Peace and Justice Post

The News International, May 14, 2008

GAZA CITY: Two Palestinian civilians and three militants were killed Wednesday in Israeli military raids on the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical officials said.

One was a17-year-old riding his bike, doctors added. At dawn Israeli troops pushed into southern Gaza to target rocket-launching squads, the army said.

Two Palestinian militants were killed in air strikes near the town of Khan Younis, Palestinian doctors said.

Hours later, Israeli tanks raided an area northeast of Gaza City in pursuit of militants who opened fire on troops near the border with Israel, the army said.

Soldiers returned fire, killing the youth and another civilian, and one militant, Palestinian doctors said.

Dissident Voice, May 13, 2008

by Robert Weitzel

To misunderstand the nature and threat of evil is to risk being blindsided by it . . . An evil unchecked is the prelude to genocide. – Dr. Mordechai, The Ezekiel Option

There are over 70 million human beings living in Iran, 17.5 million of whom are under the age of fifteen. Hillary Clinton vowed to attack Iran and “totally obliterate” the majority of the Persian race in a furnace of primordial fire should the Iranian government attack Israel with nuclear weapons, which they do not now possess or are likely to for some time — if ever.

Hillary’s “final solution” to the Persian problem bests Adolf Hitler by a magnitude of ten.

Missing in Clinton’s campaign trail pandering to America’s pro-Israel lobbies and the mushrooming evangelical Christian Zionist movement is the “inconvenient truth” that Israel has the most modern and most deadly army in the Middle East thanks to an annual $3.5 billion in American aid — one third of the U.S. aid budget.

Israel is also a major nuclear power in the region — though it refuses to admit it — with up to 200 nuclear warheads and the inter-continental-range ballistic missiles to deliver them and, according to the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment, also has an undeclared offensive chemical and biological warfare program.

Israel, along with India and Pakistan are the only three nations not to have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran is a signatory of the NNPT, by the way.

The most inconvenient truth, however, is that Israel has a 60-year history of attacking — with American-supplied armaments — any Arab country it perceives as a threat, nuclear-armed or slingshot-armed alike. Israel’s bombing of Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility in 1981 comes to mind as an example of the former, its shelling of Gaza the latter.

Israel can and will “ preemptively defend” itself against Iran, the country that a February 2008 International Atomic Energy Agency report concluded has not diverted nuclear material to non-peaceful purposes. Unfortunately for the 70 million Persians in Hillary’s bombsight, Iran’s biggest liability is its president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — but then the US is equally burdened.

So the real truth behind Clinton’s “final solution” to the Persian problem or John McCain’s “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, Iran” off-key hyperbole is not simply a “David and Goliath” struggle for survival, but is instead a cynical exploitation of the unholy marriage of convenience between fanatical Jewish Zionists who want a Muslim-free Eretz Israel in order to fulfill Old Testament prophecy and bring about the first coming of their Messiah and fanatical Christian Zionists who want the entire Middle East in flames to fulfill New Testament prophecy and bring about the Second Coming of their Messiah.

Jewish Zionists need the money and the political clout of the Christian Zionists. Christian Zionists need the Semitism and the chutzpah of the Jewish Zionists. Politicians need the votes that both groups can deliver, which in religion-drenched America is a hefty consignment.

Continued . . .

WSWS, May 14, 2oo8

By Alex Lantier

The official death toll from the massive May 12 earthquake in China’s Sichuan province continued to mount yesterday, even though reports from the most heavily devastated regions have not yet emerged. The quake, centered in a mountainous area near Sichuan’s borders with Tibet and Qinghai province, registered 7.9 on the Richter scale and was felt as far away as the Thai capital of Bangkok, 1,900 kilometers to the south.

According to the state-run Xinhua wire service, Sichuan province Vice-Governor Li Chengyun announced a death toll of over 12,000 people, with 26,206 wounded and over 9,400 people buried under debris. Li said the partial count included 161 in the Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, 7,395 in Mianyang City, 2,648 in Deyang City, 959 in Sichuan’s capital of Chengdu and 700 in Guangyuan City. Other casualties were reported in cities including Ya’an, Ziyang and in the Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.

It is feared that these figures will increase substantially, as troops and rescue workers are only beginning to arrive near the epicenter of the quake, and current casualty figures do not count these areas. Soldiers who arrived in Yingxiu, near the epicenter, said they could document 3,000 survivors in the town’s population—variously reported at 9,000 to 12,000 inhabitants.

Continued . . .

Axis of Logic, May 12, 2008 By Robert Thompson,

Others have already commented at length on the wonderful and courageous declaration by over a hundred Jews in the United Kingdom, including that of playwright Harold Pinter published in The Guardian on 30th April 2008, whereby they explain, in a manner so often hidden from the public in the English-speaking world, why they will not be celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, known to millions of us as al Naqba (the Disaster).

I wish to take my turn in saluting each and every one of the signatories of this magnificent document, which gives the lie to all those who claim that every Jew must necessarily support the brutalities and inhumanity of Zionism.

These great signatories point out the embarrassing facts behind the foundation of this racist and discriminatory state, which involved the past and continuing massive ethnic cleansing, which seem to have been successfully hidden from the consciousness of so many in the USA and the United Kingdom, who still believe the ridiculous suggestion that, in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, Palestine was an unoccupied part of the world. Although they already enjoyed Jaffa oranges before 1948, many British people accepted the myth that Palestine, once famous for being the land flowing with milk and honey, as well as for the quality of its olive-oil and of its citrus fruits, had become an unexploited desert, criss-crossed by groups of poverty-stricken nomads leading hungry flocks of sheep and goats in search of sparse grass.

Continued . . .

Press TV, May 13, 2008

US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has revealed that Washington plans to engage in a number of ‘exclusive’ activities against Iran.

“We’re being very aggressive in going after the networks in Iraq, and the individuals who are interfering or supplying weapons from Iran,” said Gates Tuesday.

“We have a number of other activities under way. We take it very seriously. But at this point our activities are focused pretty exclusively inside Iraq,” he added.

He accused the Islamic Republic of arming Iraqi insurgents and claimed it had ‘awakened them (the Iraqis) to the reality of the magnitude of Iranian meddling in Iraq.’

Washington accuses Tehran of destabilizing Iraq by ‘funding, training, arming and directing’ Iraqi insurgents.

Tehran has rejected the allegations, stating that ‘foreign interference in Middle Eastern affairs’ is the main reason behind regional violence.

The Iraqi government, however, has disputed the US allegations against Iran, saying there is no evidence that suggests Tehran is stoking the sectarian violence with money, weapons and paramilitary training.

“There is no conclusive evidence,” said Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh on May 4 in response to reports that a number of Iranian-made rockets were seized in raids against Iraqi fighters.

SBB/HGH

We are not engaged in a religious conflict with Jews; this is a political struggle to free ourselves from occupation and oppression

The Guardian, May 12, 2008
Bassem Naeem

As the Palestinian people prepare to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Nakba (“catastrophe”) – the dispossession and expulsion of most of our people from our land – those remaining in Palestine face escalating aggression, killings, imprisonment, ethnic cleansing and siege. But instead of support and solidarity from the western media, we face frequent attempts to defend the indefensible or turn fire on the Palestinians themselves.

One recent approach, which seems to be part of the wider attempt to isolate the elected Palestinian leadership, is to portray Hamas and the population of the Gaza strip as motivated by anti-Jewish sentiment, rather than a hostility to Zionist occupation and domination of our land. A recent front page article in the International Herald Tribune followed this line, as did an article for Cif about an item broadcast on the al-Aqsa satellite TV channnel about the Nazi Holocaust.

In fact, the al-Aqsa Channel is an independent media institution that often does not express the views of the Palestinian government headed by Ismail Haniyeh or of the Hamas movement. The channel regularly gives Palestinians of different convictions the chance to express views that are not shared by the Palestinian government or the Hamas movement. In the case of the opinion expressed on al-Aqsa TV by Amin Dabbur, it is his alone and he is solely responsible for it.

It is rather surprising to us that so little attention, if any, is given by the western media to what is regularly broadcast or written in the Israeli media by politicians and writers demanding the total uprooting or “transfer” of the Palestinian people from their land.

Continued . . .

Foreign Policy In Focus, May 9, 2008

Aaron Glantz

 Eighteen American war veterans kill themselves every day. One thousand former soldiers receiving care from the Department of Veterans Affairs attempt suicide every month. More veterans are committing suicide than are dying in combat overseas.

These are statistics that most Americans don’t know, because the Bush administration has refused to tell them. Since the start of the Iraq War, the government has tried to present it as a war without casualties.

In fact, they never would have come to light were it not for a class action lawsuit brought by Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth on behalf of the 1.7 million Americans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The two groups allege the Department of Veterans Affairs has systematically denied mental health care and disability benefits to veterans returning from the conflict zones.

The case, officially known as Veterans for Common Sense vs. Peake, went to trial last month at a Federal Courthouse in San Francisco. The two sides are still filing briefs until May 19 and waiting for a ruling from Judge Samuel Conti, but the case is already having an impact.

“Shh!”

That’s because over the course of the two week trial, the VA was compelled to produce a series of documents that show the extent of the crisis effecting wounded soldiers.

“Shh!” begins one e-mail from Dr. Ira Katz, the head of the VA’s Mental Health Division, advising a media spokesperson not to tell CBS News that 1,000 veterans receiving care at the VA try to kill themselves every month.

“Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see in our medical facilities. Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?” the e-mail concludes.

Continued . . .

by Sara FloundersGlobal Research, May 9, 2008
Worker’s World
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Part I

NATO held a three-day meeting in Bucharest, Romania, on April 2 to 4, attended by George W. Bush and other heads of state. It was a stormy affair. This alliance of imperialist military powers, long dominated by the U.S., was divided on several proposals being pushed by Washington.

One was the proposed further expansion of NATO eastward to include Ukraine and Georgia, which were once part of the Soviet Union and sit on the border of Russia. Another was the plan to place a U.S. ballistic missile system in the Czech Republic and Poland, the heart of Europe. Another was Washington’s recognition of independence for the Serbian province of Kosovo.

The most immediate problem for Bush, however, was resistance to his call for NATO to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan. The problem of finding more youth to be cannon fodder exposed the obvious weakness of this rapidly expanding military alliance. The U.S. is so bogged down and overstretched in Iraq that it is twisting the arms of other NATO members to fill the gap as the Pentagon’s situation in Afghanistan deteriorates.

However, there is mass opposition in Europe to increased military spending and especially to bailing out the U.S. in Iraq or Afghanistan by sending troops.

In poll after poll in both Eastern and Western Europe, the overwhelming majority of the people have opposed deeper military involvement. Politicians know that agreeing to send troops to either Iraq or Afghanistan is political suicide.

U.S. imperialism has grand and ominous plans to surround Russia and China with U.S./NATO bases. The plans look great on paper and in war games. But putting troops on the ground is becoming more and more difficult.

Continued . . .

Socialist Worker, May 13, 2008
David Barsamian

David Barsamian has been working in radio since 1978 and is the founder and director of Alternative Radio, the independent award-winning weekly series based in Boulder, Colo. He is the author of several books, including Propaganda and the Public Mind: Conversations with Noam Chomsky and The Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting.

The following is a speech Barsamian presented in April at The Attic, a “space for the living arts” in New Delhi, India.

PAKISTAN IS routinely quoted in the American media as “the world’s most dangerous country.” You can turn to Newsweek, USA Today, Business Week and other magazines and newspapers, and it’s always described in those dire terms. How it became that way is never explained. It just happened. It may be something in the genes of Pakistanis, that they are naturally inclined to be dangerous.

But I think it’s important to talk about U.S. involvement in Pakistan. Because that explains a lot of why Pakistan is the way it is today. According to the Human Rights Commission of that country, which just issued its annual report, Pakistan is a nation that is “half alive.” And 2007 is called “one of the worst years in Pakistan’s history, if not the worst.”

So I think it’s crucial to know a little bit about the background of the country. And it’s interesting how India factors in this and especially the U.S. When Pakistan was created out of British India in 1947, the U.S. was at that time kind of dividing the world into different regions that it would seek to dominate. South Asia was part of that focus. The major focus was West Asia for obvious reasons: oil. But South Asia was also of great interest to Washington.

Continued . . .