Peace and Justice Post

There’s no denying its historic decline, but the left does not lack for issues. It needs only organisation

Richard Wolff, The Guardian, March 13, 2011

An estimated 100,000 people gathered at the state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin on Saturday 26 February 2011 to protest Governor Scott Walker’s budget bill that would remove collective bargaining rights from public employees. Photograph: AP Photo/Wisconsin State Journal, John Hart

The Capitol Square in Madison at 2 p.m. today. Unionists rushed to the Capitol last night and returned today to protest the surprise passage of the governor’s anti-union bill. Photo: antrover.

Police dragged a hundred demonstrators from the Wisconsin statehouse Thursday to break a blockade trying to prevent state representatives from passing the governor’s anti-union bill.

Several thousand bellowed their disapproval outside, joined by more than 1,000 high school and middle school students who walked out of class again to march together to the Capitol.

None of the protesters were arrested, and state representatives spent the afternoon with police blocking Capitol entrances while they debated inside. Republicans have a clear majority in the Assembly and are expected to pass the bill.

Union leaders and a crowd that grew by thousands yesterday evening and throughout the day denounced Wisconsin’s Senate Republicans, who rewrote a month-old bill yesterday to focus just on attacking union rights and collective bargaining.

That allowed them to pass the bill without the participation of Senate Democrats, who reportedly are returning to the state today. Republicans didn’t need them because a quorum of 20 is required only for fiscal measures.

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AHRC, March 10, 2011

Dear friends,

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information regarding the murder of human rights activist Mr. Niyamat Ansari in Kope Gram Panchayat of Latehar District, Jharkhand state, on 2 March, as well as a similar attempt on the same day upon the life of his associate Mr. Bhukhan Singh. It is reported that the local private contractors engaged in the implementation of employment generation schemes under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 (MGNREGA) are behind the murder since Ansari and Singh were trying to expose the corruption behind the utilisation of funds under the MGNREGA. Only one person has been arrested so far despite nationwide public outcry for immediate arrest of the suspects.

CASE NARRATIVE:

As provided by the notes prepared after detailed enquiries conducted by Prof. Jean Drèze, Mr. James Herenj and Ms. Reetika Khera and also draws on the findings of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) fact finding team on 6 March, 2011. Some details may require further corroboration, but the main points are well established.

On 2 March, 2011 a group of armed men in uniforms abducted Niyamat from his residence in Jerua village (Kope Gram Panchayat). He was brutally beaten for nearly one hour. According to eyewitnesses, the same people who attacked Niyamat in October 2008 did this. It is strongly suspected that Mr. Shankar Dubey, a petty contractor in the locality and his associates instigated these men. After they deserted him, Niyamat’s brother and other family members carried his unconscious body on a charpoy from Jerua village to Manika Police Station, a distance of about 10km. Niyamat’s family reached Manika Police Station by foot, with Niyamat unconscious on a charpoy, before the administration managed to send an ambulance to them. After this, Niyamat was brought to Latehar Sadar Hospital. Soon after reaching there, he died.

The suspects were also seeking out Niyamat’s associate, Mr. Bhukhan Singh to be assaulted. But he was able to save his life by hiding. On the morning of 3 March he was brought to Latehar by the district authorities.

Niyamat is a resident of Kope Gram Panchayat in Manika Block, Latehar District. During the last few years, he was working with Gram Swaraj Abhiyan, a local campaign for village self-rule, also involved in issues such as the right to information, the right to food and the right to work.

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Anti-government protesters confront riot police assembled on a flyover near the Pearl Square in Manama, March 13.(Reuters)

Riot police in Bahrain fired tear gas and rubber bullets at anti-government demonstrators blocking the highway into the capital’s financial district Sunday and also surrounded the protesters’ main camp in the capital, eyewitnesses said.

Protesters blocked off a main thoroughfare to the Bahrain Financial Harbour, a key business district in the Gulf Arab banking centre.

Authorities failed to dislodge the thousands of protesters blocking King Faisal Highway in Manama, the capital.

About two miles (about three kilometers) away, police also moved on the Pearl Square protest camp in the largest effort to clear the area since the demonstrations, inspired by the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, started in mid-February. Another rally at a university Sunday also reportedly descended into clashes with police.

Thousands of youths ran across the King Faisal Highway as police backed away in the face of hundreds of protesters who had gathered near the Pearl roundabout, the focal point of weeks of demonstrations on the small Gulf island.

Traffic was stalled for miles (kilometers), and police fired tear gas and used heavy vehicles to try to move the protesters and dismantle the barriers they had set up.

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Uruknet.info

Source: UN News Centre

UN News Centre, 11 March 2011 – An independent United Nations expert has called on Israel to stop illegally demolishing Palestinian homes in the West Bank, including two apartment buildings in East Jerusalem where 150 people are about to be evicted, citing a recent surge in such actions.”This pattern of eviction, demolition, expansion of settlements, and settlers’ violent expropriation of Palestinian homes in the occupied East Jerusalem violates fundamental human rights, as well as provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention governing belligerent occupation,” UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Richard Falk said in a statement.  Since the beginning of 2011, Israel has demolished 96 Palestinian structures throughout the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, consisting of 32 homes and other residential structures. As a result, 175 people, more than half of them children, have lost their homes, a sharp increase compared to the same period in 2010 when there were 56 demolitions and 129 people displaced. At the same time, Israeli settlements in the West Bank have continued to expand. Mr. Falk described the decision to demolish the two buildings in the Beit Hanina neighbourhood of East Jerusalem as “particularly disturbing,” noting the families were given only 10 days to vacate their homes last Sunday. He said Israeli authorities often seek to justify demolition of Palestinian homes on the grounds that the owners lack building permits, which are next to impossible for Palestinians to obtain. Continues >>

By ROD NORDLAND, The New York Times, March 12, 2011

KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai on Saturday appeared to call for NATO and the United States to cease military operations in Afghanistan, but then issued a clarification saying that he was referring only to specific operations that had caused civilian casualties.

Shah Marai/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A mixed message from Hamid Karzai has raised tensions with American officials.

nar Province, the Afghan president told relatives and neighbors of civilian victims that he sympathized with their plight. “With great honor and with great respect, and humbly rather than with arrogance, I request that NATO and America should stop these operations on our soil,” he said. “This war is not on our soil. If this war is against terror, then this war is not here, terror is not here.”

Mr. Karzai’s remarks were made at a memorial service for the victims, in the presence of local officials as well as the second highest ranking American general in Afghanistan, David M. Rodriguez. “Our demand is that this war should be stopped,” Mr. Karzai said. “This is the voice of Afghanistan.”

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PFLP, March 12, 2011

PJ Crowley says Pentagon is being ‘ridiculous and stupid’ by subjecting WikiLeaks suspect to punitive conditions in jail

Ed Pilkington in New York, The Guardian, March 11, 2011

Bradley Manning is facing multiple charges relating to his alleged releasing of state secrets. Photograph: EPA

By Kevin Zeese, Consortium News, March 9, 2011

Editor’s Note: President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other top U.S. officials lecture world leaders on the need to respect the free flow of information as vital to democracy.

In other countries, brave whistleblowers are heroes, but in the United States, when Pvt. Bradley Manning allegedly exposed crimes and misconduct on a global scale, he was subjected to humiliation and punishment that would make many police states blush, as Kevin Zeese discusses in this guest essay:

Reports that Bradley Manning is being held nude every night at the Quantico Brig, then forced to stand naked in the hallway while he waits for his clothes, shows the inconsistency of the treatment of Manning with basic American values of due process, fair trial and human dignity.

Here is how his lawyer David Coombs describes his treatment:

“The Brig has stripped PFC Manning of all of his clothing for the past three nights, and they intend to continue this practice indefinitely. Each night, Brig guards force PFC Manning to relinquish all of his clothing.

“He then lies in a cold jail cell naked until the following morning, when he is required to endure the humiliation of standing naked at attention for the morning roll call.

“According to Marine spokesperson, First Lieutenant Brian Villiard, the decision to strip him naked every night is for PFC Manning’s own protection. Villiard stated that it would be ‘inappropriate’ to explain what prompted these actions ‘because to discuss the details would be a violation of PFC Manning’s privacy.’”

Manning, who has not been convicted of anything, has been held in virtual solitary confinement for ten months. David House who has visited him since September described him as “emotionally exhausted” and “catatonic.”

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by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

The United States, governed by a Nobel Peace Prize winner, tortures political prisoners. That truth is on display for all the world to see, in the treatment of Wikileaks defendant Private Bradley Manning, who is stripped naked every night in an effort to crush his psyche. “The enemy is anyone, anywhere who dares to consider revealing the truth about how this country actually conducts itself around the world.”

Freedom Rider: Peace Prize Torture

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

“Manning is denied the use of sheets and now is forced to sleep naked and stand naked outside of his cell when it is inspected.”

If members of the Norwegian Nobel committee do not feel embarrassment for making Barack Obama a peace prize laureate, then they are as shameless as the man they foolishly chose to honor. Barack Obama is every bit the authoritarian as his predecessor George W. Bush. He too believes in his right to declare anyone an enemy combatant and restrict their rights to due process. He too has cracked down on whistle blowers and is determined to ferret them out and punish them.

The continued psychological torture of Pfc. Bradley Manning is the latest case in point. Manning is accused of leaking information to Julian Assange of Wikileaks, telling the world about the indiscriminate killings of Iraqis and other horrors brought about by the continuing American occupation.

Manning, who has yet to be tried or convicted of any crime, has been kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours per day ever since his arrest ten months ago. Last week the army added 22 additional charges, including “aiding the enemy.”

“Manning has been kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours per day ever since his arrest ten months ago.”

Manning’s one hour outside of his cell allows him only to walk in circles in another room. He is denied the use of sheets and now is forced to sleep naked and stand naked outside of his cell when it is inspected.

The government’s objective is a simple one. They want to break Manning so that he will talk about any communications he has had with Julian Assange. In other words, they are trying to drive him crazy in order to prosecute someone else. Manning has been denied visits from friends, journalists and even government officials such as Congressman Dennis Kucinich.

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