Peace and Justice Post

Immanuel Wallerstein, Commentary No. 311, Aug. 15, 2011

A decade ago, when I and some others spoke of U.S. decline in the world-system, we were met at best with condescending smiles at our naivety. Was not the United States the lone superpower, involved in every remote corner of the earth, and getting its way most of the time? This was a view shared all along the political spectrum.

Today, the view that the United States has declined, has seriously declined, is a banality. Everyone is saying it, except for a few U.S. politicians who fear they will be blamed for the bad news of the decline if they discuss it. The fact is that just about everyone believes today in the reality of the decline.

What is however far less discussed is what have been, what will be the consequences worldwide of this decline. The decline has economic roots of course. But the loss of a quasi-monopoly of geopolitical power, which the United States once exercised, has major political consequences everywhere.

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More than 30,000 people staged a march in the northern city of Haifa on Saturday, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported on its website.

“We want there to be a welfare state here, and a welfare state is not just a slogan,” said Yossi Baruch, the representative for the largest tent city in Haifa.

“It means free education for every boy and girl, from the moment their mother finishes her maternity leave until they finish their doctorate. A welfare state is a place where its citizens receive fair wages,” he added.

In Be’er Sheva in southern Israel, over 20,000 demonstrators poured into the streets near the tent city.

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Dr. Vandana Shiva	Christiane Amanpour

“If people want more courage and inspiration to fight the Monsantos and the Cargills, to deal with the corporations, to deal with the GMO’s, to deal with the economic slowdown, I think coming to India and seeing what is happening will give you renewed confidence.”

– Dr. Vanana Shiva

CNN continuously promotes itself as “The Network that Goes Beyond Borders.” They sell programs like the “CNN Freedom Project” in which they expose “Modern Day Slavery” (with particular emphasis on human slavery when it exists among enemies of western countries). Other CNN programs like “Inside Africa” and “Inside the Middle East” expose poverty and “terrorism,” respectively. All these programs are shot through with heart-rending stories of people suffering, replete with music that moves the emotions and a message that moves the mind – of the viewer. Meanwhile, the same multi-billion dollar media funded by George Soros supports the US/NATO wars and occupations against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and continues to push for war on Iran and Syria, villainizing the enemies of western governments.

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Among Republican presidential hopefuls, several – such as Rep. Michele Bachmann and Gov. Rick Perry – have stressed their commitment to fundamentalist Christianity, which bases its approach to cultural issues on a literal reading of the Bible. But the Rev. Howard Bess notes that many of those ancient traditions are repugnant to modern society.

By the Rev. Howard Bess, Consortium News, Aug. 10, 2011

The essential messages of the Bible are justice, peace, love, reconciliation and hope — messages that have the power to operate in every age and every culture. But the list of clashes between the Bible and modern culture is long.

For instance, the Bible reflects an absurd understanding of the structure of the universe; it shows little understanding of physical and mental illnesses; and it was and is on the wrong side of patriarchal authority, marriage, equality for women, homosexuality, slavery, and the rights of an older son.

That is because the Bible is a collection of writings by many authors who wrote in ever-changing circumstances in ancient times. Today’s Bible readers live in circumstances that could not have been imagined by the original writers.

Family, social, economic and government structures today are completely different from those of the authors of the original writings. The place of women in Bible settings is a prime example of this dilemma, since that status during early Judaism is defined in the property codes of Leviticus.

Women were property owned by men. They were bought and sold. The most famous example of this law is the story of Jacob and Laban.

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Egypt military quizzes activist after ‘defamation’. No tolerance to insults directed at armed forces.

Middle East Online, Aug. 14, 2011

The face of the revolution CAIRO – Egypt’s military prosecution on Sunday detained activist and blogger Asma Mahfuz for questioning for allegedly defaming the military council on Facebook and Twitter, the official MENA news agency reported. Mahfuz — one of the leaders of the Egyptian revolution that unseated former president Hosni Mubarak — was released on bail of 20,000 pounds (around 3,300 dollars, 2,300 euros) but the investigation continues, MENA said. She is being questioned for “speaking inappropriately about the military council and for using defamatory and offensive insults against the council on Facebook and Twitter,” MENA said. Continues >>

By Lawrence Davidson, MWC News, Aug. 13, 2011

Education as Indoctrination

Over the last ten years there have been periodic outbursts of rage over the alleged anti-Semitic nature of Palestinian textbooks. Most of these episodes have been instigated by an Israeli based organization called the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (AKA the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education). According to one Israeli journalist, Akiva Eldar, the Center does sloppy work. It “routinely feeds the media with excerpts from “Palestinian” textbooks that call for Israel’s annihilation…[without] bothering to point out that the texts quoted in fact come from Egypt and Jordan.” The Center’s conclusions have been corroborated only by other Israeli institutions such as Palestinian Media Watch.

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Dunya News, 13 August,2011

There were no announced celebrations of Castro’s birthday, though a concert was held in his honour.

Fidel Castro marked his 85th birthday outside of the public spotlight Saturday, with little fanfare around the aging revolutionary icon who is rarely seen in public these days but still casts a long shadow over Cuban society.

There were no announced celebrations of Castro s birthday, though the previous night two dozen musical acts from across Latin America held a concert in his honour.

“What we say in the songs of our invited artists will be little next to what he deserves,” Alfredo Vera, one of the organizers, said late Friday. “Congratulations, beloved and eternal commandant.”

The former president didn t make it to his own birthday bash — hardly a surprise since he appears infrequently since he stepped down in 2006, at first temporarily, and then permanently in 2008, due to  an intestinal illness that he later said nearly killed him.

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Clare Algar, The Guardian, Aug. 4, 2011

David Cameron in July 2010 giving the House of Commons details of an inquiry into claims that British security services were complicit in the torture of terror suspects Photograph: PA

Reprieve announced today that we would not be taking part in the government’s inquiry into collusion in torture and rendition by British security services.

Along with a coalition of 10 leading human rights organisations, including Amnesty, Liberty and Human Rights Watch, we’ve decided that the way the detainee inquiry is set up means that it will simply not be able to get to the bottom of the allegations that our country has been involved in some of the horrific abuses that have been taking place in the name of the “war on terror”.

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Jesse Jackson, Jr. shaking hands with former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on a 2003 trip to Israel

Nearly 20 percent of the constituents of Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL) live under the poverty line, and nearly 15 percent are unemployed. Jackson’s congressional district, covering parts of the south side of Chicago and its southern suburbs, has been hit harder than many others by the crises plaguing the economy. Many of his constituents are looking at even more cutbacks in social services, higher prices for food and fuel, and ever scarcer jobs.

During this August congressional recess, Rep. Jackson, Jr. should be at home, meeting with constituents and proposing to them how he will help them cope with their difficult circumstances. Instead, the politician is proudly gallivantingaround Israel, in one of three separate congressional delegations heading there this month on all-expense-paid junkets organized by the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), a so-called charitable affiliate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most influential of the myriad pro-Israel lobbying outfits.

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The Daily Beast, Aug 11, 2011

With the 10^th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks only a month away, former CIA Director George Tenet and two former top aides are fighting back hard against allegations that they engaged in a massive cover-up in 2000 and 2001 to hide intelligence from the White House and the FBI that might have prevented the attacks.

The source of the explosive, unproved allegations is a man who once considered Tenet a close friend: former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, who makes the charges against Tenet and the CIA in an interview for a radio documentary timed to the 10^th anniversary next month. Portions of the Clarke interview were made available to The Daily Beast by the producers of the documentary.

Richard A. Clarke in 2010., Markus Schreiber / AP Photo

In the interview for the documentary, Clarke offers an incendiary theory that, if true, would rewrite the history of the 9/11 attacks, suggesting that the CIA intentionally withheld information from the White House and FBI in 2000 and 2001 that two Saudi-born terrorists were on U.S. soil—terrorists who went on to become suicide hijackers on 9/11.

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