Peace and Justice Post

British troops are paying the blood price in Helmand, as they did in Iraq, of a now officially subservient relationship

Seumas Milne, The Guardian/UK, July 21, 2010

The catastrophic illusions and acts of official betrayal at the heart of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are being progressively exposed, one after another. In London, the former head of MI5 Eliza Manningham-Buller confirmed to the Iraq inquiry this week that the security service had indeed warned Tony Blair’s government that aggression against Iraq, “on top of our involvement in Afghanistan”, would violently radicalise a generation of young Muslims and “substantially” increase the threat of terror attacks in Britain.

Continues >>

On the eve of the latest policy conference, top US and NATO officials have arrived in Kabul to pledge their support to the continuation of the Afghan War, with promises of an unending commitment to propping up the Karzai government going forward.

At the center of this new pledges, which look remarkably the same as the old pledges, is a new drawdown date in 2014. The date, which had actually been bandied about for over a year, was ostenisbly “leaked” in recent days to a number of key media outlets.

The date, which is “conditions-based” and “non-binding,” appears to be designed to accomplish little but replacing the July 2011 drawdown date, which has now been entirely abandoned by administration officials. The only apparent advantage to the 2014 date is that it is some four years hence and therefore far enough way as to not need to be immediately disavowed by any but the most hawkish officials.

So officials are now expressing their confidence in the 2014 victory, and the eventual security handover that will come at some point after it. In the meantime, the death toll in war continues to rise, and the promises of progress continue to seem more distant and more detached from reality.

By Michael Winship, Consortiumnews.com, July 2010

Editor’s Note: The war in Afghanistan grinds on with a political imperative now more in control of U.S. policy than any military expectation of a meaningful “victory.” Put simply: No one wants to be accused of “losing” on the original front in the “war on terror.”

For Official Washington – both the politicians and the pundits – it remains easier to throw more money and troops at the problem than acknowledge that the war in Afghanistan was a huge mistake, as Michael Winship notes in this guest essay:

A recent headline on the New York Daily News Web site was blunt: “In case you’ve forgotten,” it read, “we’re at war.”

The story was about the deaths of six Americans in Afghanistan in five separate attacks and one accidental explosion, all on the same day. The day before, coalition forces had mistakenly killed six Afghan civilians when an artillery strike missed its target; the day after, the Taliban would kill eleven Afghan policemen and a district governor.

It is the deadliest year of the war in Afghanistan, now the longest in American history.

Continues >>

The two-state solution is dead. There is no longer any hope for peace or justice in this solution, if there ever was to begin with. There was a time when Israel could have accepted a Palestinian state along the pre-June 1967 armistice line, with minor and mutually agreed upon revisions of the final border, and thereby “secure” its “gains” from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

But the “Jewish state” passed up this long-standing opportunity by rejecting the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people and deliberately sabotaging all efforts by the international community to seek a final resolution by implementing the consensus on a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Continues >>

By James Gundun, Global Research, July 21, 2010

Mounting unrest in Kashmir and the drivers behind it can appear endlessly complex. Simplification is needed for that reason alone, yet the conflict also breaks down naturally. The vast roots that disrupt Kashmir and Jammu were bundled together on July 8th by India’s Cabinet Committee on Security when it backed a “maximum crackdown” in Srinagar, the regional capital. Omar Abdullah, chief minister of Kashmir and Jammu, argued, “I had to put a stop to this cycle of violence,” a futile fallacy.

Maximum protests ensued giving way to renewed violence and casualties. Nine months ago Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chairman of Kashmir’s leading political bloc, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, allegedly met with Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram in New Delhi to re-ignite the peace process. Now he tells reporters from under house arrest, “People have lost faith. The constituency of peace is shrinking day by day… The peace process is in tatters.”

Continues >>

By Alistair Keely, Press Association, The Independet/UK, July 21, 2010

AP

A visible-light image of the Tarantula nebula as seen with the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope (left) along with a zoomed-in visible-light image from the Very Large Telescope (right)

Richard Norton-Taylor, Index on Censorship,  15 Jul 2010

As secret files reveal the UK’s role in abuse and torture, Richard Norton-Taylor addresses Labour’s legacy of secrets, spin and cover-up

“Drop it”, ministers strongly advised, as I sensed the government was not coming clean about their role in “extraordinary rendition”, the US practice of secretly transferring terror suspects to places where they were likely to be tortured.  It was the familiar attempt to smother an embarrassing tale, a practice at which New Labour and its spin doctors were particularly adept. The first indications from the Con-Lib coalition are that it intends to unearth its predecessor’s activities. William Hague, the foreign secretary, has delivered what he promised before the general election — a judge-led inquiry into allegations of complicity in torture.

What was astonishing was the lengths to which ministers and officials went to cover up their activities. As they persisted in a shameless pursuit of secrecy, they blamed journalists and conspiracy theorists, fed, they claimed, by human rights groups and misguided lawyers, for not letting go.

Continues >>

“Senator Mitchell will … work to support the objectives that the President and I believe are critical and pressing in Gaza, to develop a program for humanitarian aid and eventual reconstruction,” said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on January 22, 2009, the day George Mitchell was named Special Envoy for Middle East Peace.

Continues >>

CounterCurrents.org, 19 July, 2010

Interview responses by Richard Falk to questions regarding his Annual Reports as Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian Territories on behalf of UN Human Rights Council

CJP: Upon whose request was this report submitted and what are its main findings?

RF: As Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories (West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip) on behalf of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), I have an obligation to submit annually two reports, one to the HRC and the other to the General Assembly. The most recent report was to the HRC, covering the period June-December 2009, and is addressed to Israeli violations of human rights law and international humanitarian law in the course of its occupation of the Palestinian territories occupied during the 1967 War. It does not cover violations of human rights law by the Palestinian Authority (PA) on the West Bank, nor by Hamas in Gaza. The report’s presentation to the HRC had been originally scheduled for presentation and discussion in March 2010 but was postponed at the initiative of the (PA) that had sought revision of the original text. Some modifications were made, but the PA continued to be dissatisfied, but their attempt to postpone again the consideration of the report was rejected by the parliamentary official who determines the HRC agenda. The report was presented and discussed at a session of the HRC on June 14, 2010. There was no serious friction although the substance of the report was generally criticized by the representative of the United States, who also complained that the framework of inquiry was biased because it only referred to Israeli violations.

Continues >>