Peace and Justice Post

by Francis A. Boyle, Dissident Voice,  October 21st, 2010

Israel’s Likudnik Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reached into his bag of Zionist tricks and pulled out a brand-new demand that had never surfaced before in the history of the Middle East Peace Process going all the way back to their beginning with the negotiation of the original Camp David Accords conducted under the personal auspices of U.S. President Jimmy Carter in 1978: The Palestinians must recognize Israel as “the Jewish State.” Not surprisingly, the Zionist controlled and funded Obama administration publicly endorsed this latest roadblock to peace that was maliciously constructed by Israel.

Netanyahu deliberately shifted the goal-posts on the Palestinians. It would be as if the United States of America demanded that Iran recognize it as the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) State as a condition for negotiating and then concluding any comprehensive peace settlement with it. Of course such demands are racist and premeditated non-starters to begin with.

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Socialist Worker, May 24, 2011

Blackwater’s Erik Prince

YOU CAN buy a war for half a billion dollars. But get in quick. That’s at current market prices.

Costs may rise following last Saturday’s New York Times story revealing that the United Arab Emirates has paid $529 million to a company set up by Blackwater boss Eric Prince to recruit and train a mercenary army to undertake “special missions” against the oil state’s enemies, defend oil pipelines, crush internal opposition and so forth.

Emirate dictator Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan has also agreed to pay more than $100 million a year to meet running costs and supply weapons and equipment–including rifles, mortars and armored vehicles.

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Lauded by settlers and derided by commentators, the US president’s AIPAC speech is portrayed as a victory for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Saleh Naami, Ahram Online, Monday 23 May 2011

President Barack Obama arrives to speak at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention in Washington (Photo:AP)

Jewish settler leaders were moved to express their satisfaction with Barack Obama’s Middle East speech at the AIPAC annual conference, going as far as inviting the US president to join the leadership of their association.

Benny Katzover, longtime leader of the West Bank settlement movement, said that the speech didn’t just represent a victory for Israel, but it was also a great statement of support to the concept of settlement and to the “entrenchment of Jewish presence” in the West Bank, Jerusalem and the Golan.

In an interview with Israel’s Channel Seven, Katzover explained that Obama’s honest and clear mention of the necessity to take into consideration the demographic shifts taking place in the West Bank, Jerusalem and the Golan after 1967 gives legitimacy to Israel’s right to keep Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and supports without reservation the Jewish right to reinforce the settlement project as a whole and the Judaisation of Jerusalem. In his speech, Obama implied his support for Jerusalem to be the eternal and unified capital for the Jewish people, said Katzover.

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Speaking one day after President Barack Obama’s address to their national conference, AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr warned the president against treating both Israel and the Palestinians “even-handedly.”

According to Kohr, treating both sides equally would mean “Israel is authomatically at a disadvantage” and that it would put “Palestinians and Arabs” in a better position. The comments echo Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s angry condemnation of the notion of a return to the 1967 borders.

Of course in yesterday’s speech, Obama already completely disavowed his previous comments about the 1967 borders. Prime Minister Netanyahu likewise insisted that Obama’s furious backpedal was acceptable to him. This Kohr’s rebuke of Obama seem like kicking a man when he’s down.

Kohr went on to insist that even the suggestion of equal treatment by the US in brokering a peace deal would make such a deal impossible, and that only by insisting the US and Israel have identical positions would the Palestinians ever agree to a deal. The talks ended in September after Israel refused to pause expanding settlements into the territory of a potential Palestinian state.

by Stephen Lendman, Dissident Voice,  May 23rd, 2011

On February 9, London Guardian writer Chris McGreal headlined, “Egypt’s army ‘involved in detentions and torture,’ ” saying:

Military forces “secretly detained hundreds and possibly thousands of suspected government opponents since mass (anti-Mubarak) protests began, (and) at least some of these detainees have been tortured, according to testimony gathered by the Guardian.”

Moreover, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other human rights organizations cited years of army involvement in disappearances and torture. Former detainees confirmed “extensive beatings and other abuses at the hands of the military in what appears to be an organized campaign of intimidation.” Electric shocks, Taser guns, threatened rapes, beatings, disappearances, and killings left families grieving for loved ones.

Under Mubarak, Egypt’s military wasn’t neutral. It’s no different now, cracking down hard to keep power and deny change, policies Washington endorses, funds and practices at home and abroad.

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uruknet.info, May 23, 2011

Source: The News International

MIRAMSHAH: Seven people were killed in a US drone strike on a vehicle in Machikhel village in Mir Ali subdivision in North Waziristan Agency (NWA) on Monday, sources said. Sources said an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) fired two missiles at a vehicle moving on a road in Machikhel village. The vehicle was destroyed and its seven occupants killed. The identity of the slain men, whose bodies were disfigured, couldn’t be ascertained. This is the seventh missile attack by US drones in North Waziristan since the May 2 assassination of Osama bin Laden by US Special Forces in Abbottabad. This strike is the 28th by the CIA-operated drones in North Waziristan this year. North Waziristan is the primary target for US drones in Pakistan nowadays. Occasionally, the unmanned planes also attack targets in neighbouring South Waziristan Agency. These drone strikes are being conducted despite a recent unanimous resolution by parliament in Islamabad, asking the government to put an end to such attacks.

by Jack D. Douglas, LewRockwell.com, May 23, 2011

I’ve heard Congress people and others say repeatedly that the U.S. has no real or clear foreign policy for the Middle East. I think the U.S. has a clear but complex and changing, general policy in the Middle East which we can infer from U.S. actions, but Obama et al. keep using short run tactics and proclamations to deceive the various major powers there and the American people.

There is no simple, overall, constant policy like containment was toward the USSR for its final roughly forty years of existence. But there is a systematic set of nearly absolute goals which are interrelated. Let me set them out a bit starkly and clearly.

1. The U.S. will do whatever is necessary, if possible, to keep the Saudi and Persian Gulf oil flowing at its current rate.

2. The U.S. will protect Israel to keep it going.

3. The U.S. will contain Iran, work to decrease its wealth and power, carry out cyber and spy attacks on vital industries like nuclear enrichment and encourage revolutions against the government to bring it down and put a pro-U.S. one in place.

4. The U.S. will seek to keep in place pro-American puppet regimes by all effective means that do not subvert the other general goals.

5. The U.S. will accept new pro-American regimes when necessary and work to make them more so in every way to control the oil and other vital resources.

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AP

President Obama meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel Friday at the White House.

(updated below – Update II [Mon.])

This week’s hysterical, reality-deprived reaction to President Obama’s pronouncements on the Israel/Palestine conflict genuinely provoked laughter on several occasions.  That happened when I thought of the intense controversy triggered by publication of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer’s The Israel Lobby, which examined the “loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to steer U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction,” a coalition driven by “a core consisting of organizations whose declared purpose is to encourage the U.S. government and the American public to provide material aid to Israel and to support its government’s policies, as well as influential individuals for whom these goals are also a top priority.”  This week’s events underscore how remarkable it is that that book’s argument was demonized as some sort of radical, hateful conspiracy tract rather than treated as what it was: a statement of the bleeding obvious (albeit a brave one, given that discussions of that reality had previously been taboo).

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AHRC, May 24, 2011

Urgent Appeal Case: AHRC-UAC-105-2011

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PAKISTAN: A human rights defender was booked on murder charges for raising the cases of scheduled caste Hindus

ISSUES: Religious minority, human rights defender, false cases, intimidation,
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Dear friends,

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information that a human rights defender, who belongs to the Kohli group, a scheduled caste Hindu, was booked in a murder case whereas on the day of murder of a land grabber he was 500 kilometers away. He was attending a daylong conference of the civil society on the issue of Eighteenth amendment in the constitution and provincial autonomy. In 2010 he was abducted by the land grabbers who were also involved allegedly in the rape of a 17 years old Dalit girl. He was severely beaten during his captivity and was intimidated for raising his voice for the rights of the Dalits who have been bonded labourers for decades.

CASE NARRATIVE:

On May 20, 6:00 am, a group of land grabbers attacked a village of Vishnoo Kolhi, Nagar Parker sub-district, Sindh province and opened firing directly at the villagers to vacate their houses, seriously injuring four persons; Mr. Eshwar, Mr. Mohan, Mr. Hari, and Mr. Kombho who received bullet wounds. After heavy firing the villagers came out to defend the women and children and captured a few accused from whom they confiscated their guns which they later handed over to the police. The attackers names are Salah Shoro, Luqman Shoro, Mataro Shoro, Shafique Shoro, Rahib Shoro, Ranjho Shoro, Qadir Shoro Akbar Shoro, came to rescue his partners and in such circumstance one attacker, Saleh Shoro, was injured. He was taken away by the attackers and they escaped. He later died.

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By Badri Raina, ZNet, May 24, 2011

Consternation

After some thirty four years of undefeated rule in the Indian state of West Bengal—often called the “red bastion” by political pundits of other shades—the Left Front has been voted out of power.

Although the shout has gone up how the Left has been “routed,” the fact is that there is greater disbelief among Left-detractors at the circumstance than among the Left itself, stridently politic pre-result noises notwithstanding. Those that gloat and experience glee barely believe that the beast has been quelled.

And for good reason. However the “rout” may be trumpeted, imagine that even in defeat, the Left Front has polled 41% of the popular vote, a million or so votes more than it polled in the parliamentary elections of 2009! And after more than three decades of continuous rule. The question may be asked: when was the last time that either of India’s major centrist parties obtained a 40% verdict in a regional or parliamentary election? The answer to that might take us all the way back to the first decade after Independence. Indeed, most parties set to form new governments in the five states that went to the hustings in the current round will do so on an electoral base far smaller than the vote the Left still commands in West Bengal. Such are the maverick vagaries of the first-past-the-post system. And yet the Left has lost, due mainly to forms of high-handedness which the Trinamool Congress and Congress combined were able to exploit fully among sections of Bengalis, including erstwhile Left supporters.

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