Peace and Justice Post

by Eric Walberg, Dissident Voice, October 6th, 2010

Obama has just lost his close friend and chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who is making the unusual transition from national to municipal politics. He is also losing his closest adviser, David Axelrod, (pragmatist Emanuel described their difference as prose versus poetry) and his mentor and director of the National Economic Council, Larry Summers.

Why are Obama’s three closest advisers — all Jewish — leaving? There is no pat answer. Axelrod is no friend of Summers, having suggested in an email the latter would be more comfortable in the “cafeteria at Goldman Sachs”. He claims he is homesick. Obama’s Keynesianism probably finally got to Summers, who prefers tax cuts. Emanuel, a former congressman, a talented ballet dancer, son of an Irgun terrorist, and an Israeli soldier during the first Gulf war against Iraq, leads us to the real answer.

As a very, very strong Zionist (dual citizen? sayan?), he is Israel’s canary in the White House. Israel boycotted Obama’s UN speech at the Millennium Goals Summit in September, and has subjected Obama to dose after dose of humiliating treatment, the latest when Netanyahu asked for the pardon of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard (serving a life sentence) in exchange for a temporary halt in settlement expansion. Netanyahu defiantly visited Pollard in jail in 2002 and he is celebrated as a hero in yearly commemorations in Israel. There seems to be an eerie replay of 1991, the last time the White House seriously tried to stop the settlements. The Israel lobby abandoned Bush then and destroyed him in the 1992 elections.

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Editorial, The Nation, Oct 6, 2010

It is becoming pathetic to see the Pakistani state whimpering its protests against the spiralling aggression against its territory and people by NATO and the US. The government finally saw fit to register a protest with NATO HQ in Brussels while Pakistani security forces blocked only one, an done wonders why, of two vital NATO supply routes – a mere symbolism rather than an actual act of reciprocal hostility. Even worse was President Zardari’s request to the CIA Chief not to breach Pakistan’s sovereignty. He should have refused to meet the CIA Chief.

Given how NATO has now directly targeted the Pakistan military by attacking an FC post, this is effectively an act of naked aggression. So it has become incumbent upon the Pakistani state to order its military to retaliate in kind. We have had the FATA tribesmen protest the drone strikes and there is a general view that acts of terrorism will probably increase in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after these NATO attacks.

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Declan Walsh in Islamabad, The Guardian, Oct 3, 2010

By K. Ratnayake, wsws.org, Oct 5, 2010

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse, as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, last week confirmed a second court martial conviction against former army commander Sarath Fonseka for failing to follow military procurement procedures.

Fonseka, who had been held at the navy headquarters’ complex since his arrest on February 8, was shifted to Welikada prison in Colombo city on September 30. The military court sentenced him to 30 months hard labour.

Fonseka’s imprisonment is part of the government’s broader attack on democratic rights. By convicting his main rival in the January presidential election, Rajapakse has sent a signal that he will crack down on any political opposition to his government.

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“The President is an elected king,” wrote Randolph Bourne nearly a century ago, “but the fact that he is elected has proved to be of far less significance … than the fact that he is pragmatically a king.”

Bourne thereby identified a central truth of modern American politics: Stripped to its essence, our democracy has become an elaborate process of conferring enormous power on a single individual. What we choose to call an inauguration is more accurately a coronation. Nominally a chief executive, the president today occupies a position more akin to that of emperor, and Americans both expect much and demand much of their emperor.

To be “the most powerful man in the world” is to be simultaneously worshiped and despised. To occupy the Oval Office is to become the modern-day equivalent of a Sun King, commanding deference, while also becoming the subject of endless gossip, envy, jealousy, and intrigue, all to be reported at length and ad nauseam by Bob Woodward.

What lends this arrangement a semblance of legitimacy is the expectation that our president-monarch knows how to wield power effectively. Through the exercise of royal prerogatives, the king demonstrates his worthiness for high office.

Should a president demonstrate an absence of mastery—if he comes across as a weakling or a ditherer—profound dysfunction results. Recall the Carter era. Jimmy Carter’s inability to resolve the Iran hostage crisis reduced him to a figure of contempt and left Americans with a sense that the country itself was adrift. In short order, they stripped Carter of his crown.

Yet presidential weakness—even an inkling of weakness—can have international as well as domestic implications. This is notably the case in matters related to national security. If the occupant of the Oval Office appears less than fully in command, friend and foe alike will wonder who exactly is in charge.

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By Noam Chomsky, In These Times, Oct 5, 2010

Of all the “threats” to world order, the most consistent is democracy, unless it is under imperial control, and more generally, the assertion of independence. These fears have guided imperial power throughout history.

In South America, Washington’s traditional backyard, the subjects are increasingly disobedient. Their steps toward independence advanced further in February with the formation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, which includes all states in the hemisphere apart from the U.S. and Canada.

For the first time since the Spanish and Portuguese conquests 500 years ago, South America is moving toward integration, a prerequisite to independence. It is also beginning to address the internal scandal of a continent that is endowed with rich resources but dominated by tiny islands of wealthy elites in a sea of misery.

Furthermore, South-South relations are developing, with China playing a leading role, both as a consumer of raw materials and as an investor. Its influence is growing rapidly and has surpassed the United States’ in some resource-rich countries.

More significant still are changes in Middle Eastern arena. Sixty years ago, the influential planner A. A. Berle advised that controlling the region’s incomparable energy resources would yield “substantial control of the world.”

Correspondingly, loss of control would threaten the project of global dominance. By the 1970s, the major producers nationalized their hydrocarbon reserves, but the West retained substantial influence. In 1979, Iran was “lost” with the overthrow of the shah’s dictatorship, which had been imposed by a U.S.-U.K. military coup in 1953 to ensure that this prize would remain in the proper hands.

By now, however, control is slipping away even among the traditional U.S. clients.

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The Israeli soldiers boarded at night in international waters, which means that they were by definition aggressors who cannot claim to have acted in self-defense.

Photo Credit: freegazaorg

Published less than two months after Israeli commandos boarded an international aid flotilla bound for Gaza and killed nine activists, Midnight on the Mavi Marmara is, in the words of editor Moustafa Bayoumi, “the first book about the attack,” but “will likely not be the last.” This collection of some four dozen essays from eyewitnesses and “activists, novelists, academics, analysts, journalists, and poets,” serves many purposes. Some essays are expressions of simple outrage. Others probe more deeply into Israel’s broader political strategy in the region and its human costs for Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. Author and Harvard scholar Sarah Roy’s essay offers a detailed and rigorous accounting of Gaza’s humanitarian and economic woes, while well-known academic and blogger Juan Cole’s excellent contribution emphasizes the deeper problem of Palestinian statelessness, the political fact of which the Gaza blockade and even the Israeli occupation itself are merely symptomatic.

But perhaps most urgently, and certainly most befitting a work so quickly assembled after the incident, the book’s eyewitness accounts from activists aboard the flotilla and essays from their sympathizers represent an attempt to recapture a narrative of the event. As their testimonies indicate repeatedly, Israeli soldiers confiscated laptops, cameras, and other recording devices when they arrested and detained the activists for several days. This enabled Israeli public relations officials to fill a vacuum of information about the event and the parties involved with a media campaign described by filmmaker and flotilla activist Iara Lee as “aggressively dishonest.” Every eyewitness account in the book attests to several key facts. The activists carried no weapons. The Israeli soldiers boarded at night in international waters, which means that they were by definition aggressors who cannot claim to have acted in self-defense. They fired on the flotilla before boarding and without warning, and several of those killed were shot multiple times from close range in the back or back of the head.

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Like many others who have made comment on the verdict of the Allahabad High Court on the several suits pertaining to title over the disputed site in Ayodhya, I also have available to me only the excerpts of the operative parts of the Judgement (s) that have seen print thus far.

Having read these with care, and repeatedly, alongwith most commentaries that have appeared, and listened with despair to the many debates on the electronic channels, after some excruciating hours of befuddlement and reflection, I had better get my word in for what it is worth.  Not a great deal, I suspect.

I agree with most that the honourable court seems to have with deliberation chosen to operate rather more like a problem-solver than a legal/juridical entity.  Attempting thereby to resolve issues that the other branches of the State have thus far failed to resolve.  “We decided to take the risk despite some saner elements advising us against it,” Justice S.U.Khan has reportedly said in his Preamble,  adding that the “landmines” needed to be finally removed, even if it meant to venture “where angels fear to tread.”

Now, for long years I have expressed chagrin at those homo sapiens who mope and mull—indeed secretly live off the problems they eternally grumble about—and admiration for those others who trouble themselves to find solutions.

The tricky part, though, can be that sometimes the answers that are found compound the problems rather than solve them. And it is now my view that something of this nature may have been accomplished by the honourable judges, even if against their best intentions.  Not that intentions  can ever be demonstrable  facts. Like the gods, they must be taken on faith.

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