Peace and Justice Post

The tide of revolutions that rocked Tunisia and Egypt has stirred uprisings from Morocco to Libya, but it hasn’t been limited to the Middle East. In places as far south as Cameroon, as far east as China, and even westward to the budget demonstrations in Wisconsin and Europe, people are demanding reform.

Members of Women of Zimbabwe Arise, WOZA, march through the streets of Harare. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi)

There’s more to these uprisings than the now-familiar images of fresh-faced youth tweeting away despots, too. Revolutionary sparks have emerged in regions often viewed as too fractious, too apathetic, or too uncivilized to rise up.

So has there been a convergence of pro-democracy ideals around the world, particularly in the Global South? Or have localized grievances been swept into a romantic zeitgeist of reform? What’s clear is that the movements are both unique and related. Though the protesters are remarkably diverse in their backgrounds and goals, they’re tied to the project of broadening the very definition of democratic change.

Continues >>

Media Lense, Feb 2, 2011

Historian Howard Zinn (1922-2010), would be remembered above all for his humanity and warmth, were it not for the crystal clarity of his insight. In ‘A Power That Governments Can’t Suppress,’ he wrote:

‘There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people’s thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.’ (Zinn, A Power That Governments Can’t Suppress, City Lights, 2007, p.267)

Until very recently, no system of power seemed more invincible than the corporate media. One hundred years ago, industrialisation handed a near-total monopoly of the means of mass communication to a tiny elite with the money to buy and run the printing presses and, later, TV studios. The tendency to see the future in the present generated dystopic visions of ever more sophisticated technology empowering ever tighter control: thus George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

And yet, through a further twist of technological fate, the digital revolution has broken the elite monopoly and scattered it to the four winds – to be captured by a mobile phone camera here, a Twitter Tweeter there, by bloggers, vloggers, citizen journalists and Facebook posters.

Mainstream media moguls and journalists are as dumb struck by these developments as the generals overlooking Tahrir and Pearl Squares. Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s veteran Middle East correspondent, wrote recently:

‘Popular opinion in the Arab Middle East only really emerged 50 or so years ago, through radios in cafes and village squares that were often tuned to highly partisan broadcasts from Cairo.

‘Leaders concluded they could manipulate the way people thought.

‘Not any more. Pan-Arab satellite TV has been tearing away at taboos about what can be discussed since the mid 1990s. And now social media [using web-based and mobile technologies] mean that everybody can join in.’

Continues >>

Already facing public outrage over the killing of 65 civilians in an offensive, NATO is once again in the hot seat in the Kunar Province, with provincial police reporting that a NATO air strike killed nine children this afternoon.

NATO reported that its Forward Operating Base in the region came under rocket fire, and that it launched the air strikes at what they believed was the “point of origin” of the attack, a nearby mountainside.

The mountainside, however, did not contain insurgents, but rather contained ten Afghan children who were collecting firewood on the wooded area. Nine of them were slain in the strike, while another was badly wounded.

NATO has promised a further investigation into the kilings, which were in the Darah-Ye Pech District. They insisted that they took the reports of civilian deaths “very seriously,” though previous glib responses to the last Kunar massacres prompted major scorn amongst Afghan officials.

By Immanuel Wallerstein, ZNet, March 01, 2011

Fifty-one years ago, on Feb. 3, 1960, the then Prime Minister of Great Britain, Harold Macmillan, a Conservative, addressed the South African parliament, governed by the party that had constructed apartheid as its basis of government. He made what has come to be called the “wind of change” speech. It is worth recalling his words:

“The wind of change is blowing through this continent, and whether we like it or not, the growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a political fact, and our national policies must take account of it.”

South Africa’s Prime Minister, Hendrik Verwoerd, did not appreciate the talk and rejected its premises and its advice. The year 1960 has come to be called the Year of Africa, because 16 colonies become independent states that year. Macmillan’s speech was in fact really addressing the issue of those states in the southern half of the continent that had significant groups of White settlers (and often great mineral resources), who resisted the very idea of universal suffrage in which Black Africans would constitute the overwhelming majority of the voters.

Continues >>

By Barry Grey, wsws.org, 1 March 2011

The New York Times on Sunday published a column by its public editor, Arthur S. Brisbane, defending the newspaper’s decision to withhold, at the request of the Obama administration, the fact that CIA killer Raymond Davis is an employee of the US spy agency.

Whatever Brisbane’s intentions, the column is a self-indictment, exposing the liberal newspaper of record’s lack of any sense of democratic responsibility or fidelity to basic journalistic principles and its role as a quasi-state propaganda organ.

On January 27 Davis, a former US Special Forces solider and Xe Services (previously called Blackwater) mercenary, shot and killed two Pakistani youth in broad daylight while driving through a crowded market in Lahore. Other CIA operatives who raced to the scene in their vehicle to prevent Pakistani officials from arresting Davis struck a third man and fled, leaving their victim to die in the street.

The following day, Pakistani authorities arrested Davis and charged him with murder and carrying an unlicensed gun. The US government demanded, and continues to demand, Davis’ release to American officials on the grounds that he is an official with the US embassy in Islamabad and enjoys diplomatic immunity. The Obama administration denied charges by Pakistani officials that Davis is a CIA operative.

Continues >>

Let’s be clear: Governor Scott Walker’s proposed cuts are not about balancing the state budget. It’s a power play aimed at cutting the heart out of what remains of the once vibrant labor movement. A war waged against unionized workers ultimately harms all workers, and the overt strategy to squelch collective bargaining exposes the deep resentment that monied interests hold towards worker rights everywhere.

The public sector unions in Wisconsin have already agreed to make sacrifices, including significant wage cuts and increased contributions to the pension fund. But these economic concessions are not enough for Governor Walker. That’s because his true goal is to permanently cripple the unions by defunding their organizational base and stripping away their right to collective bargaining.

Sadly, Wisconsin is just one of many front lines in this fight. In the wake of the November elections, anti-union measures are on the move in Ohio, Indiana, and elsewhere.

To understand the true significance of this assault on unions, one must remember that unions do far more than negotiate benefits for its own workers. Unions have fought to strengthen public policies that benefit all Americans, both unionized and non-unionized. We have unions to thank for the weekend and the 40-hour workweek. More recently, unions fought to strengthen minimum wage laws, worker safety protections, and public safety nets. And unions, much to the dismay of corporate power brokers, help provide a powerful mechanism for voter turnout that keeps our democracy strong.

Continues >>

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig, Feb 28, 2011

I have watched mothers and fathers keening in grief over the frail corpses of their children in hospitals in Gaza and rural villages in El Salvador, Bosnia and Kosovo. The faces of these dead children, their bodies ripped apart by iron fragments or bullets tumbling end over end through their small, delicate frames, appear to me almost daily like faint and sadly familiar ghosts. The frailty and innocence of my own children make these images difficult to bear.

A child a day dies in war-related violence in Afghanistan. Children die in roadside explosions. They die in airstrikes. They die after militants lure them to carry suicide bombs, usually without their knowledge. They die in firefights. They are executed by the Taliban after being accused, sometimes correctly, of spying for the Afghan National Army. They are tiny pawns in a futile and endless war. They are robbed of their childhood. They live in fear and surrounded by the terror of indiscriminate violence. The United Nations, whose most recent report on children in Afghanistan covered a two-year period from Sept. 1, 2008, to Aug. 30, 2010, estimates that in the first half of last year at least 176 children were killed and 389 more wounded. But the real number is probably much, much higher. There are big parts of the country where research can no longer be carried out.

Continues >>

Royals ‘known for the stories of their fabulous wealth — and tendency to squander it’

Simon Robinson, Information Clearing House,

February 28, 2011 “Reuters” — LONDON (Reuters). When Saudi King Abdullah arrived home last week, he came bearing gifts: handouts worth $37 billion, apparently intended to placate Saudis of modest means and insulate the world’s biggest oil exporter from the wave of protest sweeping the Arab world.

But some of the biggest handouts over the past two decades have gone to his own extended family, according to unpublished American diplomatic cables dating back to 1996.

The cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and reviewed by Reuters, provide remarkable insight into how much the vast royal welfare program has cost the country — not just financially but in terms of undermining social cohesion.

Besides the huge monthly stipends that every Saudi royal receives, the cables detail various money-making schemes some royals have used to finance their lavish lifestyles over the years. Among them: siphoning off money from “off-budget” programs controlled by senior princes, sponsoring expatriate workers who then pay a small monthly fee to their royal patron and, simply, “borrowing from the banks, and not paying them back.”

As long ago as 1996, U.S. officials noted that such unrestrained behavior could fuel a backlash against the Saudi elite. In the assessment of the U.S. embassy in Riyadh in a cable from that year, “of the priority issues the country faces, getting a grip on royal family excesses is at the top.”

A 2007 cable showed that King Abdullah has made changes since taking the throne six years ago, but recent turmoil in the Middle East underlines the deep-seated resentment about economic disparities and corruption in the region.

A Saudi government spokesman contacted by Reuters declined to comment.

The Obama Adminstration’s vociferous claims that CIA spy Raymond Davis is entitled to “diplomatic immunity” may have struck some as odd, but according to reports inside Pakistan, it is business as usual.

Indeed, the Pakistani government reports that hundreds of US citizens have been granted diplomatic immunity under US demands despite having no role in diplomacy, and seemingly just living in upscale neighborhoods in the major cities.

These so-called “Special Americans” are under growing scrutiny, according to media reports, because of concerns that many of them, as with Davis, may have been operating as CIA spies without informing the Pakistani spy agency, which is supposed to work in concert with them.

In the wake of the Davis arrest, a number of these “Special Americans” are also reported to have fled the country, with others having simply suspending all activities to avoid attracting official attention.

Though Davis’ spying is major concern, his actual crime is the murders of two people on the streets of Lahore. A Lahore court is still hearing arguments in this case, which Davis insists amounts to “self-defense” and which US officials insist he is immune from anyhow.

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig, Feb 28, 2011

I have watched mothers and fathers keening in grief over the frail corpses of their children in hospitals in Gaza and rural villages in El Salvador, Bosnia and Kosovo. The faces of these dead children, their bodies ripped apart by iron fragments or bullets tumbling end over end through their small, delicate frames, appear to me almost daily like faint and sadly familiar ghosts. The frailty and innocence of my own children make these images difficult to bear.

A child a day dies in war-related violence in Afghanistan. Children die in roadside explosions. They die in airstrikes. They die after militants lure them to carry suicide bombs, usually without their knowledge. They die in firefights. They are executed by the Taliban after being accused, sometimes correctly, of spying for the Afghan National Army. They are tiny pawns in a futile and endless war. They are robbed of their childhood. They live in fear and surrounded by the terror of indiscriminate violence. The United Nations, whose most recent report on children in Afghanistan covered a two-year period from Sept. 1, 2008, to Aug. 30, 2010, estimates that in the first half of last year at least 176 children were killed and 389 more wounded. But the real number is probably much, much higher. There are big parts of the country where research can no longer be carried out.

Continues >>