Peace and Justice Post

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 >>

by Jeremy R. Hammond, Foreign Policy Journal, July 4, 2011

The New York Times this week reports under the headline “Taking Lead, Iraqis Hope U.S. Special Operations Commandos Stay” that the security situation in Iraq “may be at risk now that American forces are withdrawing this year” as per the U.S.-Iraqi Status of Force Agreement (SOFA). “Even as few Iraqi politicians are willing to admit publicly that they need American help, Iraqi soldiers say that American troops must stay longer to continue training and advising”, the Times reports, citing “senior Iraqi military leaders” who “have advised Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki that some troops should stay.” Naturally, “American officials have said they would agree to a such a request.” The article then goes on at length praising the abilities of the U.S. Special Operations units working with Iraqi forces.

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By Franklin C. Spinney, Counterpunch, July 5, 2011

Villefranche, France.

The United States has always meddled in other people’s affairs. For those readers who think this statement is an exaggeration, I urge them to peruse the chronology of interventions compiled by the Congressional Research Service. This historical predilection for meddling, however, grew enormously in depth and breadth during the Cold War, and to make matters worse, it is now clear that it exploded after the end of the Cold War.

The Bush-Obama perpetual war on terror is now the longest and second most expensive war in US history, exceeded only in cost by WWII, even if one removes the effects of inflation from the comparison. And this war comes on top of the incessant warmongering during the 1990s, including the bombing of air defense sites in Iraq, the drive by shootings with cruise missiles in the Sudan and Afghanistan, and the bombing in Bosnia and Kosovo during the Wars of the Yugoslavian Succession. Anyone who opposes the meddling and warmongering is labeled an isolationist by the defenders of the status quo, like Senators McCain, Graham, and Lieberman. . . .

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At least 11 people reported killed by Syrian forces in city that has become focal point for anti-government protests.

Al Jazeera English, July 5, 2011

An image grab taken from YouTube apparently shows hundreds of thousands of Syrian anti-government protesters flooding the streets of the central city of Hama on July 1. (photo: AFP)

At least 16 people have been killed in the central Syrian city of Hama as government forces intensify their operations in the city, human rights activists have told Al Jazeera.

Sumer al-Said, a resident of Hama, told Al Jazeera by phone on Tuesday afternoon that security forces had shot people indiscriminately in the streets, and that water and electricity had been cut off.

“Two days ago, they arrested a lot of people in my area, and a lot of people were badly beaten,” he said.

Troops and tanks have surrounded the city in recent days in an apparent attempt to quell protests against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad.

With tanks and armoured vehicles moving closer to the edges of the city in the early hours of Tuesday, residents said hundreds of youths had blocked roads leading to residential neighbourhoods with garbage containers, wood and metal to try to prevent a possible advance.

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Dear Mr. Papandreou,

We, members of the Gaza-Flotilla II who have come to the shores of Greece from all parts of the world, leaving behind our workplaces and families in order to put into practice our solidarity with the oppressed people of Gaza, are outraged by the decision of your government to close by force the ports of
Greece to our humanitarian initiative.

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By Tom Carter, wsws.org, July 5, 2011

As part of its cover-up of Bush administration war crimes, the Obama administration announced June 30 that it would shut down 99 investigations into deaths of prisoners in US custody during the so-called “war on terror,” leaving only two investigations with the potential to develop into criminal prosecutions.

The announcement underscores the fact that the anti-democratic policies developed during the presidency of George W. Bush continue unchallenged under President Barack Obama, who is doing everything in his power to keep the lid on the crimes of his predecessor.

Following the events of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration quickly and quietly erected a network of secret prisons and “black sites,” where opponents of US imperialism in the Middle East—as well as, in many cases, their friends, relatives and acquaintances—were jailed, tortured and murdered.

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