rights. One of the few examples of cooperation between the Democratic and Republican Parties over the last four years has been the passing of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012. This bill has given the United States military the power to arrest American citizens, indefinitely, without charge, trial, or any other form of due process of law and the Obama Administration has and continues to fight a legal battle in Federal Court to prevent that law from being declared unconstitutional. Obama authorized the assassination of three American citizens, including Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16 year old son, admittedly all members of Al Qaeda, – all without judicial review. Additionally, the Guantanamo Bay prison remains open, the Patriot Act has been extended, and the TSA has expanded at breakneck speeds. What is your take on America’s human rights record over the past four years and can you contrast Obama’s policies with those of his predecessor, George W. Bush?

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The Condition of Human Rights at the International Setting

By Professor Francis A. Boyle, ICH, Dec 10, 2012

Text of speech by Professor Francis A. Boyle at the Puerto Rican Summit Conference on Human Rights – University of the Sacred Heart – San Juan, Puerto Rico – December 09, 2012

Historically this latest eruption of American militarism at the start of the 21st Century is akin to that of America opening the 20th Century by means of the U.S.-instigated Spanish-American War in 1898. Then the Republican administration of President William McKinley stole their colonial empire from Spain in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; inflicted a near genocidal war against the Filipino people; while at the same time illegally annexing the Kingdom of Hawaii and subjecting the Native Hawaiian people (who call themselves the Kanaka Maoli) to near genocidal conditions. Additionally, McKinley’s military and colonial expansion into the Pacific was also designed to secure America’s economic exploitation of China pursuant to the euphemistic rubric of the “open door” policy. But over the next four decades America’s aggressive presence, policies, and practices in the so-called “Pacific” Ocean would ineluctably pave the way for Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 194l, and thus America’s precipitation into the ongoing Second World War. Today a century later the serial imperial aggressions launched and menaced by the neoconservative Republican Bush Junior administration and the neoliberal Democratic Obama administration are now threatening to set off World War III.

By shamelessly exploiting the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, the Bush Junior administration set forth to steal a hydrocarbon empire from the Muslim states and peoples living in Central Asia and the Middle East and Africa under the bogus pretexts of (1) fighting a war against “international terrorism” or “Islamic fundamentalism”; and/or (2) eliminating weapons of mass destruction; and/or (3) the promotion of democracy; and/or (4) self-styled humanitarian intervention/responsibility to protect (R2P). Only this time the geopolitical stakes are infinitely greater than they were a century ago: control and domination of the world’s hydrocarbon resources and thus the very fundaments and energizers of the global economic system – oil and gas. The Bush Junior/ Obama administrations have already targeted the remaining hydrocarbon reserves of Africa, Latin America (e.g., the Pentagon’s reactivization of the U.S. Fourth Fleet in 2008), and Southeast Asia for further conquest or domination, together with the strategic choke-points at sea and on land required for their transportation. Today the U.S. Fourth Fleet threatens Cuba, Venezuela, and Ecuador for sure.

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• Jason Burke in Delhi
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 December 2012

Indian soldiers patrol a sector near the India-Pakistan border in the northern Indian state of Kashmir Photograph: MANISH SWARUP/AP

Hundreds of serving Indian soldiers, including senior officers, are accused of involvement in widespread human rights abuses in Kashmir in a new report to be published on Thursday.

Many have been decorated and promoted despite serious allegations against them, the authors say. In a move likely to provoke anger, the report, by a team of veteran legal activists in the Himalayan state, names 500 “alleged perpetrators” ranging from low-ranking policemen to Indian army generals.

The charges relate to incidents occurring throughout more than 20 years of violence pitting armed religious and separatist groups against New Delhi’s rule in Kashmir, and include shootings, abductions, torture and rapes.

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Implementing Israel’s Settlement Policy

by Binoy Kampmark, Dissident Voice,  December 5th, 2012

This is the answer. Outmanoeuvred in the UN, Israel has huffed and puffed against the house that is the international community and taken the policy of increasing settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank in the corridor of land termed E1 out of cold storage.  The air of desperation is palpable. The Palestinians, having gotten the crumbs of non-observer status at the UN in an overwhelming vote, have stirred Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his government into violent action.  Since they can’t launch an invasion in protest or initiate another wave of assassinations against the Palestinian moderates, they are left with a policy of unmitigated anger.

The plans for constructing settlements on E1, a policy that will connect Jerusalem with Maaleh Adumim, would effectively divide the northern and western West Bank.  Should that occur, a contiguous Palestinian state would be dealt a blow even before its formal creation (Al Bawaba News, December 4).  The structure for defeating such a move is effectively being laid.  Of those 20 or so Palestinian communities that are slated for forced evictions, 2300 are mostly Jahalin Bedouin.

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