Peace and Justice Post

Prof James  Petras, Global Research, January 2, 2011

Imperial states build networks which link economic, military and political activities into a coherent mutually reinforcing system. This task is largely performed by the various institutions of the imperial state. Thus imperial action is not always directly economic, as military action in one country or region is necessary to open or protect economic zones. Nor are all military actions decided by economic interests if the leading sector of the imperial state is decidedly militarist.

Moreover, the sequence of imperial action may vary according to the particular conditions necessary for empire building. Thus state aid may buy collaborators; military intervention may secure client regimes followed later by private investors. In other circumstances, the entry of private corporations may precede state intervention.

In either private or state economic and/or military led penetration, in furtherance of empire-building, the strategic purpose is to exploit the special economic and geopolitical features of the targeted country to create empire-centered networks. In the post Euro-centric colonial world, the privileged position of the US in its empire-centered policies, treaties, trade and military agreements is disguised and justified by an ideological gloss, which varies with time and circumstances. In the war to break-up Yugoslavia and establish client regimes, as in Kosovo, imperial ideology utilized humanitarian rhetoric. In the genocidal wars in the Middle East, anti-terrorism and anti-Islamic ideology is central. Against China, democratic and human rights rhetoric predominates. In Latin America, receding imperial power relies on democratic and anti-authoritarian rhetoric aimed at the democratically elected Chavez government.

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Over the past decade, as crops have failed year after year, 200,000 farmers have killed themselves

By Alex Renton, The Independent, January 2, 2011

Abbie Traylor-Smith

Sugali Nagamma holds a portrait of her husband, who killed himself by swallowing pesticide in front of her

Anita Joshua, The Hindu, January 1, 2011

— Photo: AP

Flashpoint:Aasia Bibi’s death sentence has reignited the debate over blasphemy laws, pitting the civil rights activists against the “religious” right-wingers.

Irrespective of whether she wins the appeal against her death sentence, gets a presidential pardon, or Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are amended, Aasia Bibi is a marked woman. Ironically, more so because of the attention her case has drawn over the past month-and-a-half after a sessions court in the Nankana Sahib district of Punjab sentenced her to death under Section 295C of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) for allegedly making derogatory remarks against the Prophet in an argument with women from her village.

The argument began after two women refused to drink water from a glass Aasia Bibi had touched because, according to them, it had been defiled due to her faith and caste. This was in 2009. In early November 2010 the sessions court announced the death sentence, triggering yet another debate on the dreaded blasphemy laws, which, according to the last report of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, had come to haunt even the Muslims as rivals sects of Islam had begun to use the provisions against each other.

Being a Christian, her case, as a lawyer put it, seems to have bothered the conscience of the international community and condemnation from overseas, including the Vatican, was quick to come. President Asif Ali Zardari — himself a member of the minority Shia community — asked the federal Ministry of Minority Affairs to conduct an enquiry. He also constituted a committee under the Minister, calling upon religious experts, intellectuals and others to suggest amendments to the blasphemy laws.

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by Paul Craig Roberts, Foreign Policy Journal, Dec 31, 2010

”Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors.”

–Lewis H. Lapham

The year 2011 will bring Americans a larger and more intrusive police state, more unemployment and home foreclosures, no economic recovery, more disregard by the US government of US law, international law, the Constitution, and truth, more suspicion and distrust from allies, more hostility from the rest of the world, and new heights of media sycophancy.

2011 is shaping up as the terminal year for American democracy. The Republican Party has degenerated into a party of Brownshirts, and voter frustrations with the worsening economic crisis and military occupations gone awry are likely to bring Republicans to power in 2012. With them would come their doctrines of executive primacy over Congress, the judiciary, law, and the Constitution and America’s rightful hegemony over the world.

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The Independent, January 1, 2011

AP

By Amartya Sen, ZNet, Dec 30, 2010

Source: Telegraph India

I am very upset about the court decision in Chhattisgarh about Binayak Sen. It is a huge perversion of our system of justice, and particularly of the laws concerning sedition. It’s not at all clear, to start with, that the thing he has been exactly accused of — of passing letters — has been really proved beyond doubt.

Secondly, even if this were correct, that doesn’t amount to sedition. He hasn’t killed anyone, he hasn’t incited anyone to rise in violent protest or rebellion. In fact, we know that in his writings he has written against the use of violence in political struggle, arguing that this is neither correct, nor is it ultimately successful. So, I think, even if this is the case — that the exact thing he is accused of is exactly what they are saying it is, which is by no means clear — even then the charge of sedition does not stand.

Thirdly, in exercising any kind of judgment, one has to take into account the character of the person. In this case, Binayak Sen is a very dedicated social worker, working extremely hard for the welfare of some of the most neglected people in the world. He has dedicated his life to doing that rather than having the prosperous, successful life of a doctor, and making a lot of money. So his dedication is not in doubt.

To turn the dedicated service of someone who drops everything to serve the cause of neglected people into a story of the seditious use of something — in this case, it appears to be the passing of a letter, when sedition usually takes the form of inciting people to violence or actually committing some violence and asking others to follow, none of which had happened — the whole thing seems a ridiculous use of the laws of democratic India.

This is part of a legal process, and we have to bear in mind that this is only the first step in a state which has been extraordinarily keen in keeping Binayak Sen behind bars.

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By Abby Martin, Consortium News, December 27, 2010

Editor’s Note: The chance of an American getting killed by a terrorist remains miniscule, especially compared to other possible causes of mortality, like not getting timely medical attention because of the wasteful and costly health-care system. But Americans continue to surrender freedoms (and spend a fortune) to add a tiny bit of protection from terrorism.

The larger picture is even grimmer, since the accumulation of surrendered freedoms to fight the “war on terror” is shifting the United States piece by piece from a constitutional republic toward a new-age totalitarian state, as Abby Martin notes in this guest essay:

In George Orwell’s 1984, Britain is depicted as a totalitarian police state that is ruled by the Party, or Big Brother – an enigmatic, ubiquitous elite that controls society through heavy surveillance, nationalist propaganda and historical revisionism.

The concept seems like a far-fetched portrayal of a democratic nation’s demise into totalitarianism, but in America’s “post 9/11” climate of fear, the United States government has been building a comprehensive grid of surveillance and control that bears frightening similarities to Orwell’s fictional narrative.

The glaring difference between the two is that Orwell’s dystopian society is overtly totalitarian. America, conversely, operates under a “soft fascism” – an insidious, systematic method of preventative action and corporate top-down control over society’s media, economy and politics – while maintaining the necessary illusion of personal choice and freedom.

A populace with little to no concept of their subjugation makes them the perfect subjects to rule.

Many Americans might not feel the government’s hand or Big Brother’s watchful eye directly in their lives. However, with the use of GPS, cell phones and the Internet, every move we make can be tracked, cataloged and divided into demographics that are used to increase corporate advertising efficiency and to create a “chilling effect” throughout our culture, stifling dissent and diminishing activism.

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By MOBIN PANDIT & AHMED EL AMIN, The Peninsula, Dec 30, 2010

DOHA: Top officials in several Arab countries have close links with the CIA, and many officials keep visiting US embassies in their respective countries voluntarily to establish links with this key US intelligence agency, says Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing website, WikiLeaks.

“These officials are spies for the US in their countries,” Assange told Al Jazeera Arabic channel in an interview yesterday.

The interviewer, Ahmed Mansour, said at the start of the interview which was a continuation of last week’s interface, that Assange had even shown him the files that contained the names of some top Arab officials with alleged links with the CIA.

Assange or Mansour, however, didn’t disclose the names of these officials. The WikiLeaks founder said he feared he could be killed but added that there were 2,000 websites that were ready to publish the remaining files that are in possession of WikiLeaks after “he has been done away with”.

“If I am killed or detained for a long time, there are 2,000 websites ready to publish the remaining files. We have protected these websites through very safe passwords,” said Assange.

Currently, his whistle-blowing website is exposing files in a ‘responsible’ manner, he claimed. “But if I am forced we could go to the extreme and expose each and every file that we have access to,” thundered the WikiLeaks founder. “We must protect our sources at whatever cost. This is our sincere concern.”

Some Arab countries even have torture houses where Washington regularly sends ‘suspects’ for ‘interrogation and torture’, he said.

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Morning Star Online, December 29, 2010

Pappe left Israel for Britain after condemnation from the Israeli public and parliament for his work The Ethnic Cleansing Of Palestine, published in 2006.

Based upon his PhD thesis, The Ethnic Cleaning Of Palestine studies the history of the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Using previously unseen documentation from the British and Israeli governments Pappe rewrote the historical zionist narrative to include the expulsion or flight of 700,000 Palestinians in the same year.

“We were not the ‘new historians’ as we were often called,” said Pappe. “We were the first historians – there was no detailed historiography before this. But emotionally and ideologically there was a history – every visit to a demolished Arab village tells the story of 1948.”

This intellectual piece of work cost Pappe his academic credibility in Israel and led him to fear for both his and his family’s safety. He recalled friends and acquaintances receiving phone calls from anonymous people in which they were warned that it was not good to be seen with him. Death threats by phone, e-mail and post became frequent.

The discovery of this new evidence fell upon deaf ears. In Israeli society still, no-one addressed the ethical values of zionism, the ideology upon which the state of Israel is founded.

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Officials Don’t Know Identities of Any of Slain

Another 17 people were killed today in a flurry of US drone strikes against the North Waziristan Agency, bringing the two day toll to 42 slain and an unknown number of people wounded.

Officials have termed everyone killed a “suspected militant” but conceded that they don’t know any of the identities of the slain and that civilians are almost certain to be amongst the toll. With virtually no media allowed into the region, identifying the victims of US attacks is virtually impossible.

But we do know the circumstances of the attacks, including that a number of the people killed yesterday were not in the targeted vehicles but were simply nearby when the missiles landed. Today, the first drone strike destroyed a home and the second strike targeted neighbors who went to the site of the home to look for survivors.

The US has launched 115 strikes this year killing over a thousand people. Of these, only a handful were ever identified as “high value targets” and a number of those reemerged later, alive and well. The vast, vast majority will forever be known as “suspects,” despite mounting evidence that they are by and large civilians.