Peace and Justice Post

By Mumia Abu Jamal, ZNet, Friday, March 18, 2011

As pro and anti-government forces battle for supremacy in the cities and deserts of Libya, in North Africa, the tenor and tone of U.S./Western reporting puts the lie to the often heard claim of journalistic objectivity.

The cheer-leading seems more apt for ESPN than on the nation’s leading newscasts, spurred on, of course, by U.S. enmity against Col. Moammar Khaddafy, who has long been a thorn in the side of U.S. Imperial designs on the region.

Let us not pretend that American efforts are caused by solicitude for the suffering Libyan people, for easily 10 (or perhaps, 30!) times that number suffered under Egypt’s President-for-life (and trusty U.S. ally), Husni Mubarak, and the U.S. turned a deaf ear for decades to their cries.

Only when the people rose up, and took the stage, did the U.S. start mumbling phrases about ‘human rights’, and concerns about ‘violence’.

This, from a government that secretly sent (and may still be sending) men to Egyptian hellholes to be tortured via rendition –and killed by the dreaded secret police.

Indeed, anyone with a smattering of American history cannot even hear the media and political charges of a government attacking or bombing ‘its own people’ without cringing. For U.S. National Guard fired semi-automatic weapons at unarmed students in Kent State University, Ohio, killing 4 kids who were protesting the Vietnam war.

Shortly thereafter, 2 Black kids were shot and killed by cops at Jackson State University, Mississippi, during a similar protest.

Philadelphia, PA was the site of a government bombing a home, killing men, women and babies. This was the MOVE Bombing of May 13, 1985, where 11 people were bombed to death, and a whole city block reduced to smoldering rubble.

Were any of these bombers ‘brought to justice?’

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By Danny Schechter, Consortium News, March 17, 2011

Ediitor’s Note: The U.S. political/media Establishment has long treated Al Jazeera as an American enemy in the global “information war.” During George W. Bush’s presidency, U.S. forces shot and jailed Al Jazeera correspondents as part of Bush’s brutal campaign to force “free-market democracy” on the Middle East.

But it appears Al Jazeera is emerging victorious from this conflict, with far greater credibility among well-informed people than U.S. propaganda outlets, including much of the timid U.S. news media. And, Al Jazeera is now on the front lines of spreading real democracy in the Middle East.

In this guest essay, Danny Schechter describes an Al Jazeera forum on these topics that he attended at the network’s base in Doha, Qatar:

When I arrived in the capital of Qatar, as one of the guest participants in the 6th annual Al Jazeera Forum focused on the Arab world in transition, it was clear the mood had changed.

In years past, the humiliation and oppression of the region was driving the discourse, but this year, events had taken a positive turn with popular youth revolutions catapulting the Al Jazeera TV networks into the global spotlight with governments falling and a new future emerging.

A revolt in Libya was topping the news, being described as civil war — whether it is or isn’t — with Western intervention in the form of a no-fly zone on the horizon to either protect that country’s people from a mad dictator, or in Col. Gaddafi’s view, use humanitarianism as a cover for an armed effort by foreign interests to seize the country’s oil wealth.

Just as the Forum began, we learned that an Al Jazeera Cameraman, Hassan Al Jaber, who I  met at an earlier Forum was killed in Libya, likely a targeted killing because the Al Jazeera people I met believe Gaddafi put money on their heads.

Soon, the story we came to discuss also lost its standing at the top of the media agenda. The disaster in the East had displaced the crisis in the Middle East.

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The latest US drone strike against North Waziristan Agency, Pakistan is amongst the deadliest in recent memory, with at least 41 people killed and other, unconfirmed sources speculating the toll may be upwards of 80.

Making matters worse, this strike isn’t coming with the usual pretense of everyone slain being a “suspected militant.” Rather, the attack struck a tribal jirga (official meeting) for the Madda Khel tribe, in the town of Datta Khel.

The casualties from the attack included six tribal elders who were overseeing the jirga, which was apparently to discuss the ownership of mineral rights, a number of children who were brought by their families to the gathering, and several members of a pro-government militia the tribe helped organize.

The US has been striking houses and vehicles in Datta Khel and elsewhere in North Waziristan for years, and such a large gathering must have seemed an appealing target. The fact that the gathering had nothing to do with militants, however, points again to just how little information they have about their targets before launching missiles at them.

by Gareth Porter and Shah Noori, CommonDreams.org, March 17, 2011

WASHINGTON/KABUL – The number of civilians killed in U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) raids last year was probably several times higher than the figure of 80 people cited in the U.N. report on civilian casualties in Afghanistan published last week, an IPS investigation has revealed.

The number of civilians killed in U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) raids last year was probably several times higher than the figure of 80 people cited in the U.N. report on civilian casualties in Afghanistan published last week, an IPS investigation has revealed. (AFP/Shah Marai) The report also failed to apply the same humanitarian law standard for defining a civilian to its reporting on SOF raids that it applied to its accounting for Taliban assassinations.

The Mar. 9 report, produced by the Human Rights unit of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) jointly with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), said a total of 80 civilians were killed in “search and seizure operations” by “Pro-Government Forces” in 2010.

But AIHRC Commissioner Nader Nadery told IPS the figure represented only the number of civilian deaths in night raids in the 13 incidents involving SOF units that the Commission had been able to investigate thoroughly.

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Declan Walsh in Islamabad and Ewen MacAskill in Washington

The Guardian, March 16, 2011

Jamaat-e-Islami party supporters hold a protest against the release of Raymond Davis, in Karachi. Photograph: Fareed Khan/AP

document id: ALRC-COS-16-21-2011

An Oral Statement to the 16th Session of the UN Human Rights Council from the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC), a non-governmental organization in general consultative status

The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) would, at the outset, like to express its deepest sympathy and solidarity with the people of Japan.

The ALRC is gravely concerned by Sri Lanka’s perilous plunge into autocracy. Increasing religious violence against minorities, as witnessed in Indonesia concerning Ahmadiyyas, and Pakistan concerning Christians and those opposing the archaic and flawed blasphemy law, is also greatly disturbing. The assassination on March 2, of Mr. Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Religious Minorities, exactly two months after that of former governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, shows the extent to which such violence is tolerated, and promoted through impunity, in Pakistan.

The case of human rights lawyer Somchai Neelaipaijit, who was forcibly disappeared seven years ago in Thailand, is emblematic of challenges in the region. On March 11, 2011, the Criminal Court acquitted the five alleged perpetrators in this case, exposing a system of impunity. The verdict ruled that Somchai’s wife, Anghkana, who addressed this Council just last week, and her children, cannot be joint-plaintiffs, preventing them from seeking justice. The defendants were all acquitted because of the lack of legislation specifically prohibiting enforced disappearance and because evidence of Somchai’s death was not possible. In cases of disappearance, the person’s death or injury can, by definition, not be ascertained.

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Amnesty International, 16 March 2011

Bahraini protesters today told Amnesty International of bloody scenes on the streets as government security forces stepped up their violent crackdown on demonstrations and blocked access to hospitals.

At least six people were reportedly killed in the capital Manama amid continuing protests as the army used tanks to flatten the peaceful protest camps set up in recent weeks to demand reform in the Gulf state.

Government forces also surrounded hospitals and attacked doctors trying to help the wounded.

“The distressing reports and images coming out of Bahrain today provide further evidence that the authorities are using lethal and other excessive force to crush protests, with reckless disregard for human life,” said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Director.

“Wounded protesters have also been prevented from accessing medical attention by government forces.. The Bahraini authorities must immediately put a stop to this bloodshed.”

Security forces attacked the mainly Shi’a protest camp at Manama’s Pearl Roundabout camp early on Wednesday.

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On March 11-13, a small conference of around 200 gathered on the University of Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia with potential significance extending far beyond its modest attendance.  This was the national membership meeting of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a group founded in San Francisco in 1996 that, in the wake of the siege of Gaza in late 2008, has aggressively grown into a national organization with 27 local chapters and seven full time staff.

The meeting and its discussions were closed to the press (though this writer was in attendance), but this only highlights the newsworthiness of the meeting in itself.  Late last year, the Anti-Defamation League named JVP on a list it released of the “Top Ten Anti-Israel Groups in America,” and since then well-known members of the group have in some cases been met with violence or threats of violence, particularly on the west coast, and lesser forms of intimidation from various Jewish community leaders.

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By Richard Falk, Information Clearing House, March 16, 2011

After atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki there was in the West, especially the United States, a short triumphal moment, crediting American science and military prowess with bringing victory over Japan and the avoidance of what was anticipated at the time to be a long and bloody conquest of the Japanese homeland. This official narrative of the devastating attacks on these Japanese cities has been contested by numerous reputable historians who argued that Japan had conveyed its readiness to surrender well before the bombs had been dropped, that the U.S. Government needed to launch the attacks to demonstrate to the Soviet Union that it had this super-weapon at its disposal, and that the attacks would help establish American supremacy in the Pacific without any need to share power with Moscow. But whatever historical interpretation is believed, the horror and indecency of the attacks is beyond controversy. This use of atomic bombs against defenseless densely populated cities remains the greatest single act of state terror in human history, and had it been committed by the losers in World War II surely the perpetrators would have been held criminally accountable and the weaponry forever prohibited. But history gives the winners in big wars considerable latitude to shape the future according to their own wishes, sometimes for the better, often for the worse.

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