Peace and Justice Post

EU track record and Iraq seen as obstacles to getting new post of president

Ian Traynor and David Gow in Brussels

The Guardian, Wednesday February 20 2008

Tony Blair’s hopes of becoming Europe’s first president are running into mounting opposition across the EU, with Germany determined to stymie the former prime minister.

A “Stop Blair” website run by pro-Europeans has launched a petition against him; a transnational, cross-party caucus in the European parliament is forming to campaign against a Blair presidency; senior officials in Brussels are privately dismissive about the new post going to a Briton; and senior diplomats in European capitals also doubt that Blair is the right person for the post being created under Europe’s new reform treaty.

“There was surprise in Berlin when Blair’s name came up so soon,” said a European ambassador. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany admires Blair and has “great personal sympathy for Tony”, he added.

“But more generally the German political elite would be puzzled by the idea of Tony Blair. His track record on EU matters is not so great. There is unease about a Briton at the top in that job. And then personally with Blair, there’s the Iraq thing.”

Continued . . .

President Fidel Castro Ruz

February 19, 2008 This is the text of a letter from Cuban leader Fidel Castro published Tuesday by the Cuban state-run newspaper Granma. Message from the Commander in Chief Dear compatriots: Last Friday, February 15, I promised you that in my next reflection I would deal with an issue of interest to many compatriots. Thus, this now is rather a message. The moment has come to nominate and elect the State Council, its President, its Vice-Presidents and Secretary. For many years I have occupied the honorable position of President. On February 15, 1976 the Socialist Constitution was approved with the free, direct and secret vote of over 95% of the people with the right to cast a vote. The first National Assembly was established on December 2nd that same year; this elected the State Council and its presidency. Before that, I had been a Prime Minister for almost 18 years. I always had the necessary prerogatives to carry forward the revolutionary work with the support of the overwhelming majority of the people. There were those overseas who, aware of my critical health condition, thought that my provisional resignation, on July 31, 2006, to the position of President of the State Council, which I left to First Vice-President Raul Castro Ruz, was final. But Raul, who is also minister of the Armed Forces on account of his own personal merits, and the other comrades of the Party and State leadership were unwilling to consider me out of public life despite my unstable health condition. It was an uncomfortable situation for me vis-à-vis an adversary which had done everything possible to get rid of me, and I felt reluctant to comply. Later, in my necessary retreat, I was able to recover the full command of my mind as well as the possibility for much reading and meditation. I had enough physical strength to write for many hours, which I shared with the corresponding rehabilitation and recovery programs. Basic common sense indicated that such activity was within my reach. On the other hand, when referring to my health I was extremely careful to avoid raising expectations since I felt that an adverse ending would bring traumatic news to our people in the midst of the battle. Thus, my first duty was to prepare our people both politically and psychologically for my absence after so many years of struggle. I kept saying that my recovery “was not without risks.” My wishes have always been to discharge my duties to my last breath. That’s all I can offer. To my dearest compatriots, who have recently honored me so much by electing me a member of the Parliament where so many agreements should be adopted of utmost importance to the destiny of our Revolution, I am saying that I will neither aspire to nor accept, I repeat, I will neither aspire to nor accept the positions of President of the State Council and Commander in Chief. In short letters addressed to Randy Alonso, Director of the Round Table National TV Program, –letters which at my request were made public– I discreetly introduced elements of this message I am writing today, when not even the addressee of such letters was aware of my intention. I trusted Randy, whom I knew very well from his days as a student of Journalism. In those days I met almost on a weekly basis with the main representatives of the University students from the provinces at the library of the large house in Kohly where they lived. Today, the entire country is an immense University. Following are some paragraphs chosen from the letter addressed to Randy on December 17, 2007: “I strongly believe that the answers to the current problems facing Cuban society, which has, as an average, a twelfth grade of education, almost a million university graduates, and a real possibility for all its citizens to become educated without their being in any way discriminated against, require more variables for each concrete problem than those contained in a chess game. We cannot ignore one single detail; this is not an easy path to take, if the intelligence of a human being in a revolutionary society is to prevail over instinct. “My elemental duty is not to cling to positions, much less to stand in the way of younger persons, but rather to contribute my own experience and ideas whose modest value comes from the exceptional era that I had the privilege of living in. “Like Niemeyer, I believe that one has to be consistent right up to the end.” Letter from January 8, 2008: “…I am a firm supporter of the united vote (a principle that preserves the unknown merits), which allowed us to avoid the tendency to copy what came to us from countries of the former socialist bloc, including the portrait of the one candidate, as singular as his solidarity towards Cuba. I deeply respect that first attempt at building socialism, thanks to which we were able to continue along the path we had chosen.” And I reiterated in that letter that “…I never forget that ‘all of the world’s glory fits in a kernel of corn.” Therefore, it would be a betrayal to my conscience to accept a responsibility requiring more mobility and dedication than I am physically able to offer. This I say devoid of all drama. Fortunately, our Revolution can still count on cadres from the old guard and others who were very young in the early stages of the process. Some were very young, almost children, when they joined the fight on the mountains and later they have given glory to the country with their heroic performance and their internationalist missions. They have the authority and the experience to guarantee the replacement. There is also the intermediate generation which learned together with us the basics of the complex and almost unattainable art of organizing and leading a revolution. The path will always be difficult and require from everyone’s intelligent effort. I distrust the seemingly easy path of apologetics or its antithesis the self-flagellation. We should always be prepared for the worst variable. The principle of being as prudent in success as steady in adversity cannot be forgotten. The adversary to be defeated is extremely strong; however, we have been able to keep it at bay for half a century. This is not my farewell to you. My only wish is to fight as a soldier in the battle of ideas. I shall continue to write under the heading of ‘Reflections by comrade Fidel.’ It will be just another weapon you can count on. Perhaps my voice will be heard. I shall be careful. Thanks. Fidel Castro Ruz February 18, 2008

The Hindu, Feb. 20, 2008
— Photo: AFP


END OF AN ERA: Hero of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro, announced on Tuesday his decision to retire from his official positions. In a statement published online by the Communist Party daily, Granma, the 81-year-old leader said: “I communicate to you that I will not aspire to or accept … the position of President of Council of State and Commander-in-Chief” (when the National Assembly meets on Sunday). He added that he would continue to “fight as a soldier of ideas” by writing columns in the Cuban media.

HAVANA: Cuban leader Fidel Castro defied America for nearly half a century, resisting U.S. attempts to topple him while leading his country he built just 145 km south of Florida. He resigned as President on Tuesday, two years after falling ill and temporarily ceding power. Through 10 U.S. administrations beginning with that of Dwight Eisenhower, Mr. Castro survived assassination attempts, an invasion by a CIA-trained exile army at the Bay of Pigs, and a standoff with Washington over Soviet missiles that pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war. ”Socialism or death” was Mr. Castro’s rallying cry long after his beard turned gray, the Soviet Union broke up and Communism toppled across eastern Europe. The man who said ”power doesn’t interest me” as he led his rebels into Havana in 1959 said in his resignation letter that he held onto power for so long, even when ill, only because the United States ”had done everything possible to get rid of me.”

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Dissident Voice
by Allan Nairn / February 16th, 2008

I happened to learn about the car-bomb assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, the Hezbollah commander, while talking to a Palestinian Fatah man who is a confidante of Mohammed Dahlan, who is famously reputed in the press to have been both a torturer and the CIA’s man in Gaza, until the Hamas ousted him.

The Fatah/ Dahlan man who imparted the assassination news hates Hamas with a passion — he said that in last year’s rival security forces showdown they grabbed and tortured him with knives for four hours (he was earlier tortured by the Israelis far longer, and worse, but views that as par for the course)– and is no fan of Hezbollah, but he viewed the killing with irony. He said he was hearing that the Israelis were saying “we cleared the account with him (Mughniyeh)” (Palestinian Authority security forces, like those Dahlan ran, now have regular coordination meetings with their ostensible enemies, Israeli intelligence), yet he claimed that Mughniyeh’s major killings had been more against other Arabs (eg. Saudi, Kuwait) than against Israelis.

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Pambazuka News

By Prof. Horace Campbell (2008-02-14)

Horace Campbell looks at Bush’s visit as an attempt to further militarize the continent and consolidate US holding.

One year after the announcement that he United States government was going to accelerate the militarization of Africa, President George Bush is embarking on a journey to Africa to coerce African societies to align themselves with the neo-conservative agenda of the present US administration. President George Bush will visit five African countries between February 15 -21. The countries are Benin, Ghana, Liberia, Rwanda and Tanzania. George Bush is a lame-duck President who cannot visit real global players so this visit to Africa is an effort to shore up the credentials of the neo-liberal forces in Africa while promoting the conservative ideas of abstinence as the basis of the fight against the HIV –AIDS pandemic.

Exactly one year ago, in February 2007, President Bush of the United States of America announced that the Defense Department would create a new Africa Command to coordinate U.S. government interests on the continent. Under this plan all governmental agencies of the US would fall under the military, i.e, USAID, State Department, US Department of Energy, Treasury, and Department of Education etc. Already within the US academic community, the interests of the Pentagon has been placed before all other interests.

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Information Clearing House

By Richard Sanders

How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again! – Mark Twain

18/02/08 “CommonGround” — – On March 25, 2003, during the “shock and awe” bombardment of Iraq, then US Ambassador Paul Cellucci admitted that “… ironically, Canadian naval vessels, aircraft and personnel… will supply more support to this war in Iraq indirectly… than most of those 46 countries that are fully supporting our efforts there.”

Cellucci merely scratched the surface of Canada’s initial “support” for the Iraq War, but he had let the cat out of the bag. As then Secretary of State Colin Powell had explained a week earlier, “We now have a coalition of the willing… who have publicly said they could be included in such a listing…. And there are 15 other nations, who, for one reason or another, do not wish to be publicly named but will be supporting the coalition.”

Canada was, and still is, the leading member of this secret group, which we could perhaps call CW-HUSH, the “Coalition of the Willing to Help but Unwilling to be Seen Helping.” The plan worked. Most Canadians still proudly believe that their government refused to join the Iraq War. Nothing could be further from the truth. Here are some of the ways in which we joined the fray:
Escorting the US Navy: Thirteen hundred Canadian troops aboard Canada’s multibillion dollar warships escorted the US fleet through the Persian Gulf, putting them safely in place to bomb Iraq.

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David Morrison, The Electronic Intifada, 14 February 2008

A woman carries a sign reading “No to the presence of the occupation at the crossing” as women Hamas supporters demonstrate against the border closure at the Rafah crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, 2 February 2008. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)

How is Israel able to strangle the Gaza Strip when there is supposed to be an international crossing between Gaza and Egypt not controlled by Israelis?

Certainly, free movement was the promise held out in the comprehensive Agreement on Movement and Access, signed more than two years ago by Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). The first of the six components of this agreement was that there would be a crossing between Gaza and Egypt at Rafah, controlled by the PA and Egypt. At the time, this was hailed as an historic step on the road to a Palestinian state — for the first time, it was said, Palestinians would have access to the outside world free from Israeli control.

So, how was Israel still able to impose a suffocating blockade on the Strip, home to almost 1.5 million Palestinians, eighty percent of them refugees? After Palestinian forces opened the border wall on 23 January, breaking the siege, many Palestinians blamed Egypt for not doing the same much earlier to relieve the suffering and deprivation that had brought Gaza to within days of running out of food and medicine. But however complicit Egypt may have been it was not alone.

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Paul Craig Roberts | Antiwar, Feb. 18, 2008

Americans traditionally thought of their country as a “city upon a hill,” a “light unto the world.” Today only the deluded think that. Polls show that the rest of the world regards the U.S. and Israel as the two greatest threats to peace.

This is not surprising. In the words of Arthur Silber:

“The Bush administration has announced to the world, and to all Americans, that this is what the United States now stands for: a vicious determination to dominate the world, criminal, genocidal wars of aggression, torture, and an increasingly brutal and brutalizing authoritarian state at home. That is what we stand for.”

Addressing his fellow Americans, Silber asks the paramount question: “why do you support” these horrors?

His question goes to the heart of the matter. Do we Americans have any honor, any humanity, any integrity, any awareness of the crimes our government is committing in our name? Do we have a moral conscience?

How can a moral conscience be reconciled with our continuing to tolerate our government which has invaded two countries on the basis of lies and deception, destroyed their civilian infrastructures and murdered hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children?

The killing and occupation continue even though we now know that the invasions were based on lies and fabricated “evidence.” The entire world knows this. Yet Americans continue to act as if the gratuitous invasions, the gratuitous killing, and the gratuitous destruction are justified. There is no end of it in sight.

If Americans have any honor, how can they betray their Founding Fathers, who gave them liberty, by tolerating a government that claims immunity to law and the Constitution and is erecting a police state in their midst?

Continued . . .

Counterpunch, Weekend Edition, Feb. 16/ 17, 2008

Take It From Achilles, Heroism is a Hoax

By DIANE CHRISTIAN

War licenses destruction, breaking the bodies and land and will of the enemy. War is a condition that suspends human respect and care and authorizes destruction.

Americans accept the idea of war; we launch war on poverty and war on terror-invoking an abstraction seen as good to kill abstractions seen as bad. If poverty and terror should be destroyed why and how is war the the weapon? War corrupts, breaks, ruptures, ruins. It does not build, nurture, create. It destroys, some argue, in order to create. It transforms its acts of terror and cruelty by that good intention into good and reasonable actions. The figure invokes sanitation or surgery or violence as cleansing in itself.

So for many war is a noble self-sacrificing action, heroic. Killing and dying and maiming and ruining and ravaging, burned children, tortured innocents, fold into a drama of metaphysical good and evil. Individuals are melded and subsumed into abstract objectives and tactics. War is humanity’s most persistent madness.

Why do we admire it? Why praise it, why say we must win? Plato said all wars came from the body, from greed to own and feed. Plato blamed the body and trusted mind which more surely causes war by its will to dominate.

Why, more to the point, do we believe destruction is good? Perhaps it’s a deep birth metaphor: bloodiness, pain, and labor produce a child when the struggle is over. Aztecs thought warriors who died in battle and women who died in childbirth were entitled to special recognition in the afterworld. Warriors who face death before their natural time are counted noble when they die. Americans want to see the dead from the Iraq war as heros even when they die by friendly fire or accident or doing their job as soldiers. Achilles in the Greek underworld chides Odysseus who praises him as the most honored warrior of all. Achilles says he’d rather be a live slave than a dead hero. And this very sobering line is cited by Plato as one of the dangers of poets. Such sentiments aren’t good for society he says. How will we persuade young men to fight, he asks, when the greatest national hero says heroism’s a hoax?

Our politicians are afraid to be anti-war. Being willing to kill and attack are thought required postures. They pose like strongman Saddam, thinking that to show ‘weakness’ about warring will invite the aggression of those who brandish better. The cowboy diction of taking out the bad guy infects all. We know now that nuclear war over Cuba was averted over 45 years ago by a Russian submarine officer who countermanded a direct order to shoot nuclear missiles at the American embargo ships. It was very close, it almost happened.

War not only destroys bodies and land and community of the ‘enemy’. It corrupts the human conscience of the aggressor. This is why warmongers always argue their war as righteous, revenging attack, as the action of victims not violators. Intentions do not change the acts.

Diane Christian is SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor at University at Buffalo and author of the new book Blood Sacrifice. She can be reached at: engdc@acsu.buffalo.edu

The Palestine Chronicle, Feb. 17, 2008

By Uri Avnery

Every people elevate the profession in which they excel.

If a person in the street were asked to name the area of enterprise in which we Israelis excel, his answer would probably be: Hi-Tech. And indeed, in this area we have recorded some impressive achievements. It seems as if hardly a day passes without an Israeli start-up company that was born in a garage being sold for hundreds of millions. Little Israel is one of the major hi-tech powers in the world.

But the profession in which Israel is not only one of the biggest, but the unchallenged Numero Uno is: liquidations.

This week this was proven once again. The Hebrew verb “lekhassel” – liquidate – in all its grammatical forms, currently dominates our public discourse. Respected professors debate with academic solemnity when to “liquidate” and whom. Used generals discuss with professional zeal the technicalities of “liquidation”, its rules and methods. Shrewd politicians compete with each other about the number and status of the candidates for “liquidation”.

Indeed, for a long time now there has not been such an orgy of jubilation and self-congratulation in the Israeli media as there was this week. Every reporter, every commentator, every political hack, every transient celeb interviewed on TV, on the radio and in the newspapers, was radiant with pride. We have done it! We have succeeded! We have “liquidated” Imad Mughniyeh!

Continued . . .