Peace and Justice Post

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  Seumas Milne, The Guardian, Wednesday 8 January 2014
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    ‘And in case there were any doubt that all the main combatants were in the land-grabbing expansion game, Britain and France then divvied up the defeated empires.’ Illustration: Matt Kenyon

They were never going to be able to contain themselves. For all the promises of a dignified commemoration, the Tory right’s standard bearers held back for less than 48 hours into the new year before launching a full-throated defence of the “war to end all wars”. The killing fields of Gallipoli and the Somme had been drenched in blood for a “noble cause”, declared Michael Gove. The slaughter unleashed in 1914 had been a “just war” for freedom.

Hostility to the war, the education secretary complained, had been fostered by leftwingers and comedians who denigrated patriotism and painted the conflict as a “misbegotten shambles”. Gove was backed by the prime minister, as talk of international reconciliation was left to junior ministerial ranks.

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Nasir Khan, January 5, 2014

Mr Salaman  Taseer opposed the infamous blasphemy laws and stood for the rights of the underprivileged, socially downgraded and politically powerless Christians in a predominantly Muslim country, who have been frequently targeted by anti-social Muslim religious extremists. For his bold political stand and public views, his life was in danger; he was apprehensive of an attempt on his life at the hands of any misguided extremist. As we know, a vicious and brainwashed extremist goon killed him. His death reminds us of the deplorable fanaticism, intolerance and apathy in Pakistan.

But the best way we can pay our respects to this noble son of Pakistan is that all democratic, revolutionary and politically active people unite on some common points and struggle against miscreants and religious extremists who personify evil and inhumanity. They are not only a constant threat to the level-headed and just people who dare to speak against the injustices inflicted upon the people under the blasphemy laws but also a insult to the glorious and tolerant religion, Islam.

The so-called blasphemy laws of the brutal dictator General Zia strengthened the hands of religious maniacs in Pakistan. We demand that all these barbaric laws be annulled and all people of Pakistan irrespective of religion, creed, or ethnicity be treated equal in law and in society. This should happen not by pious wishes but in practice. At present religious persecution, oppression and religious discrimination in Pakistan is growing. This destructive and insidious phenomenon violates basic human rights of the citizens of Pakistan and also violates the  UN Charter.

The slow disintegration of living conditions in the West Bank continues apace. But this is no natural disaster or complicated economic malaise. This is a very deliberately created policy, one designed and implemented by a state – the occupying power Israel.

The Zionist project in the land of Palestine shares much with the toppled South African apartheid regime. But there are important differences. Unlike South Africa, which relied on the black masses as a subservient labour force, ideologically, Israel would simply wish for Palestinians to disappear.

Hence the project of Zionist colonisation that began even before 1948, but reached a peak then, with the Nakba – the deliberate ethnic cleansing of the majority of the Palestinian population through force of arms. This project never ended and continues today.

Palestinians on both sides of the “Green Line” ceasefire line (drawn in 1949) constantly face down direct expulsions from the Israeli terrorist army. A new project of Israeli ethnic cleansing the in southern desert, the Naqab, has been thwarted by a concerted Palestinian protest movement. Or thwarted for now, we should say, since the Prawer Plan is likely to return to the Knesset in another form.

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Professor Richard Falk, December 31, 2013 

In a little noted initiative the General Assembly on November 26, 2013 voted to proclaim 2014 the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. The UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People was requested to organize relevant activities in cooperation with governments, the UN system, intergovernmental organizations, and significantly, civil society. The vote was 110-7, with 56 abstentions, which is more or less reflective of the sentiments now present in international society.  Among the seven opponents of the initiative, in addition to Israel, were unsurprisingly its three staunchest supporters, each once a British colony: the United States, Canada, Australia, with the addition of such international heavyweight states as Micronesia, Palau, and the Marshall Islands. Europe and assorted states around the world were among the 56 abstentions, with virtually the entire non-West solidly behind the idea of highlighting solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle for peace with justice based on rights under international law.

 Three initial observations: those governments that are willing to stand unabashedly with Israel in opposition to the tide of world public opinion are increasingly isolated, and these governments are under mounting public pressure from their own civil societies that seeks a balanced approach that is rights based rather than power dominated; the West, in general, is dominated by the abstaining governments that seek the lowest possible profile of being seen as neither for or against, and in those countries where civil society should now be capable of mobilizing more support for the Palestinian struggle; and the non-West that is, as has long been the case, rhetorically in solidarity with the Palestinian people, but have yet to match their words with deeds, and seem ready to be pushed.

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By Patrick Goodenough, CNSNews , December 31, 2013

The past year witnessed bloodshed in Syria and Iraq, turmoil in Egypt, anarchy in Central Africa, threats by a nuclear-armed North Korea and Chinese military posturing, but as 2013 ends a global poll finds that the country seen as representing the greatest threat to peace today is … the United States.

Not only did the U.S. top the list with an aggregate of 24 percent, but the runner-up threat country, Pakistan, was way behind at eight percent. China was third at six percent, followed by North Korea, Iran and Israel at five percent each.

The survey of opinions across 65 countries by pollster Win/Gallup International recorded some of the strongest anti-American sentiment, predictably, in countries widely regarded as rivals, led by Russia (where 54 percent of respondents said the U.S. was the greatest threat to peace) and China (49 percent).

But the view that the U.S. poses the greatest threat to peace was also strongly held in some purported U.S. allies – such as NATO partners Greece and Turkey (45 percent each), and Pakistan (44 percent), which is also a top recipient of U.S. aid.

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Christof Lehmann, nsnbc international,

– On Sunday, 29 December, Israel’s Ministerial Committee on Legislation approved a bill to annex the Jordan Valley of Palestine’s occupied West Bank. The bill shall ensure that the region remains within Israeli sovereignty even if an agreement with Palestine is reached under the ongoing, US-facilitated, talks or any other agreement in the future. A closer look reveals that there is nothing new in the proposed bill, and that neither of the two major Palestinian factions are likely to respond by implementing a policy that is consistent with the liberation of Palestine.

File – Maan News Agencies

The bill has been proposed by Member of Israel’s Parliament (Knesset) Miri Regev and has been supported by eight Ministers from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, Yisrael Beitenu and Habayit Hayehudi, reports the Israeli news agency y-net. The sponsor of the bill, Miri Regev, is a former Brigadier General of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and a former military spokeswoman.

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• • Heather Linebaugh
  • theguardian.com, Sunday 29 December 2013 

An Elbit Systems Hermes 450 drone. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Whenever I read comments by politicians defending the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Predator and Reaper program – aka drones – I wish I could ask them some questions. I’d start with: “How many women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile?” And: “How many men have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?” Or even more pointedly: “How many soldiers have you seen die on the side of a road in Afghanistan because our ever-so-accurate UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicle] were unable to detect an IED [improvised explosive device] that awaited their convoy?”

Few of these politicians who so brazenly proclaim the benefits of drones have a real clue of what actually goes on. I, on the other hand, have seen these awful sights first hand.

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On July 13, former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin issued a dire warning to the government of Israel: either it will reach some kind of two-state settlement or there will be a “shift to a nearly inevitable outcome of the one remaining reality — a state ‘from the sea to the river’.” The near inevitable outcome, “one state for two nations,” will pose “an immediate existential threat of the erasure of the identity of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state,” soon with a Palestinian-Arab majority.

On similar grounds, in the latest issue of Britain’s leading journal of international affairs, two prominent Middle East specialists, Clive Jones and Beverly Milton-Edwards, write that “if Israel wishes to be both Jewish and democratic,” it must embrace “the two-state solution.”

It is easy to cite many other examples, but unnecessary, because it is assumed almost universally that there are two options for cis-Jordan: either two states — Palestinian and Jewish-democratic — or one state “from the sea to the river.” Israeli commentators express concern about the “demographic problem”: too many Palestinians in a Jewish state. Many Palestinians and their advocates support the “one state solution,” anticipating a civil rights, anti-Apartheid struggle that will lead to secular democracy. Other analysts also consistently pose the options in similar terms.

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By: Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter,  December 26, 2013

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Photo from The White House | (Note: Photos like the one above are released as a substitute for granting photographers from the press access.)

For the first time since the United States began to launch drone attacks, a strike was launched late on Christmas Day in Pakistan. Four people who could not be identified but who were allegedly from Afghanistan were killed.

The Pakistani newspaper, The Express Tribune, reported, “Four suspected militants were killed when a US drone fired missiles at a compound in North Waziristan Agency in the late hours of Wednesday.”

Two missiles were fired at a compound. A local tribesman said he had heard “two huge explosions” in the “outskirts of Miramshah.” Tribesmen left their homes in panic.

“We can still hear the sound of drones hovering in the sky,” he said, adding that the bodies were being pulled out of the compound.

The Pakistan Tribune also reported, “Panic gripped the area following the attack as unmanned aircraft kept flying over the area till wee hours of Thursday morning.” And, “The identity of the deceased couldn’t be ascertained because of their charred bodies.”

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Truthdig.com,  Dec 23, 2013

By Amy Goodman

There has been yet another violent attack with mass casualties. This was not the act of a lone gunman, or of an armed student rampaging through a school. It was a group of families en route to a wedding that was killed. The town was called Radda—not in Colorado, not in Connecticut, but in Yemen. The weapon was not an easy-to-obtain semiautomatic weapon, but missiles fired from U.S. drones. On Thursday, Dec. 12, 17 people were killed, mostly civilians. The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has consistently tracked U.S. drone attacks, recently releasing a report on the six months following President Barack Obama’s major address on drone warfare before the National Defense University (NDU) last May. In that speech, Obama promised that “before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured—the highest standard we can set.” The BIJ summarized, “Six months after President Obama laid out U.S. rules for using armed drones, a Bureau analysis shows that covert drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan have killed more people than in the six months before the speech.” In a nation that abhors the all-too-routine mass killing in our communities, why does our government consistently kill so many innocents abroad?

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