Peace and Justice Post

by Kim Petersen, Dissident Voice,  November 2nd, 2011

The recent moves by the self-declared “leader of the free world” are puerile to an extreme.

The vote to grant membership to Palestine in the United Nations cultural organization UNESCO was 107 votes in favor, 14 against, and 52 abstentions. The United States was one of the 14 votes against, demonstrating that it was only “leading” a small group of nations.

The reaction of the US was embarrassing. It announced cancellation of its $60 million payment due in November to the UN body. Membership dues paid by the U.S. account for about 20 percent of UNESCO’s annual budget. Canada also announced it would withholding “voluntary contributions” (are there involuntary contributions?) to UNESCO.

Continues >>

The US drone war in the tribal regions of Pakistan continue to exact a heavy toll on civilians, including the elderly, women, and children – and two teenagers, age 16 and 12, who were killed last week. There exists no evidence that either of these two had any links to militants, and since journalists are banned from the region, it is hard to get to the truth of the carnage behind America’s drone program. Other victims of drones have survived, like the teenage boy called Saadullah, who lost three of his relatives, both legs, one eye and his hope for the future. ”What’s going on here, unfortunately, is murder,” says one British lawyer.

Read the whole report by Orla Guerin at the BBC.

The Party of Wall Street has ruled unchallenged in the United States for far too long. It has totally (as opposed to partially) dominated the policies of Presidents over at least four decades (if not longer), no matter whether individual Presidents have been its willing agents or not. It has legally corrupted Congress via the craven dependency of politicians in both political parties upon its raw money power and upon access to the mainstream media that it controls. Thanks to the appointments made and approved by Presidents and Congress, the Party of Wall Street dominates much of the state apparatus as well as the judiciary, in particular the Supreme Court, whose partisan judgments increasingly favor venal money interests, in spheres as diverse as electoral, labor, environmental and contract law.

Continues >>

Extend Labor Protections to Migrant Women and Girls at Home, Abroad

Downloadable Resources:

Cambodia/Malaysia: Domestic Workers Face Abuse – Khmer Translation

(Phnom Penh) – The Cambodian and Malaysian governments’ failure to regulate recruiters and employers leaves Cambodian migrant domestic workers exposed to a wide range of abuses, Human Rights Watch said in a report issued today. Tens of thousands of Cambodian women and girls who migrate to Malaysia have little protection against forced confinement in training centers, heavy debt burdens, and exploitative working conditions.

The 105-page report, “‘They Deceived Us at Every Step’: Abuse of Cambodian Domestic Workers Migrating to Malaysia,”documents Cambodian domestic workers’ experiences during recruitment, work abroad, and upon their return home. It is based on 80 interviews with migrant domestic workers, their families, government officials, nongovernmental organizations, and recruitment agents. The report highlights the numerous obstacles that prevent mistreated women and girls from obtaining justice and redress in both Cambodia and Malaysia.

Continues >>

Share Link:

Israel is forcing Palestinians out of East Jerusalem as part of a deliberate policy that might constitute a war crime, a prominent Israeli non-governmental organisation said, a charge rejected by Jerusalem’s mayor.

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) has presented the United Nations with its findings on Monday and demanded an inquiry, saying Israel targeted Palestinians by demolishing homes, revoking residency and eroding quality of life.

“We are witnessing a process of ethnic displacement,” said Michael Sfard, a lawyer who helped draw up a 73-page report into the issue. “Israel is manifestly and seriously violating international law … and the motivation is demographic.”

Stephan Miller, a spokesman for Israel’s mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, dismissed the report. He said in a statement it was based on “misleading facts, blatant lies and political spin about Jerusalem, so I’m sure the UN will enjoy it”.

Ciontinues >>

Egypt: Press Crackdown, Continued

One of Egypt’s most prominent bloggers and revolutionary activists is behind bars.

Rasha Azab leads a protest outside the military court in Cairo. (Image by Sharif Abdel Kouddous. Egypt, 2011)

Alaa Abdel Fattah, 29, was summoned before a military prosecutor on Sunday to face charges of inciting violence, stealing military weaponry and assaulting military personnel during an Oct. 9 military crackdown on a protest of mostly Coptic demonstrators that left at least 27 people dead and hundreds more wounded. The military court ordered Abdel Fattah to be detained for 15 days, pending further investigation, after he declined to answer any questions as a matter of principle.

The case, which has sparked widespread outrage, delineates a struggle that has been steadily growing against the ruling military council in post-Mubarak Egypt.

Continues >>

Obama tried his hardest, and in total conjunction with the US military commanders and the Pentagon, to keep US troops there after Dec. 31. He failed, not because of ineptitude, but because the Iraqi political leaders forced the US troops to leave, argues Immanuel Wallerstein.

Middle East Online, November 1, 2011

It is now official. All uniformed US troops will be withdrawn from Iraq by Dec. 31, 2011. There are two major ways of describing this. One is by President Obama, who says that he is thereby keeping an electoral promise he made in 2008. The second is by the Republican presidential candidates, who have condemned Obama for not doing what they say the US military wanted, which is to keep some US troops there after Dec. 31 as “trainers” to the Iraqi military. According to Mitt C, Obama’s decision was either “the result of naked political calculation or simply sheer ineptitude in negotiations with the Iraqi government.”

Both statements are nonsense, and merely represent self-justifying arguments for the American electorate. Obama tried his hardest, and in total conjunction with the US military commanders and the Pentagon, to keep US troops there after Dec. 31. He failed, not because of ineptitude, but because the Iraqi political leaders forced the US troops to leave. The withdrawal marks the culmination of the US defeat in Iraq, one comparable to the US defeat in Vietnam.

Continues >>

By Gideon Polya, MWC News,  Oct 29, 2011

Share Link:

Untruth must be repudiated, not punished

Freedom of expression, freedom of speech is vital for democracy, for unimpaired scholarly research and for rational risk management that keeps society safe. But what about hate speech, racial vilification or speech likely to cause dangerous public disorder? The need for democracy, scholarship and risk management means that freedom of speech must be sacrosanct but there is a place for a formal, transparent, expertly-informed judicial process that would make findings on free speech excesses but the only punishment of, for example, holocaust or genocide deniers would simply be the shame and ignominy of public exposure by such a process.

Abuses of freedom of speech can involve lying by commission and lying by omission. A good example involving lying by commission is given by the story of the shepherd boy who repeatedly cried wolf when there was no wolf but when a wolf did come nobody listened to his cries with dire consequences for the boy. This fable is acutely relevant to today. Thus the US Center for Public Integrity has reported that in 2 years after the 9-11 atrocity the Bush Administration told a total of 935 lies about Iraq. Failure of the System to expose Bush Administration lying led to the Iraq War and the utter devastation of that country.

Continues >>