Peace and Justice Post

New Hampshire voters have chosen warmonger clones of Bush/Cheney for their party’s presidential candidates. The only candidates not in Israel’s pocket are Kucinich, Paul, and Gravel, who have no chance for their party’s nomination.

Obama, who provided some hope for change, undercut his support on the eve of the New Hampshire primary by declaring that he would invade Pakistan in order to protect America. It is a mystery why Obama thought this message would motivate those inclined to support his candidacy.

This means change is unlikely. Neocon think tanks, media, evangelical preachers, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and many other members of the government have succeeded in turning a majority of Americans into scared Islamophobes and in denying Americans any reliable information about the cause of the conflict.

Keep reading . . .

Information Clearing House

By Albert Einstein

This essay was originally published in the first issue of Monthly Review (May 1949).

Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is.

Let us first consider the question from the point of view of scientific knowledge. It might appear that there are no essential methodological differences between astronomy and economics: scientists in both fields attempt to discover laws of general acceptability for a circumscribed group of phenomena in order to make the interconnection of these phenomena as clearly understandable as possible. But in reality such methodological differences do exist. The discovery of general laws in the field of economics is made difficult by the circumstance that observed economic phenomena are often affected by many factors which are very hard to evaluate separately. In addition, the experience which has accumulated since the beginning of the so-called civilized period of human history has—as is well known—been largely influenced and limited by causes which are by no means exclusively economic in nature. For example, most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution and created a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior.

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In eight years Palestinians have seen the bald eagle of enlightened US power degenerate into a phoney, biased, cynical lame duck

Jonathan Steele
Friday January 11, 2008
The Guardian

It is a well-deserved irony for George Bush that his first presidential visit to Israel coincided this week with the storm of excitement produced by the unexpected outcome of the two New Hampshire primaries. Nothing could better highlight the irrelevance of the final year of the Bush presidency.

The moment at which an incumbent becomes a lame duck fluctuates in every US administration, depending on circumstances. The day on which the first votes are cast is traditionally the symbolic date, even though the race has been under way in the media for months. This year’s riveting contests in New Hampshire certainly proved that true, overshadowing whatever interest there was in Bush’s plans for influencing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Keep reading . . .

Axis of logic, January 9, 2008

By Fred Schlomka 

While Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas were wheeling and dealing at Annapolis, several Israeli government ministries and security agencies were deploying their combined resources in a massive operation aimed at Israel’s southern Negev Desert. While the eyes of the world are on the West Bank and Gaza, Israel is in the middle of a campaign to complete the displacement of Palestinian Arabs who are also Israeli citizens.

The indigenous Bedouin are the target, and their lands are required by the state in order to complete the implementation a master plan for the Negev. The plan relegates the Bedouin to ghetto enclaves while allocating huge swathes of territory for Jewish suburban development and agricultural communities. The Negev is the final frontier inside Israel, the last tract of largely undeveloped land in the state. Israel has virtually completed the dismemberment of Palestinian lands in the center and north of the country, and now is consolidating the “Jewish redemption” of the southern desert.

Antiwar.com, Updated at 6:30 p.m. EST, Jan. 9, 2008

Nine American soldiers were reported killed on an otherwise extremely quiet newsday. At least 25 Iraqis were killed, mostly gunmen, and 10 Iraqis were wounded in separate events. Also, the World Health Organization released their report on the number of civilian casualties since the invastion. They say that between 104,000 to 223,000 people have died in violent attacks.

Six MND-North soldiers were killed after entering a booby-trapped home in Diyala province today; another four were wounded. Also, three American soldiers were killed and two more were wounded during combat operations in Salah ad Din province yesterday.

Three dumped bodies were recovered in Baghdad. A roadside bomb in an eastern area blasted an American patrol but no casualties were reported.

Continued . . . 

Barack Obama’s shock defeat in New Hampshire is being linked to the so-called Bradley effect, which suggests that although voters claim to support black candidates they will vote for the white runner on the day

Haroon Siddique
Wednesday January 9, 2008
Guardian Unlimited

Barack Obama. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

It seems strange to be looking for the reasons for Barack Obama’s shock defeat in the New Hampshire primary. Just a few weeks ago Hillary Clinton was the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination to contest the presidential election but that was before the Illinois senator stormed to victory in the Iowa caucus.

His campaign seemed to have built up an unstoppable momentum, which was reflected in opinion polls that had him comfortably ahead. So how did the pollsters get it so wrong?

Continued . . .

War In Iraq, January 10, 2008

There were several major vote fraud issues to arise out of the New Hampshire primary…

by Paul Joseph Watson
(Prison Planet)

There were several major vote fraud issues to arise out of the New Hampshire primary revolving mainly around Ron Paul and Barack Obama, who were both seemingly cheated out of third and first places respectively as a result of rigged Diebold voting machines and deliberate malfeasance in the counting of hand-written paper ballots.

– Obama had a 13 to 15 point lead over Hillary Clinton heading into the primary. Nothing occured that boosted Hillary’s numbers immediately before the election, in fact immediately after the staged crying incident, many pundits argued it could only have harmed her chances. And yet Hillary somehow managed to instigate a near 20 point swing to defeat Obama by three per cent. If not for her 7% swing as a result of Diebold voting machines, Hillary would have lost to Obama. If Obama was struggling he would probably contest this bizarre outcome, but he is likely to accept the results simply to save face.

Continued . . .

Aljazeera.net

January 8, 2008 Thousands of Palestinians in Gaza have gathered to protest against the visit of the US president to the occupied West Bank in a bid to push forward talks between Israel and the Palestinians. The protesters gathered in Gaza City on Tuesday, saying that George Bush is indifferent to their condition. Bush will not visit the territory as part of his tour of the Middle East which starts on Wednesday. The protest was also against the ongoing Israeli siege of Gaza. Protesters carried 62 coffins symbolising those who have died because they have been unable to leave the area for medical treatment. Humanitarian crisis Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna said: “If the US president’s motorcade ever travelled in Gaza City, he would see young school pupils and their parents and teachers demonstrating against the ongoing Israeli siege. Keep reading . . .

The Counterpunch, January 7, 2008

The Hostile President

By GIDEON LEVY

George Bush is coming to Israel this week. He will take pleasure in his visit. One can assume that there are few prime ministers with a giant photo of themselves with the U.S. president hanging on the wall in their home, as our Ehud Olmert boasted last week that he does, to his exalted guest, the comic Eli Yatzpan. There are also few other countries where the lame duck from Washington would not be greeted with mass demonstrations; instead, Israel is making great efforts to welcome him graciously. The man who has wreaked such ruin upon the world, upon his country, and upon us is such a welcome guest only in Israel.

A man is coming to Israel this week who has left a trail of killing, destruction and global hatred. Never has the U.S. been so despised as during Bush’s seven years in office, which abruptly brought his county back to the not-so-merry days of Vietnam.

He led the U.S., and the free world in its wake, into two brutal and completely futile wars of conquest, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. He sowed mass killing in these two wretched countries under the false pretext of a battle against global terror.

But the world after these two wars is not a better world or a safer one. And these two wounded countries feel no gratitude toward the superpower that ostensibly came to emancipate them from their regimes of terror.

Keep reading . . .

New York Times, January 9, 2008

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. — A former member of an elite Marine combat unit that operated last year in eastern Afghanistan testified Tuesday that his comrades appeared to have needlessly killed civilians after their convoy was attacked by a suicide car bomb.

Nathaniel Travers, a former Marine intelligence sergeant assigned to the 30-man Special Operations convoy that was patrolling on March 4 last year, testified in a military court here that a few marines fired at civilians and other unarmed noncombatants after the suicide bomber struck.

No marines have been charged with a crime in the episode. The hearing was held to determine whether troops had violated the laws of war.

Continued . . .