Peace and Justice Post

By the Bradley Manning Support Network. October 19, 2011

Report on Bradley Manning to be Released Soon

NEW YORK — Juan Mendez, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, confirmed yesterday that the Department of Defense has blocked his requests for an unmonitored meeting with PFC Bradley Manning, the accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower. He told reporters gathered at a U.N. General Assembly committee on human rights that he would be issuing a report on Bradley Manning’s case “in the next few weeks.”

Mendez noted that the Obama administration had offered the possibility of a meeting, but only under “conditions in which they could not confirm the confidentiality of my conversations with him.”  He said that, according to the rules of his U.N. mandate, “that is a condition that we cannot accept.”  Mendez explained further that he nevertheless offered to meet with PFC Manning, but that “he also chose not to waive his right to have a private conversation with me.”

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Socialist Worker, October 24, 2011

Video footage posted on the Internet showed an injured Qaddafi (left) in the custody of rebels

LIBYA’S FORMER dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi was killed last week as rebels, backed by NATO military forces, conquered the final city holding out against them. The U.S.-backed Transitional National Council (TNC) declared on Sunday that Libya was now “liberated”–but the manner of Qaddafi’s downfall raises questions about that claim.

Most Libyans celebrated the death of the man who ruled their country with an iron fist for more than four decades. Hatred of the Qaddafi regime spurred a popular rebellion last February. This mass mobilization against tyranny was another chapter in the Arab Spring that has spread from Northern Africa across the Middle East.

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By James Petras, Countercurrents.org,  23 October, 2011

The relation between imperialism and democracy has been debated and discussed over 2500 years, from fifth century Athens to Liberty Park in Manhattan. Contemporary critics of imperialism (and capitalism) claim to find a fundamental incompatibility, citing the growing police state measures accompanying colonial wars, from Clinton’s anti-terrorist laws, and Bush’s “Patriot Act” to Obama’s ordering the extrajudicial assassination of overseas US citizens.

In the past, however, many theorists of imperialism of varying political persuasion, ranging from Max Weber to Vladimir Lenin, argued that imperialism unified the country, reduced internal class polarization and created privileged workers who actively supported and voted for imperial parties. A historical, comparative survey of the conditions under which imperialism and democratic institutions converge or diverge can throw some light on the challenges and choices faced by the burgeoning democratic movements erupting across the globe.

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by Pepe Escobar

No one ever lost money betting on the dull predictability of the US government. Just as Occupy Wall Street is firing imaginations all across the spectrum – piercing the noxious revolving door between government and casino capitalism – Washington brought us all down to earth, sensationally advertising an Iranian cum Mexican cartel terror plot straight out of The Fast and the Furious movie franchise. The potential victim: Adel al-Jubeir, the ambassador in the US of that lovely counter-revolutionary Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

FBI Director Robert Mueller insisted the Iran-masterminded terror plot “reads like the pages of a Hollywood script”. It does. And quite a sloppy script at that. Fast and Furious duo Paul Walker/Vin Diesel wouldn’t be caught dead near it.

The good guys in this Washington production are the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). In the words of Attorney General Eric Holder, they uncovered “a deadly plot directed by factions of the Iranian government to assassinate a foreign Ambassador on US soil with explosives”.

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United States officials in the Obama administration and Justice Department have explicitly claimed that Iran’s supreme leader and the Quds Force covert operations unit were likely aware of the so-called terror plot to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States. But evidence of that is lacking and many officials have admitted there are gaps in their understanding of the plot.

The Obama administration has combatively blamed the highest echelons of the Iranian government and promised impending consequences, despite the fact that there is no solid information about “exactly how high it goes,” as one official put it.

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The situation of Balochistan is no different to that of the former East Pakistan (Bangladesh) when the military carried out operations and killed more than 300,000 people in the guise of protecting ideological boundaries.

The government does not consider extrajudicial killings anything out of the ordinary and one of the reasons for this is that they have lost all control over the military, Para-Military forces and state intelligence agencies that control the province. These military forces brook no interference into their affairs and use ‘national security’ and the protection of ideological boundaries to justify the killings and disappearances of innocent persons, particularly students.

Not a single day goes by without an extrajudicial killing. In the recent years a new phenomenon has been introduced in the cases of disappearances where the victims are extrajudicially killed in order to destroy any evidence of wrong doing.

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It appears unlikely that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would approve such a brazen plot. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

It has the ring of a far-fetched Hollywood thriller and even the senior law enforcement official involved in the investigation admitted to journalists that the alleged plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the US did not fit with what was known about the methods and practices of the supposed perpetrators, the Quds force of the Revolutionary Guards. But $100,000 was clearly transferred by someone as a downpayment on the assassination. Washington is taking the case seriously enough to make unprecedented allegations against Tehran and threaten further isolation. The affair leaves several questions unanswered:

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U.N. says Afghanistan routinely tortures war suspects | McClatchy.

By Peter Symonds, wsws.org, 11 October 2011

At a press conference last Thursday, President Obama made his clearest warning yet that Pakistan had to do more to crack down on Islamist insurgents. While ruling out any immediate aid cut-off, he declared: “There is no doubt that we’re not going to feel comfortable with a long-term strategic relationship with Pakistan if we don’t think they’re mindful of our interests as well.”

Obama’s remarks follow weeks of mounting US pressure on Pakistan, including accusations by US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen in late September that the Haqqani network inside Pakistan’s border area with Afghanistan acted as “a veritable arm” of Pakistan’s spy agency—the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Mullen alleged that the Haqqani network was responsible for high-profile attacks against targets in Kabul.

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