Peace and Justice Post

By James Cogan, wsws.org, 17 November 2011

US President Barack Obama has used his brief state visit to Australia over the past 24 hours to underscore that his administration’s aggressive intervention into the Asia-Pacific region is aimed at undercutting China’s growing influence. The Labor government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard has unconditionally aligned itself with the US as the means for advancing Australian corporate and strategic interests within the region.

At a press conference yesterday evening, Obama and Gillard announced that the American military will boost its operations in the north and west of the Australian continent. The country’s Northern Territory and its capital city Darwin, which is closer to Indonesia than Australia’s major southern cities, will be developed into a major US staging base.

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The Raw Story, Nov 15, 2011

By Agence France-Presse

WASHINGTON — The US Air Force has a new 30,000-pound bomb in its arsenal designed to penetrate targets buried deep underground, a spokesman said Tuesday.

The Air Force started taking delivery of the giant bomb, the “Massive Ordnance Penetrator,” in September, said Lieutenant Colonel Jack Miller.

Under an August 2 contract worth $32 million, the aerospace firm Boeing is due to produce eight of the giant MOP bombs to fulfil the Air Force’s “operational needs,” according to Miller.

The Air Force could not say how many of the conventional bombs have been delivered so far, but the MOP is seen as a weapon made for going after underground bunkers and tunnels in North Korea or Iran.

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 Uruknet.info, Nov 15, 2011

Source: The Frontier Post

The CIA’s new rules for its illegal and audacious drone attacks in Pakistan in reality represent no whittling down in its arrogant adventurism against a sovereign independent state, as has it projected to be by the American media. It just reflects an outcome of a heated interagency wrangling of America, specifically a triumph of sorts of US secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s doctrine of “smart power”. For furthering the US interests abroad, she has been pressing for lesser reliance on its brute power projection and more on diplomatic and development assistance initiatives, with the state department playing the central role in the entire gamut of America’s foreign domain. By using her immense stature, clout and status, she has already wrested a pivotal position for the state department in interacting with Iraq after the withdrawal of all the US troops by this year’s end. Continues >>

US drones attacked a house in the town of Miramshah in North Waziristan overnight, destroying the home and killing seven people inside. Two others were reported wounded in the attack, and are recovering at a nearby hospital.

The identities of the slain are unclear, but they were all termed “suspects” by officials. Some suggested they might be linked to the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), though this would be unusual as the group is not generally active in North Waziristan.

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US drones attacked a house in the town of Miramshah in North Waziristan overnight, destroying the home and killing seven people inside. Two others were reported wounded in the attack, and are recovering at a nearby hospital.

The identities of the slain are unclear, but they were all termed “suspects” by officials. Some suggested they might be linked to the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), though this would be unusual as the group is not generally active in North Waziristan.

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Eric Margolis, LewRockwell.com, Nov 15, 2011

Here we go again. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) long awaited, much ballyhooed report on Iran’s nuclear activities has been thunderously greeted in North America as conclusive evidence that Iran is working on nuclear weapons.

Tehran has long denied such claims. So, more tellingly, did a 2007 US combined intelligence assessment that rudely pulled out the rug from under the feet of the Bush-era neocons who were trying to engineer war with Iran. Now, they are back, in full fulmination mode.

There’s little new in this IAEA report, and a lot of déjà vu. We read the old story floating around since 2002 about a mysterious laptop stolen from Iran and passed to US intelligence. It allegedly contains scientific material about explosive compression methods to trigger a nuclear explosion, and designs to shrink nuclear warheads to fit in missile nosecones.

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AHRC, Nov 3, 2011

Human Rights in Papua 2010/2011

Statement : Following last month’s violent dispersal by Indonesian security forces of the Third Papuan Peoples’ Congress in Jayapura, Indonesia has been confronted with the full scale of human rights problems in Papua by the new Report ‘Human Rights in Papua 2010/2011’. This was launched yesterday in Geneva, by the Faith Based Network on West Papua (FBN), Franciscans International (FI), and the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC).

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If the Israeli war party attacked Iran and achieved everything it hopes to achieve, would that constitute victory for Israel? Would Israel, by a quick and successful strike, enhance its national security?

Almost anything could happen were Israel to start an unprovoked war against Iran. Let us assume, for the purposes of argument that it all goes just as the Israeli war party dreams.

With Defense Minister Barak, let us assume that almost no Israelis will die. Let us assume that Israeli planes and missiles hit their targets and that those targets are perfectly selected from among the possible 300 or more Iranian nuclear sites. Let us assume that the bombing sets the Iranian nuclear research program back by an optimistic five years, more than former Mossad chief Meir Dagan  and U.S. intelligence circles seem to think likely. Let us further assume that Hezbollah simply rolls over and plays dead, shocked and awed.

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by Kit Kittredge, Dissident Voice,  November 14th, 2011

Why I wanted to Challenge the Israeli Naval Blockade of Gaza

In the overland five trips I have made to Gaza since March, 2009, I have seen the disastrous effect of the brutal Israeli land and sea blockade has had on the Palestinian people.  I have seen the terrible level of destruction that the 2008-2009 Israeli attack wrecked on Gaza, in which 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the 22 day attack, 5,000 were wounded and 50,000 were made homeless.  I was on the Gaza Freedom March in 2009 and I was a passenger on the US Boat to Gaza, the “Audacity of Hope” that was forbidden from sailing June, 2011 by the Greek government on behalf of the Israeli government.

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By Devinder Sharma, Countercurrents.com, Nov 14, 2011

Ground Reality

Although Prime Minister Manmohan Singh considers rising food inflation to be a sign of growing prosperity, the reality is very harsh and painful. Rising food inflation, which continues for the 4th successive year now, has hit the aam aadmi like never before. Adding fuel to fire is the frequent raise in petrol prices.

Every time food inflation crosses the double-digit barrier, the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, have been quick to set a deadline some three to six months ahead during which period they promise to bring down the prices. While the failure to stem the price rise is written large, what is more worrying is the complete inability of the government to comprehend the reasons behind it. Economists and policy makers appear clueless and therefore continue to grope in the dark.

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