Peace and Justice Post

The Anti-Empire Report

By William Blum, Foreign Policy Journal, Oct 2, 2010

For many years I have not paid a great deal of attention to party politics in the United States. I usually have only a passing knowledge of who’s who in Congress. It’s policies that interest me much more than politicians. But during the 2008 presidential campaign I kept hearing the name Barack Obama when I turned on the radio, and repeatedly saw his name in headlines in various newspapers. I knew no more than that he was a senator from Illinois and … Was he black?

Then one day I turned on my kitchen radio and was informed that Obama was about to begin a talk. I decided to listen, and did so for about 15 or 20 minutes while I washed the dishes. I listened, and listened, and then it hit me … This man is not saying anything! It’s all platitude and cliché, very little of what I would call substance. His talk could have been written by a computer, touching all the appropriate bases and saying just what could be expected to give some hope to the pessimistic and to artfully challenge the skepticism of the cynical; feel-good language for every occasion; conventional wisdom for every issue. His supporters, I would later learn, insisted that he had to talk this way to be elected, but once elected — Aha! The real genuine-progressive, anti-war Barack Obama would appear. “Change you can believe in!” Hallelujah! … They’re still saying things like that.

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NATO is scrambling to do damage control tonight after a number of weekend incidents led to the deaths of Afghan civilians, including several children. US troops killed two civilians, including an eight year old girl in a shooting in Logar Province, while NATO air strikes in the Helmand Province killed another three civilians and wounded a number of children. NATO troops also shot and killed a child in Kandahar Province.

All told 13 civilians were killed over the weekend in a series of attacks by both NATO and Taliban forces. The US has formally apologized for the Logar killings, while NATO insists the Kandahar killings were because they thought a “suspected insurgent” was “perceived as about to fire a weapon.”

The attacks are just the latest in a growing number of high profile civilian killings by NATO troops in recent weeks, which seems to have spiked since Gen. David Petraeus took over command. Petraeus was widely expected to tone down the rules of engagement regarding killing civilians, citing damage the rules were doing to troop morale.

Indeed, the attacks weren’t the biggest killings of children by NATO forces in the past week. On Wednesday NATO helicopters in the Ghazni Province attacked and killed four children. Though at the time they identified them as “insurgents,” they later conceded that they were all civilians. 13 other civilians had also been killed earlier in the week in anotherattack on a major civilian target.

By Jonathan Cook, The Counterpunch, Oct 4, 2010

The disclosure of the details of a letter reportedly sent by President Barack Obama last week to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, will cause Palestinians to be even more sceptical about US and Israeli roles in the current peace talks.

According to the leak, Obama made a series of extraordinarily generous offers to Israel, many of them at the expense of the Palestinians, in return for a single minor concession from Netanyahu: a two-month extension of the partial feeze on settlement growth.

A previous 10-month freeze, which ended a week ago, has not so far been renewed by Netanyahu, threatening to bring the negotiations to an abrupt halt. The Palestinians are expected to decide whether to quit the talks over the coming days.

Netanyahu was reported last week to have declined the US offer.

The White House has denied that a letter was sent, but, according to the Israeli media, officials in Washington are privately incensed by Netanyahu’s rejection.

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Basil Fernando, AHRC , Oct 2, 2010

What Sarath Fonseka and Sam Rainsy have in common is that they are the most popular opposition leaders in their countries and that they have been jailed for that very reason. Political popularity is treated as a serious crime in both countries, where the ruling parties are aspiring to create one party rule.

Here are some similarities between the political styles followed by the ruling regimes in both countries:

The ruling regimes enjoy more than 2/3 majority in their parliaments. Hun Sen in fact has 90 seats out of 123 in the parliament, in which Sam Rainsy’s party has 26 seats. When the first election was held after the Pol Pot period May 1993, the opposition party won the election and the party of the present Prime Minister Hun Sen lost despite of their having the territorial control of the largest part of Cambodia. However, through subsequent elections, Hun Sen’s party has gradually gained control of power and the Funcinpec party, which was the party created by the former king, Norodom Sihaneuk. From having the majority, the Funcinpec party, was reduced to two seats in 2008. The next opponent to the ruling party was Sam Rainsy and now he is being jailed on flimsy charges. The ruling regime controls the courts and is able to get whatever verdicts it wants on political matters.

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Immanuel Wallerstein, Commentary No. 290, October 1, 2010

This past month, two important events marked the world of Social-Democratic parties. In Sweden, on September 19, the party lost the election badly. It received 30.9% of the vote, its worst showing since 1914. Since 1932, it has governed the country 80% of the time, and this is the first time since then that a center-right party won reelection. And to compound the bad showing, a far right, anti-immigrant party entered the Swedish parliament for the first time.

Why is this so dramatic? In 1936, Marquis Childs wrote a famous book, entitled Sweden: The Middle Way. Childs presented Sweden under its Social-Democratic regime as the virtuous middle way between the two extremes represented by the United States and the Soviet Union. Sweden was a country that effectively combined egalitarian redistribution with internal democratic politics. Sweden has been, at least since the 1930s, the world poster child of Social-Democracy, its true success story. And so it seemed to remain until rather recently. It is a poster child no more.

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By Jason Leopold, Consortiumnews.com, October 2, 2010

Editor’s Note: It’s always easier to condemn abuses by an “enemy” state than to acknowledge similar crimes committed by your own. But that it is the commitment that the United States and other signatories to anti-torture agreements undertook.

Instead, President Obama has followed the hypocritical political course of shielding his U.S. predecessor from any accountability for torture, murder and other crimes, while adopting a moralistic posture against Iran, as Jason Leopold notes in this guest essay:

This week, in a burst of stunning hypocrisy, President Barack Obama signed an executive order that imposes sanctions on Iran for human rights abuses and targets eight Iranian government and military officials who are blamed for the torture, abuse and murder of citizens who protested Iran’s 2009 presidential election.

“The United States is strongly committed to the promotion of human rights around the world, including in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the White House said in an accompanying news release. “As the President noted in his recent address to the United Nations General Assembly, human rights are a matter of moral and pragmatic necessity for the United States.”

A State Department fact sheet added, “protesters [in Iran] were detained without formal charges brought against them and during this detention detainees were subjected to beatings, solitary confinement, and a denial of due process rights at the hands of intelligence officers under the direction of [Iran’s then-Minister of Military Intelligence Qolam] Mohseni-Ejei.

“In addition, political figures were coerced into making false confessions under unbearable interrogations, which included torture, abuse, blackmail, and the threatening of family members,” the State Department said.

Yet, President Obama has taken no action against U.S. officials who under the direction of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld imprisoned without charge “war on terror” detainees at secret black sites and at Guantanamo Bay.

These prisoners also were subjected to beatings, solitary confinement and a denial of due process. They, too, were coerced into making false confessions under unbearable interrogations, which included torture, abuse, blackmail, and the threatening of family members.

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Middle East Online, Oct 1, 2010

Dangerous religious illiteracy in America was evident after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Religious leaders from multiple faiths–Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and others–quickly realized the dangers involved. The latest surveys show how little has changed, note John L. Esposito and Sheila B. Lalwani.

In a single vote, the Texas State Board of Education managed to undermine Christian-Muslim relations, hamper religious literacy and impose ignorance on our kids at a time when they need knowledge to live and work in a competitive and integrated world.

Board members–no foreigners to strange and bizarre decisions–voted to scrub textbooks of anything that smacked of a “pro-Islam” or “anti-Christian” bias. Texas textbooks, by their sheer number, end up setting nationwide standards.

The resolution, passed in a 7-6 vote, refers to moments in history when Christianity is portrayed unfavorably and Islamic events that could be deemed unfavorable are “glossed over.” The vote endangers relations between Christians and Muslims at a time when Islamophobia is becoming a worrying phenomenon across America.

Statistics from the Pew Center on Religion & Public Life find that 38 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of Islam, compared to 30 percent who reported a positive view. Another study conducted by The Washington Post found Islam’s unfavorable image creeping up to 49 percent among Americans.

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The Anti-Empire Report

By William Blum, Foreign Policy Journal, Oct 2, 2010

In one of his regular “Reflections” essays, Fidel Castro recently discussed United States hostility towards Venezuela. “What they really want is Venezuela’s oil,” wrote the Cuban leader.[1] This is a commonly-held viewpoint within the international left. The point is put forth, for example, in Oliver Stone’s recent film “South of the Border”. I must, however, take exception.

In the post-World War Two period, in Latin America alone, the US has had a similar hostile policy toward progressive governments and movements in Guatemala, Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Grenada, Dominican Republic, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Cuba, and Bolivia. What these governments and movements all had in common was that they were/are leftist; nothing to do with oil. For more than half a century Washington has been trying to block the rise of any government in Latin America that threatens to offer a viable alternative to the capitalist model. Venezuela of course fits perfectly into that scenario; oil or no oil.

This ideology was the essence of the Cold War all over the world.

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By Altaf Hussain,

BBC News, Srinagar

The authorities have been enforcing a curfew for weeks

A prominent video journalist has been admitted to hospital in Srinagar in Indian-administered Kashmir after being severely beaten by police.

Merajuddin, who works as a cameraman for APTN, was hit with a baton in the neck and fell unconscious. Police also beat his son and colleague, Omar Meraj.

There have been a number of such attacks on local journalists recently.

The authorities have declared a curfew following violent anti-India protests in which scores have died since June.

The two journalists had been heading to the state assembly in Srinagar when they were stopped by police, who refused to let them pass despite their having curfew passes.

When Merajuddin insisted on speaking to their officer, the policemen became angry and beat him.

The assault happened while Chief Minister Omar Abdullah was apologising in the assembly for the seizure of newspapers by the police in Srinagar on Friday morning.

He told members the police had seized the newspapers without his knowledge.

The media is under increasing pressure in the state.

One senior journalist, Sheikh Mushtaq, said: “We have never felt so insecure as now. We not only face a threat to our lives but are also humiliated off and on.”