Peace and Justice Post

Three protesters, including a girl, were killed Sunday in Kashmir, taking to nine the number of young people shot dead by Indian security forces in three days of street protests, police said.

The latest casualties mark the deadliest phase in the Muslim-majority Himalayan territory since June 11, when turmoil erupted after a 17-year-old student was killed by a police tear-gas shell.

Sunday’s deaths took place in Pampore town, about 13 kilometres (eight miles) south of Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir.

Witnesses said security forces again opened fire at a funeral procession of one of the two dead men near Pampore, killing a 17-year-old girl.

The two men were killed when security forces opened fire with rifles when thousands of residents in Pampore defied a strict curfew, blocked the region’s main highway and attacked security personnel.

Residents said they were holding a peaceful protest against Indian rule when security troops fired on them.

However, the shooting brought even more people out onto the streets.

“Call for OIC, UN”

Senior detained Kashmiri Hurriyet leader, Syed Ali Gilani, has condemned the killing of peaceful protestors in indiscriminate firing of Indian police, terming it as “the worst kind of Indian state terrorism”.

Syed Ali Gilani in a statement issued in Srinagar said, he” appealed to the Organization of Islamic Conference to call an urgent meeting to address worsening situation in the occupied territory and take steps to stop genocide of Kashmiris by Indian forces.”

The veteran Hurriyet leader also “urged the United Nations to implement its resolutions on Kashmir,” Kashmiri Media Service reported.

A total of 26 civilians, mostly young men in their teens or early 20s, have died in protests with Indian fire in the Muslim-majority Kashmir since June.

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. Kashmiris say fight against India since it rejected to hold referendum in Kashmiri territory.

India maintains a massive troop presence in Kashmir.

Agencies

GK NEWS NETWORK

Srinagar, Aug 1: The killing spree across the Valley including those who were shot dead in Pampore and Khrew on Sunday has evoked strong condemnation.

TROOPERS GIVEN LICENCE TO KILL: MIRWAIZ
The chairman of Hurriyat (M) Mirwaiz Umar Farooq has castigated the police and paramilitary CRPF troopers for what he said killing innocent protesters across Kashmir.
“The government has handed over the state to trigger happy forces. There is no accountability and complete lawlessness,” Mirwaiz said.  He urged the international community to come forward and impress upon India to stop killings of civilians here.
“The people at Pampore and other places were staging peaceful protests to achieve the right to self-determination. However, the troopers killed them with impunity,” he said.

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By Gareth Porter, Consortiumnews.com, July 31, 2010

Editor’s Note: Despite guiding the United States into the bloody quagmires of Afghanistan and Iraq, Washington’s neoconservatives remain extremely influential, still dominating the op-ed pages, the key think tanks and the TV talk shows.

And, the neocons have not given up their dream of extending the reach of the U.S. war machine into Iran on behalf of Israel’s right-wing Likud government, as investigative historian Gareth Porter notes in this guest essay:

Reuel Marc Gerecht’s screed justifying a prospective Israeli bombing attack on Iran coincides with the opening of the new Israel lobby campaign marked by the introduction of House Resolution 1553 expressing full support for such an Israeli attack.

What is important to understand about this campaign is that the aim of Gerecht and of the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu is to support an attack by Israel so that the United States can be drawn into direct, full-scale war with Iran.

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by Nat Hentoff, Cato.org, July 29, 2010

News of our pilotless killer drones hurling more Hellfire missiles abroad has largely vanished from our press, despite President Obama’s fixation on this questionable aspect of our war on terrorism.

An impressive exception to the media inattention is investigative reporter Adam Entous of Reuters.

He reports that, contrary to the administration’s claim that only high-level terrorists researched are targeted, “the CIA has killed around 12 times more low-level fighters than mid-to-high-level al-Qaida and Taliban leaders since the drone strikes intensified in the summer of 2008.”

Another of his sources, who was involved in our robotic warfare and has since left the service, told him that the CIA’s targeting of low-level foot soldiers worries him because “it degrades the notion we’re going after serious threats to the United States.”

Middle East Online, July 30, 2010

Israeli soldiers detain foreign peace activists

Israel urged to halt targeted killings, torture, army impunity, blockade of Gaza Strip.

GENEVA – A UN panel of experts called Friday on Israel to fall in line with international norms on civil rights and to take action against targeted killings, torture and impunity for security forces.

The UN Human Rights Committee also called for an end to the blockade of Gaza and questioned the independence of Israel’s own inquiry into a naval raid on a Gaza-bound relief supply ship in which nine Turkish nationals dead.

In conclusions on its review of Israel’s application of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the committee also urged a halt to restrictions on Palestinians and raised concerns about discrimination.

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By James Petras, Information Clearing House, July 30, 2010

Western societies and states are moving inexorably toward conditions resembling barbarism; structural changes are reversing decades of social welfare and subjecting labor, natural resources and the wealth of nations to raw exploitation, pillage and plunder, driving living standards downward and provoking unprecedented levels of discontent.

We will proceed by outlining the economic political and military processes driving this process of decay and decomposition and follow with an account of the mass popular responses to their own deteriorating conditions.  The deep structural changes accompanying the rise of barbarism become the basis for considering the prospects for socialism in the 21^st century.

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By Badri Raina, ZNet,  August 01, 2010

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Badri Raina’s ZSpace Page

(Bhartiya Janata Party statement on the investigations into the Gujarat crimes).

I

As the skeletons tumble in droves out of the  house of horrors in Gujarat, right-wing Hindutva  forces  which now openly  include the  “main opposition Party” in  parliament, the BJP, is up in arms at what it suits them  to call a  Congress-inspired attack on  “patriotic Indians.”

As per revelations thus far available from the investigations,  ordered  not by the Congress Party, or the government of the day, but by the Supreme Court of India,  these “patriotic Indians”  include   business bigwigs, extortionists,  extra-judicial  killers among the highest echelons of the Gujarat police, and no less than  the Minister of State for Home Affairs of Guajrat (read  Interior Ministry), now arrested, and under questioning in custody.

Among the documents of the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) is a poser (Annexure C) as to the accountability, to use the most parliamentary of terms, of the  Chief Minister and Home Minister, one Narendra Modi, since all transfer files of senior Indian Police Service and State Service officers go to him per protocol  for decision.

The question:  did he know why these officers were being either removed or relocated while the  extra-judicial killings were underway?  Who all might he have been in  steady communication with  during the  days and hours when some 21 citizens were liquidated, all accused of  having “provenly” connived, don’t you know,  to kill Modi, the saviour of Hindutva from the “Islamist” onslaught,  and  the heroic emblem of the idea of  “Natonalism”?

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The past few years have proven to be particularly awful for the Palestinian people. The suffocating Israeli siege of Gaza, despite some slight loosening, continues to this day, with Egypt’s active support and Washington’s tacit approval; Israel’s 2008-2009 attack on Gaza, was the single most devastating event for the inhabitants of the Occupied Territories since 1967; Israel’s settlement program proceeds unabated; Israel’s attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla has raised the level of violent confrontation further; and Israel’s crackdown on domestic dissent, particularly among its Palestinian citizens, has reached unprecedented levels with the arrest of activists and threatened measures against Arab MPs.

The Israeli Occupation Archive asked Noam Chomsky for his assessment of the current situation and future prospects.

IOA:  The Goldstone report, the Abu Dhabi Mossad assassination, the Gaza Flotilla attack: all these have severely weakened Israel’s international reputation — in Europe, in Turkey, in Egypt. How has the US-Israeli relationship fared through all this, and how has this affected the larger US strategic project in the Middle East and its efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Noam Chomsky: I would add the Gaza attack itself, quite apart from the Goldstone report. It was so savage that it led to a substantial change in attitudes among the general population, though not noticeably among the political class or the media. But governmental relations haven’t changed, and no change should have been expected. Washington strongly supported the Gaza attack, and participated directly in it. The attack was clearly timed so that Obama could keep to the hypocritical “there’s only one president so I cannot comment” stance. It ended, surely by plan, at the moment that he took office, so that he could adopt the posture of “let’s look forward and forget the past,” very convenient for partners in crime. The media and commentators — unanimously, to my knowledge — evaded the central fact about the war: the issue was not whether Israel had a right to defend itself from rockets, but whether it had the right to do so by force. It surely did not, because the US-Israel knew that peaceful means were available but refused to pursue them: accepting Hamas’s offer to renew the cease-fire, which Hamas had observed even though Israel did so only partially. That suffices to establish the criminality of the attack. Disproportionality in the use of force is a minor crime by comparison. The other events you mention had little impact in the US, with one exception: there is now some concern in the US military and intelligence that support for Israeli crimes and intransigence may harm military operations in the field. General David Petraeus quickly retracted his comments to this effect, but others are expressing the same concern, among them Bruce Riedel, an influential long-time senior intelligence official and presidential advisor. Israeli intelligence understands this problem very well. Mossad chief Meir Dagan warned the Israeli Knesset that they are treading on thin ice for this reason. That might prove significant.

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Web manager Dilshat Perhat was sentenced to five years in jail by an Urumqi court

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Amnesty International, 30 July 2010

uruknet.info, July 29, 2010

Source: Russia Today

Reports have emerged that the UK used depleted uranium weapons during the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. A UK defense official has reportedly admitted using highly controversial ammunition. “UK forces used about 1.9 metric tons of depleted uranium ammunition in the Iraq war in 2003,” UK Defense Secretary Liam Fox said in a written reply to the House of Commons Thursday, Iranian Press TV reported, citing the Kuwait News Agency. It is alleged that a joint inquiry by Iraq’s environment, health and science ministries uncovered more than 40 sites across the war-torn country contaminated with high levels of radiation. The use of uranium ammunition is widely controversial because of potential long-term health effects. The US and UK have allegedly used up to 2,000 tons of such ammunition during the war. Continues >>