Peace and Justice Post

The inherent artificiality of US-Pakistan relations was bound to assert itself as it has now. After a spate of bellicose statements from the US military hierarchy directly targeting the military and the ISI, it was the COAS who showed the grit to defend Pakistan’s legitimate strategic interests. The responsibility for doing so rested on the shoulders of the political leadership, but they constitute an important component of the problem that Pakistan is faced with today.

The US is losing the war in Afghanistan just like all previous invaders have. It has lost wars in the past that it started with intentions of stamping its illegitimate hegemony on various regions. In the process, it destabilised the world causing untold mayhem and impoverished millions of people who are still struggling to cope. Since the initiation of wars by the US has been part of a jaundiced but unchanging strategy of cultivating strife to keep its arms industry going and to physically occupy all sources of energy, there has been no let up in its scope or intensity, and there will not be any. Region after region has been mercilessly subjected to US brutality.

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The misuse of blasphemy laws are no longer the prerogative of religious bigots or fundamentalists. It is now being used in every section of society, particularly members of the teaching staff who are eager to contribute in pushing the country towards a religious intolerant state. Indeed, the enthusiasm of the educational staff in this instance was so high that they accused a student of a minority community of blasphemy without following the basic concepts of the ethics of imparting education.
These ethics are being violated when the secrecy of examination papers are dishonoured. When an examiner asks a question of a student if he or she is not satisfied with the student’s answer the examiner has the right to fail that student. However, the examiner does not have the right to disclose the student’s answer which is the personal opinion held by that student. The attitude of the teaching staff now is to gain points from the religious leaders by pointing out those students who they believe to have made blasphemous comments mistakenly or otherwise.

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He may prove the most disastrous president in our history in terms of civil liberties.

President Obama failed to close Guantanamo Bay, continued warrantless surveillance and military tribunals and asserted the right to kill U.S. citizens he views as terrorists. Photographed: The president speaks at the Libya Contact Group Meeting Sept. 20. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP Photo)

With the 2012 presidential election before us, the country is again caught up in debating national security issues, our ongoing wars and the threat of terrorism. There is one related subject, however, that is rarely mentioned: civil liberties.

Protecting individual rights and liberties — apart from the right to be tax-free — seems barely relevant to candidates or voters. One man is primarily responsible for the disappearance of civil liberties from the national debate, and he is Barack Obama. While many are reluctant to admit it, Obama has proved a disaster not just for specific civil liberties but the civil liberties cause in the United States.

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Human Rights Watch, 2011

The February 2010 presidential election ended the political turmoil that has characterized Ukraine in recent years. Viktor Yanukovich won the election over incumbent Viktor Yushschenko in a contest that international observers declared generally in accordance with international standards. Upon taking office President Yanukovich initiated far-reaching reforms, drawing criticism for pushing through changes without respecting democratic procedures or engaging the opposition.

Ukraine’s relationship with Russia improved significantly in 2010. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who had clashed frequently with Yushschenko, voiced hope that the “black page” in relations between Russia and Ukraine following the Orange Revolution of 2005 would be turned. Yanukovich, widely-seen as pro-Russian, visited Moscow in March and agreed to extend the lease on Russia’s Black Sea fleet in the Crimea for another 25 years. Medvedev reciprocated by discounting gas prices to Ukraine.

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Midtøstenutsendingen kan presses ut av jobben fordi han anses som altfor pro-israelsk.

Les også:

• Abbas: FN-søknad behandlet i løpet av uker
• Diplomatisk spill for å unngå krise i FN
• Blair leter etter kompromiss i FN

Den tidligere britiske statsministeren har vært utsending for den såkalte “Kvartetten”; Storbritannia, USA, Russland og EU – siden 2007. Helt siden starten har elementer i den palestinske ledelsen vært skeptisk til at Blair fordi de har ansett ham som ubalansert i sitt syn på konflikten mellom Israel og de palestinske områdene.

Nå har begeret rent over, sier flere palestinske ledere til den britiske avisen The Daily Telegraph.

– Vi har vært svært misfornøyde med ham helt siden han ble utsending, men spesielt de siste ukene, sier en kilde i den palestinske ledelsen til den britiske avisen.

Årskaen til at misnøyen har økt de siste ukene, skal være at Blair har jobbet hardt for å få europeiske land til å stemme imot forslaget om å gi Palestina anerkjennelse i FN som en egen, selvstendig stat.

Enstemmig avgjørelse

Denne uken skal ledelsen, trolig med palestinernes president Mahmoud Abbas i spissen, samles for å drøfte hva de skal gjøre med Blair. Ifølge The Telegraph ligger det et forslag på bordet som går ut på å fryse den tidligere statsministeren ute – å gjøre ham til en “persona non grata”.

Det vil i så fall gjøre det svært vanskelig for Blair å fortsette som Kvartettens midtøstenutsending.

Kilder i den palestinske ledelsen forteller den britiske avisen at avgjørelsen trolig vil bli tatt, og at den vil være enstemmig.

Det er ikke bare anonyme palestinske tjenestemenn som nå angriper Tony Blair. I forrige uke, da president Abbas sa frem forslaget om FN-anerkjennelse i New York etter å ha vært utsatt for massivt press fra USA til ikke å gjøre det, anklaget flere palestinere Blair for å løpe USAs og Israels ærend.

– Han høres til tider ut som en israelsk diplomat, sa Nabil Shaath, en høytstående palestinsk forhandler.

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Admiral Mike Mullen’s speech to lawmakers last week accusing Pakistan’s intelligence service of colluding with the Haqqani insurgent group was inaccurate and overstated, according to anonymous officials speaking with the Washington Post.

A senior Pentagon official with access to intelligence files on Pakistan said Mullen’s language “overstates the case,” because there is little evidence of direct control or cooperation with the Haqqanis. Mullen suggested otherwise and cited the recent 20-hour attack on the US Embassy in Kabul as a case in point.

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Is it not time to enquire whether U.S. policy has not created more terrorists than the CIA has managed to kill? Asks Patrick Seale.

Middle East Online, Sept.28, 2011

U.S. President Barack Obama is piling up foreign policy disasters. In at least three areas, crucial for world peace and American interests — Arab-Israel, Afghanistan-Pakistan and Yemen-Somalia — he is pursuing a course which can only be described as foolhardy. The anger and hate towards the United States which he is generating could take a generation to dispel.

His abject surrender to Israel on the Palestine question has shocked a large part of the world and gravely damaged America’s standing among Arabs and Muslims. To court the Jewish vote at next year’s presidential election, he has thrown into reverse the policy of outreach to the Muslim world which he expressed so eloquently in his 2009 Cairo speech. If he is now driven to use America’s veto at the Security Council to block the application of a Palestinian state for UN membership, he will have been defeated by the very forces of racism, Islamophobia, neocon belligerence and Greater Israel expansionism he once hoped to tame.

Obama’s policy in Afghanistan is equally perverse. On the one hand he seems to want to draw the Taliban into negotiations, but on the other some of his army chiefs and senior diplomats want to kill the Taliban first. This is hardly a policy likely to bring the insurgents to the table. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Ryan Crocker, America’s new ambassador to Kabul, actually said that the conflict should continue until more of the Taliban are killed. Who, one wonders, is in charge of U.S. policy?

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Asian Human Rights Commision, Sept. 29, 2011

Urgent Appeal Case : The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information that human rights defender Mr. Perumal Sivakumara (32) of Kalpitiya Road, Norochchole in the Puttalam District has died after being tortured in public by officers attached to the Special Task Force of the Sri Lanka Police. Perumal a well-known civil rights activist had gone to the town along with a friend to buy some medicine. At that time a large number of people had gathered at the church because a stranger had been terrorizing the village. When Perumal approached the gathering police officers arrived and started to beat some of the people. Despite the pleadings of Perumal he was severely tortured and later admitted to the Puttalam Base Hospital where he later died. No investigation has been started into the torture and extrajudicial killing of Perumal. This case is yet another illustration of the exceptional collapse of the rule of law in the country.

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This week marks the beginning of what is supposed to be the final 100 days of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. But if U.S. troops are to leave Iraq at the end of this year as promised – repeatedly – it will take grassroots pressure to counter the growing “occupy-Iraq-forever” chorus in Washington.

Despite the fact that there is a Bush-era agreement with the Iraqi government to leave, despite the fact that the majority of Iraqis and Americans don’t support a continued U.S. presence, and despite the fact that Congress is supposedly in an all-out austerity mode, strong forces – including generals, war profiteers and hawks in both parties – are pushing President Obama to violate the agreement negotiated by his predecessor and keep a significant number of troops in Iraq past the December 31, 2011 deadline.

It’s true there has already been a major withdrawal of U.S. troops, from a high of 170,000 in 2007 to about 45,000 troops today (with most of the troops being sent over to occupy Afghanistan instead). That number, however, doesn’t tell the whole picture. . .

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Iranian peace activist Narges Mohammadi at her home in Tehran in 2001. Photograph: Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images

A prominent Iranian human rights activist who was taken seriously ill after being detained by the authorities has been sentenced to 11 years in jail.

Narges Mohammadi, 39, the deputy head of Iran‘s Defenders of Human Rights Centre (DHRC), a rights organisation presided over by the Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi, was picked up last year by security officials who raided her house in middle of the night without a warrant for her arrest.

She was taken to Tehran’s Evin prison where she was kept in solitary confinement but was released after a month and taken to hospital.

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