Peace and Justice Post

by William A. Cook, Veterans Today, May 12, 2011

What silent communion this scene holds,

a life lived and one yet to unfold;

What forlorn love those encircling arms portend,

That would protect against the evils that descend

From unseen missiles yet to come with unlived years,

Where hopes and dreams dissolve into unforeseen fears

That falls like a funeral pall upon this child,

Who sits so quiet, so pensive, so mild

Beneath those crescent arms as they reach to shield

This innocent lost in this barren field.

What catastrophe is caught in this aged face,

What last years lost in silent disgrace,

What father is now absent from this scene,

What mother abandoned to a fate unseen? 

How relive a life lost, what might have been?

How rekindle love in a world of sin?

How undo the infectious toxin of hate?

How understand the true terror of fate?

I share this tent of sorrow and of shame,

The darkness in the soul, the guilt and blame,

A seared image of suffering and pain–

The curse of Cain rises– once again.

~o~o~

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: William A. Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California and author of The Rape Of Palestine: Hope Destroyed, Justice Denied, Read Full Bio

by Marjorie Cohn, CommonDreams.org, May 13, 2011

The assassination of Osama bin Laden has rekindled the discourse about the efficacy and legality of using torture in the “war on terror.” Torture is illegal under all circumstances, even in wartime. Moreover, the United States located Bin Laden with traditional interrogation methods over several years, not by the use of torture.Demonstrator Maboud Ebrahimzadeh is held down during a simulation of waterboarding. (Reuters)

When the United States ratified the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, it became part of U.S. law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which says treaties are the supreme law of the land. The Torture Convention states, “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.” The prohibition against torture is unequivocal, regardless of the circumstances.

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UN Special Rapporteur: Israel Killed 1300 Palestinian Children Since 2000

Palestine News Network, May 3, 2011

Amman – PNN – The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Richard Falk, announced a new report documenting 1300 Palestinian children killed by Israel since 2000.

UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk

Falk announcement came during a press conference he held in the Jordanian Capital Amman on Monday night. Falk noted in his report that in 2010 Israeli army gunfire and shelling targeting the Gaza Strip killed 17 children.

The UN Special Rapporteur is visiting the region until 3 May. His visits included Egypt and Jordan, during which Falk  meet officials, human rights defenders, UN agencies and civil society organizations working in the occupied Palestinian territory.

The Government of Israel has not responded to repeated requests from the Special Rapporteur for access to the occupied Palestinian territory. Due to the prevailing security situation in Gaza, the Special Rapporteur has been forced to cancel his visit to Gaza as part of this mission. The UN announced that he plans to visit Gaza later in 2011.

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By Noam Chomsky and Amy Goodman, ZNet, May 12, 2011

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to the 25th anniversary of FAIR, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, the media watch group in New York, which just celebrated the 25 years of the reports they’ve come out, documenting media bias and censorship, and scrutinized media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints. One of those who addressed the hundreds of people who gathered to celebrate FAIR was the world-renowned political dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky. This is some of what he had to say.

NOAM CHOMSKY: The U.S. and its allies will do anything they can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world. The reason is very simple. Across the region, an overwhelming majority of the population regards the United States as the main threat to their interests. In fact, opposition to U.S. policy is so high that a considerable majority think the region would be more secure if Iran had nuclear weapons. In Egypt, the most important country, that’s 80 percent. Similar figures elsewhere. There are some in the region who regard Iran as a threat—about 10 percent. Well, plainly, the U.S. and its allies are not going to want governments which are responsive to the will of the people. If that happens, not only will the U.S. not control the region, but it will be thrown out. So that’s obviously an intolerable result.

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Basil Fernando, Asian Human Rights Commission, May 12, 2011

The attempted eye gouging incident in at Paikgachha village, where a human rights defender and journalist, FMA Razzak and his brother were attacked by a about 40 persons mobilized by a major in Bangladesh army, Mustafizur Rahman Bokul, is a painful experience to all. It is necessary to learn from this experience so that effective actions can be taken to address the very serious threats to everyone that are manifest through this extraordinarily inhumane attack.

There were glaring inefficiencies and carelessness in the police conduct prior to this incident, during and after the incident. Razzak complained to the police about the harassment from Major Mustafizur Rahman Bokul’s family for months. However, the police failed make any reasonable intervention. (For details of police neglect please see: www.humanrights.asia/news/ahrc-news/AHRC-OLT-005-2011).  It is the duty of the police to enforce the law and to keep the peace and when it fails to do so violence and chaos are the inevitable result. Everyone we have talked to over this incident expressed their frustration and disappointment with the way policing system is functioning in Bangladesh. Police reform therefore is one of the major tasks that need to be achieved in Bangladesh.

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Socialist Worker, May 12, 2011

A Kentucky regiment in Puerto Rico during the Spanish American War

NATIVE AMERICAN organizations across the U.S. are objecting to the use of “Geronimo” as the code name for Osama bin Laden in the operation that led to his assassination last week. The military’s message to the White House after bin Laden’s murder was “Geronimo EKIA”–Enemy Killed In Action.

Geronimo was an Apache leader who, with a small number of warriors, fought off 8,000 U.S. and Mexican troops in the mountains of Arizona and Mexico until his surrender and life imprisonment in 1886. “It’s another attempt to label Native Americans as terrorists,” remarked Paula Antoine, a member of the South Dakota Rosebud Sioux.

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By Lawrence Davidson, MWC News, May 11, 2011

Welcome to Bahrain

If you want to see how an ostensive religious regime can be corrupted into something close to fascism, just take a look at contemporary Bahrain. In February 2011 there were a series of non-violent demonstrations staged mostly by the small kingdom’s Shia majority (approximately 70% of the country’s Muslim citizens.) These were held to protest the discriminatory practices of the country’s Sunni monarchy. The protests were soon violently suppressed by the Bahraini army and police, with the help of troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. However, it was what followed the crushing of the demonstrations that smacks of fascism.

Here is how a report, dated 6 May 2011, by Roy Gutman of the McClatchy Newspapers, puts it, “authorities have held secret trials where protesters have been sentenced to death, arrested prominent mainstream opposition politicians, jailed nurses and doctors who treated injured protesters, seized the health care system that had been run primarily by Shiites, fired 1,000 Shiite professionals and canceled their pensions, beat and arrested journalists, and forced the closure of the only opposition newspaper. Nothing, however, has struck harder at the fabric of this nation, where Shiites outnumber Sunnis nearly 4 to1, than the destruction of Shiite worship centers.”

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 by Paul Craig Roberts, Foreign Policy Journal,  May 12, 2011

One of the wishes that readers often express to me came true today (May 11). I was on the mainstream media. It was a program with a worldwide reach–the BBC World Service. There were others on the program as well, and the topic was Hillary Clinton’s remarks (May 10) about the lack of democracy and human rights in China.

I startled the program’s host when I compared Hillary’s remarks to the pot calling the kettle black. I was somewhat taken aback myself by the British BBC program host’s rush to America’s defense and wondered about it as the program continued. Surely, he had heard about Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo detainees, CIA secret torture prisons sprinkled around the world, invasion and destruction of Iraq on the basis of lies and deceptions, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya. Surely, he was aware of Hillary’s hypocrisy as she demonized China but turned a blind eye to Israel, Mubarak, Bahrain and the Saudis. China’s record is not perfect, but is it this bad? Why wasn’t the Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs criticizing America’s human rights abuses and rigged elections? How come China minds its own business and we don’t?

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Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine is known world-wide. But few know the history of Israeli piracy in support of its occupation policies. The Free Gaza flotillas want to break the Gaza blockade and Israel’s illegal ‘occupation’ of the sea, note Huwaida Arraf, Noam Chomsky, and Gabriel Schivone.

Middle East Online, May 11, 2011

A year ago this month, Israel shocked the world when it attacked a humanitarian convoy on its way to Gaza in international waters, killing 9 civilians, injuring dozens more, and kidnapping hundreds. Today — as Hamas and Fatah negotiate internal unity and Egypt moves to permanently open Gaza’s southern border, consequences of the Arab Spring — the international solidarity movement musters an even greater flotilla of ships to challenge Israel’s illegal actions against the Palestinians. As anticipated, Israel promises to do everything it can to once again stop an organized, nonviolent force of civil society standing with Palestinians in their struggle for equal rights and self-determination.

Threatening to hijack boats in international waters and kill or kidnap passengers is, of course, a serious crime. But Israel’s threats and actual uses of force are nothing new. For decades, Israel has been hijacking international vessels throughout the Mediterranean and kidnapping or killing passengers. To understand the current situation involving civil resistance to Israeli policy, a glance at Israel’s aggressive history in international waters is in order.

In 1976, according to Knesset member Mattiyahu Peled, the Israeli Navy began to capture boats belonging to Lebanese Muslims — turning them over to Lebanese Christian allies, who killed the owners — in an effort to abort a movement towards reconciliation that had been arranged between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel.

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