Peace and Justice Post

Published on Sunday, November 18, 2007 by The Toronto Star

by Haroon Siddiqui

Those who were most gung-ho about the invasion and occupation of Iraq have been the least helpful in mopping up the mess there. Those least enthusiastic have ended up bearing the greatest burden.

The United States and Britain have accepted only a handful of the 4.2 million displaced Iraqis. Ditto Kuwait, which was the most bellicose of America’s pro-war Arab allies. Ditto Saudi Arabia, that other staunch American ally. It has shut its border with Iraq, and plans to fortify it with a $2 billion fence.

Stephen Harper, who as leader of the opposition agitated for Canada to join the war, has been silent as prime minister about admitting Iraqi refugees to Canada.

On the other hand, Syria and Jordan, which strongly opposed the war, have accepted 2 million Iraqi refugees, and done so gracefully.

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From The Times

November 20, 2007

Zahid Hussain in Islamabad

Pakistan’s neutered Supreme Court dismissed the main challenges to the reelection of Pervez Musharraf as President yesterday, taking him a step closer to quitting as army chief and restoring civilian rule.

Stripped of hostile judges by General Musharraf under a state of emergency, because he feared that it would rule he was ineligible for another five-year term, the new-look court took just over two hours to throw out the cases.

General Musharraf has promised to hang up his uniform, one of the key demands of the opposition and the international community, as soon as his victory in last month’s presidential election is validated. The final legal challenge is expected to be considered, and dismissed, on Thursday.

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Counterpunch, November 19, 2007

Hang the Judges and Lawyers Out to Dry

By CHINA HAND

The United States has been oddly silent on the central, precipitating factor in Pakistan’s crisis: Musharraf’s use of the State of Emergency to move against the Supreme Court that was poised to disallow his election to another term as president.

The most likely interpretation is that the U.S. will disregard the illegality of Musharraf’s bid for another term as president if he takes office as a civilian and lifts the State of Emergency prior to parliamentary elections.

It looks like that’s what’s going on. And that probably means the judiciary gets hung out to dry.

In John Negroponte’s statement before leaving Pakistan there wasn’t a word about restoring the Supreme Court, releasing the lawyers and judges from jail, or maintaining an independent judiciary.

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The Times of India, 19 Nov 2007

Chidanand Rajghatta

WASHINGTON: The Bush administration has given Pakistan’s military dictator Pervez Musharraf a wide berth despite a “tough” public stance against the imposition of Emergency.

US Special Envoy John Negroponte was all praise for Musharraf as he left Islamabad in the face of the dictator’s defiant stand in rejecting calls to lift Emergency, broadly sticking to Washington’s game plan of a introducing a quasi-civilian government.

In short, there appears to be no change in the US masterplan of inducting a Musharraf-Benazir government, notwithstanding the dictators crackdown on democracy and the acrimonious drama between the two principals.

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Information Clearing House

By John Pilger

11/15/07 “ICH” — — On Remembrance Day 2007 – Veterans Day in America – the great and the good bowed their heads at the Cenotaph. Generals, politicians, newsreaders, football managers and stock-market traders wore their poppies. Hypocrisy was a presence. No one mentioned Iraq. No one uttered the slightest remorse for the fallen of that country. No one read the forbidden list.

The forbidden list documents, without favor, the part the British state and its court have played in the destruction of Iraq. Here it is:

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AlterNet

By Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown. Posted November 17, 2007.

Bush & Buckshot are riding their little stick horses, demonizing another Muslim nation — and the Dems are supporting it. We’ve got to shut them down.

Look out — here they come again! Bush & Buckshot are riding their little stick horses, waving the bloody flag of 9/11, demonizing another Muslim nation, shouting warnings about weapons of mass destruction, bellowing for regime change, and generally trying to whoop up a new war. Having done so well in Iraq, George W and Cheney are pushing feverishly to hype up a national-security threat and commit our nation, our bedraggled military, our depleted treasury, and our country’s already-tarnished name to another of their fantasyland, neocon, preemptive invasions of a sovereign people who are doing no harm to us. Their target this time: Iran.You might be thinking, oh, come on, Hightower, surely not. You’re paranoid — even the Bushites aren’t that crazy. I wish.

The drums of war

For such leading neocon zealots as Norman Podhoretz, bombing and even invading Iran are about protecting “our” Mideastern oil, strengthening Israel’s regional power, and continuing Western control of the restive Muslim majority in the Middle East. Podhoretz and other true believers assert that there’s an urgent need for Israel and the West to crush Iran’s Muslim government now, frantically wailing that it intends to destroy America and control the world. Even though Iran has made no threats to the U.S., the neocons see regime change there as the key to winning “World War IV” (they insist that the Cold War was World War III) against what they have dubbed “Islamofacism.”

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The Independent, UK.

By Robert Fisk | Published: 16 June 2007

How troublesome the Muslims of the Middle East are. First, we demand that the Palestinians embrace democracy and then they elect the wrong party – Hamas – and then Hamas wins a mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza Strip. And we Westerners still want to negotiate with the discredited President, Mahmoud Abbas. Today “Palestine” – and let’s keep those quotation marks in place – has two prime ministers. Welcome to the Middle East.

Who can we negotiate with? To whom do we talk? Well of course, we should have talked to Hamas months ago. But we didn’t like the democratically elected government of the Palestinian people. They were supposed to have voted for Fatah and its corrupt leadership. But they voted for Hamas, which declines to recognise Israel or abide by the totally discredited Oslo agreement.

No one asked – on our side – which particular Israel Hamas was supposed to recognise. The Israel of 1948? The Israel of the post-1967 borders? The Israel which builds – and goes on building – vast settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land, gobbling up even more of the 22 per cent of “Palestine” still left to negotiate over ?

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IPS News

By Aaron Glantz

SAN FRANCISCO, California, Nov 16 (IPS) – Two U.S. Army deserters who fled to Canada and sought refugee status on grounds of their opposition to the war in Iraq have lost their bids to have the Supreme Court of Canada hear their cases.

The court refused to hear the appeals of Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey Thursday, who were rejected two years ago by Canada’s immigration authorities.

The board ruled they would not be at risk of their lives if they returned to the United States, nor were they at risk of “cruel and unusual treatment or punishment”.

Hinzman and Hughey deserted the U.S. Army in 2004 after learning their units were being deployed to Iraq to fight in a war they have called immoral and illegal. The men argue that serving in Iraq would force them to commit crimes against civilians, and that they would be persecuted if forced to return to the United States.

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The Nation, November 17, 2007

The American-sponsored Middle East peace conference (or meeting or get-together) expected to be held in Annapolis , Maryland later this month has more to do with providing Secretary of State Condoleezza a much-needed photo op to repair her tarnished legacy than creating the groundwork for a just and comprehensive settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Besides the need to repair her legacy, Rice urgently needs to buy Arab support for the Administration’s war in Iraq and its escalating threats against Iran. As a result, after years of scorning Arab-Israeli diplomacy, Rice has become such a freqent visitor to the region that she given birth to a new verb in Israeli government circles: ‘lecondel.” According to the New York Times, the verb –based on Ms. Rice’s first name– means ” to come and go for meetings that produce few results.”

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