Peace and Justice Post

Norwegian PM calls for embracing ‘openness, tolerance’ one month after Islamphobic ‘Crusade’ massacre.

Middle East Online, Aug. 22, 2011

By Pierre-Henry Deshayes – Oslo

A display of unity

Norway held an emotional commemoration Sunday for the 77 victims of last month’s twin attacks with survivors, relatives, royals and pop stars all remembering the country’s worst peacetime bloodshed.

Some 6,700 people gathered in the Spektrum concert hall in Oslo in a display of unity, almost exactly a month after Anders Behring Breivik bombed the government quarter in the capital before mowing down participants at an island youth camp.

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg urged Norwegians to help the victims’ relatives and stand by the very ideals of democracy and openness that the far-right extremist 32-year-old self-confessed killer sought to shatter.

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Today, one in five U.S. kids are living in poverty, says a new report on how kids are faring in the recession. Everything about the foreclosure crisis and recession and the attack on the public safety net that has made the last few years difficult for U.S. adults has also made things tough for U.S. children. But for kids of color, the numbers are much worse.

More than one in three black kids—a full 36 percent of black youth—live in poverty and 31 percent of Latino kids lives in poverty. And for many of the indicators of child welfare that the Annie E. Casey Foundation, whose 2011 Kids Count Data Book was released on Wednesday, tracks, like infant mortality rates and school achievement, black and Latino kids fare far worse than their white counterparts.

For example, in 2009, a full 16 states reported poverty rates for black children that were upwards of 40 percent. And in five states, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas and Alabama, more than 40 percent of Latino kids there lived in poverty. However, no state has a white children’s poverty rate that’s over 23 percent.

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by Jeff Gates, Dissident Voice,  August 19th, 2011

So let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against all anti-Zionists….
— Manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik

War-making storylines tend to lose their steam. Sustained warfare requires more than just a plausible Evil Doer. A credible narrative is also essential. To remind us who to hate, who better than a murderous Nordic Muslim-hater?

Far-fetched? How many Americans had heard of the Taliban before March 2001 when destruction of the ancient Buddhas at Bamiyan was reported worldwide as a ‘Cultural Holocaust’? Voila! An Evil Doer brand emerged and was soon repackaged as Islamo-fascism.

Six months later, an attack on U.S. soil left little doubt that outraged Americans would be provoked to war. Combine an emotionally wrenching mass murder with manipulated intelligence and an invasion was assured—of Iraq. That miscue required sophisticated pre-staging.

Residents of Washington, DC well recall the sniper attacks that left ten dead during the October 2002 lead-up to a Senate vote on a war resolution sponsored by Jewish Zionist Senator Joe Lieberman. Those well-timed murders ensured a heightened sense of insecurity and helped ratchet up the requisite hatred—to invade a nation that played no role in 911.

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by Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies , Aug. 20, 2011

As Israel continued the bombardment of the Gaza Strip since Thursday, Palestinian medical sources in Gaza reported that the number of slain residents arrived to 15, while more than 40 others, were wounded in the last 24 hours of military escalation.

The sources stated that the Israeli Air Force fired a missile at a motorcycle driving in Ath-Thaltheen Street, in Gaza City, killing three residents, including a child. Their bodies were severely mutilated.

Adham Abu Salmiyya, spokesperson of the Higher Committee of Medical and Emergency Services in Gaza, reported that the child was only two years old, and that one woman is among the injured.

The casualties were identified as Dr. Monther Qreiqe’ and his brother Mo’taz of the Al Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad, and a two-year-old child identified as Islam. They were transporting Islam to a local hospital as he needed urgent medical care.

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AHRC, August 19, 2011

ASIAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION – URGENT APPEALS PROGRAMME

Urgent Appeal Case: AHRC-UAC-145-2011
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Dear friends,

At a time that the proxy military government in Burma is purporting to bring about political change, it is continuing to arrest and falsely accuse citizens in various criminal cases. In this appeal, the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) draws your attention to 14 persons accused in connection with a bombing in Pegu town during 2010. The police have brought charges against the accused following illegal detention of over three months and having falsified records.

CASE NARRATIVE:

On 29 September 2010 a bomb exploded in a local council office in Pegu, northeast of Rangoon. During the next month, officials arrested 13 persons over the case, while three who have been named as accused escaped capture.

The police have lodged charges against 14 of the accused over having allegedly gone to Thailand to get training in political defiance and use of Internet and having got financial support with which they made the bomb attack.

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As the seeds of Obama’s 2012 electoral campaign begin to sprout, labor unions are being forced either to pledge their allegiance or distance themselves from the incumbent president. There has already emerged some hefty splits in the labor movement over the issue, based on the President’s complete lack of action on creating jobs combined with his false promises in the 2008 election.

In fact, Obama has presided over the worst atmosphere for U.S. labor unions since the Reagan Administration. He has remained silent over the massive attack on public employee unions while aggressively pushing his union-busting education program, Race to the Top. Obama’s 2012 electoral campaign offers enormous potential for U.S. labor unions to stand in opposition to these policies by refusing to endorse or campaign for the President.

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You Tube about the extreme right-wing political party of Pakistan, Jamaat-e-Islami

پاکستانی  سیاسی تنظیم جماعت اسلامی کے بارے میں حیدر مودودی کا انٹرویو

By Rep. Dennis Kucinich, News Wire,  August 17, 2011

The Obama Administration continues to use unmanned drones as a tool of war — a tool that according to the New York Times, the Administration claims has killed 600 militants in Pakistan and no civilians since May 2010. But the math doesn’t add up.

A recent report released by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that at least 2,292 people have been killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004. The Bureau estimates that of that number, over 350 are civilians. A July 2009 Brookings Institution report stated ten civilians die for every one suspected militant from U.S. drone strikes. Yet another study by the New American Foundation concluded that out of 114 drone attacks in Pakistan, at least 32% of those killed by the strikes were civilians.

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Hundreds of Palestinians in Area C have their homes demolished by Israeli authorities every year.

Middle East Online, Aug. 18, 2011

Children of the Saed family playing in Khallet Zakariya

RAMALLAH, West Bank – Each year, hundreds of Palestinians in Area C have their homes demolished by the Israeli authorities because they are unable to obtain permits for their buildings, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Area C covers 60 percent of the West Bank with a Palestinian population of about 150,000.

Israel retains military authority and full control over building and planning in Area C: as much as 70 percent of it is inaccessible to Palestinians, classified as Israeli settlement areas, firing zones, or nature reserves.

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