Peace and Justice Post

It is not a secret any more after Pakistan’s Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar finally admitted that drones fly from country’s southwestern Shamsi air base.

He said Pakistan has asked the US to evacuate the air base —- something —– Washington has refused to do so far.

Caught between the public demands and US pressure, the officials blame the previous governement fort the current conditions.

The US was never given access to carry out drone attacks. Washington was given access only for civilian purpose during the previous government. The matter had been raised over Washington’s control over the base at the highest level with the US government.

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Socialist Worker, June 2, 2011

NEVER IN history has there been such a deliberately misunderstood and misrepresented historical figure as Lenin. It is extremely difficult to disentangle myth from reality because the Russian revolutionary was deified in the East and systematically vilified in the West.

In Russia, following his death in 1924 and up until 1991 and the collapse of the ex-USSR, something called “Leninism” was converted into a state religion to justify policies that Lenin would never have countenanced when he was alive.

His own introduction to his work State and Revolution describes how after the death of revolutionaries, “attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons.” The Stalinist bureaucracy turned Lenin into just such a harmless icon. Lenin was quite literally mummified, his embalmed body displayed in a mausoleum in Red Square–something that would have horrified Lenin had he known about it.

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Socialist worker, July 8, 2011

The U.S. boat from the Gaza Freedom Flotilla 2 docked in Greece

WITH THE Gaza Freedom Flotilla 2 stalled in ports in Greece and elsewhere, more than 200 activists staged a lively July 5 protest outside the Israeli consulate in Chicago to condemn Israel’s international pressure campaign to expand the siege of Gaza to ports around the Mediterranean Sea.

Hundreds of activists from 22 countries have spent the last several months making preparations for a voyage to break Israel’s illegal siege of Gaza–organizing boats, collecting supplies of humanitarian aid and, in the last couple weeks, assembling in Greece, Turkey and elsewhere.

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The long struggle of a female worker has drawn the attention of both the local and international community. Ms. Kim Jin-suk, a member of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) has been occupying the cabin of Crane No. 85, which is 35 metres high, in the shipyard of Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction (HHIC) in Busan for six months. Ms. Kim is demanding that the company reconsider the dismissal of dozens of employees and is refusing to leave the cabin despite being sentenced for trespass in January. The sentence carried a fine of KRW One Million (approximately US$ 1,000) for each day she has occupied and continues to occupy the crane cabin. Her struggle casts doubts as to the society’s interest in matters of labour and also the role of the government in respecting, protecting and fulfilling the human rights of a third party when business enterprises are involved.

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Stephen Lendman, MWC News, July 5, 2011Under Article 50 of Cuba’s Constitution:

“Everyone has the right to health protection and care. The state guarantees this right:

• by providing free medical and hospital care by means of the installations of the rural medical service network, polyclinics, hospitals, preventative and specialized treatment centers;
• by providing free dental care;
• by promoting the health publicity campaigns, health education, regular medical examinations, general vaccination and other measures to prevent the outbreak of disease. All the population cooperates in these activities and plans through the social and mass organizations.”

Cuba’s Article 51 also guarantees free universal education at all levels to young people and adults. Cuba isn’t perfect, far from it, but imagine if America matched these social benefits, ones Cuba provides at miniscule cost because services eliminate bureaucratic and other waste that enrich Western healthcare provider predators.

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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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