Peace and Justice Post

By Jeremy R. Hammond, Foreign Policy Journal, Oct 28, 2010

Israel National News (INN) has published an op-ed about my essay “The Myth of the U.N. Creation of Israel“, in which they asked Dr. Mordecai Nisan, a lecturer at Hebrew University, to respond. There are two observations to be made about this op-ed: First, it does not actually refute so much as a single point of fact or logic from my article, and, second, Dr. Nisan in fact acknowledges that my thesis is correct.

“Of course it is a myth to assert or believe that the U.N. created Israel,” Dr. Nisan admits in his reply. One might think that, since there is agreement on this point of fact, there would be not much else to debate. What he challenges, however, is not the thesis itself, but the corollary that the Zionist leadership lacked any legal foundation for their unilateral declaration of the establishment of the state of Israel.

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Intifada Palestine, Oct 24, 2010

By Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban

Seconds passed like an eternity for a heart beating for freedom, a soul which fought against occupation and its humiliation and a body shrinking into itself trying to avoid 21^st century brutality in a prison cell without door or windows. The body is thin and delicate, the head is scarved and the eyes are blindfolded in absolute absence of human conscience; while the monsters of the Western age in the land of Jesus Christ dance around their victim. Are these monsters dancing in celebration of kidnapping an Arab girl whose only sin is that she has fought for her and her people’s freedom? Or are they dancing in celebration of the death of world conscience which drawls human rights and freedom while turning its back on the most sacred cause of freedom in the 21^st century – the freedom of the Palestinian people and its fight for salvation from Israeli terrorism perpetrated through Western support for over sixty years.

Released prisoner, Ihsan Dababseh (24), tells the story of the video in which Israeli soldier Avi Yakobov, who abused her by performing a belly-dance and rubbing against her bound and blind-folded body in December, 2007 at the Gush Etzion military base. She says, “Another soldier brought a bottle of wine and asked me to drink”. Minutes later, soldiers attacked her like frenzied wolves with gun butts. “One soldier kept hitting my head against an iron bar until I blacked out”.

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World Bulletin, Friday, 29 October 2010

International aid agency Oxfam warned that three months into Pakistan’s unprecedented flood crisis funds were drying up, putting millions at risk with swathes of farmland still under water.

The United Nations issued a record two-billion-dollar appeal for funds to cope with Pakistan’s worst humanitarian disaster, which ravaged an area roughly the size of England and affected 21 million people.

“Funds for the UN flood appeal are drying up and threatening the aid and reconstruction effort,” Oxfam on Friday said in a statement marking the third month since heavy monsoon rains began falling in northwestern Pakistan.

“The crisis is far from over,” said Oxfam’s director in Pakistan, Neva Khan.

“Fund issue”

A United Nations appeal for $1.9 billion for Pakistan is only 39 percent funded, spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said.

“We still have a long way to go. The food security, health and camp management sectors are really under-funded,” she said.

“Cases of disease are increasing and large areas remain under water in southern Sindh province,” said Oxfam. “As winter approaches, seven million people are still without adequate shelter.”

UN officials say 10 million people are in need of immediate food assistance and health authorities have reported 99 confirmed cases of cholera.

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Transcript

TONY JONES, PRESENTER: Tonight’s guest is veteran Middle-East correspondent and author Robert Fisk.

Following the release by WikiLeaks of nearly 400,000 classified US military documents, Mr Fisk wrote an angry piece headlined “The Shaming of America” in his newspaper The Independent.

He claimed the Pentagon’s anger over the leaks was not because their secrecy had been breached, but because they’d been caught out telling lies, and he joined us just a short time ago from Beirut.

Robert Fisk, thanks for being there.

ROBERT FISK, JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR: You’re welcome.

TONY JONES: Now, what’s the significance of the close-to-400,000 secret US military documents that have been posted by WikiLeaks, as far as you’re concerned?

ROBERT FISK: Well I think there are several very important elements to this story.

First of all, the individual items like, you know, there are witnesses, American witnesses to torture, they didn’t do anything, that the Iraqis – security authorities were torturing Iraqis, that American air strikes were killing many civilians.

We knew about this, but it was always denied by the Americans. I was doing stories years ago about Iraqis torturing Iraqis and the stories were coming from American officers who were leaking them to me.

But of course every time I wrote them in the paper, the Americans denied that it was true. I went to the scenes of US air strikes. They were obviously limbs, hands, arms of children, babies, women, civilians, as well sometimes as armed men, and we wrote about this. . . .

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Victor Stenger, The Huffington Post, Oct 28, 2010

Based on opening remarks presented in the debate “Science and Religion: Confrontation or Accommodation” on October 7, 2010, at The 30th Anniversary Conference of Free Inquiry and the Council for Secular Humanism,” Los Angeles.

Belief in ancient myths joins with other negative forces in our society to keep most of the world from advancing scientifically, economically, and socially at a time when a rapid advancement in these areas is absolutely essential for the survival of humanity. We are now probably only about a generation or two away from the catastrophic problems that are anticipated from global warming, pollution, and overpopulation. We can expect flooded coastal areas, severe climatic changes, epidemics caused by overcrowding, and starvation for much of humanity. Such disasters are predicted to generate worldwide conflict on a scale that could exceed that of the great twentieth-century wars, possibly with nuclear weapons in the hands of unstable nations and terrorist groups.

This is a time, if there ever was one, when science is needed to lead the way. It won’t do so by sitting back and letting irrationality rule the day. And make no mistake about it; the irrationality we see on today’s political scene, as exemplified by the Tea Party, is fueled by the irrationality of religion.

It’s time for secularists to stop sucking up to Christians — and Muslims and Jews and Hindus and any others who claim they have some sacred right to decide what kind of society the rest of us must live in–what a human being can do with her own body. The good news is that young people are joining the rising atheist movement in increasing numbers. I have not met one yet who is an accommodationist. I have great hope that in perhaps another generation America will have joined Europe and the rest of the developed world in shucking off the rusty chains of ancient superstition.

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Officials: 3 suspected US missile strikes in 24 hours kill 14 people in NW Pakistan

RASOOL DAWAR, Antiwar Newswire, Oct 28, 2010
Source: AP News

American unmanned planes fired two missiles at a house in a Pakistani tribal region close to the Afghan border on Thursday, killing seven alleged militants, the latest in a barrage of such attacks, intelligence officials said.

By  Ira Chernus,  The Huffington Post,  Oct 28, 2010

Israel can do whatever it damn pleases, and the Obama administration will never say no — or so the common wisdom goes. But it ain’t so. Obama has backed down far too often, but there’s also a long history of Israel giving in to U.S. pressure in the last 18 months. Here are just some of the highlights:

On June 4, 2009, Obama went to Cairo and called on the Israelis to agree to an independent Palestinian state. That same day Netanyahu met with his cabinet. “Ministers split over Obama’s Cairo speech,” one Israeli headline declared.

Just ten days later, Netanyahu spoke words that he’d never said publicly before: “Two states for two people.” Had Obama not made his own speech, it’s doubtful anyone would ever have heard those words from Netanyahu.

Later that summer, “a senior source in Jerusalem” told an Israeli reporter that American envoy George Mitchell had asked Netanyahu to promise a one-year freeze on settlement construction. “Netanyahu and Barak did not reject the request”; they merely “disagreed over some of the details.” The Israelis agreed to ten months, which “came about as a result of extensive bilateral discussions” between Israel and the U.S., according to the Washington Post.

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Syria spurns U.S. bid to mend ties

Haaretz, Oct 26, 2010

By The Associated Press

Syria’s president has accused the United States of sowing chaos overseas, snubbing Washington’s efforts to improve ties with Damascus.

	Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
	Photo by: AP

Bashar Assad told Al-Hayat newspaper in an interview published Tuesday that the U.S. created chaos in every place it entered.

“Is Afghanistan stable? Is Somalia stable? Did they bring stability to Lebanon in 1983?” Assad asked, referring to U.S. intervention in Lebanon’s 15-year civil war that ended in 1990.

In Washington, the State Department issued a strong rebuttal. Spokesman P.J. Crowley charged that Syria is destabilizing Lebanon by supplying arms to militants and issuing arrest warrants for Lebanese officials.

“These activities by Syria directly undermine Lebanon’s sovereignty and directly undermine Syria’s stated commitments to Lebanon’s sovereignty and independence,” Crowley said. We believe we’re playing a constructive role in the region, and we believe that Syria is not.

The tough retort appeared to run counter to U.S. efforts to improve ties with Syria.

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