Peace and Justice Post

Vice-President, shilling troupe of retired generals, deliver fantastic tales for their cause

PARIS — U.S. intelligence released a dramatic video last Thursday, supposedly taken by an Israeli spy, that purportedly showed North Korean technicians helping build a nuclear reactor in Syria.

The reactor was destroyed seven months ago by Israeli warplanes.

Until now Israel and the U.S. have remained silent about the attack. Syria claimed a warehouse was hit, but curiously said nothing more about what was an act of war. Washington offered no proof the reactor, if it was one, would have produced weapons rather than electric power. U.S. and Israeli intelligence have long stated Syria had no nuclear weapons capabilities.

Vice-President Dick Cheney and fellow neocons forced the CIA to release the James Bondish video in an effort to sabotage an impending six-nation agreement to end North Korea’s nuclear program. They bitterly oppose the deal for being too soft on Pyongyang. Neocons long have worried the possibility of North Korea selling nuclear technology to Arab states posed a potential threat to Israel.

This mysterious imbroglio also is being used by Israel’s rightwing Likud Party, a close ally of U.S. neocons, to attack political rival Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Kadima Party.

Continued . . .

By Loretta Napoleoni | Information Clearing House, April 4, 2008

Islamic finance has become the fastest-growing, most dynamic sector of global finance. Every Western-style financial product has its sharia, i.e. Islamic law, compliant instrument: microfinance, mortgages, oil and gas exploration, bridge building, even sponsorship of sporting events. Islamic finance is innovative, flexible, and potentially very profitable. “Operating in 70 countries with about $500bn in assets, it is poised to expand geometrically.” With more than one billion Muslims eager to support it, analysts project that this system will soon manage approximately 4 percent of the world economy, equivalent to $1 trillion in assets. Such figures explain the eagerness of Western banks to tap into sharia financial services. Citigroup, along with many other Western banking retailers, have opened Islamic branches in Muslim countries.

At the end of 2004, the Islamic Bank of Britain, the first bank catering to a European Muslim client base, floated its shares on the London Stock Exchange. Ironically, Western capitalism’s three major global economic crises – the 1970s oil shocks, the late 1990s Asian crisis, and 9/11 – paved the way to the ascent of Islamic finance. Unlike market economics, Islamic finance centers on the religious tenets of Islam and operates in a way to keep Muslims compliant with sharia, the religious law that comes directly from the Koran. Islamic activists, intellectuals, writers, and religious leaders have always upheld the prohibition of riba, the interest charged by moneylenders, and denounced gharar, which refers to any type of speculation. Under this belief, money must not become a commodity in itself to create more money. Islamic finance thus shuns hedge funds and private equities, because they simply multiply cash by stripping assets. Money serves as a means or instrument of productivity as originally envisioned by Adam Smith and David Ricardo. This principle is embodied in the sukuks, Islamic bonds. Sukuks always link to real investments – for example, to pay for the construction of a toll highway – and never for speculative purposes. This principle springs from the sharia’s ban on gambling as well as on the prohibition of any forms of debt and activities that trade risk.

Continued . . .

RINF, Saturday, April 26th, 2008

Reuters | Syria’s ambassador to the United States said Friday that the CIA fabricated pictures allegedly taken inside a secret Syrian nuclear reactor and predicted that in coming weeks the U.S. story about the site would implode from within.

“The photos presented to me yesterday were ludicrous, laughable,” Ambassador Imad Moustapha told reporters at his Washington residence.

He refused to say what the building in the remote eastern desert of Syria was used for before Israeli jets bombed it in September 2007.

Senior U.S. intelligence officials said Thursday they believe it was a secret nuclear reactor meant to produce plutonium, which can be used to make high-yield nuclear weapons. They alleged that North Korea aided in the design, construction and outfitting of the building.

Syria bulldozed the building’s ruins a month after it was bombed and
constructed a new, larger building in its place, leaving little or no evidence of what had been on the site.

Moustapha would not explain the purpose of the new building. But he said the lack of military checkpoints, air defenses or barbed wire fences around either building should show that it was not a sensitive facility.

So far, Syria has not allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency to
inspect the area.

Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar Ja’afari, pledged on Friday to cooperate with the IAEA and suggested that the main target of the American CIA allegations against Syria is to justify the Israeli attack against the Syrian side.

In a message to employees, CIA Director Michael Hayden praised the agency’s outstanding work, calling it a case study in rigorous analytic tradecraft, skillful human and technical collection.

Continued . . .

According to an explosive ABC News report on April 9, dozens of top-secret meetings took place in the White House, beginning in 2002, in which the president’s top advisors approved the use of torture. Those involved were members of the National Security Council’s “Principals Committee” — Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, George Tenet, and John Ashcroft. Unfortunately, however, these dramatic revelations have been largely ignored by the media and the public. Yet we now know more clearly than ever before that it is because of these senior officials — and not just Animal House on the night shift — that America is regarded around the world as a Torture Nation.

The techniques that the advisors not only approved, but reportedly even choreographed in particular cases amount to torture by any reasonable standard. Near drowning (waterboarding), sleep deprivation, subjection to temperatures of extreme cold (hypothermia), physical assault and stress positions are proscribed by international and domestic law. They are gulag tactics that have no place in a democratic society. John Ashcroft rightly asked at one point: “Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.” But according to the report, Condoleezza Rice prevailed, telling the CIA: “This is your baby. Go do it.”

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Call on India to investigate enforced disappearances and mass graves in Kashmir and Jammu

Amnesty International, April 18, 2008

Hundreds of unidentified graves – believed to contain victims of unlawful killings, enforced disappearances, torture and other abuses – have been found in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir.

Amnesty International has urged the Indian government to launch urgent investigations into the mass graves, which are thought to contain the remains of victims of human rights abuses in the context of the armed conflict that has raged in the region since 1989.

The findings appear in the report Facts under Ground, issued on 29 March by the Srinagar-based Association of the Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP). The report details the existence of multiple graves which, because of their proximity to Pakistan controlled-areas, are in areas not accessible without the specific permission of the security forces. Since 2006, the graves of at least 940 people are reported to have been discovered in 18 villages in Uri district alone.

The Indian army has claimed that those found buried were armed rebels and “foreign militants” killed lawfully in armed encounters with military forces. However, the report recounts testimonies from local villagers saying that most buried were local residents hailing from the state.

The report alleges that more than 8,000 persons have gone missing in Jammu and Kashmir since 1989. The Indian authorities put the figure at less than 4.000, claiming that most of these went to Pakistan to join armed opposition groups.

In 2006, a state police report confirmed the deaths in custody of 331 persons, and also 111 enforced disappearances following detention since 1989.

Continued . . .

An Interview with Bashir Abu-Manneh

New Politics, Vol XI No 4

New Politics: 2008 is the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of Israel and of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe. What do you see as the Israeli goal and has it changed over the years?

Bashir Abu-Manneh: Israel’s goal has been a constant: Jewish sovereignty in Palestine. Israel has always sought to expropriate as much Palestinian land as possible and to rule over as few Palestinians as possible. This has been the single most important ideological and political principle informing the practices of the dominant strand of Zionism which founded the Jewish State in Palestine against the wishes of the Arab indigenous majority. 1948 epitomizes this principle: 78 percent of Palestine was forcibly conquered and 750,000-840,000 Palestinians were systematically expelled and prevented from returning to their cities and villages (hundreds of which were completely erased) in violation of international law and of UN General Assembly resolution 194 safeguarding refugees’ right of return.

Israel bears full responsibility for destroying Palestinian society and for turning most Palestinians into stateless refugees. No Israeli denial or American diplomatic summersaults can erase this nagging and unresolved fact. Palestinians still constitute the largest refugee population in the world today: 70 percent of Palestinians, out of 10 million in all, are refugees (the American occupation of Iraq has produced around 4 million refugees and internally displaced Iraqis). For most Palestinians and Arabs, the Palestinian question is a refugee question and 1948 remains at the heart of the Arab- Israel conflict. If Israel wants real peace, it must rectify the wrongs it willfully committed in 1948, and do so in a way that is democratically acceptable to a majority of Palestinians (i.e. subject to popular referendum). There is no historical reconciliation or lasting peace without justice and national rights for the Palestinians.

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By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agenices, April 26, 2008

Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, said that his talks with the US President, George Bush, and US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, have failed in achieving any positive results.

Abbas stated that the talks failed to address the core issues of an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders and a halt of Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank.

The president added that he will be heading back to the Palestinians territories “with no, or little to show”.

Israeli Ynetnews reported that Abbas told the Associated Press that it does not seem that a peace deal would be achieved with Israel this year.

He added that one of the biggest obstacles in front of peace talks is the issue of Israel’s ongoing expansion of settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

“We demanded the US Administration to implement the first phase of the Road Map Peace Plan which talks about halting settlement expansion”, Abbas stated, “This issue is the biggest obstacle that obstructs peace talks”.

Close aides to Abbas said that he was upset on Thursday after he had lunch with the US Secretary Of State. Both were discussing the shape of the peace deal, but Rice said nothing about the Palestinian demand of creating an independent Palestinians State”.

Abbas also said that the US Administration did not offer any new proposals to advance the peace process.

So far, Israel refuses to hold talks on the final borders of the Palestinian State, Jerusalem and the Right of Return of the Palestinian Refugees. Yet, Israeli leaders always said that Jerusalem will always be the “united capital of Israel”, and they continue to reject talks on the right of return of the Palestinian refugees, and refuse to talk on border issues.

It is worth mentioning that Israel is the only sovereign state that does not have set borders as it continues to expand its settlement blocks in the West Bank, and continues to construct the illegal annexation wall in order to create a its own version of a peace deal.

On Thursday, chief Palestinian Negotiator, Dr. Saeb Erekat, said that Abbas brought the Palestinian objections to Bush, but the later did not respond directly, the Ynetnews reported. Abbas was informing Bush of the Palestinian objections on the ongoing Israeli settlement expansion.

The Ynetnews quoted Erekat as saying that “Bush told Abbas…I am focusing on the bigger scope”.

Saturday, April 26th, 2008

By Mick Meaney – RINF

The former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, has echoed calls for Western leaders to be charged with war crimes over the invasion of Iraq.

Speaking at Imperial College in London Mahathir, who was in office from 1981 to 2003, singled out US President George Bush, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australia’s former prime minister John Howard as he wants to see them tried “in absence for war crimes committed in Iraq”.

The event was organised by the Ramadhan Foundation which is a leading British Muslim youth organisation working for peaceful co-existence and dialogue between communities.

Mohammed Shafiq, spokesman for the group said: “It was an opportunity for students to put a range of questions about war crimes and the international situation. He said that people have to stop killing each other and use arbitration, negotiation and discussion as an alternative to violence, war and killing.”

Speaking about the Iraq war, Mahathir focused on “the thousands dying, the economic war, the power of oil and how we could utilise some of these tools to have a leverage against the people who commit countries to war”, Shafiq said.

Continued . . .

By Chalmers Johnson, Le Monde diplomatique. Posted April 26, 2008.

60 years of enormous military spending is taking a dramatic toll on the rest of the economy.

The military adventurers in the Bush administration have much in common with the corporate leaders of the defunct energy company Enron. Both groups thought that they were the “smartest guys in the room” — the title of Alex Gibney’s prize-winning film on what went wrong at Enron. The neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon outsmarted themselves. They failed even to address the problem of how to finance their schemes of imperialist wars and global domination.

As a result, going into 2008, the United States finds itself in the anomalous position of being unable to pay for its own elevated living standards or its wasteful, overly large military establishment. Its government no longer even attempts to reduce the ruinous expenses of maintaining huge standing armies, replacing the equipment that seven years of wars have destroyed or worn out, or preparing for a war in outer space against unknown adversaries. Instead, the Bush administration puts off these costs for future generations to pay or repudiate. This fiscal irresponsibility has been disguised through many manipulative financial schemes (causing poorer countries to lend us unprecedented sums of money), but the time of reckoning is fast approaching.

There are three broad aspects to the U.S. debt crisis. First, in the current fiscal year (2008) we are spending insane amounts of money on “defense” projects that bear no relation to the national security of the U.S. We are also keeping the income tax burdens on the richest segment of the population at strikingly low levels.

Second, we continue to believe that we can compensate for the accelerating erosion of our base and our loss of jobs to foreign countries through massive military expenditures — “military Keynesianism” (which I discuss in detail in my book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic). By that, I mean the mistaken belief that public policies focused on frequent wars, huge expenditures on weapons and munitions, and large standing armies can indefinitely sustain a wealthy capitalist economy. The opposite is actually true.

Third, in our devotion to militarism (despite our limited resources), we are failing to invest in our social infrastructure and other requirements for the long-term health of the U.S. These are what economists call opportunity costs, things not done because we spent our money on something else. Our public education system has deteriorated alarmingly. We have failed to provide health care to all our citizens and neglected our responsibilities as the world’s number one polluter. Most important, we have lost our competitiveness as a manufacturer for civilian needs, an infinitely more efficient use of scarce resources than arms manufacturing.

Continued . . .