Peace and Justice Post

The uprisings in the Middle East, the unrest that is tearing apart nations such as the Ivory Coast, the bubbling discontent in Greece, Ireland and Britain and the labor disputes in states such as Wisconsin and Ohio presage the collapse of globalization. They presage a world where vital resources, including food and water, jobs and security, are becoming scarcer and harder to obtain. They presage growing misery for hundreds of millions of people who find themselves trapped in failed states, suffering escalating violence and crippling poverty. They presage increasingly draconian controls and force—take a look at what is being done to Pfc. Bradley Manning—used to protect the corporate elite who are orchestrating our demise. Demonstrators carry an effigy of Ronald McDonald. (AP / Jacques Brinon)

We must embrace, and embrace rapidly, a radical new ethic of simplicity and rigorous protection of our ecosystem—especially the climate—or we will all be holding on to life by our fingertips. We must rebuild radical socialist movements that demand that the resources of the state and the nation provide for the welfare of all citizens and the heavy hand of state power be employed to prohibit the plunder by the corporate power elite. We must view the corporate capitalists who have seized control of our money, our food, our energy, our education, our press, our health care system and our governance as mortal enemies to be vanquished.

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by Prof. Marjorie Cohn
Global Research, March 25, 2011
American Constitution Society Book Talk

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is facing court-martial for leaking military reports and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, is being held in solitary confinement in Quantico brig in Virginia. Each night, he is forced to strip naked and sleep in a gown made of coarse material. He has been made to stand naked in the morning as other inmates walked by and looked. As journalist Lance Tapley documents in his chapter on torture in the supermax prisons in The United States and Torture, solitary confinement can lead to hallucinations and suicide; it is considered to be torture. Manning’s forced nudity amounts to humiliating and degrading treatment, in violation of U.S. and international law.

Nevertheless, President Barack Obama defended Manning’s treatment, saying, “I’ve actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures . . . are appropriate. They assured me they are.” Obama’s deference is reminiscent of President George W. Bush, who asked “the most senior legal officers in the U.S. government” to review the interrogation techniques. “They assured me they did not constitute torture,” Bush said.

The order for Manning’s nudity apparently followed what he described as a sarcastic comment he made to guards after their repeated harassment of him regarding how he was to salute them. Manning said that if he were intent on strangling himself, he could use his underwear or flip-flops.

“In my 40 years of hospital psychiatric practice, I’ve never heard of something like this,” said Dr. Steven Sharfstein, a former president of the American Psychiatric Association. “In some very unusual circumstances, when people are intensely suicidal, you might put them in a hospital gown. … But it’s very, very unusual to be in that kind of suicide watch for this long a period of time.”

Sharfstein also was concerned that military officials appeared to defy the recommendations of mental health professionals. “He’s been examined by psychiatrists who said he’s not suicidal. … They are making medical judgments in the face of medical evaluations to the contrary,” Sharfstein noted.

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Reports of many killed as marchers take to streets, plus confrontations in Jordan, Yemen and Bahrain

Katherine Marsh in Damascus, Tom Finn in Sana’a and Martin Chulov in Beirut

The Guardian, March 26, 2011

Protesters shout anti-government slogans after Friday prayers at Omayyad mosque, in Damascus, Syria. Photograph: Muzaffar Salman/AP

By Musa Hattar, uruknet.info, March 25, 2011

AMMAN (AFP) — More than 100 people were injured Friday as pro-reform protesters and government supporters clashed in Amman, prompting police to use water cannons to disperse them.

Anti-riot police also broke up a protest camp for students and arrested several of them, a security official told AFP.

“There are more than 100 people injured, including policemen. Two of the injured are in critical condition,” a medical source at the scene said.

An AFP journalist at the scene said police used water cannons to break up clashes between the students protesting to demand reforms and government supporters.

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Democracy activist Liu Xianbin has already served 10 years in prison for subversion

Associated Press, The Guardian, March 25, 2011

Chinese police monitor Tiananmen Square. Authorities want to stamp out unrest inspired by uprisings in the Arab world. Photograph: Goh Chai Hin/AFP/Getty Images

The bailouts of banks, speculators and manufacturers served their real purposes: the multi-millionaires became billionaires and the later became multi-billionaires.

James Petras, Information Clearing House, March 25, 2011

According to the annual report of the business magazine Forbes there are 1,210 individuals – and in many cases family clans – with a net value of $1 billion dollars (or more). There total net worth is $4 trillion, 500 billion dollars, greater than the combined worth of 4 billion people in the world. The current concentration of wealth exceeds any previous period in history; from King Midas, the Maharajahs, and the Robber Barons to the recent Silicon Valley – Wall Street moguls of the present decade.

An analysis of the source of wealth of the super-rich, the distribution in the world economy and the methods of accumulation highlights several important differences with major political consequences. We will proceed to identify these specific features of the super-rich, starting with the United States and follow with an analysis of the rest of the world.

The Super-Rich in the US: Greatest Living Parasites

The US has the most billionaires in the world (413), better than one third of the total, the greatest proportion among the “big countries in the world. A closer look also reveals that among the top 200 billionaires (those with $5.2 billion and more) there are 57 from the US (29%). Over one third made their fortune through speculative activity, predators on the productive economy and exploiters of the property and stock market. This is the highest percentage of any major country in Europe or Asia (with the exception of England). The enormous concentration of wealth in the hands of this tiny parasitical ruling class is one reason why the US has the worst inequalities of any advanced economy and among the worst in the entire world . . .

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Every evening, at the end of the PBS News Hour, one of the most respected news programs in the U.S., one can see the images of the U.S. soldiers killed the previous day. They usually are young men, generally between 20 and 25 years of age. Even the most hardened person cannot but feel a pang of anguish looking at these young people whose lives were cut short by an irrational war. And one can imagine how many vibrant lives were lost and will be lost until the war in Afghanistan ends.

Awful as these losses are, another reality should be considered –the photos of these same soldiers degrading Afghan prisoners. Through these photos we can see that these soldiers’ lives have been compromised by war but, equally terrifying, that war has changed them, has made them lose that essential humanity that makes us respect other people at their most basic level. And thus we suddenly have a vision of the essential evilness of war.

These thoughts are brought to mind after looking at three photographs recently released by the German newspaper Der Spiegel, part of 4,000 photos and videos taken by the soldiers. The photos are among a number seized by U.S. Army investigators investigating the deaths of three unarmed Afghan civilians during 2010.

Twelve soldiers from the Bravo company unit of the Fifth Stryker Combat Brigade in Kandahar province are accused of serious crimes against Afghan civilians. Those accused include Special Sergeant Jeremy Morlock, 22, and three other men who were allegedly following orders from Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, 25.  These soldiers are accused of killing Afghan civilians for sport and collecting their body parts –including a human skull- as trophies.

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By Nasir Khan,  March 24, 2011

As the Libyan crisis continues, we witness a vast array of views within the ranks of anti-imperialist activists and radical writers. Richard Falk’s present article is one such example (Qaddafi, Moral Interventionism, Libya, and the Arab Revolutionary Moment). In this article he has raised many questions about the military intervention by the Western powers and the role of the Libyan opposition who have challenged Qaddafi’s long dictatorial regime.

Although he rightly says that Qaddafi had forfeited the legitimacy of his rule because of his long rule, maintained by an oppressive closed system, his views on the opposition that rose to challenge the despot need some critical assessment. I am commenting on only one or two points.

Does the anti-Qaddafi opposition that eventually rose against the dictator has no political identity or no political aspirations? For the last 41 years, the vast majority of Libyans had seen only the oppressive political order of Qaddafi; they had no chance to evolve an independent political identity. He did not allow any such activity,  any freedom to meet or any opposing views  against his rule. He had a vast authoritarian system in place throughout Libya where no opposite viewpoint was tolerated. Despite such an oppressive system, it is quite possible that ordinary men and women were dissatisfied with his rule and his policies. Not hard to imagine that they must had their hopes and aspirations for freedom, democracy and the end of his tyranny. This is despite the fact that he has some loyal followers who have been mesmerised by their ‘great leader’.

We should keep in mind that the pro-democracy movement that challenged Qaddafi cannot be regarded to have arisen due to some sort of conspiracy either. There were discontented elements within the military, bureaucracy and civil society. Libya was and is part of the common ossified Arab political order in the Middle East and North Africa. But the uprising that started in Tunisia gave inspiration to the Arab masses everywhere including Libya. That also means that Libyan pro-democracy movement has a general political context.

The popular uprising against Qaddafi was not confined to any one place even though Qaddafi had his major base of support in Tripoli. The people who stood against the heavily armed forces of Qaddafi are mostly ordinary people who had little or no training in the use of weapons. Their weapons have been small arms and rifles that are hardly a match to what the Qaddafi’s loyal forces have. When Qaddafi and his son Saif (the ‘PhD’ man!) threatened to take Benghazi by military force without any mercy to the rebels they meant what they said. By a clever propaganda trick the regime announced the first ceasefire and used the interval to bring the army and heavy weapons to crush Benghazi. The bloodbath in Benghazi was averted when the French intervened and destroyed Libyan tanks and heavy armour.