Peace and Justice Post

news-journalonline, March 11, 2008

By PIERRE TRISTAM
ESSAYS

Quick test. Which of the following were acts of terrorism: a) Al-Qaida’s bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, which killed 17 American sailors; b) Hezbollah’s raid on an Israeli military patrol in July 2006, killing three soldiers and capturing two, and triggering a 34-day war; c) The Hamas ambush last week of an Israeli patrol on the Gaza border, killing one Israeli soldier; d) Attacks on American troops in Iraq, which have killed about 3,500 soldiers (not including some 800 nonhostile deaths); e) None of the above.

The answer is (e) — none of the above. It may be impossible to agree on a single definition of terrorism. It’s easier to agree on what terrorism isn’t. Attacking military personnel or military installations isn’t terrorism. It’s an act of war. This definition would hold even according to the U.S. Code, which states: “The term ‘terrorism’ means an activity that involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure and appears to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, kidnapping, or hostage-taking.”

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International Herald Tribune, March 13, 2008

The Associated Press

BAGHDAD: Three American soldiers were killed in a rocket attack in southern Iraq on Wednesday, bringing to 12 the number of soldiers who have been killed in Iraq over the past three days.

Lieutenant Patrick Evans of the U.S. Navy, a military spokesman, said the three soldiers were killed in an attack on Combat Outpost Adder near Nasiriya, about 320 kilometers, or 200 miles, southeast of Baghdad. Two other soldiers were wounded.

The attack came a day after an American soldier died when a roadside bomb hit his patrol near Diwaniya, 130 kilometers south of Baghdad.

Eight soldiers were also killed in a pair of bomb attacks on Monday, the heaviest single day of U.S. casualties since September.

Three of those soldiers died in a roadside bombing in Diyala, a violent province where Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia – the Sunni insurgent group that U.S. intelligence says is primarily made up of Iraqis but is foreign-led – has been active.

The five others were killed while on foot patrol in central Baghdad. A suicide bomber approached them and detonated his explosives vest. Three Americans and an Iraqi interpreter were wounded.

The latest killings mark a significant rise in deadly attacks against Americans; the overall U.S. military death toll in Iraq is nearing 4,000, according to an Associated Press count.

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The Guardian, March 13, 2008

Elna Schor in Washington

A US military study officially acknowledged for the first time yesterday that Saddam Hussein had no direct ties to al-Qaida, undercutting the Bush administration’s central case for war with Iraq.The study, based on more than 600,000 documents recovered after US and UK troops toppled Saddam in 2003, concluded there was “no ‘smoking gun’ [direct connection] between Saddam’s Iraq and al-Qaida”.

George Bush and his senior aides have made numerous attempts to link Saddam and al-Qaida in their justification for waging war against Iraq. The US defence department attempted to bury the release of the report yesterday.

The Pentagon cancelled a briefing on the study and scrapped plans to post its findings on the internet, ABC news reported. Unclassified copies of the study would be sent to interested individuals in the mail, military officials told the network.

Another Pentagon official told ABC that initial press reports on the study made it “too politically sensitive”.

As early as 2002, military intelligence analysts discounted the administration’s claim that the Iraqi government had trained al-Qaida members to employ chemical weapons. But Bush aides continued asserting that the intelligence they received showed a link.

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John W. Whitehead | The Huffington Post, March 11, 2008

“The very rich,” observed F. Scott Fitzgerald, “are different from you and me.” And nowhere is this so-called difference more apparent than in the growing divide between poor and working class Americans and the rich who rule over us.

While working class Americans are getting poorer (there are five million more poor people today than in 2005), studies show that the rich are indeed getting richer. According to the Center for American Progress, 37 million Americans, a size roughly equivalent to the population of California, live below the official poverty line. Thus, in a nation of almost 297 million people, 12.6 percent are poor (for instance, a family of four that makes less than $19,971 is considered poor). And one out of every three Americans is considered low-income.

At the other end of the spectrum, 19 percent of the nation’s income is held by the richest one percent of Americans who, according to former New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston, have gotten richer as a result of taxes, subsidies and regulatory policies that “take from the many to give to the already superrich.”

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By Kenneth Theisen | Opednews, March 11, 2008

In the recent political battle around the Marine recruiting station in Berkeley. California there has been much confusion around the concept or slogan of “supporting the troops,” but opposing the unjust wars of the Bush regime. Many who oppose the Bush Regime wars also say they “support the troops.” Let me say it straight out — I do not support the troops and neither should you. It is impossible to support the troops of the imperialist military forces of the U.S. and at the same time oppose the wars in which they fight.

“Support for the troops” has become political cover to support the wars, and undermine the widespread opposition to them. In Congress, many of those who claim they oppose the wars, use “support of the troops” to vote for hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the wars. These politicians are political opportunists, but there are also people who genuinely oppose the war, but who also say “I support the troops.”

KILLING MACHINE

The U.S. has over 700 military bases or sites located in over 130 foreign countries. The U.S. government spends more on its military than the entire rest of the world combined. The hundreds of thousands of troops stationed overseas are not there to preserve or foster freedom and democracy as the Bush regime would like to claim, but to maintain U.S. imperialist domination of the world. If you “support the troops” in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the other more than 100 countries in which they are located, you also support U.S. hegemony in the world. I believe that the vast majority of people who say they support the troops do not wish to support U.S. imperialism, but that is what they are really doing by putting forth the slogan of “support the troops.”

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Green Left, March 8, 2008

As the Iraq war approaches its fifth anniversary on March 20th, it is important to remember why the war was started. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 the US has looked to find new ways to justify its military interventions in order to increase economic prosperity and further expand its empire.

The “communist threat” has been replaced by a new global “threat” of terrorism. The so-called “war on terror” gave the Bush administration an opportunity to wage an illegal pre-emptive war on the sovereign nation of Iraq.

But even the idea that the US can wage a “war on terror” is ridiculous: the US has arguably been the biggest perpetrator of state terrorism since the end of World War II. It would be like Adolf Hitler declaring a war on anti-Semitism. According to John Pilger, since 1945 the US has launched 72 interventions into other countries. However, it is not called terrorism when the US attacks other countries: it is disguised as “humanitarian intervention” or “liberation”.

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Bloomberg.com, March 12, 2008

By Janine Zacharia and Ken Fireman

March 12 (Bloomberg) — Admiral William Fallon‘s resignation as U.S. commander in the Middle East provoked criticism that President George W. Bush won’t tolerate dissent and fed speculation his Iran policy could become more confrontational.

“Congress needs to determine immediately whether Admiral Fallon’s resignation is another example of truth tellers being forced to the sidelines in the Bush administration,” said Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who lost to Bush in the 2004 election. “His departure must not clear the way for a rush to war with Iran.”

Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced that Fallon, 63, was resigning over perceived differences on Iran policy with the Bush administration as Fallon was starting an Iraq visit yesterday. Fallon will retire from the Navy at the end of March.

“Recent press reports suggesting a disconnect between my views and the president’s policy objectives have become a distraction at a critical time and hamper efforts” in his area of responsibility, known as Central Command, Fallon said in a statement.

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The Independent, March 12, 2008

Soon after the Second World War started Fullarton joined the RAF and was stationed in South Africa

Steve Fullarton was the last survivor of the 500 Scots who fought with the International Brigades against General Franco’s rebels in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39. Aged just 18, and halfway through his engineering apprenticeship when he crossed the Pyrenees in April 1938, he was also one of the youngest of the 2,300 men and women from the British Isles – of whom nearly one in four died – who enlisted as soldiers or medics to defend the Spanish Republic. Indeed, he had to lie about his age, since the Communist Party – the recruiting agent for the volunteers – had a policy of only accepting those aged over 21.

Fullarton was one of a family of five raised by his widowed mother in the Shettleston district of Glasgow. He made up his mind to volunteer after seeing cinema newsreel of the bombing of Spanish cities by Franco’s German and Italian allies. “There were women running around with terror in their eyes,” he recalled. “Some people could ignore it and say: ‘It’s none of my business’. I made it my business.” He watched the newsreels with mounting anger as Britain and the other democracies, by their policy of non-intervention, effectively allowed Hitler and Mussolini to topple Spain’s elected government.

Then came an encounter in a dance-hall one Saturday night with the local Communist Party organiser. Fullarton was already involved in the regular street collections of tins of food and condensed milk to send to Spain. Soon he was travelling through France with five other volunteers. With the border sealed, the group entered Spain by night along smugglers’ paths, wearing rope-soled sandals to silence their footsteps.

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Margaret Kimberley | Smirking Chimp | March 10, 2008

This is all too sick and disgusting for words. Britain’s former Prime Minister Tony Blair will teach religion at Yale University. That’s right. The man responsible for giving Bush cover in occupying Iraq and killing one million people will be affiliated with the Yale University Divinity School. I hope someone at Yale has guts enough to denounce this travesty.

It isn’t surprising that Blair can only get a job like this in America, or that the Bush family alma mater is the place where he landed. Will he ever stop sucking up to Bush? I guess not. When he tried to establish a similar arrangement at the London School of Economics faculty and students said no thank you. The British have sense enough to be embarassed by his presence. Only the Bushies would make the case for this awful man to have a decent job. If there were any justice in this world Blair would be permanently unemployed and friendless.

Blair, like Bush, is a war criminal. He shouldn’t be allowed anywhere in polite society, certainly not in a classroom with impressionable young minds. But we all know what will happen. The ambitious student will clamor to be in his presence because his courses will look good on an American resume. A letter of reference from a former British Prime Minister will look even better.

So the worst criminals in this world, government leaders, once again get a pass. Blair thinks that killing thousands is fine as long as a government run by white people does the killing. If you think I’m being harsh look at his own words.

“British troops are risking their lives trying to prevent the killing. Why should anyone feel angry about us? Why aren’t they angry about the people doing the killing?”

Gee Tony, maybe people are mad because Britain is doing some of the killing. There is more death in Iraq post occupation than there was under Saddam Hussein, and that is no mean feat.

Like his pal George Bush, Tony Blair is a terrorist. Warfare is the ultimate act of terror with the biggest body count. There is no terror group with the killing capacity of a government. Just ask Rev. Blair. He can explain it all to you.

AFP, March 10, 2008

Exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer Monday accused China of fabricating alleged plots against the Olympics, and even of scheming to carry out its own terror attacks, to blacken her community’s name.

“It’s completely untrue. All these allegations are falsified,” the separatist figurehead, who joined her US-based husband in 2005 after six years in a Chinese jail, told AFP through an interpreter.

“The real goal of the Chinese government is to organize a terrorist attack so that it can increase its crackdown on the Uighur people,” the 61-year-old head of the Uyghur American Association said.

Wang Lequan, Communist Party chief in the northwestern Xinjiang region, said Sunday that a January raid on “terrorists,” which resulted in the deaths of two militants and 15 arrests, had foiled a planned attack directed at the Games.

It was the second foiled attack linked to Muslim separatists in Xinjiang, home of the Uighur community, to be announced over the weekend.

Passengers attempted to crash a Chinese airliner on Friday that was flying to Beijing from Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital, a regional official said on Sunday.

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