Peace and Justice Post

by Kit Kittredge, Dissident Voice,  November 14th, 2011

Why I wanted to Challenge the Israeli Naval Blockade of Gaza

In the overland five trips I have made to Gaza since March, 2009, I have seen the disastrous effect of the brutal Israeli land and sea blockade has had on the Palestinian people.  I have seen the terrible level of destruction that the 2008-2009 Israeli attack wrecked on Gaza, in which 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the 22 day attack, 5,000 were wounded and 50,000 were made homeless.  I was on the Gaza Freedom March in 2009 and I was a passenger on the US Boat to Gaza, the “Audacity of Hope” that was forbidden from sailing June, 2011 by the Greek government on behalf of the Israeli government.

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By Devinder Sharma, Countercurrents.com, Nov 14, 2011

Ground Reality

Although Prime Minister Manmohan Singh considers rising food inflation to be a sign of growing prosperity, the reality is very harsh and painful. Rising food inflation, which continues for the 4th successive year now, has hit the aam aadmi like never before. Adding fuel to fire is the frequent raise in petrol prices.

Every time food inflation crosses the double-digit barrier, the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, have been quick to set a deadline some three to six months ahead during which period they promise to bring down the prices. While the failure to stem the price rise is written large, what is more worrying is the complete inability of the government to comprehend the reasons behind it. Economists and policy makers appear clueless and therefore continue to grope in the dark.

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• • Laurie Penny
  • guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 15 November 2011 13.40 GMT

Solidarity with the police has turned to outrage. Photograph: Lucas Jackson/Reuters

At four in the morning in lower Manhattan, as what remains of the Occupy Wall Street encampment is loaded into trash compacters, some protesters have still not given up on the police. Kevin Sheneberger tries to engage one NYPD officer in a serious debate about the role of law enforcement in public protest. Then he sees them loading his friend’s tent into the back of a rubbish truck. Behind him, a teenage girl holds a hastily written sign saying: “NYPD, we trusted you – you were supposed to protect us!”

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Air Chief Marshall Rao Suleiman, the head of Pakistan’s Air Force, today discussed the “lessons” of the past three and a half years of bombing the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

According to Suleiman, the Air Force flew 5,500 sorties against the FATA since May 2008, and has learned the lesson that knowing what you’re bombing is really important. He even conceded that early on, the Air Force was relying entirely on Google Earth to select targets.

It was only during the summer of 2009, when Pakistan invaded the Swat Valley, that the military actually starting doing its own reconnaissance for identifying camps to potentially bomb.

Unspoken in Suleiman’s comments are that the 5,500 sorties have done essentially nothing, and the FATA are no more under control of the military and the Zardari government now than they were when this round of bombing campaigns, mostly done at the behest of the United States, began.

Dr Isamil Salami, Veterns Today, Nov 14, 2011

Following the recent IAEA report released on Iran’s nuclear program which many observers found professionally faulty, Washington once again ratcheted  up the ‘bomb, bomb Iran’ rhetoric.

The rhetoric escalated even more in the US presidential debate on Saturday when some of the Republicans made it loud and clear that a war with Iran would be the ultimate solution to Iran’s nuclear program.

“Totally. Absolutely without any doubt the Iranians if they develop a nuclear weapon … the whole region is going to want a nuclear weapon. Then you march down the road of Armageddon. If you open Pandora’s box, if you attack Iran, if they get a nuclear weapon you empty Pandora’s box, that’s the world we live in. So I support the option of a military option as a last resort,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Sunday.

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Despite reams of nonsense published by the likes of Eli Lake and Avi Issacharoff in the Washington Times and Haaretz respectively, regurgitating IDF talking points that the Eilat terror attacks were planned and orchestrated by the Popular Resistance Committees in Gaza–Idan Landau, Alex Fishman and I knew otherwise.  We said the attacks were carried out by Egyptian militants based in Sinai.  We said that killing 30 Gazans merely because the Israeli government couldn’t take revenge on Egypt and needed to take revenge on someone, was criminal.  Issacharoff even sneered at my talking of this as a potential war crime.  Well, who’s sneering now?

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By Stephen Lendman, rense.com, Nov 11, 2011

News is carefully filtered, dissent marginalized, and supporting imperial belligerence substitutes for full and accurate disclosure.

As a result, patriotism means going along with rogue policies. Never mind rule of law principles and democratic values. Free and open societies are risked. So is humanity if belligerents overstep.

The IAEA Iranian nuclear program report stirred a hornet’s nest of inflammatory commentary, no matter the agency’s fabricated contents. Previous US intelligence assessments refuted them, including most recently in March 2011.

Nonetheless, IAEA allegations proved red meat for America’s media. Commentaries from three major broadsheets are typical.

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Arab League Should Suspend Syria

(New York) – The systematic nature of abuses against civilians in Homs by Syrian government forces, including torture and unlawful killings, indicate that crimes against humanity have been committed, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. Human Rights Watch urged the Arab League, meeting in Cairo on November 12, 2011, to suspend Syria’s membership in the League and to ask the United Nations Security Council to impose an arms embargo and sanctions against individuals responsible for the violations, and refer Syria to the International Criminal Court.

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By Richard Falk,ZNet, November 12, 2011

 Source: Richardfalk.com

How many times have we heard in recent weeks either outright threats to attack Iran mainly emanating from Israel or the more muted posture adopted by the United States that leaves ‘all options’ on the table including ‘the military option’? What has Iran done to justify this frantic war-mongering in a strategic region that is sorting out the contradictory effects of the long Arab Spring and is the contested site of energy geopolitics that has replaced territory and minerals as the core issue of world politics? 

As a matter of historical context, it is worth observing that the Western military interventions of recent years, Iraq and Libya, were both in oil-producing countries, devastating the country to achieve regime change, which remains the central tenet of the neocon/Netanyahu vision for a reconfiguration of power in the Middle East. . .

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