Peace and Justice Post

The Obama Adminstration’s vociferous claims that CIA spy Raymond Davis is entitled to “diplomatic immunity” may have struck some as odd, but according to reports inside Pakistan, it is business as usual.

Indeed, the Pakistani government reports that hundreds of US citizens have been granted diplomatic immunity under US demands despite having no role in diplomacy, and seemingly just living in upscale neighborhoods in the major cities.

These so-called “Special Americans” are under growing scrutiny, according to media reports, because of concerns that many of them, as with Davis, may have been operating as CIA spies without informing the Pakistani spy agency, which is supposed to work in concert with them.

In the wake of the Davis arrest, a number of these “Special Americans” are also reported to have fled the country, with others having simply suspending all activities to avoid attracting official attention.

Though Davis’ spying is major concern, his actual crime is the murders of two people on the streets of Lahore. A Lahore court is still hearing arguments in this case, which Davis insists amounts to “self-defense” and which US officials insist he is immune from anyhow.

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig, Feb 28, 2011

I have watched mothers and fathers keening in grief over the frail corpses of their children in hospitals in Gaza and rural villages in El Salvador, Bosnia and Kosovo. The faces of these dead children, their bodies ripped apart by iron fragments or bullets tumbling end over end through their small, delicate frames, appear to me almost daily like faint and sadly familiar ghosts. The frailty and innocence of my own children make these images difficult to bear.

A child a day dies in war-related violence in Afghanistan. Children die in roadside explosions. They die in airstrikes. They die after militants lure them to carry suicide bombs, usually without their knowledge. They die in firefights. They are executed by the Taliban after being accused, sometimes correctly, of spying for the Afghan National Army. They are tiny pawns in a futile and endless war. They are robbed of their childhood. They live in fear and surrounded by the terror of indiscriminate violence. The United Nations, whose most recent report on children in Afghanistan covered a two-year period from Sept. 1, 2008, to Aug. 30, 2010, estimates that in the first half of last year at least 176 children were killed and 389 more wounded. But the real number is probably much, much higher. There are big parts of the country where research can no longer be carried out.

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Gary Young, The Guardian, Feb 28, 2011

You can tell a great deal about a nation’s anxieties and aspirations by the discrepancy between reality and popular perception. Polls last year showed that in the US 61% think the country spends too much on foreign aid. This makes sense once you understand that the average American is under the illusion that 25% of the federal budget goes on foreign aid (the real figure is 1%).

Similarly, a Mori poll in Britain in 2002 revealed that more than a third of the country thought there were too many immigrants. Little wonder. The mean estimate was that immigrants comprise 23% of the country; the actual number was about 4%.

Broadly speaking, these inconsistencies do not reflect malice or wilful ignorance but people’s attempts to make sense of the world they experience through the distorting filters of media representation, popular prejudice and national myths. “The way we see things is affected by what we know and what we believe,” wrote John Berger in Ways of Seeing. “The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.”

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by Kevin Ryan, Foreign Policy Journal, Feb 28, 2011

We will soon see the eighth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq.  That anniversary should remind us that the Iraq war has claimed many lives and permanently damaged many more.   It is not clear when this war and occupation, or the war in Afghanistan, will ever end.  What is clear is that the Iraq War was built entirely on lies and that painful fact grows clearer with each passing year.  It is no longer possible for honest people to suggest that the false claims made to start this war were just a string of misunderstandings, which brings to mind an important question.

One of the two original justifications for invading Iraq was that Iraq was linked to al-Qaeda and the attacks of September 11.  Vice President Dick Cheney made such claims on several occasions.  But the truth was that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or 9/11 and he was distrustful of that elusive organization.  It was later reported by the US Senate Intelligence Committee that Hussein denied all requests to provide material or operational support to al-Qaeda, and that Cheney’s claims were all false.[1]

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Los Angeles protest in solidarity with Wisconsin workers, 2/26/2011 (Fight Back! News/Staff)

Los Angeles, CA – Thousands of workers rallied at Los Angeles City Hall, Feb. 26, to show solidarity with the struggle of workers in Wisconsin, who are fighting to keep their right to collective bargaining. The union members proudly wore their union shirts and carried signs reading “This is about freedom.” From AFSCME, SEIU, Teamsters, CWA, IBEW and ILWU, to name a few of the participating unions, workers expressed their anger at Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Walker’s attack on public workers.

A delegation of Los Angeles union workers had just arrived from Wisconsin and told about camping inside the Wisconsin State Capitol building. Mike Garcia, president of SEIU 1877 told the rally, “the bosses are our real enemy,” to loud cheers from the workers of all nationalities.

The militant rally was organized by MoveOn.org, along with the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. Jose Calderon, professor of Chicano Studies at Pitzer College, pointed out how Chicano, Latino and Black workers are paid less and how immigrants are exploited by the bosses.

A march of Women for Choice joined the rally to join to protest the attack on unions and workers in Wisconsin. The chants included “We are one! We will win!”

The ex-Soviet leader argues the US must take some blame for fanning Islamic fundamentalism

By Matthew Bell, The Independent, Feb 27, 2011

By Dave Zirin, ZNet, Feb 27, 2011

Unions across the country are standing with the workers of Wisconsin against the unprecedented attacks by Gov. Scott Walker. Count the National Basketball Association’s Player’s Association among their ranks. The NBAPA have been threatened with layoffs, contraction, and steep cuts in pay and benefits in their current collective bargaining negotiations with NBA commissioner David Stern and the assorted team owners. Considering that no one ever bought a ticket to look at Mark Cuban, a Maloof brother or (shudder) Donald Sterling, their’s is a struggle worthy of support. Well solidarity is a two way street and it is a very positive development to have NBAPA Executive Director Billy Hunter  and Milwaukee Buck Keyon Dooling – also an NBAPA VP speak out on behalf of Wisconsin’s workers. Thursday’s late night vote in the state assembly to strip the public sector employees of their very rights to collectively bargain was, for Hunter and Dooling, a bridge too far.

“Last night’s vote by the Wisconsin Assembly was an attempt to undermine organized labor and the men and women across the country who depend on their unions for a voice in the workplace,” said Hunter. “The NBPA proudly supports our brothers and sisters in Wisconsin and their stand for unequivocal collective bargaining rights.”

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Daily Times, Feb 27, 2011

SRINAGAR: A prominent Indian-held Kashmir (IHK) leader staged a day-long token hunger strike on Saturday against large-scale arrests in the aftermath of massive anti-India protests last year. Yasin Malik, head of the pro-independence Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, said more than 4,000 young people and separatists had been jailed by Indian police since 114 people were killed last year, mostly shot by police. “This is a peaceful protest against the unabated crackdown on our youth,” said Malik, flanked by over a dozen separatist leaders, as some 400 protesters shouted “We want freedom.” The demonstration took place in the centre of Srinagar, the summer capital of IHK, which has been wracked by a more than two-decade armed revolt against Indian rule. afp

Pak Tribune, Feb 25, 2011

KUNAR: A recent Nato air strike in an eastern Afghanistan valley killed at least 62 civilians including women and children, an Afghan government investigation said on Thursday. On Sunday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai accused Nato of having killed more than 50 civilians in eastern Afghanistan’s troubled

Kunar province, and sent a team to inquire into the alleged civilian deaths. “After three days of investigation, we found out that 62 civilians, including women and children, were killed and 10 others injured in the Nato operation,” the head of the probe team, Shahzada Massoud, who is a Karzai adviser, told reporters in Kunar. He did not clarify whether any insurgents were killed in the operation, but a member of the probe team, Shahzada Shahid, separately told AFP that 14 Taliban militants had also been killed, on top of the 62.

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Jeff Halper, Information Clearing House, 25 Feb 2011

Last Friday’s vote in the UN in which the US refused to follow the other 14 members of the Security Council in condemning Israel’s ongoing settlement project – including, it should be noted, such traditionally pro-Israel stalwarts as Britain, France and even Germany and India (for whom Israel is the #2 supplier of arms, as it is with China) – revealed what international isolation into which the US has fallen. Without being pollyannish over the human rights records of the other members of the Security Council, human rights does, nevertheless, motivate the foreign policy of many countries of the world, if only because to be seen respecting human rights has become a standard of national legitimacy. Israel’s blatant violations of international law threaten the consensus upon which the international order rests, even if it is upheld in the breech.

The Security Council vote show that this is not true for the United States, whose perceived cultural and legal exceptionalism rests upon a rapidly eroding economic and military hegemony. The very message of the American vote – that we do not see ourselves subject to international law and human rights; we set the policies and rules, not the UN or international courts – sends a chill down the spine of people everywhere, especially those, such as the peoples uprising in the Middle East or those in Burma, the Congo, China and in American prisons, who cannot revolt yet hold out hope that struggles for human rights will eventually each them.

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