Peace and Justice Post

by Sheldon Richman, fff.org, October 3, 2011

The Obama administration’s hypocritical vow to block full UN membership for Palestine shames America. Only a hypocrite could proclaim support for the Arab Spring while opposing this step toward realizing the Palestinian aspiration to be free from the 44-year-old Israeli occupation of the West Bank and subjugation of Gaza.

The Palestinians have been under brutal and degrading occupation since the 1967 Six-Day War, which they did not start. Their daily lives, when not punctuated by shootings, beatings, and bulldozing of homes and olive groves, are scarred by routine humiliation: military checkpoints, road blocks, arbitrary searches, unpredictable delays, and an inhumanely disruptive “security” wall. No one should have to live like that, yet two generations of Palestinians have been subjected to this cruelty. Some Palestinians, mostly in Gaza, have responded with attacks on Israeli civilians. However comprehensible, it is nonetheless vicious, criminal action.

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It was formed to assist in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, in reality, envoy Tony Blair uses it for personal profit.

Quartet envoy Tony Blair has been the target of stinging criticism of late from officials close to Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. There have even been murmurs that Abbas’ officials may formally request Blair’s removal.

While Blair’s Quartet role, which he took up the day he left office as UK prime minister in 2007, has undoubtedly been harmful to the Palestinian people and to any semblance of international law, it would not be enough to call for Blair to go.

It is the Quartet itself – an ad hoc committee of US, EU and Russian officials, and the UN Secretary General, that monopolises the so-called “peace process” – that has destroyed what little credibility the United Nations has left on the question of Palestine.

It functions as a front that launders Israeli and American demands as UN and “international” positions, sidelining international law and countless resolutions declaring myriad Israeli actions to be grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.

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by William Blum, Foreign Policy Journal, October 5, 2011

Is history getting too close for comfort for the fragile little American heart and mind? Their schools and their favorite media have done an excellent job of keeping them ignorant of what their favorite country has done to the rest of the world, but lately some discomforting points of view have managed to find their way into this well-defended American consciousness.

First, Congressman Ron Paul during a presidential debate last month expressed the belief that those who carried out the September 11 attack were retaliating for the many abuses perpetrated against Arab countries by the United States over the years. The audience booed him, loudly.

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By Rob Kall, opednews.com, October 5, 2011

The banksters on Wall Street, The Heads of Lehman Brothers, BofA, Morgan Stanley, etc.,– they’re all just single heads of the hydra that is multinational globalization.

This protest pinpoints how dysfunctional our economic system is: we must refashion it for human needs, not corporate aims

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• Richard Wolff,  guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 4 October 2011

A man holds up an anti-Wall Street placard on the march to NYPD headquarters. Photograph: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images

Occupy Wall Street has already weathered the usual early storms. The kept media ignored the protest, but that failed to end it. The partisans of inequality mocked it, but that failed to end it. The police servants of the status quo over-reacted and that failed to end it – indeed, it fueled the fire. And millions looking on said, “Wow!” And now, ever more people are organising local, parallel demonstrations – from Boston to San Francisco and many places between.

Let me urge the occupiers to ignore the usual carping that besets powerful social movements in their earliest phases. Yes, you could be better organised, your demands more focused, your priorities clearer. All true, but in this moment, mostly irrelevant. Here is the key: if we want a mass and deep-rooted social movement of the left to re-emerge and transform the United States, we must welcome the many different streams, needs, desires, goals, energies and enthusiasms that inspire and sustain social movements. Now is the time to invite, welcome and gather them, in all their profusion and confusion.

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Exclusive: Israeli leaders continue to pound the drum about taking out Iran’s nuclear program – and some hardliners may want to strike soon, fearing the window of opportunity will close if President Barack Obama wins reelection and is less susceptible to political pressures, as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern observes.

By Ray McGovern, Consortium News, Oct. 3, 2011

There are mounting signs that the right-wing Israeli government may think the timing is right for an attack on Iran, with growing alarms inside Israel about alleged Iranian progress on building a nuclear bomb – and with President Barack Obama fearing loss of key Jewish political support in 2012 if he doesn’t go along.

On Sept. 26, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated Iran’s alleged progress, telling interviewer Charlie Rose that “time is short” before Iran obtains nuclear weapons and poses a direct threat to Israel and the rest of the world.

Yet, the key factor in any Israeli decision to send its aircraft and missiles to Iran is the degree to which Netanyahu and other hard-line Likud leaders believe that President Obama is locked into giving blanket support to Israel — particularly as Election 2012 draws near.

The Israelis might well conclude that the formidable effectiveness of the Likud Lobby and kneejerk support of the U.S. Congress as well as still powerful neoconservatives in the Executive Branch (and on the opinion pages of major American newspapers) amount to solid assurance of automatic support for pretty much anything Israel decides to do.

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The US drone that assassinated American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen was launched from one of the Obama administration’s newly constructed bases on the Arabian Peninsula.

It was only a few weeks ago that reports were first released about the Obama administration’s new construction of “a constellation of secret drone bases,” as they were described by the Washington Post, installed with the specific intention to broaden the drone war in the Arabian Peninsula and northeast Africa, especially in Yemen and Somalia.

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AHRC, Oct. 4, 2011

Ms. Srini Wasana Amaratunga

Urgent Appeal Case : On 25 September body of Ms. Srini Wasana Amaratunga was found at the Elakanda, Wattala in the Gampaha District. Srini had been missing since the morning of the 24th and her relatives made a complaint to the Negombo police. As is customary, the police took no action until her body was found a police team on patrol attached to the Wattala Police Station. This is a one of a series of cases which have occurred in the last several months where women have been abducted and robbed for their jewellery and money. The Asian Human Rights Commission has observed an increased in the daily occurrence of crimes in every part of the country and the law enforcement agencies are doing nothing to carry out their statutory duties. The lethargic approach of these officers and the undue delays in the judiciary have exasperated the situation to the point where the general public live in constant fear. This case is yet another illustration of the exceptional collapse of the rule of law in the country.

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By Ismail Salami, vetetarnstoday.com, Sept. 29, 2011

In a primitive society where women find themselves in such a farcical situation where they are not even allowed to drive, a simple word like ‘driving’ which is per se devoid of any archetypal undertones has come to carry a meaning far beyond ordinary.

Saudi Arabia has treated women as second-class citizens for decades, denying them many rights including the right to drive. However, the act of driving recently gained symbolic significance when a group of Saudi activists launched an online campaign in June and urged women to start driving on Saudi Arabian roads. Known as the “Women2Drive” campaign, they used Facebook and Twitter to engage in driving as part of their protest against women discrimination in the country.

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