Peace and Justice Post

Robert Naiman, The Huffington Post, Aug 16, 2010

575. That’s how many U.S. soldiers have lost their lives in the Afghanistan war since Barack Obama became President at noon on January 20, 2009, according to the icasualties.org website, which tracks U.S. soldiers’ deaths using reports received from the Department of Defense — and which is widely cited in the media as a source of information on U.S. deaths.

According to the same website, 575 is also the number of U.S. soldiers who lost their lives in the Afghanistan war during the Presidency of George W. Bush.

Therefore, total U.S. deaths in Afghanistan have doubled in Afghanistan under President Obama, and when the next U.S. soldier is reported dead, the majority of U.S. deaths in Afghanistan will have occurred under President Obama.

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Editorial,

The Guardian/UK, August 16, 2010

When the nuclear whistleblower, Mordechai Vanunu, was released from prison in 2004 after serving 18 years, 12 of them in solitary confinement, he said he was ready to start a new life. The authorities in Israel were not. He was charged with breaking the terms of his parole which forbade him from speaking to foreigners, a restriction which can be traced to the emergency regulations of the British Mandate. A week ago Vanunu was released once again, after serving 10 weeks for that so-called offence. He said he hoped the prime minister and the head of Shin Bet would solve the problem of having to rearrest him by letting him leave the country. The idea that 24 years after he leaked details and pictures of Israel’s nuclear bomb programme to the Sunday Times, and six years after he completed his sentence, this junior technician from Dimona would still have sensitive secrets up his sleeve is plainly ludicrous. It is one that no serious Israeli military analyst accepts. He survived his vindictive spell in isolation, and his pariah status as Israel’s most reviled man, with his head unbowed. As Daniel Ellsberg, the man who released the Pentagon Papers has said, Vanunu is the preeminent hero of the nuclear era. By telling the truth, and revealing that his country’s stockpile was much larger than the CIA and others had guessed, he certainly caused it mild problems 24 years ago, when Norway announced a ban on exports of heavy water. He causes no problems now. Israel must allow Vanunu to go.

ERIC MARGOLIS, QMI Agency, Toronto Sun, Aug 16, 2010

George Orwell wrote: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

A true journalist’s job is to expose government wrongdoing and propaganda, skewer hypocrites, and speak for those with no voice. And wage war against mankind’s two worst scourges: Nationalism and religious bigotry. Not to lick the boots of government.

I’ve always felt kinship for free thinkers, rebels, and heretics.

That’s why I am drawn to the plight of Pte. Bradley Manning who apparently believed Ernest Hemingway’s dictum: “Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”

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by South Asia Solidarity Initiative, CommonDreams.org, Aug 14, 2010

by Chris Hedges, truthdig.com, Aug 16, 2010

Time is running out for Israel. And the Israeli government knows it. The Jewish Diaspora, especially the young, has a waning emotional and ideological investment in Israel. The demographic boom means that Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories will soon outnumber Jews. And Israel’s increasing status as a pariah nation means that informal and eventually formal state sanctions against the country are probably inevitable.

Desperate Israeli politicians, watching opposition to their apartheid state mount, have proposed a perverted form of what they term “the one-state solution.” It is the latest tool to thwart a Palestinian state and allow Israel to retain its huge settlement complexes and land seizures in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The idea of a single state was backed by Moshe Arens, a former defense minister and foreign minister from the Likud Party, in a column he wrote last month in the newspaper Haaretz asking “Is There Another Option?” Arens has been joined by several other Israeli politicians including Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin.

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By Peter Symonds, wsws.org, Aug 16, 2010

A lengthy article in the New York Times on Sunday entitled “A Secret Assault on Terrorism Widens on Two Continents” has provided a glimpse into the extent of the Obama administration’s covert wars. Obama has not only continued, he has expanded the murderous operations that were waged under the banner of the “war on terror” by the CIA and Pentagon during the Bush administration.

As the authors explain: “In roughly a dozen countries—from the deserts of North Africa, to the mountains of Pakistan, to former Soviet republics [in Central Asia] crippled by ethnic and religious strife—the United States has significantly increased military and intelligence operations, pursuing the enemy using robotic drones and commando teams, paying contractors to spy and training local operatives to chase terrorists.”

Obama has dramatically intensified the CIA’s drone missile attacks against alleged insurgents inside areas of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan. The White House has “approved raids inside Somalia,” it has “carried out clandestine operations from Kenya,” and it has collaborated with European allies in covert operations in North Africa, including a recent French strike in Algeria.

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By Badri Raina , ZNet,  August 13, 2010

Change Text Size a- | A+ Badri Raina’s ZSpace Page

“Kashmir may be conquered by the force of spiritual merit but not by the force of soldiers.”

(Kalhana Pandit)

I

So total has been the loss of hegemony of  Kashmir’s  elected  representatives, in government and in the legislature, over the last two months, and so  desperately brutal the recourse to coercive subjugation  of fearless young anger on the streets of the valley, that if ever there was a time to say  resistance to authority (sic) deserves to be rewarded with what it seeks, it has been now.  If the prospect, that is, of the secession of the valley—since other parts of the state of Jammu & Kashmir desire, contrarily, not secession but more complete integration with the Union of India– were not fraught with  incalculable negative consequences not just for India and Pakistan, but for the inhabitants of the valley itself.

To that I shall return.

Just the other day, the Home Minister of India made two significant averments in parliament.  One that the Union recognizes that the Accession of the state of Jammu & Kashmir was a “unique one”; and, two, that, apart of all other things, the Republic and its successive governments had failed to keep promises made to the people of Jammu & Kashmir.

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