Peace and Justice Post

by Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff, Dissident Voice,  July 4th, 2010

There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.

–– Charles Dickens

We face what appears to be a military industrial media empire so powerful and complex that truth is mostly absent or reported in disconnected segments with little historical context. A case in point: the London Times reported on June 5, 2010, that American troops are now operating in 75 countries. Has President Obama secretly sanctioned a huge increase in the number of US Special Forces carrying out search-and-destroy missions against al-Qaeda around the world? If so, this increase is far in excess of special-forces operations under the Bush administration and reflects how aggressively Obama is pursuing al-Qaeda behind his public rhetoric of global engagement and diplomacy. Somehow this information didn’t make it into the US media.

Continues >>

Statement in the House by Rep. Tim Johnson of Illinois on funding the war in Afghanistan.

I stand in opposition to this rule and in sincere but deep opposition to this $63 billion massive spending bill, and particularly the war spending component of the bill.

I speak, I believe, on the behalf of the hundreds of thousands of brave men and women who serve America in the Middle East with neither a defined objective nor the ability to assess victory or defeat; and on behalf of families of our military personnel around the world who have lost their fathers or their mothers or their sons or their daughters in a valiant but shortsighted effort and battle that can never be won; and on behalf of the American taxpayers who have seen more than $1 trillion poured into an attempt to fight terror, where there is not even a remote relationship to the welfare of the American people; and really, also, on behalf of the innocent children who have had the misfortune to simply be in the ever-changing line of fire and the vicinity of terrorists who move effortlessly from Iraq to Somalia to Yemen to Paraguay to Afghanistan like the Whack-a-Mole at the county fair in the form of unconventional and ill-defined tribal warfare that 2,000 years have taught us we simply cannot fight.

I think it was November of 1952, when I was about 6 years old, that Charles Schultz and his Peanuts comic strip came out with the annual saga where, every year, Charlie Brown comes up to the football, and Lucy tells Charlie Brown year after year, “Just one more time, we’ll let you kick ball.” And each year, she pulled the football out, only to find Charlie Brown on his rear end.

I would suggest to you, Mr. Speaker and Members of the House, in this somewhat stretched analogy, that a series of Commanders-in-Chief are Lucy, and we’re Charlie Brown, and the football is the illusive promise of a goal that we simply cannot reach. We cannot force a culture to accept our values, and we cannot impose Western democracy on a people who don’t understand or accept it and whose leadership is corrupt and antidemocratic beyond repair. And we cannot continue to spend the billions and, arguably, trillions of dollars of the hardworking men and women in this country in a venture that has no objective, no end game, and no proximate connection to the well-being of our Nation.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker and Members of the House, we cannot afford economically, we cannot afford militarily, and we cannot afford as a people to pass this bill. This President who, frankly, won an election based on his strong antiwar message, like many of his predecessors, asked us one more time to spend a few more billion dollars — in this case $38 billion — and a few thousand more men and women in an effort to kick the football just one more time. It simply isn’t doable.

I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker and Members of the House, that this rule underlies a bill that the vast majority, I believe, of the American people don’t want. I represent a district in central Illinois, and I think I speak in many ways for middle America. I voted for the authorization of force in Iraq and, frankly, Afghanistan; and I believe, like many of us, I may have questioned my vote. But I believe that we’re the greatest nation on Earth, thanks in large part to the generations of fighting men and women who have given their lives to this great cause and democracy and this great Nation of ours.

As we prepare to celebrate our independence in a few days, I think I speak on behalf of the average American citizen who says, For what? What is this money being expended for? Why are we doing it? And what’s the end game? And I would suggest to you, Mr. Speaker and Members of the House, that there is no end game, and I would respectfully ask that this rule and the underlying bill be defeated.

Jews For Justice For Palestinians,

Dear Friends,

Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan is the mother of Smadar Elhanan, 13 years old when killed by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem in September 1997. Below is Nurit’s speech made on International Women’s Day in Strasbourg earlier this month. Please listen to the words of a bereaved mother, whose daughter fell victim to a vicious, indiscriminating terrorist attack. I wish her words will enter the hearts of all peace seekers in our troubled and divided world.

For better days,
Professor Avraham Oz Department of Hebrew and Comparative Literature University of Haifa

WOMEN
Nurit Peled-Elhanan

Thank you for inviting me to this today. It is always an honour and a pleasure to be here, among you (at the European Parliament).

However, I must admit I believe you should have invited a Palestinian woman at my stead, because the women who suffer most from violence in my county are the Palestinian women. And I would like to dedicate my speech to Miriam R’aban and her husband Kamal, from Bet Lahiya in the Gaza strip, whose five small children were killed by Israeli soldiers while picking strawberries at the family`s strawberry field. No one will ever stand trial for this murder.

When I asked the people who invited me here why didn’t they invite a Palestinian woman, the answer was that it would make the discussion too localized.

Continues >>

The allegations of torture by British soldiers in Iraq bear chilling comparison with America’s worst excesses

• Phil Shiner and Tessa Gregory
• The Guardian/UK, Saturday 3 July 2010

The inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa is due to report by the end of the year. It will detail how Mousa died in Iraq in September 2003, allegedly brutalised by British soldiers in a “free for all”; and how it was that he and nine other men in the same incident were allegedly hooded, forced into painful stress positions, and deprived of sleep, food and water.

The Guardian article this week, which reported that many more civilians died in army custody than previously thought, should shock the conscience of the nation. The evidence of Lieutenant Colonel Mercer to the inquiry reveals that as early as May 2003 – four months before Mousa’s death – there were “a number of deaths in custody” with “various units”. It appears there were, by then, at least nine deaths. The Ministry of Defence refuses to answer questions from us or the Guardian as to where, how or why these Iraqis died, and refuses to confirm or deny whether any of these deaths were ever investigated and if so with what outcome.

Continues >>

Despite the fact that the youngest of Israel’s victims on the flotilla — 19-year old Furkan Dogan — was an American citizen, we cannot rely on our American leaders in this pursuit of justice.

But the War Machine Grinds On and On and On

By Ann Jones, ZNet, July 2, 2010
Source: TomDispatch
Change Text Size a- | A+

Ann Jones’s ZSpace Page

President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy isn’t working.  So said a parade of Afghanistan watchers during the flap over war commander General Stanley McChrystal’s firing.  But what does that phrase, so often in the media these days, really mean?  And if the strategy really isn’t working, just how can you tell?

The answers to these questions raise even more important ones, including: Why, when President Obama fires an insubordinate and failing general, does he cling to his failing war policy? And if our strategy isn’t working, what about the enemy’s? And if nothing much is working, why does it still go on nonstop this way?  Let’s take these one at a time.

Continues >>

By Ivan Eland, Cosortiumnews.com, June 30, 2010

Editor’s Note: The war in Afghanistan is now the longest in U.S. history, but that doesn’t mean it’s anywhere close to reaching a favorable conclusion — or for that matter, any conclusion at all.

For seven years, President George W. Bush treated the conflict as second fiddle to the neocon war of choice in Iraq, while President Barack Obama has thrown in more troops but seems more interested in dodging neocon accusations of “softness” than actually convinced the escalation is a good idea, a quandary addressed by Ivan Eland in this guest essay:

In contrast to World War II and Desert Storm — which had clear goals, even though those of the latter were limited — the war in Afghanistan resembles the Spanish-American War and the Vietnam War.

Continues >>

Middle East Online, July 1, 2010


Watch, hunt and kill

Spy in the sky rakes in millions for Israel as more armies use pilotless planes to watch and to attack.

By Charly Wegman – PALMAHIM AIR BASE (Israel)

The eyes in the sky of modern warfare, whose hallmark hum is heard over Afghanistan, Iraq and Gaza, drones are a key weapon and a major cash earner for Israel, the world’s largest exporter of pilotless planes.

With more than 1,000 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) sold, Israel has raked in several hundred million dollars over the years.

Israel’s fleet ranges from aircraft which fit in a soldier’s backpack to planes the size of a Boeing 737 that can fly as far as Iran.

The flying robots can be used to watch, hunt and kill.

Interest is such that a Turkish military delegation reportedly made a secret trip to Israel last month for training in remote piloting of the Heron drone, despite a major diplomatic crisis between the two countries.

“It’s good for reaching remote targets, wherever it’s needed,” an officer who would only identify himself as Captain Gil, said, pointing to an IAI Heron on the tarmac of the Palmahim Air Base, near Tel Aviv.

The plane, known in Israel as Shoval — “trail” in Hebrew — has a 16-metre (52-foot) wingspan, can fly at an altitude of 30,000 feet (almost 10 kilometres) and can stay in the air for 40 hours.

It carries an array of sensors and radar systems, transmits information in real time, and is equipped with missiles.

“It can stay above a target a long time, without fear a pilot might get shot,” said Gil as the bright sunlight reflected on the aircraft’s silver fuselage.

The sound of a drone circling over the base could be heard. A monotonous hum that is all too well known to residents of the Gaza Strip, where at times it is followed by a deadly air strike.

UAVs played a key role in the devastating 22-day offensive against the Palestinian enclave which Israel launched on December 27, 2008 in a bid to end daily rocket fire against the Jewish state.

Drones — US-made in this case — are also widely used in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, both to monitor and to strike.

Turkey says it is using Israeli drones, in coordination with the Americans, for surveillance in northern Iraq, the rear base for attacks on Turkish targets by the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK.)

Israel prides itself on the cutting-edge technology of its UAVs, but human rights groups said scores of Palestinian civilians were killed by drones during the Gaza offensive.

Israel insists it does all it can to avoid civilian casualties, while Gil stressed that drones are crucial to troop protection.

Gil, who sports aviator-type sunglasses, is a pilot, but one who sits outside the plane — behind a computer in an office set up in a container.

Take-off and landing is generally done manually, with the computer taking over, unless manually overridden, for the rest of the flight.

Israel recently unveiled the Heron TP, also known as Eitan — Hebrew for “strong” — a 4.5-ton flying behemoth about the size of a 737 whose autonomy puts it well within range of Iran — the Jewish state’s arch-enemy.

At the other end of the scale is a hand-sized and -launched flying machine.

“Israel is the world’s leading exporter of drones, with more than 1,000 sold in 42 countries,” says Jacques Chemla, head engineer at the UAV department of the state-owned Israel Aircraft Industries, the flagship of the country’s defence industry,

That, he says, brings in about 350 million dollars a year.