Peace and Justice Post

by Edward S. Herman, Dissident Voice,  October 1st, 2011

Assassination is as American as apple pie. The record-breaking case of assassination targeting is Fidel Castro.  The 1976 Church Committee report on “Alleged Assassination Plots on Foreign Leaders” listed “at least” seven attempts to kill Castro, but the book by Fabian Escalante, the Cuban former official in charge of protecting Castro, claimed that the number of tries ran into the hundreds.  In 2006 Duncan Campbell pointed out that Luis Posada Carriles was still living in Florida after his failed effort to murder Castro (among his other terrorist actions), and Campbell noted sardonically that Florida is “a place where many of the unsuccessful would-be assassins have made their home.”¹ It would be a mistake, however, to think that Florida is the terror center of the world—that honor falls to Washington, D.C. and its environs; Florida is just one branch of the center, just as Guantanamo is just one branch of a D.C.-centered torture network.

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Imagine for a moment that on the day of the fancy speeches at the U.N. last Friday an Israeli father had been killed by a rocket out of Gaza. You know that the killing and the funeral would have been big news in the States. I bet we would have seen a photo of the grieving family and village on the front page of the Times– alongside of Abbas, asking the world for a Palestinian state. The nightly news would have had some footage.

Well last Friday morning — as Mahmoud Abbas later stated in his speech that day at the U.N.– Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian father  of 7 in the little village of Kusra in the northern West Bank. Issam Badran was 35.

A group of Israeli settlers came to tear down the village’s olive trees. They had set fire to its mosque earlier this month. And the village is resisting in its way. Three hundred people from the village went out to protect their lands last Friday.

Israeli soldiers came between the settlers and Palestinians. And who did they attack– the villagers! They shot Badran in the neck. Here is the best account I’ve seen: link to www.palestinemonitor.org

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• Staff and agencies
• guardian.co.uk, Saturday 1 October 2011

A group of Palestinians rally in New York while President Mahmoud Abbas calls for the UN to formally recognise the Palestinian state. Photograph: Gary Dwight Miller/ Zuma Press/Corbis

The Palestinian Authority has accused the US of “collective punishment”, after the US Congress blocked $200m (£128m) in aid in response to President Mahmoud Abbas’ bid for UN statehood.

The decision to freeze the payments was reportedly made by three congressional committees on 18 August, before Abbas’ planned bid for statehood recognition at the UN the following month.

The funds, intended for food aid, health care, and infrastructure projects, were supposed to have been transferred within the US financial year, which ends today. The Obama administration is reportedly negotiating with congressional leaders to unlock the aid.

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The UK has changed its laws to shield Israeli war crimes suspects from prosecution.

(Inbal Rose/MaanImages)

Legal mechanisms developed after the end of the Second World War to more easily prosecute war criminals are now being taken off the books to preserve Israeli impunity from accountability.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes an outraged international community demanded justice — a demand that resulted in the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the introduction of the new legal concept of universal jurisdiction. Justice, it seemed, would be impartial and hiding places for criminals scarce.

Universal jurisdiction is a simple concept. Deriving its authority from Common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions, it places an obligation upon all states “to respect and ensure respect” for the laws of war, effectively requiring all states to prosecute suspected war criminals regardless of where the crimes were committed.

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By Paul Craig Roberts, lewrockwell.com, Sept. 30, 2011

In the past decade, Washington has killed, maimed, dislocated, and made widows and orphans millions of Muslims in six countries, all in the name of the “war on terror.” Washington’s attacks on the countries constitute naked aggression and impact primarily civilian populations and infrastructure and, thereby, constitute war crimes under law. Nazis were executed precisely for what Washington is doing today.

Moreover the wars and military attacks have cost American taxpayers in out-of-pocket and already-incurred future costs at least $4,000 billion dollars – one third of the accumulated public debt – resulting in a US deficit crisis that threatens the social safety net, the value of the US dollar and its reserve currency role, while enriching beyond all previous history the military/security complex and its apologists.

Perhaps the highest cost of Washington’s “war on terror” has been paid by the US Constitution and civil liberties. Any US citizen that Washington accuses is deprived of all legal and constitutional rights. The Bush-Cheney-Obama regimes have overturned humanity’s greatest achievement – the accountability of government to law.

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by Richard Falk,  Foreign Policy Journal, September 30, 2011

There is a natural disposition for supporters of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination to suppose that the Palestinian statehood bid must be a positive initiative because it has generated such a frantic Israel effort to have it rejected. Despite the high costs to American diplomacy in the Middle East at this time of regional tumult and uncertainty, the United States has committed itself to exercise its veto on Israel’s behalf if that turns out to be necessary. To avoid the humiliation of disregarding the overwhelming majority opinion of most governments in the world, the United States has rallied the former European colonial powers to stand by its side, while leaning on Bosnia and Colombia to abstain, thereby hoping to deny Palestine the nine votes it needs for a Security Council decision without technically casting a veto. . .

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Hassan N. Gardezi, Viewpoint Online, Sept. 30, 2011

In the mid-1950s several Afro-Asian countries were asserting their independence from the hegemonic influence of Western powers, while Pakistan’s rulers were driving the country deeper into subservient cold war alliances with the United States, the super imperialist power in the making. A new leadership was emerging in Africa and Asia involved in movements of genuine national liberation.  Sukarno in Indonesia, Nkrumah in Ghana, Bandaranaike in Sri Lanka and Nasser in Egypt were trying to root out the remnants of imperialism from their countries, while Nehru of India along with Zhao Enlai of China were laying down the foundations of  Non-aligned Movement.

In 1956 Nasser of Egypt having overthrown the decadent monarchy of King Farouk nationalised the Suez Canal and its operations. Britain and France which claimed imperial title to the ownership of the Canal went to the United Nation’s Security Council to establish their title, only to be rebuffed by the Soviet Veto. Next they convened an international conference to drum up support for their claims. A resolution was moved in this conference calling for the surrender of the Suez Canal and its lucrative operations to the Anglo-French authority. Pakistan’s delegates to the conference, first Hamidul Haq Chowdhury and then Feroz Khan Noon, supported the resolution while Krishna Menon, the Indian delegate, firmly opposed it. Later when the resolution was about to be passed by the Western delegates and their Eastern allies, Krishna Menon walked out of the Conference along with the Soviet, Sri Lankan and Indonesian delegates, rendering the proceedings meaningless.

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• • By PETER ORSI, Associated Press – Thu Sep 29, 12:43 pm ET

HAVANA, Cuba – Fidel Castro mocked President Barack Obama on Thursday for saying he’s open to changing U.S. policy toward Cuba if there is change on the island first, calling the U.S. leader “stupid.”

Writing in one of his semiregular essays published across state-run media, Castro reacted with sarcasm to reported comments that Obama would be open to a different relationship with Cuba when there is political and social change.

“How kind! How intelligent!” Castro said. “Such kindness still has not allowed him to understand that 50 years of blockade and crimes against our country have not been able to bow our people.”

Cuba uses the term “blockade” to refer to the nearly five-decades-old economic embargo against the island.

“Many things will change in Cuba, but they will change through our efforts and in spite of the United States. Perhaps that empire will fall first,” Castro added, a reference to the United States.

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By Teesta Setalvad, Countercurrents.com, Sept. 30, 2011

The Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) strongly condemns the vindictive action of the Gujarat government in arresting Sanjeev Bhatt, senior IPS officer in an action that is nothing short of an attempt to intimidate an important witness in the Zakia Ahsan Jafri and CJP criminal complaint against chief minister Narendra Modi and 61 others. This action of the Gujarat police under the direct intructions of the state’s Home Minister—Narendra Modi amounts to tampering with evidence and direct intimidation of a key witness. It is also a cheap attempt to slur his character and standing.

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Pulitzer-winning author Alice Walker sees a reflection of the injustice done to African-Americans in today’s treatment of the Palestinians, leading her to object when the artwork of Palestinian children is barred from U.S. museums and to join a flotilla that challenged Israel’s blockade of Gaza, as Dennis Bernstein reports.

By Dennis Bernstein, Consortium News, Sept. 28, 2011

Alice Walker is Pulitzer Prize winning poet, author and activist. She participated recently in the U.S. Boat to Gaza, which was a part of the Freedom Flotilla, to break the Israeli embargo on the Gaza Strip.

Last year, a flotilla was attacked by Israeli commandos and a number of people were killed and wounded. Walker’s boat was stopped by Greek authorities before it could traverse the eastern Mediterranean to Gaza.

DB:  I want to start with the recent attempt by the Children’s Museum of Oakland to prevent Palestinian kids from showing their art. You wrote a very moving piece on your web site. It was very personal. Could you just briefly outline what you wrote and your response to this censorship?

AW: Well, I was basically saying that the children need to have exposure of their art because it will be a wonderful way to help them heal from the trauma of being bombed and watching their friends, and sometimes parents, die.

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