Peace and Justice Post

Official Washington often lectures other countries on the need for accountability, especially when governments have engaged in war crimes. Yet, one of the clearest cases of a U.S. war crime – the mass spraying of Vietnam with Agent Orange – has escaped any reckoning, note Marjorie Cohn and Jeanne Mirer.

By Marjorie Cohn and Jeanne Mirer

Aug. 10 marks the 52^nd anniversary of the start of the chemical warfare program in Vietnam, a long time with little or no remedial action by the U.S. government. One of the most shameful legacies of the American War against Vietnam, Agent Orange continues to poison Vietnam and the people exposed to the chemicals, as well as their offspring.

For over 10 years, from 1961 to 1975, in order to deny food and protection to those deemed to be “the enemy,” the United States defoliated the land and forests of Vietnam with the chemicals known as Agent Orange. These chemicals contained the impurity of dioxin – the most toxic chemical known to science.

A U.S. military helicopter spraying the defoliant Agent Orange over Vietnam during the Vietnam War. (U.S. Army photo)

Millions of people were exposed to Agent Orange and today it is estimated that three million Vietnamese still suffer the effects of these chemical defoliants. In addition to the millions of Vietnamese still affected by this deadly poison, tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers are also afffected.

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by Badri Raina, Aug 2013

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Finally, our actions must make

Our wishes  horses,  so we ride

To embrace every one’s human need;

Let that be the gift of this year’s  Eid.
Let  illiterate doctrine  stay above,

And angry  law yield to love.

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Let the grand Mufti drink copiously

Of the  incandescent  wisdom of  Chisti.

Let Kabir, Nanak, Bulla, Farid

Illuminate the meaning of Eid.

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Let not the husband beat the wife,

Or the man of god misuse the knife.

Let no one ever again be the “other,”

But  friend, sister, comrade,brother

Across all faiths and denominations,

Lands, rivers, borders, stations.

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Let the Allama bow to Ghalib and Mir,

And the music of the Sufi uplift and bear

Our basest  self-righteousness beyond

The hate-filled, scared, sectarian pond.

Let god be found upon the earth,

Dancing to the innocence of mirth.

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Eid Mubarak a thousand times,

Ring the bells, unleash the chimes.

Nasir Khan, Aug 7, 2013

As a humanist, I extend my Eid greetings to Muslims and all other people with any religious or non-religious orientation. Let’s hope all people of goodwill will strive to uphold human values and struggle against  anti-human forces of religious extremists and fanatics who kill fellow human beings in the name of their brand of religion or sect in Pakistan and Iraq. They also terrorise other religious minorities.

We are human beings first and last. Religions and religious consciousness can also be used to advance human values and human happiness. Luckily some religious  people work for social welfare of  the people and  we can be proud of their work.  But a  tiny minority of  misguided and brainwashed goons is perpetrating random killings.

However, it is unrealistic to think that any  government can cope with these rogues if  the people  are not motivated to  cope with them. Again, it is the  people who can uproot this menace by their constructive and educational work among the masses.

Nasir Khan,  August 3, 2013

In a Facebook comment Rahul Banerjee offered his views on Marxist dialectics that I thought needed my brief reply.

Nasir Khan: Mr Banerjee, as a casual reader of Marx and Marxian concept of dialectics, I find your views on dialectics interesting on a number of points. But if I understand you correctly, then your notion of dialectics seems to me mechanistic and deterministic; it has little in common with what Marxist dialectics stands for. No wonder the question of thesis and a ‘matching antithesis’ in ‘natural or social developments’ you have summed up falls in that category! I don’t know how you have arrived at the view that for Marx the process of thesis and antithesis inevitably is ‘progressive’. I have not found anything like that in my reading of Marx’s texts. What you say does not represent Marxist concept of dialectics. No, Sir; Marx did not expound such a view. Another puzzling thing is that you name quantum physics and molecular biology to elaborate on the social development of society. In my view any advances in physical sciences do not lead to the negation of dialectics, which essentially is a model to analyse social change.

Rahul Banerjee: what marx took from hegel was his version of dialectics. now this form of dialectics too is shabby stuff that is not borne out by reality at all times. there is not always a thesis and matching antithesis in natural or social development and the synthesis that results even if there was such a pair may not always be of a progressive kind!! instead the process of change in the real world is of a very chancy kind and not deterministic and linear as envisaged in the dialectical method. now that we have a better understanding of this chanciness due to advances in quantum physics and molecular biology and the unpredictable development of society, we need to move on from what Hegel and Marx could surmise in their day.

by Nazim Hikmet (1902-1963)

I come and stand at every door
But none can hear my silent tread
I knock and yet remain unseen
For I am dead for I am dead

I’m only seven though I died
In Hiroshima long ago
I’m seven now as I was then
When children die they do not grow

My hair was scorched by swirling flame
My eyes grew dim my eyes grew blind
Death came and turned my bones to dust
And that was scattered by the wind

I need no fruit I need no rice
I need no sweets nor even bread
I ask for nothing for myself
For I am dead for I am dead

All that I need is that for peace
You fight today you fight today
So that the children of this world
Can live and grow and laugh and play

Nasir Khan, August 2, 2013

The mixing of Islam with the politics of Pakistan has been a recipe for disaster for the people and the political system of Pakistan. It is obvious to all of us what people say in matters of faith is full of controversies, divergent interpretations and inter-sectarian conflicts that result in much bloodshed and social polarization. While every sect repudiates other sects in doctrinal matters while maintaining its own version to be the only genuine and legitimate one!

As long as Pakistan does not follow the principles of a peoples’ democracy and separate religion from politics, more and more disasters and mayhem will follow. I think, one important step for Pakistani secular activists is to show the importance of the separation of religion and the State. When this is made possible then the people should follow whatever religion or sect they choose or reject in their personal lives. That should be their option and no one should interfere with that. The State should be neutral in religious matters. When this happens, religion (Islam in the case of Pakistan) will stop being a power that poisons the body-politic of Pakistan as it also does in many other Muslim countries.

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Exclusive: For more than a decade since the Iraq invasion, President Bush, Prime Minister Blair and their senior aides have stuck to the story of innocent intelligence mistakes and evaded accountability. But the code of silence may crack if top British spy Richard Dearlove tells his story, says ex-UK intelligence officer Annie Machon.

By Annie Machon

In a surprising statement last weekend, the former head of Great Britain’s foreign intelligence-gathering agency, MI6, suggested that he might break the code of omerta around the fraudulent intelligence case – including the so-called “dodgy dossier” – that was used as the pretext for the Iraq War in 2003.

Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6 and current Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge, contacted the UK’s Mail on Sundaynewspaper to state that he had written his account of the intelligence controversy in the run-up to the U.S./UK invasion of Iraq and indicated that he might release it in the near future.

Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of Great Britain’s MI-6 intelligence agency.

With the much-delayed official Chilcot Enquiry into the case for war about to be published, Dearlove is obviously aware that he might be blamed for “sexing up” the intelligence and former Prime Minister Tony Blair might once again evade all responsibility.

In the months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the British government produced a couple of reports “making a case for war,” as Major General Michael Laurie said in his evidence to the enquiry in 2011: “We knew at the time that the purpose of the [September] dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence, and that to make the best out of sparse and inconclusive intelligence the wording was developed with care.”

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The European Union has proposed new guidelines for how it will do business with the state of Israel that will require any Israeli entity seeking funding or cooperation from the E.U. to submit a declaration that it has no links to any of the occupied territories. Any agreement between the E.U. and Israel would need to include a section stating that its settlements in the territories are not part of Israel. The guidelines, obtained by the Israeli daily Haaretz, state that “only Israeli entities having their place of establishment within Israel’s pre-1967 borders will be considered eligible for consideration.” Human rights organizations like B’Tselem and non-governmental organizations like Peace Now that work to promote peace will be exempt from the requirement not to have links to the occupied territories.

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