Peace and Justice Post

Imran Khan leads thousands in Karachi rally, calling for an end to strikes seen as violation of Pakistan’s territory.

Al Jazeera, May 22, 2011

Khan leads a rally to condemn US drone attacks targeting suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan [EPA]

Imran Khan, Pakistan’s cricket-great-turned-politician and the chairman of the Tehreek-e-Insaf party (Movement for Justice), has led around 6,000 protesters in Karachi demanding an end to US drone strikes on Pakistani soil.

On Saturday, thousands of anti-US protesters gathered near the port of Pakistan’s largest city Karachi to stage a protest on the first of the planned two-day sit-in against what they regard as violations of Pakistan’s territory by the US and NATO forces.

Khan called for the blocking of NATO’s supply line to put a stop to the unpopular drone attacks which are carried out mainly in Pakistan’s tribal regions, where al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters are believed to be based.

US-Pakistani relations are at a low point over the unilateral American raid that killed Osama bin Laden in the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad.

Pakistan is angry that it was not told in advance of the raid and says it did not know that the al-Qaeda chief was hiding in the area.

In the wake of the operation in which Bin Laden was killed, Pakistan’s parliament has demanded that the US stop its missile strikes and drone attacks, warning that it may cut off the supply route into Afghanistan altogether if the attacks do not end.

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By Ben Tanosborn, MWC News, May 20, 2011

Change in foreign policy, or a political faux pas by Obama?

Two years ago in Cairo, Barack Obama had everything going for him as he addressed the global Muslim community as new leader of powerful America; someone who had been elected to help bring about change not just domestically but in foreign policy as well, particularly in that region of the world where there was so much at stake for the United States: the Middle East.

President Obama had a great start, if only symbolically, by using the traditional greeting of Assalaamu alaykum as the salutation to begin his address. However, that probably was also the high point of his speech. The entire address conveyed a tone of realism sweetened with hope which did not set particularly well with those in the Middle East who had anticipated, at the very least, a more conciliatory move by the US towards the region; definitely a foreign policy change in the Israeli-Palestinian issue, one that would bring the US closer, if not in tune, with the international community as reflected in the voting throughout the years in the United Nations.

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Heba Morayef is an Egypt-based researcher for Human Rights Watch

Heba Morayef, The Guardian, May 20, 2011

Human rights activist Heba Morayef says despite Mubarak’s removal protesters are still being tortured and imprisoned. Photograph: Guardian

The most worrying development of the past few months has been the detentions and trials conducted by the military. It’s a very worrying precedent at the very time when people are looking to see how Egypt is going to manage the transitional process in terms of issues of justice and accountability.

The army is presenting itself as taking a strong hand against criminals and thugs, and that resonates with people, but historically this is exactly the kind of rhetoric Mubarak’s police state depended on. We need a shift from whoever is governing the country towards the strict application of the rule of law, and that hasn’t happened extensively yet.

On certain points there has been progress but the picture is always mixed. The interim government, for example, has allowed the formation of independent trade unions but at the same time we’ve seen a draft law banning strikes and protests, which is very problematic. There’s also been a liberalisation of the political parties law, allowing new parties to be created, and that freedom of association is an essential prerequisite to fair elections later this year. But for elections to take place you also need an environment which respects freedom of assembly and freedom of expression; the draft law contravenes that freedom of assembly, and when it comes to freedom of expression the military has been setting red lines regarding what is acceptable criticism of the country’s current rulers and what isn’t.

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 uruknet.info, May 20, 2011

AFP

NICOSIA: Security forces killed at least 44 people during anti-regime protests which swept Syria on Friday, with most of the casualties in the western province of Idlib and the central city of Homs, a human rights activist told AFP on Saturday. “Syrian authorities are continuing to use excessive force and live ammunition to face popular protests in various regions throughout the country,” said Ammar Qurabi, head of the National Organisation for Human Rights, who was reached by telephone. Qurabi said 26 people were killed in the province of Idlib and 13 in Homs. Two people were also killed in the eastern town of Deir Ezzor, one in Daraya, a suburb of the capital Damascus, one in the coastal city of Latakia and one in central Hama.  Continues >>

by Paul Craig Roberts, Foreign Policy Journal, May 21, 2011

In a sensational and explosive TV report, the Pakistani News Agency has provided a live interview with an eyewitness to the US attack on the alleged compound of Osama bin Laden. The eye witness, Mohammad Bashir, describes the event as it unfolded.  Of the three helicopters, “there was only one that landed the men and came back to pick them up, but as he [the helicopter] was picking them up, it blew away and caught fire.”  The witness says that there were no survivors, just dead bodies and pieces of bodies everywhere. “We saw the helicopter burning, we saw the dead bodies, then everything was removed and now there is nothing.”

I always wondered how a helicopter could crash, as the White House reported, without at least producing injuries. Yet, in the original White House story, the SEALs not only survived a 40-minute firefight with al Qaeda, “the most highly trained, most dangerous, most vicious killers on the planet,” without a scratch, but also survived a helicopter crash without a scratch.

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Socialist Worker, May 21, 2011

I’LL MAKE you a bet. If you’ve never read the Communist Manifesto, take two hours and read it–it’s just a 50-page pamphlet. You can buy it at most bookstores for a couple bucks, or read it online at www.marxists.org–or better yet, order Phil Gasper’s annotated version from HaymarketBooks.org.

My bet is that you will find at least 10 things that make you say, “That is exactly what I’ve always thought!”

More than that, when you finish reading it, you’ll think, “Sure, some things have changed, but my God–the Communist Manifesto is more relevant, truthful and inspiring than anything I’ve ever read by an American politician. No wonder they don’t assign this as reading in high school history class!”

Then you’ll understand why South African coal miners, the unemployed of Indonesia, South Korean teachers, French railroad workers, Indian trade unionists and Cuban radicals have all looked to Karl Marx for inspiration.

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For many of those who protested — and died — on Israel’s border with Lebanon this May 15, it was their first sighting of their ancestral home, writes Sabah Haider.

Middle East Online, May 19, 2011

I was standing in Maroun al-Ras, Lebanon, on 15 May, in solidarity with thousands of Palestinians, Lebanese and other pro-Palestinian protestors, and I saw Israelis use live ammunition against protesters throwing rocks over the barbed-wire fence at the border.

Many young men were shot: 10 people died and 115 were wounded, the largest number of casualties at any of the day’s border protests in Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. There were reports that the Israelis used rubber bullets, but rubber bullets don’t kill.

Hundreds of buses from all over the country brought thousands to Maroun al-Ras, a village in southern Lebanon, that morning — the day was the 63rd anniversary of the Naqba, when so many Palestinians were displaced from their homeland at the creation of the state of Israel. I don’t think anyone paid for their journey. I wanted to pay the bus organiser, but he wouldn’t take it. “It’s been paid for,” he said with a smile.

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by James Petras, Dissident Voice, May 19th, 2011

In May 2011, Mexican investigators uncovered another mass clandestine grave with dozens of mutilated corpses; bringing the total number of victims to 40,000 killed since 2006 when the Calderon regime announced its “war on drug traffickers”. Backed by advisers, agents and arms, the White House has been the principal promoter of a ‘war’ that has totally decimated Mexico’s society and economy.

If Washington has been the driving force for the regime’s war, Wall Street banks have been the main instruments ensuring the profits of the drug cartels. Every major US bank has been deeply involved in laundering hundreds of billions of dollars in drug profits, for the better part of the past decade.

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A rule of thumb in journalism is that there are almost always two sides to a story, but that rule is often ignored by the U.S. news media in the heat of some conflict when the United States is involved. Then, the real motivations of the U.S. adversary are widely ignored in favor of demonization, as the Independent Institute’s Ivan Eland notes in this guest essay.

By Ivan Eland, Consortium News, May 17, 2011

The killing of Osama bin Laden reminds us that there are only two disciplines in which uncaused events occur — quantum physics and the history of U.S. foreign policy.

According to the version of history expounded by the American media and politicians, the passenger aircraft hitting the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11 were a diabolical surprise attack out of the blue by the evil bin Laden against unsuspecting and naïve Americans.

Of course, Americans were naïve, but principally about their government’s political and military interventions in Muslim countries since World War II, and especially since 1980.

Bin Laden was blunt about this in his pronouncements on why he attacked the United States, but America never wanted to hear.

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Comment reported in New York Times comes amid growing tensions between Washington and Jerusalem over the U.S. President’s backing of a Palestinian state within 1967 borders.

By Haaretz Service, May  20, 2011

U.S. President Barack Obama does not think Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will ever make the concessions necessary to achieve a Middle East peace deal, the New York Times cited Obama aides as saying on Friday.

The comments attributed to associates of the U.S. president comes amid what is turning become into a veritable war of words between Israel and the U.S., following Obama’s Mideast strategy speech on Thursday in which the American leader voiced his support for a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders.

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