Peace and Justice Post

by Innovative Minds, Dissident Voice,  August 20th, 2011

On Tuesday 14th June 2011 human rights activists came together to oppose the visit of Israeli historian Benny Morris to the London School of Economics.

The visit was organised by the Anglo Israel Association, whose honorary president is the Israeli Ambassador. The Anglo Israel Association boast that their most fruitful work is as propagandists for Israel bringing ‘opinion formers’ to the UK on speaking tours in partnership with British think-tanks and universities to push the Israeli perspective.

Benny Morris is well known for his racist views of Arabs and Muslims, his support and whitewashing of ethnic cleansing and his justification of genocide.

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By Vidya Bhushan Rawat, Countercurrents.com, Aug. 22, 2011

India at the moment is at the cross roads. Anna Hazare and his team have presented a Janlokpal bill which according to them will wipe out corruption from India. They feel that corruption is the root cause of all our evils. Now, one does not know whether they consider the caste system, untouchability, dowry as corruption or not. We do not know whether billions of rupees of cash, Gold and other treasure in our religious institutions are corruption free or meant for something else.

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Pro-Israel organizations, led by AIPAC have too often sought to advance short-term goals over long-term interests, to the detriment of genuine advocacy in support of peacemaking, stresses Alon Ben-Meir.

Middle East Online, Aug. 23, 2011

The effusive standing ovations Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received during his speech to a joint session of Congress despite his recent public clashes with President Obama, raised anew questions of the power and influence of the so-called “Israel lobby,” led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Suggestions that AIPAC is all-powerful in Washington, or that its aims and actions are nefarious, are baseless. AIPAC is an effective interest group that has wielded grassroots activism and political contributions to foster a closer relationship between the United States and the State of Israel based largely on common interests, values, and cultural affinity. Yet criticism of AIPAC is not unwarranted, especially with regard to its muted efforts to support actions to achieve a lasting peace in the Middle East.

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The remaining Arab potentates and tyrants have spent a second sleepless night. How soon will the liberators of Tripoli metamorphose into the liberators of Damascus and Aleppo and Homs? Or of Amman? Or Jerusalem? Or of Bahrain or Riyadh? It’s not the same, of course.

The Arab Spring-Summer-Autumn has proved not just that the old colonial frontiers remain inviolate – an awful tribute to imperialism, I suppose – but that every revolution has its own characteristics. If all Arab uprisings have their clutch of martyrs, some rebellions are more violent than others. As Saif al-Islam Gaddafi said at the start of his own eventual downfall, “Libya is not Tunisia, it’s not Egypt…It will become civil war. There will be bloodshed on the streets.” And there was.

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“India is Anna, Anna is India.” This slogan, reeking of the memory of Indira-imposed Emergency — “India is Indira, Indira is India” — tells you how much of what is now on display is about democracy

Badri Raina – Delhi. Hard News, August 2011

Bliss is it in this dawn to be alive,
But to be old is to be doubting.
(With apology to William Wordsworth)

Maha Kumbh

These are heady days in India. An orgy is underway in many parts, as angels of virtue shriek holy imprecations, ostensibly, to exorcise the demon ‘Corruption’, a word that has a nice Biblical-postlapsarian ring to it. This inventively constituted Ravana of our times, embodied, we are told, chiefly in the conjoint body of the politicians of the day, especially of the ruling Congress party, is now faced with the equally inventively constituted Ram in the person of Anna Hazare. Suitably, this crusader, although he wears the pristine white, topped with a Gandhi cap, opposes the demon in hues which are increasingly more and more saffron as the hours go by (see ‘Is Anna’s Crusade Changing Colour?’HindustanTimes, August 19). No wonder that some electronic channels seem to have nothing better to do than to pour incandescent ablutions of fuel into the corruption-Kumbh, in the full knowledge of the politics they seek to advance.

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Big News Network, Aug. 22, 2011

Hundreds of new immigrants from the U.S. landed at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel on Tuesday.

An unprecedented 104 of the 360 new arrivals, came to enlist in the Israeli army.

Brig. Gen. Eli Shermeister, the Chief Education Officer, was among a delegation of officials on hand to greet the 18 to 22 year olds.

“It’s an honor to have you join the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) and the Israeli nation,” the Brig. Gen. said. “There are no words to describe my appreciation for you, your courage and the Zionistic values you hold. The State of Israel is coping with security threats every day and defending its security is the main goal of the IDF.”

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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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