Peace and Justice Post

Daily Times, Feb 27, 2011

SRINAGAR: A prominent Indian-held Kashmir (IHK) leader staged a day-long token hunger strike on Saturday against large-scale arrests in the aftermath of massive anti-India protests last year. Yasin Malik, head of the pro-independence Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, said more than 4,000 young people and separatists had been jailed by Indian police since 114 people were killed last year, mostly shot by police. “This is a peaceful protest against the unabated crackdown on our youth,” said Malik, flanked by over a dozen separatist leaders, as some 400 protesters shouted “We want freedom.” The demonstration took place in the centre of Srinagar, the summer capital of IHK, which has been wracked by a more than two-decade armed revolt against Indian rule. afp

Pak Tribune, Feb 25, 2011

KUNAR: A recent Nato air strike in an eastern Afghanistan valley killed at least 62 civilians including women and children, an Afghan government investigation said on Thursday. On Sunday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai accused Nato of having killed more than 50 civilians in eastern Afghanistan’s troubled

Kunar province, and sent a team to inquire into the alleged civilian deaths. “After three days of investigation, we found out that 62 civilians, including women and children, were killed and 10 others injured in the Nato operation,” the head of the probe team, Shahzada Massoud, who is a Karzai adviser, told reporters in Kunar. He did not clarify whether any insurgents were killed in the operation, but a member of the probe team, Shahzada Shahid, separately told AFP that 14 Taliban militants had also been killed, on top of the 62.

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Jeff Halper, Information Clearing House, 25 Feb 2011

Last Friday’s vote in the UN in which the US refused to follow the other 14 members of the Security Council in condemning Israel’s ongoing settlement project – including, it should be noted, such traditionally pro-Israel stalwarts as Britain, France and even Germany and India (for whom Israel is the #2 supplier of arms, as it is with China) – revealed what international isolation into which the US has fallen. Without being pollyannish over the human rights records of the other members of the Security Council, human rights does, nevertheless, motivate the foreign policy of many countries of the world, if only because to be seen respecting human rights has become a standard of national legitimacy. Israel’s blatant violations of international law threaten the consensus upon which the international order rests, even if it is upheld in the breech.

The Security Council vote show that this is not true for the United States, whose perceived cultural and legal exceptionalism rests upon a rapidly eroding economic and military hegemony. The very message of the American vote – that we do not see ourselves subject to international law and human rights; we set the policies and rules, not the UN or international courts – sends a chill down the spine of people everywhere, especially those, such as the peoples uprising in the Middle East or those in Burma, the Congo, China and in American prisons, who cannot revolt yet hold out hope that struggles for human rights will eventually each them.

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by James Petras, Dissident Voice,  February 26th, 2011

In the midst of the Arab uprisings throughout the Middle East, at a time when even the European Union  (EU) has publically condemned Israel’s blockade of Gaza and its illegal land seizures in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou promised a visiting delegation of American Jewish leaders, that he would do everything possible to undermine EU opposition and promote Israeli economic, diplomatic and political interests in Europe. US Zionists, recently returned from a visit to Athens described Papandreou as by far the most amenable (‘servile’) European leader they have met in recent memory. Papandreou’s slavish submission to Israeli interests includes his promise, to a delegation of U.S. zionist notables, to use his influence to pressure the new Egyptian military junta to continue to uphold the Mubarak agreements with Israel.¹ These include the continued blockade of Gaza and support of Israel’s military assaults on Lebanon, Syria and Palestinians. In other words Papandreou is openly supportive of Egypt’s past collaboration with Israeli clandestine assassinations and kidnapping of Arab militants.

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By Daniel C. Maguire, Consortium News, February 26, 2011

Editor’s Note: On Friday, Daniel C. Maguire, professor of moral theology at Marquette University, wrote an open letter to Susan E. Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, criticizing the veto she cast on behalf of the Obama administration to block a U.N. resolution condemning Israel’s illegal settlements on Palestinian lands:

Dear Dr. Rice, A criticism and a comment: “Settlement” is, as you know, a euphemism for expropriation of Palestinian property.

Your casting that vote on February 18, to veto the Security Council Censure of these ongoing ethnic cleansings when all other members of the Council voted for it and when there were 100 co-sponsors among other nations is not a vote you will remember with pride.

It is also not a vote that serves American interests. Yours is the latest in a long line of American officials bowing to Israeli and AIPAC pressure and sacrificing the national interest of the United States.

The price we pay for that subservience is high. As the Congressional report on 9/11 said, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed cited our biased support of Israeli policies as a motive for the 9/11 attack. That is a high price to pay and Homeland Security experts say we will pay it again.

Even Dick Cheney has cited our kind of support of Israel policies as one of the “true sources of resentment” against us, a point also made by General [David] Petraeus. Your vote endangered us and our soldiers. Resignation before casting such a vote would be honorable.

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The United States government cannot get enough of war.  With Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s regime falling to a rebelling population, CNN reports that a Pentagon spokesman said that the U.S. is looking at all options from the military side.

Allegedly, the Pentagon, which is responsible for one million dead Iraqis and an unknown number of dead Afghans and Pakistanis, is concerned about the deaths of 1,000 Libyan protesters.

While the Pentagon tries to figure out how to get involved in the Libyan revolt, the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific is developing new battle plans to take on China in her home territory. Four-star Admiral Robert Willard thinks the U.S. should be able to whip China in its own coastal waters.

The admiral thinks one way to do this is to add U.S. Marines to his force structure so that the U.S. can eject Chinese forces from disputed islands in the East and South China seas.

It is not the U.S. who is disputing the islands, but if there is a chance for war anywhere, the admiral wants to make sure we are not left out.

The admiral also hopes to develop military ties with India and add that country to his clout. India, the admiral says, “is a natural partner of the United States” and “is crucial to America’s 21st-century strategy of balancing China.”  The U.S. is going to seduce the Indians by selling them advanced aircraft.

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WEST POINT, N.Y. — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates bluntly told an audience of West Point cadets on Friday that it would be unwise for the United States to ever fight another war like Iraq or Afghanistan, and that the chances of carrying out a change of government in that fashion again were slim.

“In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it,” Mr. Gates told an assembly of Army cadets here. “In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it,” Mr. Gates told an assembly of Army cadets here.

That reality, he said, meant that the Army would have to reshape its budget, since potential conflicts in places like Asia or the Persian Gulf were more likely to be fought with air and sea power, rather than with conventional ground forces.

“As the prospects for another head-on clash of large mechanized land armies seem less likely, the Army will be increasingly challenged to justify the number, size, and cost of its heavy formations,” Mr. Gates warned.

“The odds of repeating another Afghanistan or Iraq — invading, pacifying, and administering a large third-world country — may be low,” Mr. Gates said, but the Army and the rest of the government must focus on capabilities that can “prevent festering problems from growing into full-blown crises which require costly — and controversial — large-scale American military intervention.”

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John Pilger, johnpilger.com, Feb 24, 2011

Shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I interviewed Ray McGovern, one of an elite group of CIA officers who prepared the President’s daily intelligence brief. McGovern was at the apex of the “national security” monolith that is American power and had retired with presidential plaudits. On the eve of the invasion, he and 45 other senior officers of the CIA and other intelligence agencies wrote to President George W. Bush that the “drumbeat for war” was based not on intelligence, but lies.

“It was 95 per cent charade,” McGovern told me.

“How did they get away with it?”

“The press allowed the crazies to get away with it.”

“Who are the crazies?”

“The people running the [Bush] administration have a set of beliefs a lot like those expressed in Mein Kampf… these are the same people who were referred to in the circles in which I moved, at the top, as ‘the crazies’.”

I said, “Norman Mailer has written that that he believes America has entered a pre-fascist state. What’s your view of that?”

“Well… I hope he’s right, because there are others saying we are already in a fascist mode.”

On 22 January, Ray McGovern emailed me to express his disgust at the Obama administration’s barbaric treatment of the alleged whistleblower Bradley Manning and its pursuit of WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange. “Way back when George and Tony decided it might be fun to attack Iraq,” he wrote, “I said something to the effect that fascism had already begun here. I have to admit I did not think it would get this bad this quickly.”

On 16 February, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech at George Washington University in which she condemned governments that arrested protestors and crushed free expression. She lauded the liberating power of the internet while failing to mention that her government was planning to close down those parts of the internet that encouraged dissent and truth-telling.  It was a speech of spectacular hypocrisy, and Ray McGovern was in the audience. Outraged, he rose from his chair and silently turned his back on Clinton. He was immediately seized by police and a security goon and beaten to the floor, dragged out and thrown into jail, bleeding. He has sent me photographs of his injuries. He is 71. During the assault, which was clearly visible to Clinton, she did not pause in her remarks.

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By Badri Raina, ZNet, Thursday, February 24, 2011

Epigraph:

“During my interaction with Kaleem, I learnt that he was previously arrested in the Mecca Masjid bomb blast case and he had to spend about one-and-a-half years in prison. During my stay in jail, Kaleem helped me a lot and used to serve me by bringing water, food,etc. for me. I was very moved by Kaleem’s good conduct and my conscience asked me to prayaschit by making confessional statement.”

(Swami Aseemanand in his confessional statement to Magistrate.  The statement was recorded on December, 18 under section 164 of the IPC, and is thus admissible in evidence. Kaleem, the Muslim boy, has been accused of the crime, namely the blast at the Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad, that Aseemanand says was infact committed by Hindutva terrorists.)

I was asked the other day what kinds of people I thought to be the greatest danger to the  “idea of India.”  Hopelessly enough, as many in the audience must have thought, I came up with  a complicated answer, contradicting the clarity that seems rampant these days.

Yet my simple point was that the answer to the question must depend greatly on how one is placed within the nation-state.

Ask the question of  a Tata, a Birla, an Ambani, or those that comprise the country’s  land and mining mafia, or those in politics and the bureaucracy who largely do their work, or those in the  corporate media who remain busily occupied in  peddling with penchant  the ever-more avaricious aspirations of India’s upwardly mobile  classes, or the endowed  non-resident Indians impatient to do away with the  uncouth habits of the masses and to pave some ten percent of the “homeland” (which they have deserted) with gold (that they may also  own), and  the answer you might get is left-wing extremism, trade unionism, NGO activism, wasteful social spending and so forth.

Ask the other eighty or so percent of Indians who sweat in fields, farms, factories, or vend the day for a pittance, forest-dwellers who are told not a tree, a bush, a  patch of land, or a drop of water  belongs to them anymore, or millions of children who rag-pick, or slave in  shops or  homes, who feed on crumbs and get roundly abused and beaten routinely and die like flies in the cold and heat, and they might not even comprehend the question you ask, being past all conceivable danger all their wretched lives.  The “idea of India,”– what might that be?  Ask those who still scavenge for a living, and get treated like lepers for their labours of keeping the rest of us clean, and they might say that the greatest danger is that they may be dispossessed even of the privileges of scavenging which keeps them just this side of starvation.

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By Ilan Pappe, ZNet, Feb 24, 2011

Source: Electronic Intifada

The view from Israel is that if they indeed succeed, the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions are bad, very bad. Educated Arabs — not all of them dressed as “Islamists,” quite a few of them speaking perfect English whose wish for democracy is articulated without resorting to “anti-Western” rhetoric — are bad for Israel.

Arab armies that do not shoot at these demonstrators are as bad as are many other images that moved and enthused so many people around the world, even in the West. This world reaction is also bad, very bad. It makes the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and its apartheid policies inside the state look like the acts of a typical “Arab” regime.

For a while you could not tell what official Israel thought. In his first ever commonsensical message to his colleagues, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked his ministers, generals and politicians not to comment in public on the events in Egypt. For a brief moment one thought that Israel turned from the neighborhood’s thug to what it always was: a visitor or permanent resident.

It seems Netanyahu was particularly embarrassed by the unfortunate remarks on the situation uttered publicly by General Aviv Kochavi, the head of Israeli military intelligence. This top Israeli expert on Arab affairs stated confidently two weeks ago in the Knesset that the Mubarak regime is as solid and resilient as ever. But Netanyahu could not keep his mouth shut for that long. And when the boss talked all the others followed. And when they all responded, their commentary made Fox News’ commentators look like a bunch of peaceniks and free-loving hippies from the 1960s.

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