Peace and Justice Post

Professor Richard Falk, Dec 15, 2012

Once again, perhaps in the most anguishing manner ever, the deadly shooting of 20 children (and 8 adults) between the ages of 5 and 10 at the Newton, Connecticut Sandy Hook Elementary School, has left America in a stunned posture of tragic bemusement. Why should such incidents be happening here, especially in such a peaceful and affluent town? The shock is accompanied by spontaneous outpourings of grief, bewilderment, empathy, communal espirit, and a sense of national tragedy. Such an unavoidably dark mood is officially confirmed by the well-crafted emotional message of the president, Barack Obama.

The template of response has become a national liturgy in light of the dismal pattern of public response: media sensationalism of a totalizing kind, at once enveloping, sentimental, and tasteless (endless interviewing of surviving children and teachers, and even family members of victims), but dutifully avoiding deeper questions relating to guns, violence, and cultural stimulants and conditioning. . .

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• U.S. carried out 333 drone strikes in Afghanistan in 2012, report says, up from 294 in 2011

• Controversial method of fighting uses remote pilots to operate aircrafts

By Beth Stebner, Mail Online, Dec 21, 2012

The United States carried out more drone strikes in Afghanistan this year than it has done in all the years put together in Pakistan since it launched the covert air war there eight years ago, it has been revealed.

The statistics, published by the U.S. Air Force and published by Wired’s Danger Room blog, show that there were 333 drone strikes in Afghanistan in 2012 alone, up from 294 in the previous year and 278 in 2010.

It is far more than an estimated 338 strikes carried out by the CIA in Pakistan since it began hunting down remnants of al Qaeda, the Taliban and other militant groups in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas eight years ago.

The U.S. carried out more drone strikes in Afghanistan this year than it has done in all the years put together in Pakistan since it launched the air war there eight years ago

Rape

by Bardi Raina

.

Woman, if and when you bless me,

You are goddess;

When you do obey unquestioningly

My command, you are devi;

When you say, wear, think your own thing,

You are whore.

In this, every indian male from Manu

To modern judge, police and politician,

Father and son and more are agreed.

Such is the cultural nationalism

That makes of us a unique breed.

Yet, the rapist must hang in public square,

Where potential rapists among the common dregs

May take fear, and shelve their frustration

With women’s proliferating visibility

On the street, office and station.

Only those among the rapists who rape

Their own wards in privacy of homes

Must not hang; priests and temple domes

Must be deployed to set to right

Their so excusable oversight.

Education must be used to train

Women to know why their troubles

Issue from their pretence to brain.

In this one thought all Indians come

Into such exemplary unity:

Hindu and Muslim patriarchs happily see

The infallible truth of that recipe.

Om shanti, shanti, shanti.

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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