Peace and Justice Post

While we go on waging unwinnable wars on false premises, the Pentagon papers tell us we must not wait 40 years for the truth

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• Daniel Ellsberg, The Guardian, June 13, 2011

Viet Cong guerrilla suspects led by US infantrymen to an interrogation point near Long Thanh, 40 miles southwest of Saigon, during the Vietnam war on 1 February 1966. Reflecting on the release of the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg bitterly regrets that he did not release sooner contemporaneous evidence in his possession that contradicted the official version of the 1964 Tonkin Gulf incident, which – just as with Iraq’s nonexistent WMD in 2003 – enabled the presidential executive to gain congressional approval for escalating US military involvement in Vietnam. Photograph: AP Photo/Henri Huet

The declassification and online release Monday of the full original version of the Pentagon Papers – the 7,000-page top secret Pentagon study of US decision-making in Vietnam 1945-67 – comes 40 years after I gave it to 19 newspapers and to Senator Mike Gravel (minus volumes on negotiations, which I had given only to the Senate foreign relations committee). Gravel entered what I had given him in the congressional record and later published nearly all of it with Beacon Press. Together with the newspaper coverage and a government printing office (GPO) edition that was heavily redacted but overlapped the Senator Gravel edition, most of the material has been available to the public and scholars since 1971. (The negotiation volumes were declassified some years ago; the Senate, if not the Pentagon, should have released them no later than the end of the war in 1975.)

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JOHN REYNOLDS, The Irish Times, June 13, 2011

BASRA LETTER: The effects of depleted uranium can be seen among the young in the city’s hospitals, where staff are convinced of its link to cancer and deformities

THE AIRY, bright and modern corridors of the new, $166 million (€116 million) 101-bed Laura Bush hospital for children with cancer are a short car journey from the colourfully painted, but ageing Ibn Ghazwan maternity and children’s hospital in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.

They provide a rare contrast to the greyish-brown city streetscape, whose dusty, fume-filled air will reach 60 degrees this summer and is some of the most polluted in the world.

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WASHINGTON – During his intensive initial round of media interviews as commander in Afghanistan in August 2010, Gen. David Petraeus released figures to the news media that claimed spectacular success for raids by Special Operations Forces: in a 90-day period from May through July, SOF units had captured 1,355 rank and file Taliban, killed another 1,031, and killed or captured 365 middle or high-ranking Taliban.

The timing of Petraeus’s claim of Taliban fighters captured or killed, moreover, indicates that he knew that four out of five of those he was claiming as “captured Taliban rank and file” were not Taliban fighters at all. The claims of huge numbers of Taliban captured and killed continued through the rest of 2010. In December, Petraeus’s command said a total of 4,100 Taliban rank and file had been captured in the previous six months and 2,000 had been killed.

Those figures were critical to creating a new media narrative hailing the success of SOF operations as reversing what had been a losing U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.

But it turns out that more than 80 percent of those called captured Taliban fighters were released within days of having been picked up, because they were found to have been innocent civilians, according to official U.S. military data.

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A year has gone by but it is difficult to shun the ghost of June 11, 2010 all across Kashmir Valley. It follows you wherever you go – from home to work place to streets – even amidst a semblance of routine hum drum of life, which goes on, as usual.

Last year on June 11, when Tufail Mattoo was hit by a tear-gas shell, it was beyond anyone’s imagination that the next few months would unfold the most turbulently tragic times in Kashmir. 118 deaths followed the revelation of Machil fake encounter killings in May last year, sparking protests during which Tufail Mattoo, returning home from tuitions, was the first to be killed. The vicious cycle followed claiming many more lives, leaving hundreds injured, many still recuperating and battling for life, many maimed and scarred for the rest of their lives amid a long period of shutdowns and curfews. It was not simply for the scale of violence and brutal deaths over a period of five months, during which time everything else including economy came to a halt, which made the summer of 2010 the biggest tragedy in the history of two decade long Kashmir’s armed conflict. It was accentuated by the official response of denial – negation of any wrong doing on part of the men in uniform who went on a killing spree and refusal to even lodge cases in accordance with law. But going by the track record of two decades, this official response revealing the ugly pattern of impunity, wasn’t so unusual.

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See also, Urdu Weekly Rehbar, p.3

Mr. Fish

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig.com, June 13, 2011

In Franz Kafka’s short story “Before the Law” a tireless supplicant spends his life praying for admittance into the courts of justice. He sits outside the law court for days, months and years. He makes many attempts to be admitted. He sacrifices everything he owns to sway or bribe the stern doorkeeper. He ages, grows feeble and finally childish. He is told as he nears death that the entrance was constructed solely for him and it will now be closed.

Justice has become as unattainable for Muslim activists in the United States as it was for Kafka’s frustrated petitioner. The draconian legal mechanisms that condemn Muslim Americans who speak out publicly about the outrages we commit in the Middle East have left many, including Syed Fahad Hashmi, wasting away in supermax prisons. These citizens posed no security threat. But they dared to speak a truth about the sordid conduct of our nation that the state found unpalatable. And in the bipartisan war on terror, waged by Republicans and Democrats, this ugly truth in America is branded seditious.

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By Stephen Lendman

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Previous articles discussed America’s permanent war agenda, culture of violence, imperial lawlessness, daily atrocities, blood-drenched history, glorification of killing in the name of peace, and support for the world’s worst despots, as well as contempt for democratic values, rule of law principles, and human and civil rights abroad and at home.

Obama continues the odious tradition, governing repressively while waging global imperial wars, brazenly claiming humanitarian intentions he doesn’t give a damn about, never did, and won’t tolerate.

Americans foot the bill and pay the price. Global millions suffer. Earlier articles addressed America’s wars against Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as proxy ones in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, and at home against Muslims, Latino immigrants, and working households.

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End the Israeli Occupation, June 8th, 2011

This September, Palestinians are expected to push for the State of Palestine to become a full member of the United Nations and to get additional countries to recognize Palestinian statehood.

Will this important diplomatic initiative succeed? It probably won’t if the United States wields its veto in the Security Council to block Palestine’s application for UN membership. Given the Obama Administration’s track record of shielding Israel from accountability, there’s every reason to believe that the United States will once again try to thwart Palestinian rights.

Just last month at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference, President Barack Obama declared:

“No vote at the United Nations will ever create an independent Palestinian state… the United States will stand up against efforts to single Israel out at the United Nations… Israel’s legitimacy is not a matter for debate.”

By equating Palestinian efforts to seek their long-denied rights at the UN with the “delegitimization” of Israel, President Obama is subjecting Palestinian freedom to Israel’s timetable.

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Pro-Tel Aviv American senators propose resolution opposing any Israeli withdrawal to 1967 borders.

Middle East Online, June10, 2011

Orrin Hatch and Joe Lieberman; deal a symbolic blow to Obama’s peace efforts

WASHINGTON – US senators proposed a resolution Thursday opposing any Israeli withdrawal to 1967 lines, dealing a symbolic blow to President Barack Obama’s efforts to renew peace talks.

“It is contrary to United States policy and national security to have the borders of Israel return to the armistice lines that existed on June 4, 1967,” read the text introduced by Senators Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, and Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Independent.

The resolution, which enjoys the support of some 30 other senators, including Democrats, says US policy aims to “support and facilitate Israel in maintaining defensible borders.”

Last month, President Barack Obama gave rare public voice to the long-standing US policy of supporting a Palestinian state based on the borders that preceded the Six Day War, with mutually agreed land swaps.

His statement provoked a public scolding from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a subsequent White House visit. The Israeli leader also stressed the “indefensible” nature of the 1967 lines.

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An Open Letter to Noam Chomsky and the General Public

by John Pilger, CommonDreams.org, June 11, 2011

Dear Noam,

I am writing to you and a number of other friends mostly in the US to alert you to the extraordinary banning of my film on war and media, ‘The War You Don’t See‘, and the abrupt cancellation of a major event at the Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe in which David Barsamian and I were to discuss free speech, US foreign policy and censorship in the media.

Lannan invited me and David over a year ago and welcomed my proposal that they also host the US premiere of ‘The War You Don’t See’, in which US and British broadcasters describe the often hidden part played by the media in the promotion of war, notably in Iraq and Afghanistan. The film has been widely acclaimed in the UK and Australia; the trailer and reviews are on my website www.johnpilger.com

The banning and cancellation, which have shocked David and me, are on the personal orders of Patrick Lannan, whose wealth funds the Lannan Foundation as a liberal center of discussion of politics and the arts. Some of you will have been there and will know the Lannan Foundation as a valuable supporter of liberal causes. Indeed, I was invited in 2002 to present a Lannan award to the broadcaster Amy Goodman.

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Shamus Cooke, opednews.com, June12, 2011

Ever since the Great Recession shook the foundations of the U.S. economy, President Obama has been promising recovery.  Evidence of this recovery, we were told, was manifested in the massive post-bailout profits corporations made. Soon enough, the President assured us, these corporations would tire of hoarding mountains of cash and start a hiring bonanza, followed by raising wages and benefits. It was either wishful thinking or conscious deception. The recent stock market meltdown has squashed any hope of a corporate-led recovery.

The Democrats fought the recession by the same methods the Republicans used to create it: allowing the super rich to recklessly dominate the economy while giving them massive handouts. This strategy, commonly referred to as Reaganomics or Trickle Down Economics, is now religion to both Democrats and Republicans; never mind the staged in-fighting for the gullible or complicit media.

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