Peace and Justice Post

Protesters in Brussels, Belgium, speak out against government violence in Syria at a demonstration organized by Amnesty International. (Bruno Fahy / EPA / July 1, 2011)

A trio of major human-rights groups on Wednesday sounded separate alarms about the violent crackdown against the pro-democracy movement in Syria, accusing the regime of war crimes and urging the international community to haul the leadership in Damascus before a tribunal.

More than 1,400 Syrians have been killed in the nearly 4-month-old uprising, which seeks to bring democracy to a nation that has been run by the family of President Bashar Assad or its political allies since 1963.

“The situation in Syria cannot be allowed to deteriorate further,” Neil Hicks of Human Rights First said in a statement. “The U.S. government must lead international efforts to adopt a resolution condemning Syria’s actions at the U.N. Security Council. Syria’s leaders should be put on notice that they will be held to account for their actions.”

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 Swedish bestselling crime author Henning Mankell slams Greece for blocking the aid flotilla to Gaza as some of Sweden’s pro-Palestinian activists returned home

 ahramonline, July 7, 2011

Source: AFP

Swedish bestselling crime author Henning Mankell slammed Greece for blocking the aid flotilla to Gaza as some of Sweden’s pro-Palestinian activists returned home on Thursday.

“That we were not able to leave (for Gaza) has to do with the fact that the Greek government has sold its soul for a silver coin,” the 63-year-old writer, who was taking part in the flotilla, told reporters at the airport in Sweden’s second-largest city Gothenburg.

Greece, he was quoted by the TT news agency as saying, “has given in to Israeli threats, to American threats and didn’t let us leave, which is of course a scandal.”

“But we will come back. We won’t give up,” he added.

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Maan News Agency, July 7, 2011

RAMALLAH (Ma’an) — Israeli settler violence against Palestinians increased “dramatically” in June, according to a Palestinian Authority report released Wednesday.

The report documented 139 attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank by the Israeli army and settlers during the month, including the demolition of 95 buildings and over 3600 olive trees and vines.

Fires in the villages of Madama on Tuesday, and in Aqraba on Monday, both near Nablus, were also attributed to settler violence, the report said.

“In the first week of June, settlers burnt 350 trees in Deir al-Hatab village near Nablus, 20 grape vines in Hebron and uprooted 40 grape vines in Beit Ummar village,” the report stated.

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By Amira Hass, ZNet, July 8, 2011

CRETE – Like an anti-Semitic caricature, Israel has extended its long tentacles around the globe in an effort to stop 10 decades-old ships from sailing to Gaza. Many Israelis interpreted this as a great victory.

The story could be read as follows: The Greek government wanted to save people whom it surely views as eccentrics and professional trouble-makers, even if naive, from a traumatic and perhaps even fatal experience. The Greek foreign minister rejected claims that Israeli pressure led his government to ban the flotilla’s departure. He explained that Greece wanted to prevent a “humanitarian disaster” in the event of a clash between the Israel Defense Forces and the protesters.

Indeed, a Greek police officer – one of those who tried (in vain) to discover from passengers on the Tahrir who was piloting their ship – did not beat around the bush. We wanted to save you from the Israeli army, he told one of them. The Jew of the blood libel, of whom one must be wary, has been replaced by an Israeli navy commando.

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by Kathy Kelly, CommonDreams.org, July 8, 2011

It looked like a scene from an opera. Massed in the doorway and second floor balconies of a quaint building in Athens, facing a magnificent view of the Parthenon, Spanish activists hung banners and flashed peace signs and proclaimed that they wouldn’t leave the building, the Embassy of Spain, until their government assured them that their boat, “The Guernica,” could at last leave for the suffering and besieged territory of Gaza.

Like other boats in the “Freedom Flotilla 2,” an international flotilla aiming to end the naval blockade of Gaza, the Spaniards’ boat has been blocked from sailing by bureaucratic measures imposed by the Greek government. This was unacceptable to the activists. On July 4, 2011, the Spanish Ambassador to Greece had agreed to meet with only four of the Spanish activists, but at a pre-arranged time, one of the four had gone downstairs, opened the door and ushered in 17 others to help them occupy the Embassy. Today, three days later, they have issued an eloquent statement explaining why they still refuse to leave. They call for an end to the illegal blockade of Gaza and for immediate release of their boat so that it can soon reach Gazan shores.

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Soldiers of 1st Squadron 61st Cavalry 101st Airborne Division listen to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates while he visits Field Operating Base in Connolly, Afghanistan, December 7, 2010. (Photo: Air Force Master Sgt. Jerry Morrison / DoD)

A few days after Barack Obama’s December 2009 announcement of 33,000 more troops being sent to Afghanistan, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary Robert Gates advanced the official justification for escalation: the Afghan Taliban would not abandon its ties with al-Qaeda unless forced to do so by US military force and the realization that “they’re likely to lose.”

Gates claimed to see an “unholy alliance” of the Afghan Taliban, al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban emerging during 2009. Unless the United States succeeded in weakening the Taliban in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda would have safe haven in Afghanistan, just as they had before the 9/11 attacks, according to Gates.

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by Richard Falk, Foreign Policy Journal, July 5, 2011

The reports that two of the foreign flagged ships planning to be part of the ten vessel Freedom Flotilla II experienced similar forms of disabling sabotage creates strong circumstantial evidence of Israeli responsibility. It stretches the imagination to suppose that a sophisticated cutting of the propeller shafts of both ships is a coincidence with no involvement by Israel’s Mossad, long infamous for its overseas criminal acts in support of contested Israeli national interests.

Recalling the lethal encounter in international waters with Freedom Flotilla I that took place on 31 May 2010, and the frantic diplomatic campaign by Tel Aviv to prevent this second challenge to the Gaza blockade by peace activists and humanitarian aid workers, such conduct by a state against this latest civil society initiative, if further validated by incriminating evidence, should be formally condemned as a form of ‘state terrorism’ or even as an act of war by a state against global civil society.

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Lawrence Davidson, MWC News, July 7, 2011

Civil Society Movements vs. Corrupt Politics

When it comes to the struggle against Israel’s policies of oppression there are two conflicting levels: that of government and that of civil society. The most recent example of this duality is the half dozen or so small ships held captive in the ports of Greece. The ships, loaded with humanitarian supplies for the one and half million people of the Gaza strip, are instruments of a civil society campaign against the inhumanity of the Israeli state. The forces that hold them back are the instruments of governments corrupted by special interest influence and political bribery.

Most of us are unaware of the potential of organized civil society because we have resigned the public sphere to professional politicians and bureaucrats and retreated into a private sphere of everyday life which we see as separate from politics. This is a serious mistake. Politics shapes our lives whether we pay attention to it or not. By ignoring it we allow the power of the state to respond not so much to the citizenry as to special interests. Our indifference means that the politicians and government bureaucrats live their professional lives within systems largely uninterested in and sometimes incapable of acting in the public good because they are corrupted by lobby power. The ability to render justice is also often a casualty of the way things operate politically. The stymying of the latest flotilla due to the disproportionate influence of Zionist special interests on U.S. and European Middle East foreign policy is a good example of this situation.

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by Dr. Alan Sabrosky, Dissident Voice,  July 6th, 2011

Archimedes once said, “Give me a place to stand and I will move the world.” In the preceding articles in this series (listed below after my bio), I have developed the basic theses of my analysis that define the place we stand now, and where we must stand if we wish to alter the world Zionism has contrived for us. One is that we must focus our attention on the edifice of Zionist influence and control in the US, and not be mesmerized by events in and around Palestine. Another is that our efforts to date, with the partial exception of the BDS (Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions) campaign, have been ineffectual at best and counterproductive at worst. And the third, most critical point is that the gate to containing Zionism is in the US; the lock to the gate is in the heartland of the US and not Washington; and the key to that lock is the Israeli orchestration of 9/11 and its spin-off wars.

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uruknet.info, July 5, 2011

Source: LEMONDE.FR

LEMONDE.FR | 10.06.11 | 20h48 • Mis à jour le 10.06.11 | 21h02  “Did the American army use nuclear weapons in Iraq?“ This is the surprising question raised by France Info on Friday June 10. In partnership with Paris-Match, Angélique Férat, radio correspondent for the area, returned to the city of Fallujah, about fifty kilometers from Baghdad. The city, a stronghold of the Sunni insurrection, was attacked and partially destroyed by American forces in April 2004 and again in November the same year. Since then the city has seen a very high number of birth defects – so much so that, according to Angélique Férat, “almost every family has its own ‘monster baby'”. The Iraqi authorities refuse to consider the subject and there are no official statistics. Ms. Férat is not the first journalist to consider the fate of the city’s children. In May 2008, the British television channel Sky News sounded an alarm about the rate of congenital malformations there. An official of a local human rights organisation spoke of 200 cases of congenital malformations, the majority of which happened after the bombardment of the city. . . . Continues >>