Peace and Justice Post

Azzaman, September 13, 2010

One in every six Iraqis is an orphan. That is the toll Iraqi children are paying in a country which is supposedly under the occupation and protection of the world’s only superpower.

Not all the orphans are the result of the violence that swept the country in the aftermath of the 2003-U.S. invasion.

But the invasion has caused untold miseries for Iraqis, surpassing those inflicted on them by their former tormentors, the clique that ruled Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

There were unconfirmed reports that Iraq has turned into a country of orphans. But the exact figure only became a reality recently, when the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs made public its own statistics.

The statistics points to dangerous demographics with grave social, health and economic consequences for a country which still lacks basic infrastructure.

These are the voiceless Iraqis. Their U.S. occupiers have almost cut and run and their Iraqi rulers are not so much concerned about their livelihood and well-being.

In a violent country like Iraq, where U.S. marines with bullet-proof jackets and thick armor, cannot feel safe, there is not so much room for an orphan.

Hundreds of thousands of them live on the street. There is no social security system to look after them.

Continues >>

The Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are reported to be going well — or as well as they can go with the United States maintaining its insistence that no attempts at Palestinian unity are made.

This is Israel’s demand, conveyed to the lobby, enforced by President and Congress, and then rammed down the throat of even the forces within the Palestinian Authority who want to coordinate with Hamas.

But, forgetting that for a moment, the big worry about the current talks continues to be what will happen after September 26th, when Israel’s partial settlement freeze ends. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu says that he won’t continue the freeze while President Mahmoud Abbas says he will end the talks if the freeze lapses.

The whole settlement freeze issue is one of the three most unnecessary obstacles to peace . The other two are the belief, on the part of some Palestinians, that the 1948 refugees and their progeny are returning to Israel (rather than to a Palestinian state) and Netanyahu’s insistence that Palestinians recognize Israel “as a Jewish state.”

Continues >>

Indian troops shot dead on Friday two more people in Kashmir in firing on demonstrators who condemned army killings and India after the calls for new protests outside Indian army garrisons next week.

One of Kashmir’s most influential leaders, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, has called for peaceful sit-in protests on Tuesday outside army camps across Kashmir, defying threats of Indian troops to “shoot on sight” in a three-month long uprising in one of the world’s most militarised regions.

Indian troops killed more than 90 Kashmiri civlians in a summer of protests that Kashmiris says peaceful, fuelling anti-India anger in the Muslim-majority valley.

Kashmiris see India as an “occupier” and has called for independence since decades.

In 1948, the United Nations adopted a resolution calling for a referendum for Kashmir to determine whether the Himalayan region should be part of India and Pakistan. But India has rejected to hold referendum in Kashmiri territory.

“The sit-in protests have never been peaceful … I would appeal to the Hurriyat (the separatist grouping) to call off its call,” army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel J. S. Brar told reporters late on Thursday.

The death toll so far includes children, women and teenagers, nearly all killed by police bullets.

Hours after the army statement troops shot dead two protesters and wounded at least eight. Hundreds of protesters defied curfew in west and north Kashmir, police said.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, faced with criticism of not dealing with the protests seriously, held a meeting with the government and opposition parties on Wednesday, but all it decided was only to send a delegation of politicians to Kashmir.

Geelani, a leader of the umbrella grouping All Parties Hurriyat Conference, has demanded India declare Kashmir an international dispute, withdraw hundreds of thousands of troops from the region and release all political prisoners as a precondition for talks.

“It seems both Srinagar and New Delhi are clueless, there is no end to the violence. Indians should act sincerely before it is too late,” Mohammad Shafi, a former Kashmiri lawmaker, said.

The continuing police shootings, imposed curfews and the cycle of strikes and as a response has shut down schools, colleges and offices, stopped newspapers from being printed, and made food and medicine scarce.

Reuters

Kashmir Watch, Sep 16, 2010

By Zaheerul Hassan

Despite curfew massive protests which started on Eid Day from Srinagar have extended to all over the Kashmir including major districts Anantnag, Pampore and Sopore towns. The masses refused to obey occupied forces and defied the curfew. Since last  Saturday (September 11,2010)  till today death toll rose up  to 95, more than 2000  injured and about  3000 freedom fighters have been abducted by Indian occupied forces. The properties of innocent Kashmiri’s people are being burnt by the local police with the help of extremists Hindus in Jamu valley and all other parts of Hindu’s dominated areas. In this regard occupied Indian forces are providing them fully support.

The army aggression in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) is even worst than Israeli brutality in Palestine.  Pakistan, China and Arab countries have strongly condemned the ongoing Indian barbarism against women, children, young’s and old individuals. Cries of women and children can be heard from every second house of the valley. Thus in retaliation, young girls and boys whenever find chance fight back the forces with stone throwing. As Parvaiz Bukhari, a journalist, said early this week that  the stones flung randomly by protestors have become “the voice of a neglected people” convinced that the world deliberately ignores heir plight There only demand now is “liberation of Kashmir and it accession to Pakistan”. Pakistani and Iranian news channels have been banned by state authorities, reported a Koran desecration in the United States.  It is also notable here that local authorities have forcefully stopped the publishing of newspaper since September 13, 2010.

Continues >>

By Mike Marqusee, Morning Star Online, September 17, 2010

Swaziland is a small country with a big problem. The 1.1 million inhabitants of the land-locked southern African kingdom live under the thumb of one of the world’s last absolute monarchies, a venal and repressive regime whose plunder of the country is systematic and comprehensive.

Ma’an News, Sep 17, 2010

A relative mourns over the body of Iyad As’ad Shelbaya at the Thabit Thabit Hospital on 17 September 2010. [MaanImages]TULKAREM (Ma’an) — Israeli forces entered the home of a Hamas leader in Tulkarem on Friday morning and shot him three times in the neck and chest before withdrawing, family members said. Medics at the Thabit Thabit Hospital in Tulkarem confirmed that 38-year-old Iyad As’ad Shelbaya, a known Hamas leader, was dead, killed by three bullets to the neck and chest. Shelbaya lived in the Nur Shams refugee camp east of Tulkarem. Security sources said he was assassinated during a raid on his home at 2:30 a.m. on Friday morning. Officials said several armored vehicles entered the area to carry out the assassination. Palestinian forces were said to have coordinated with the Israeli military in getting Shelbaya’s body from his home to the hospital. Continues >>

Support for Occupation Relies on Lies and Spin

Ted Rall, Information Clearing House, Sep 15, 2010

There’s an exception. It is a limited set of circumstances. If the armies of another nation invade your country, there is no need to resort to lies to sell war. The battle is already joined. The threat is palpable. Anyone with a smidgen of patriotism and/or the instinct of self-preservation will rush to enlist.

Mostly, this does not happen. It sort of happened in 1941, with Pearl Harbor. But Hawaii, itself recently seized by U.S. marines without the thinnest veneer of legality, was merely a distant possession. It sort of happened in 1848 when Mexican troops crossed the Rio Grande (after being deliberately provoked by the Americans). It definitely happened in 1812. But you see the point: every war the United States has fought, at least since 1945 (really since 1814), has been just for fun.

Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Gulf War I, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq—the U.S. didn’t have to fight any of them. They were optional. At minimum, they were wars of imperialism. Mostly, they were wars of aggression: undeclared, immoral, violations of international law.

Lies and spin are essential tools of “leaders” who want to convince the public to support wars for fun and profit.

Continues >>

Philippine Times,  September 15, , 2010
(Nasouh Nazzal – Gulf News)

Israelis never actually ceased construction on the West Bank or in East Jerusalem and the number of home units in these areas has grown dramatically during the so-called moratorium.

Khalil Al Tafakji, the head of the Maps and Colonies Department in East Jerusalem, said that colony construction in the West Bank has not ceased — even during the freeze.

He also said more than 13,000 homes for Israeli colonists in the West Bank would soon be built, in addition to two new colonies to be set up near Nablus and in the Jordan Valley area.

Al Tafakji said the Israelis had never actually ceased construction on the West Bank or in East Jerusalem and that the number of home units in these areas had grown dramatically during the so-called moratorium.

Continues >>

By Fidel Castro, ZNet, September 15, 2010

Although several articles on this subject were published before and after September  1st, 2010, on that day the Mexican daily La Jornada published one of great impact entitled El holocausto gitano: ayer y hoy (The gypsies’ holocaust: yesterday and today) which reminds us of a truly tragic history.  Without adding or deleting a single word from the information contained in the article, I will quote some lines referring to some events that are really touching. Neither the West nor -most of all- its colossal media apparatus have said a single word about them.

“1496: boom of humanist thinking.  The Rom peoples (gypsies) from Germany are declared traitors to the Christian nations, spies paid by the Turkish, carriers of the plague, witches and warlocks, bandits and children kidnappers.

Continues >>

The president brings back the credibility gap

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES ‘BARRY O’BOMBER’: President-elect Barack Obama began playing basketball at 10 after his father gave him a ball. Now at 47, he remains an avid player.

The discovery of tapes of Sept. 11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh being interrogated in Morocco has drawn the attention of Justice Department investigators. The tapes were made in 2002 at a facility the CIA used near Rabat and purportedly were found “under a desk” at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. Ninety-two other such tapes are said to have been destroyed.

The Justice Department‘s dogged quest to root out alleged war criminals raises the question of when it will begin investigating the Obama administration. Mr. Obama‘s increasingly public dirty little secret is that he has widened the use of covert actions against terrorists that were pioneered by his predecessor, President George W. Bush. Mr. Obama‘s secret war is disturbing mainly to his left-wing base, whose members apparently believed the sanctimonious rhetoric of the early days of the administration, when it seemed that war-crimes show trials against members of the Bush national security team were imminent.

That notion of targeting the previous administration faded quickly, in part because it would have destroyed the gossamer fabric of trust necessary for the intelligence community to operate – and also because Mr. Obama discovered that there are significant advantages to waging a covert war against terrorism. Much of what is being done in the name of the United States would not fit well with Mr. Obama‘s finely cultivated internationalist image. Best to keep it out of the public eye. Official secrets mean never having to say you’re sorry.

Continues >>