Peace and Justice Post

The Time, October 1, 2007

Young men from Myanmar who helped to inform the rest of the World through their blogs

By Kenneth Denby in Rangoon

Internet geeks share a common style, and Ko Latt and his four friends would not be out of place in cyber cafés across the world. They have the skinny arms and the long hair, the dark T-shirts and the jokey nicknames. But few such figures have ever taken the risks that they have in the past few weeks, or achieved so much in a noble and dangerous cause.

Since last month Ko Latt, 28, his friends Arca, Eye, Sun and Superman, and scores of others like them have been the third pillar of Burma’s Saffron Revolution. While the veteran democracy activists, and then the Buddhist monks, marched in their tens of thousands against the military regime, it is the country’s amateur bloggers and internet enthusiasts who have brought the images to the outside world.

Keep reading . . .

Middle East Online

First Published 2007-10-01, Last Updated 2007-10-01 14:59:34 A double suffering Amnesty urges international community to help Palestinian refugees, armed groups to stop targeting them. LONDON – Thousands of Palestinian refugees in Iraq have been ill-treated, with many of them abducted, tortured and murdered by armed Shiite Muslim groups, Amnesty International said in a report published Monday. The London-based human rights group issued an urgent appeal to the Shiite-led Iraqi government, US-led coalition and international community to take concrete steps to protect the Palestinians. “Palestinian refugees in Iraq have been subjected to gross human rights abuses including abduction, hostage-taking, unlawful killing, torture and other ill-treatment at the hands of armed militia groups,” it said. The groups are reportedly linked to some political parties and religious groups, it said. Palestinians are targeted, it said, because they are seen to have received “preferential treatment” from the ousted dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni like most of them, or they are suspected to support Sunni insurgents. Keep reading . . .

Telegraph.co.uk,  October 1st,  2007

By Tim Shipman in Washington

The American air force is working with military leaders from the Gulf to train and prepare Arab air forces for a possible war with Iran, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

Neocons seek to justify action against Teheran   Iranian president Ahmadinejad An air warfare conference in Washington last week was told how American air chiefs have helped to co-ordinate intelligence-sharing with Gulf Arab nations and organise combined exercises designed to make it easier to fight together. Gen Michael Mosley, the US Air Force chief of staff, used the conference to seek closer links with allies whose support America might need if President George W Bush chooses to bomb Iran. Pentagon air chiefs have helped set up an air warfare centre in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) where Gulf nations are training their fighter pilots and America has big bases. It is modelled on the US Air Force warfare centre at Nellis air force base in Nevada. Jordan and the UAE have both taken part in combined exercises designed to make sure their air forces can fly, and fight, together and with American jets. The conference was long-planned to discuss developments in air warfare technology, but the question of possible hostilities involving Iran was discussed. Bruce Lemkin, the American air force deputy under-secretary for international affairs, said: “We need friends and partners with the capabilities to take care of their own security and stability in their regions and, through the relationship, the inter-operability and the will to join us in coalitions when appropriate… “On its most basic level, it’s about flying together, operating together and training together so, if we have to, we can fight together.” While it is unlikely that America’s Gulf allies would join any US air strike against suspected nuclear targets in Iran, their co-operation might be required to allow passage of warplanes though their airspace. American defence officials are also keen that Iran’s Arab neighbours prepare to deal with any Iranian attempt to target them in return. Lt Gen Prince Faisal bin Al Hussein, who is special assistant to the chief of staff of the Jordanian armed forces, said “concern at Iran’s attempt to establish itself as a regional superpower” had led to greater co-operation, “not just at the inter-service level but also at the political level”. He said the new air warfare centre had allowed them to “exchange information and exercise together”. But Air Chief Marshal Sir Glen Torpy, the head of the RAF, voiced the fear of many British officials that America is too devoted to military solutions. He said: “In an environment like this, we always focus on the part that the military can play in solving security and foreign policy problems, but the military will rarely, if ever, be the solution.”

Jonathan Cook, Electronic Lebanon, Sep 28, 2007

Just months after Israel’s war on Lebanon came to an end, Israeli peace-activists protest in Tel Aviv with stickers reading, “Talk with Syria,” November 2006. (Moti Milrod/MaanImages)

Israel’s air strike on northern Syria earlier this month should be understood in the context of events unfolding since its assault last summer on neighboring Lebanon. Although little more than rumors have been offered about what took place, one strategic forecasting group, Stratfor, still concluded: “Something important happened.”

From the leaks so far, it seems that more than half a dozen Israeli warplanes violated Syrian airspace to drop munitions on a site close to the border with Turkey. We also know from the US media that the “something” occurred in close coordination with the White House. But what was the purpose and significance of the attack?

Keep reading . . .

CommonDreams.org, September 28, 2007

By John Nichols

The Senate agreed on Thursday to increase the federal debt limit by $850 billion — from $8.965 trillion to $9.815 trillion — and then proceeded to approve a stop-gap spending bill that gives the Bush White House at least $9 billion in new funding for its war in Iraq.

Additionally, the administration has been given emergency authority to tap further into a $70 billion “bridge fund” to provide new infusions of money for the occupation while the Congress works on appropriations bills for the Department of Defense and other agencies.

Translation: Under the guise of a stop-gap spending bill that is simply supposed to keep the government running until a long-delayed appropriations process is completed — probably in November — the Congress has just approved a massive increase in war funding.

The move was backed by every senator who cast a vote, save one.

Keep reading . . .

Source: IPS

WASHINGTON, Sep. 28 (IPS) – A U.S.-based private security firm received a contract worth up to 92 million dollars from the Department of Defence amid hard questions about its involvement in two separate violent incidents in Iraq.

“Blackwater has been a contractor in the past with the department and could certainly be in the future,” said the U.S.’s top-ranking military officer, General Peter Pace, at an afternoon press conference here.

The future arrived just two hours later when the Pentagon released a new list of contracts — Presidential Airways, the aviation unit of parent company Blackwater, was awarded the contract to fly Department of Defence passengers and cargo between locations around central Asia.

The announcement comes as a cloud of suspicion is gathering around the “professional military” firm for its actions as a State Department security contractor in Iraq in which at least eight Iraqis and possibly as many as 28 were killed, including a woman and child.

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The Seattle Post Intelligence, September 27, 2007

JIM SINCLAIR AND RICK BENDER
GUEST COLUMNISTS

Working people from both sides of the border will gather Saturday at the Peace Arch border crossing to send a strong message to both our governments — it’s time to bring our troops home.

It should come as no surprise that organizations representing more than 800,000 workers have come to the same conclusion. It is not because we are afraid to fight that we are opposed. Working people are fighters. Our movement and our countries have been built by the struggle and sacrifices of ordinary citizens acting with extraordinary courage.

As trade union leaders, we are challenged to speak out because it is the young daughters and sons of working people whose lives are being wasted in an impossible war that will have no end.

Keep reading . . .

EUX.TV, September 26, 2007

Washington (dpa) – US lawmakers voted Wednesday to split Iraq into a loose federation of sectarian-based regions and urged President George W Bush to press Iraqi leaders to agree.

More than 20 Republicans joined Democrats to pass the non-binding measure in the Senate, 75-23, showing frustration in both parties about Bush’s war policy and lagging national reconciliation in Iraq.

Supporters of Iraqi partition believe it would let Shia, Sunni and Kurdish factions settle their differences and make it easier for US troops eventually to return home.

But the measure, attached to the 2008 defence budget, runs against US administration policy to keep Iraq united and would likely face a veto if it reached Bush’s desk.

The proposal to breaking up Iraq into decentralized regions came from Senator Joseph Biden, who heads the chamber’s foreign relations committee and is running for the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nomination.

Biden has long championed the federal plan, saying it would give Iraq’s main groups “breathing room in their own regions” and speed up a US troop withdrawal.

But partition would raise concern in neighbouring Turkey, which is fighting a Kurdish separatist movement and would be wary of broader autonomy for Iraqi Kurds across the border.

Sunni-led Saudi Arabia would likely fear a further rise in Iranian influence over Iraq if Iraqi Shiites controlled their own mini-state.

A key Republican supporter and presidential candidate, Senator Sam Brownback, has urged Bush to send a high-level envoy to Iraq “to get these people in a room to cut the deal to get different states, where you have the power mostly residing in the states.”

Biden’s amendment calls for the US government to work for a “political settlement based on the creation of federal regions within a united Iraq.”