Peace and Justice Post

Rebel from a bygone era

Karma Nabulsi, The Electronic Intifada, 1 February 2008

“His very name scatters fire through ice,” wrote Byron of an 18th-century revolutionary leader, and so it has always been with the name of that extraordinary Palestinian George Habash. For those in anti-colonial movements across the world who learned and trained under him, his name embodies that inextinguishable human demand for justice and freedom. His exhilarating emancipatory model of resistance to injustice, his radical optimism and, above all, his tight political organization scorched the consciousness of young people across the Arab world, mobilized masses and inspired a huge wave of talented artists and intellectuals.

One doesn’t have to be a Marxist to appreciate the value of his extraordinary force. For 60 years Habash engaged in a non-stop struggle for Arab unity, human progress, women’s rights, liberation and equality. By founding the anti-colonial Arab Nationalist Movement, he lit a fuse throughout the region, from Yemen, where forces he trained and organized liberated the country from British rule, through the battle for Egyptian-Syrian unity, and Kuwait — which only has a parliament thanks to the movement’s impact — to the founding of trade unions across much of the Gulf.

Continued . . .

The Independent, February 3, 2008

When General Suharto came to power in 1965 he overthrew the grandfather of journalist Chris Kline, who explains here why he will not mourn the death of Indonesia’s dictator

Chris Kline as a child with his American father and Indonesian mother

When I was five or six, the Indonesian dictator Suharto, who died last week, came to Rome for a state visit. My Indonesian mother and I were summoned to the embassy to pay homage.

But when it came time for photographs, and Suharto picked me up, I shouted for him to put me down, and began punching him while he awkwardly kept smiling. I called out that he was a “uomo cattivo”, a bad man. Millions of Indonesians who thought the same would never have dared to say so aloud.

Why did Suharto permit this? Because I am the American grandson of the founder of modern Indonesia, Sukarno. General Suharto (both men, like many Indonesians, are known by only one name) overthrew him in a blood-soaked coup in 1965, covertly aided and enthusiastically abetted by the US, Britain and Australia.

I was just two when Suharto unleashed his “New Order”, living in Europe with my American father, Frank Latimore, and my Indonesian mother, Rukmini Sukarno. He was a Hollywood and Broadway actor, she was a European opera diva. We were far from Indonesia, home to a fifth of the world’s natural resources, which my grandfather led to independence after a long liberation struggle against colonial rule by the Netherlands. But we were not free from Suharto’s dictatorship.

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WSWS, February 2, 2008

By K. Ratnayake and Keith Jones

More than two hundred retired high-ranking Pakistani military officers have unanimously demanded that the country’s president, Pervez Musharraf, resign and hand over his powers to deposed Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, so he can form a “neutral care-taker government” to supervise national elections.

Organized in the Pakistan Ex-Servicemen Association, the officers—who include army generals, admirals, air marshals, and at least one former head of Pakistan’s military—met in Islamabad, Thursday.

Former Air Force Chief Asghar Khan, who presided over the meeting, later told a press conference that Musharraf should “hand over powers to Justice Chaudhry who is still constitutional chief justice” so as “to save the country from worsening political turmoil.”

Chaudhry and some 60 other supreme and high court judges were arbitrarily purged by Musharraf when he imposed de facto martial law last November 3.

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The Daily Free Press, February 1, 2008

By Ben Kruger-Robbins

Pulitzer-Prize winning author Noam Chomsky denounced the Iraq War and “imperialistic” American foreign policy of the Nixon, Reagan and Bush administrations at Roxbury Community College last night.

Chomsky, a renowned linguist often noted as one of the nation’s leading leftist intellectuals, condemned Gens. David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker’s abusive actions against the Iraqi state to the crowd of more than 500.

“Lord Petraeus has initiated tyrannically destructive policies, including, but not limited to, the surge proposed on Sept. 11, 2007 in a despicably theatrical manner before Congress,” Chomsky said. “Great sectarian violence, particularly in the Anbar Province, has all but consumed a once prosperous nation.”

Chomsky drew comparisons between U.S. foreign diplomacy and the conduct of the Nazi Party within Germany, referencing the Nuremberg trials as a parallel to contradictions in U.S. political speech and government-sanctioned action.

“I think the ironies of United States deployed treacheries in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea are self-evident,” he said.

Chomsky said “Ronald Reagan’s conservation coalition” caused the overthrow of the legally elected Sandinista-regime in Nicaragua in 1984.

“Reagan was a thug and a coward,” he said. “He managed to physically diminish a democratically-elected government and throw a nation into civil chaos for well over a decade . . . because the Sandinistas didn’t back U.S. trade policies.”

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By Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers, January 31, 2008

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WASHINGTON — The U.S. death toll in Iraq increased in January, ending a four-month drop in casualties, and most of the deaths occurred outside Baghdad or the once-restive Anbar province, according to military statistics.

In all, 38 American service members had been reported killed in January by Thursday evening, compared with 23 in December. Of those, 33 died from hostile action, but only nine of them in Baghdad or Anbar.

A total of 3,942 American service members have been killed in Iraq as of Thursday, according to icasualties.org, an independent Web site that tracks the statistics.

U.S. officials in Iraq said the death toll had risen because the military was targeting armed groups that had been driven out of Baghdad and Anbar by the increase in American troops.

In January, the military launched a major offensive in northeastern Diyala province, where nine service members were killed. In addition, the U.S. moved troops to the northwestern Ninevah province, which has become an al Qaida in Iraq stronghold. Seven service members were killed there in January, compared with four in December.

The fact that more Americans have been killed in those provinces has some fretting that the U.S. is fighting another round of “whack-a-mole,” a term that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., once used to describe chasing insurgents and terrorists from one part of Iraq to another.

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By ROBERT C. KOEHLER

Tribune Media Services, January 31, 2008

“Many in this chamber understand that America must not fail in Iraq, because you understand that the consequences of failure would be grievous and far-reaching . . .”

There it is again, that choking lie, so smoothly administered — with just enough fear to help America gag down all that righteousness.

President Bush told it again in his final State of the Union address the other night, of course. What choice did he have? The truth, coming from him at this point, would be . . . too weird, too offensive, impossible to comprehend.

But the truth is that we’ve already failed in Iraq, and throughout the Middle East and Central Asia — failed with consequences beyond reckoning. God knows someone will have to take a swig of political courage and acknowledge it one of these days, simply to stop the lie — the lies, a governmental cluster bomb of them — from doing further harm.

Keep reading . . .

Akhbar Alkhaleej , Januaary 29, 2008

Church and State. Posted February 2, 2008.

Congress has mandated that the phrase “In God We Trust” has greater prominence on the new presidential dollar coins.

Responding to complaints from the Religious Right, Congress has passed legislation mandating that the phrase “In God We Trust” be moved from the edge to the back or front of the new presidential dollar coins.

President George W. Bush signed the measure into law Dec. 26. It was tucked into a $555 billion domestic spending bill after having been pushed by U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.). Brownback and other Religious Right conservatives have been complaining about the new coins since the series started last year.

The U.S. Mint has been releasing gold-colored dollars honoring each non-living U.S. president. Four coins are released per year. The first four coins, honoring George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, were issued in 2007.

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The Independent, Saturday, 2 February 2008

By Tony Paterson in Berlin

GETTY
German soldiers secure a hill outside Kabul, as part of the Nato peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan

A bitter diplomatic row between Germany and the United States deepened yesterday after Berlin flatly rejected demands from Washington that it deploy troops in war-torn southern Afghanistan and angrily dismissed the request as “impertinent” and a “fantastic cheek”.

Germany currently has some 3,200 soldiers stationed in comparatively tranquil northern Afghanistan and the capital Kabul as part of the current Nato peacekeeping mission. It has been urged to deploy troops in the south before but has consistently refused. Yesterday however, it became clear that Washington had stepped up pressure on Berlin to commit troops to the south.

The move followed increased Taliban attacks and threats from Canada that it would withdraw its Afghanistan contingent completely unless more Nato troops were sent south. Canada has lost 77 combat troops in the region.

Two US non-governmental studies released this week warned that Afghanistan could once again become a failed state and terrorist haven.

Details of what was described as an “unusually stern” letter written by Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, to Franz Josef Jung, his German counterpart, were leaked to the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Keep reading . . .

dpa – International News Service in English, Jan 31, 2008 04:29 EST

Islamabad (dpa) – Chanting slogans against President Pervez Musharraf, thousands of Pakistani lawyers were holding rallies across the country on Thursday to protest the removal of ex-chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry by the embattled leader late last year.
“The lawyers’ community is observing complete boycott of the court proceedings and demonstrations are being held in every city and town of the country to express solidarity with the chief justice,” said Athar Minallah, a senior leader of Islamabad Bar Association.

“We are demanding the restoration of 60 unconstitutionally removed senior judges, an end to the dictatorship of Musharraf and the release of all detained justices and lawyers,” he said.

Chaudhry was sacked together with his dozens of colleagues on November 3 when Musharraf imposed state of emergency and suspended the constitution. The retired general argued the judiciary was hindering his fight against terrorism.

The opponents said the move aimed at mainly preventing the Supreme Court from ruling against Musharraf’s candidacy for the presidential vote for his second five-year term.

After dumping the high court, the president packed it with his hand-picked judges and took oath before resigning as military chief and lifting emergency.

But the senior judges and dozens of representatives of the lawyers remain under house arrest.

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