Peace and Justice Post

By Greg Miller,  The Washington Post,  December 28, 2011

The Obama administration’s counterterrorism accomplishments are most apparent in what it has been able to dismantle, including CIA prisons and entire tiers of al-Qaeda’s leadership. But what the administration has assembled, hidden from public view, may be equally consequential.

In the space of three years, the administration has built an extensive apparatus for using drones to carry out targeted killings of suspected terrorists and stealth surveillance of other adversaries. The apparatus involves dozens of secret facilities, including two operational hubs on the East Coast, virtual Air Force­ ­cockpits in the Southwest and clandestine bases in at least six countries on two continents.

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by Stephen Lendman, Veterans Today, Dec 27, 2011

Sham Israeli peace negotiations were stillborn from inception. Writer Henry Siegman once called them “the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history.”

Netanyahu once said they’re “a waste of time.” Previous Israeli officials called occupation and status quo conditions “permanent.”

Republican presidential aspirant Newt Gingrich calls Palestinians an “invented” people. Decades ago, former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (a transplanted Ukrainian American) said:

“There is no such thing as a Palestinian people. It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t exist….How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.”

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The harsh treatment of alleged leaker Bradley Manning is part of a broader campaign to silence government whistleblowers, a pattern that began with Vice President Dick Cheney’s outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame but has expanded under President Obama, says ex-CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman.

By Melvin A. Goodman, Consortiumnews.com, Dec 21, 2011

When Pvt. Bradley Manning appeared in a military courtroom at Fort Meade, Maryland, last week, it was his first public appearance in more than 19 months. Manning has been held without trial for the past year and a half; only now is a hearing being conducted to determine if there is sufficient evidence to refer his case to a general court martial.

During this period, Manning, who is charged with transferring classified information to an unauthorized source, has been treated as an “enemy combatant,” subjected to solitary confinement in a maximum-security cell as well as harassment day and night.

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Palestinians Only Obstacle to Peace, Insists Lieberman

In a Christmas press conference attended by a number of top ambassadors, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman lashed those critical of Israel’s position on the peace process, while insisting no peace could be achieved within the next decade.

“In the next decade, this will be the situation and we need to know how to deal with it,” insisted Lieberman, saying that ambassadors should focus on “managing” the conflict instead of trying to solve it.

Lieberman also reiterated his condemnation of the European Union for criticizing settlement expansion, saying that the only obstacle to peace with the Palestinians is the Palestinians themselves and that construction would continue.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems to support the notion that the Israeli government has abandoned the idea of peace, insisting that his government will no longer negotiate with the Palestinians under any circumstances once they form a unity government, something expected within the next few months.

MWC News,  20 December 2011

By Nima Shirazi

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Why Alan Dershowitz is Wrong on Israel’s ‘Rights’

Renowned torture enthusiast and perennial Israel apologist Alan Dershowitz is in Tel Aviv this week attending an annual business conference sponsored by Globes and, as usual, has been busy equivocating for Israeli espionage, defending war criminals, and warmongering about Iran.

During a speech he delivered on Sunday December 11, Dershowitz opined, “Israel has the right morally and legally to strike Iran just as it did on [the Osirak nuclear facility] in Iraq in 1981.”

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When I was asked to speak at Saturday’s rally at Fort Meade in support of Pvt. Bradley Manning, I wondered how I might provide some context around what Manning is alleged to have done.

(In my talk, so as not to think I had to insert the word “alleged” into every sentence, I asked for unanimous consent to using the indicative rather than the subjunctive mood.)

What jumped into my mind was the letter Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from the Birmingham City jail in April 1963, from which I remembered this:

“Like a boil that can never be cured as long as it is covered up, but must be opened with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must likewise be exposed, with all of the tension its exposing creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”

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14 UN Security Council Members Issue United Statements Slamming US

In a move Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin termed “historic,” all 14 other members of the United Nations Security Council united today to offer statements slamming the United States for its decision to block a UN Security Council resolution on Israel’s settlement expansion.

Israel announced the latest in a long line of such expansions on Sunday, and it has been roundly criticized by virtually every nation on the planet, with European Union officials in particular warning the move harmed the prospect of peace talks.

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• 
• • Gary Younge, guardian.co.uk, Sunday 18 December 2011 21.00 GMT

Illustration by Toby Morison

On 19 November 2005 a US marine squad was struck by a roadside bomb in Haditha, in Iraq’s Anbar province, killing one soldier and seriously injuring two others. According to civilians they then went on the rampage, slaughtering 24 people. They included a 76-year-old man in a wheelchair and a three-year-old child. It was a massacre. “I think they were just blinded by hate … and they just lost control,” said James Crossan, one of the injured marines.

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With the prosecution pushing to introduce “secret” evidence against Pfc. Bradley Manning, the presiding officer in his preliminary hearing has moved the session behind closed doors, insisting that “protecting classified information is an overriding interest that outweighs the value of an open proceeding.”

The decision removed the public and press from the courtroom, though the Army did say that certain “other government agencies” which they did not identify would be allowed to remain and follow the hearing.

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