Peace and Justice Post

Editor & Publisher, March 07, 2008 7:40 AM ET

Associated Press

NEW YORK The number of wounded soldiers has become a hallmark of the nearly 5-year-old Iraq war, pointing to both the use of roadside bombs as the extremists’ weapon of choice and advances in battlefield medicine to save lives.

About 15 soldiers are wounded for every fatality, compared with 2.6 per death in Vietnam and 2.8 in Korea.

But with those saved soldiers comes a financial price — one veterans groups and others claim the government is unwilling to pay.

Those critics also say that the tens of thousands of soldiers wounded in Iraq are part of a political numbers game, one they say undermines the system meant to care for them.

The most frequently cited figure is the 29,320 soldiers wounded in action in Iraq as of Thursday. But there have been 31,325 others treated for non-combat injuries and illness as of March 1.

“The Pentagon keeps two sets of books,” said Linda Bilmes, a professor at Harvard and an expert on budgeting and public finance whose newly published book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, was co-authored with Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

“It is important to understand the full number of casualties because the U.S. government is responsible for paying disability compensation and medical care for all our troops, regardless of how they were injured,” Bilmes said.

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Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 7 March 2008

Young relatives of newborn baby Amira Abu ‘Aser mourn during her funeral in Gaza City, 5 March 2008. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)

Compared with the international silence that surrounded Israel’s recent massacres of Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Gaza Strip, condemnation and condolences for the victims of the shooting attack that killed eight students at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva in Jerusalem has been swift.

“I have just spoken with [Israeli] Prime Minister [Ehud] Olmert to extend my deepest condolences to the victims, their families, and to the people of Israel,” US President George W. Bush said. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon added his “condemnation” and “condolences,” as did EU High Representative Javier Solana.

The day before the Jerusalem attack, Amira Abu ‘Aser was buried in Gaza. She had lived just 20 days on this earth before being shot in the head by Israeli occupation forces who attacked the house of friends she and her family were visiting. Needless to say, she had not been firing rockets at Sderot when she was killed. One of the house’s inhabitants was found the next day, shot dead and his head crushed by an army jeep, an apparent victim of an extrajudicial murder by Israeli forces.

But confirming their status in the eyes of the “international community” as less than complete human beings, neither Amira’s killing, nor any of the dozens of Palestinian civilian victims of Israel’s onslaught in Gaza have merited condemnation or condolences.

The fallacy that lies behind the differential concern for the lives of innocent Israelis and Palestinians is that the massacre in Jerusalem and the massacres in Gaza can be separated. Israeli deaths are “terrorism,” while Palestinian deaths are merely an unfortunate consequence of the fight against “terrorism.” But the two are intricately linked, and what happened in Jerusalem is a direct consequence of what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for decades.

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By Bill Van Auken | World Socialist Web Site, 7 March 2008

Nearly a week after Colombia’s cross-border raid against an encampment of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrilla movement in neighboring Ecuador, Latin America continues to confront its worst regional diplomatic and military crisis in decades. The US government and mass media have weighed in with unsolicited judgments and advice, attributing the tense standoff between Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela to the threat of terrorism to Colombia, the complicity in terrorism on the part of Venezuela and overheated animosities between the respective heads of state of these three countries.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey declared that “it’s important to recognize that the events that took place were, in fact, a response to the presence of terrorists.” Similarly, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino affirmed that Colombia “was defending itself against terrorism.”

This official reaction extends to Colombia—Washington’s principal client state in South America and the recipient of some $600 million annually in American military aid—the mantle of the Bush Doctrine, which holds that in the “global war on terrorism” such niceties as respect for sovereign borders and international law no longer apply.

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International Middle East Media Center, Thursday March 06, 2008

by Ghassan Bannoura, Saed Bannoura – IMEMC News

The Palestinian education ministry issued a report on Thursday stating that 22 Palestinian students were killed in the latest Israeli attacks on the Palestinian coastal region.

File -2008

The report, which covers the period between the 27th of February to the 3rd of March also shows that 20 students were injured in those attacks.

The report also said that during the Israeli ground offensive targeting the northern part of the Gaza strip last week the Israeli tanks partially destroyed two schools.

Also, the ministry revealed that troops attacked two schools in Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, and fired rounds of live ammunition at the two educational facilities causing significant damage.

In the West Bank, several schools in the Qalqilia area, in the northern part of the West Bank, had to shut down for a number of days as the army invaded several areas and imposed curfew barring the residents from leaving their homes.

The Palestinian Education Council issued a call for international human rights groups to protect the Palestinian school children and provide them with adequate conditions to live in.

The Ministry added that the Palestinian children, as all children around the globe, have the right to receive proper education in a safe environment without being subjected to gunfire and shells, as well as different attacks carried by the army.

Haaretz, Israel, March 6, 2008

By Yossi Melaman

The Bush administration is prolonging the hunting season against journalists. The latest victim is James Risen, The New York Times reporter for national security and intelligence affairs. About three months ago, a federal grand jury issued a subpoena against him, ordering Risen to give evidence in court. A heavy blackout has been imposed on the affair, with the only hint being that it has to do with sensitive matters of “national security.”

But conversations with several sources who are familiar with the affair indicate that Risen has been asked to testify as part of an investigation aimed at revealing who leaked apparently confidential information about the planning of secret Central Intelligence Agency and Mossad missions concerning Iran’s nuclear program.

Risen included this information in his book, “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration,” which was published in 2006. In the book, he discusses a number of ideas which he says were thought up jointly by CIA and Mossad operatives to sabotage Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

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By: BBC on: 06.03.2008

Many white working class people believe immigration threatens jobs

A majority of white working class Britons feel nobody speaks for people like them, a BBC survey has suggested.
Some 58% said they felt unrepresented compared to 46% of white middle class respondents to a Newsnight poll.

White working classes were also negative about the past decade with 62% saying life had generally become worse in the UK.

In response to BBC Two’s White Season, a special Newsnight on 6 March will feature full poll results and debate.

Crime worse

In most areas covered by the survey the white working classes are more pessimistic about the future and more negative about the last decade in Britain than white middle class people.

Of the white working class people questioned 71% believe crime has got worse over the last decade, compared with 66% of middle class white people.

On housing, 80% of the white working classes say that people like them can no longer afford to buy homes in the area they live. A smaller majority – 68% – of middle class people believed they had been priced out of the local housing market.

Overall 62% of the white working classes believe that life in Britain has generally got worse over the last decade compared with 51% of middle class white people.

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• Ian Black, Middle East editor
• The Guardian, Friday March 7 2008

Atrocities in the Middle East are often carefully planned and the Palestinian gunman who killed eight Israelis in Jerusalem last night may have been carrying out a dual act of revenge for the recent onslaught in the Gaza Strip and the assassination of a Hizbullah commander in Damascus.

The shooting at a Jewish seminary in the west of the city, far from Palestinian areas , matters for several reasons:

· It was the first attack in Jerusalem for four years

· It seemed intended to send the message that Israel’s attacks on its enemies, either in Gaza, Lebanon or Syria would not go unanswered

· It reinforced the assumption that action on one front would bring a response on another.

· It will make it harder than before to achieve progress in the near-moribund peace process.

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Telegraph, UK, March 6, 2008

At least eight people have been killed after gunmen opened fire at a rabbinical seminary near Jerusalem.

	An injured student is helped from the scene of the attack

Ambulances from around the city raced to the scene, where a further 35 people are reported to have been wounded.

“We have counted eight dead and 35 wounded,” an official of the Magen David Adom rescue service, equivalent to the Red Cross, told army radio.

Witnesses said gunmen infiltrated a dining hall at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in the Kiryat Moshe quarter of the city, where around 80 people were gathered.

Initial reports said the men had opened fire “indiscriminately”.

The seminar is a well-known centre of Jewish studies and is identified with the leadership of the Jewish settlement movement in the West Bank.

“There are at least seven killed and 10 people wounded,” said Eli Dein, director of Israel’s rescue service.

Medic Yaron Tzuker said he arrived as the gunfire was still going on. “They were still shooting when we got here. We took cover and the ambulance was hit. It’s horrible inside – dead bodies and wounded – it’s horrific.”

Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben Ruby said, “One or two terrorists infiltrated the Mercaz Harav seminary and opened fire in all directions. One terrorist was killed in an exchange of fire.”

He added that the dead gunmen was wearing a vest at first thought to be explosives, but that it was later found to contain ammunition.

He said students had been evacuated from the building and that police were searching from room to room.

Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski said: “It’s very sad tonight in Jerusalem – many people were killed in the heart of Jerusalem.”

In Gaza City, residents went out into the streets and fired rifles in celebration in the air after hearing news of the attack on the seminary.

Between 2001 and 2004, Jerusalem was a frequent target for Palestinian terrorist attacks, although there have been no incidents in the last year.

There has been no immediate claim for the shootings but the Palestinian Hamas movement has praised the attack.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said: “This heroic attack in Jerusalem is a normal response to the crimes of the occupier and its murder of civilians.”

It’s springtime in American politics. It’s only early March, but there’s a giddy, hopeful feeling to this election season, a sense that new leadership is blossoming. We could have a Democrat in the White House next year. But winter isn’t over yet and we need to balance our hope with a little fear. In 2000 Bush and Cheney stole the election in Florida. In 2004 they played dirty tricks in Ohio. In 2008 could they go one step further — and suspend the election altogether?

The necessary architecture may already be in place. On May 4 last year, the White House issued the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, key parts of which remain classified and hence shrouded from public view. The directive outlines procedures to respond to a “catastrophic emergency,” defined broadly as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.” Of course previous administrations also had emergency plans. But the Bush directive transfers power from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to the White House, where the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism is assigned the job of “National Continuity Coordinator”.

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A protester uses a megaphone in front of Federal police officers in Oaxaca city’s main plaza, Mexico November 1, 2006

© REUTERS/Henry Romero

Amnesty International | 6 March 2008

On 8 March, International Women’s Day, women across the world will take to the streets to express their commitment to the defence of human rights, often at great risk to their safety.

These rights include freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, the right to be treated equally under the law, sexual and reproductive rights, and the rejection of violence against women. But, in promoting these rights, activists come face to face with discriminatory laws, policies and practices.

Aline Castellanos is a leading member of the Committee for Parliamentary Dialogue and Equality in Mexico. She documented and publicized human rights violations in the Oaxaca region of the country during widespread protests in 2006. At that time, Aline Castellanos was working to encourage women’s activism and heighten women’s visibility in public life.

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