Peace and Justice Post

Green Left, September 8, 2007

Pip Hinman

The following speech was delivered by Pip Hinman, a member of Sydney’s Stop the War Coalition and the Socialist Alliance, to the September 8 “Stop Bush” protest in Sydney.

The other night on Lateline on the ABC, US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was trying to justify her government’s war of occupation in Iraq.

The people in Iraq, she said, just want they same things that we want. They want peace, security and freedom. Just like we do.

That was her argument for the US occupation of Iraq.

But it has been the US government and the governments of other rich robber nations that have been denying the people of Iraq, and others in the Middle East, peace, security and freedom for more than a century.

Continued . . .

Haaretz.com, September 6. 2006
By The Associated Press

Norway’s embassy in Tel Aviv has urged the government to criticize Israel for the alleged use of torture in prisons, the state radio network NRK reported Thursday.

The network said it had obtained a secret diplomatic document from the embassy urging action by expressing our concern that torture is still practiced in Israel.

According to Norway’s NRK, the concern stemmed from a report by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, an Israeli human rights group, claiming that prisoners were sometimes beaten during interrogation, held in painfully tight handcuffs and suffered isolation, threats, humiliation and sleep deprivation.

Norway’s Deputy Foreign Minister Raymond Johansen said he was aware of the document, but had not decided whether to act upon the recommendation.

“We have a number of difficult cases to raise with the Israeli authorities, not in the least in relation to the Israel-Palestinian conflict,” Johansen said on NRK. “Every government must exercise good judgment in which matters to raise at any given time.”
He said Norway does consider torture and abuse to be serious issues, but you always have to make a choice.

The Israeli Embassy in Oslo said it could not immediately comment on the report because the ambassador was in a meeting.

Norway has sought to be a peacemaker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, having secretly brokered the now-tattered 1993 Oslo Agreement Peace accords between the sides.

According to NRK, the secret diplomatic document says the interrogation methods are seen as legal by Israeli authorities.

NRK said the human rights group report was based on interviews with 82 former prisoners.

Source: Information Clearing House

By Dr. Crockett Grabbe and Lenny Charles

09/08/07 “ICH” — — The majority of us accept as fact that the current administration manipulates science for political ends. Few were surprised to hear experts from industry challenge overwhelming evidence of man-made climate change. Frustration within the scientific community had grown so much that by Dec. 2006 more than 10,000 scientists, including 52 Nobel laureates and 63 recipients of the National Medal of Science, had signed a statement accusing the Bush administration of “distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends”.

Scientific integrity within the administration has often not been rewarded. Recently fired US surgeon general Richard Carmona said after leaving, “In public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science, or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds.”

Truth, even when grounded in strong scientific evidence, is the first casualty of war, and the US is at war.

The pattern is clear, and it affects us all.

Continued . . .

Counterpunch, September 6, 2007

Nuclear Hypocrisy in the Middle East

By KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON

Former CIA Analysts

The internet is loaded these days with reports of the inevitability of a U.S., or a U.S.-Israeli, attack on Iran. Some writers allege that the attack is imminent. Others, including the writers of this article, argue only that the attack will happen sometime before January 2009, when the Bush administration leaves office. Many of these stories have by now been picked up by the mainstream media. In fact, it is probably safe to say that today a majority of the traditionally cautious and so-called respectable foreign policy experts in the U.S. think it is at least possible that Bush will attack Iran before he leaves office.

Such is the power of recollection with respect to how Bush bulled his way into invading Iraq in 2003 that many people simply accept that he might gamble on doing it again. He has made it clear that in this “War on Terror,” victory means everything to him. He might also believe that a win in Iran could reverse current setbacks in Iraq and also bring victory closer for the U.S. and Israel in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. And he has already shown that he is willing to accept the killings of hundreds of thousands or even a million people in the hope of going down in history as a great commander-in-chief.

The people of the United States are the only ones with a chance of stopping him, and it can only happen if a powerful majority of voters will join in a maximum effort to impeach both Bush and Cheney right now. This has to happen before the U.S. and/or Israel undertake any expanded military efforts against Iran.

Continued . . .

Mathaba.Net

Big opposition march announced for Saturday. Special forces deployed to monitor APEC Summit

CANBERRA, Australia, Sept. 5.— Protests against the presence of George W. Bush in Australia continued in Sydney and are expected to continue to grow, leading up to the start of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum in that city at the end of the week.

For the second straight day, Australians marched against Bush in Sydney. Photo: AP

The environmental organization Greenpeace participated in Wednesday’s demonstrations by erecting two ice sculptures of Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard, with the idea that they will melt in protest against the lack of action to counter global warming on the part of Australia and the United States, the AFP reported. 

Environmentalists are criticizing the excessive utilization of fossil fuels by the industrialized countries, while Sydney and Washington refuse to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on the reduction of greenhouse gases.

Another creative protest is expected on Friday, when some 2,000 people plan to gather in a Sydney park near where APEC leaders will meet, to send a message to Bush about what they really think about his visit.

The culmination of these demonstrations of opposition to the presence of the White House chief on Australian territory will be a big march on Saturday, in which tens of thousands of people are expected to participate.

Translated by Granma International

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet.Posted September 6, 2007.

The majority party is preparing to roll over, again, on Iraq.

Next week, Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, and General David Petraeus, the army’s counter-insurgency guru, will brief Congress on the Bush administration’s claims of progress in Iraq. At stake is not only the upper hand in the political debate over the continuing occupation, but an enormous amount of money — $147 billion — that was supposedly conditioned on tangible measures of progress, specifically 18 “benchmarks” attached to the 2007 supplemental spending bill.

According to a report by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO), only three of those benchmarks have been met, and those were among the minor ones (The White House has promised to “water down” the GAO’s findings). In addition to rampant insecurity throughout much of the country, Iraq’s political situation is, objectively, a disaster, and most Iraqis agree that U.S. troops cause more violence than they prevent.

But despite the reality on the ground, the administration last week threw a Hail-Mary pass, announcing that it would ask for another $50 billion for war-fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan through next Spring. That’s in addition to $147 billion already requested for the two countries.

Continued . . .

Truthdig, September 6, 2007

By Scott Ritter

AP Photo / Charles Dharapak

What I did on my summer vacation: Katie Couric poses with Marines while awaiting a presidential visit in Anbar province.

It should come as no surprise that administration’s newest military-man-of-substance-turned- political lapdog, General Petraeus, maintains that the situation in Iraq is not only salvageable, but actually improving, due to the “surge” of U.S. combat troops into Iraq over the past year. All the president and his collection of GI Joe hand-puppets ask for is more time, more money and more troops.

There is no reason to believe that the compliant war facilitators who comprise the “anti-war” Democratic majority in Congress will do anything other than give the president what he is asking for. No one seems to want to debate, in any meaningful fashion, what is really going on in Iraq.

Why would they? The Democrats, like their Republican counterparts, have invested too much political capital into fictionalizing the problem with slogans like “support the troops,” “we’re fighting the enemy there so we don’t have to fight them here,” and my all-time favorite, “leaving Iraq would hand victory to al-Qaida.”

Continued . . . 

vdare.com, September 05, 2007

Who Are The Fanatics?

By Paul Craig Roberts

President Jimmy Carter was demonized for pointing out in his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, that there are actually two sides to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Distinguished American scholars, such as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have suffered the same fate for documenting the excessive influence the Israel Lobby has on US foreign policy.

Americans would be astonished at the criticisms in the Israeli press of the Israeli government’s policies toward the Palestinians and Arabs generally. In Israel facts are still part of the discussion. If the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, could replace Fox “News,” CNN, New York Times and Washington Post, Americans would know the truth about US and Israeli policies in the Middle East and their likely consequences.

On September 1, Haaretz reported that Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, which represents 900 Congregations and 1.5 million Jews, “accused American media, politicians and religious groups of demonizing Islam” and turning Muslims into “satanic figures.” [Jewish leader urges US Muslims to condemn violence, Reuters, September 1, 2007]

Continued . . .

Salon.com, September 6, 2007

By Sydney Blumenthal

On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam’s inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.

Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD.

On April 23, 2006, CBS’s “60 Minutes” interviewed Tyler Drumheller, the former CIA chief of clandestine operations for Europe, who disclosed that the agency had received documentary intelligence from Naji Sabri, Saddam’s foreign minister, that Saddam did not have WMD. “We continued to validate him the whole way through,” said Drumheller. “The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy.”

Continued . . .

Independent, September 7, 2007

By Mark Lavie in Jerusalem

In its strongest condemnation of Israel since last summer’s war, Human Rights Watch said yesterday that most Lebanese civilian casualties were caused by “indiscriminate Israeli air strikes”.

The international human rights organisation said there was no basis to the Israeli claim that civilian casualties resulted from Hizbollah guerrillas using civilians for cover. Israel has said that it attacked civilian areas because Hizbollah set up rocket launchers in villages and towns. More than 1,000 Lebanese were killed in the 34-day conflict, which began after Hizbollah staged a cross-border raid, killing three Israeli soldiers and capturing two others.

Israeli aircraft targeted Lebanese infrastructure, including bridges and Beirut airport, and heavily damaged a district of Beirut known as a Hizbollah stronghold, as well as attacking Hizbollah centres in villages near the border. Hizbollah fired nearly 4,000 rockets at northern Israel, killing 119 soldiers. In the fighting, 40 Israeli civilians were killed.

Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch executive director, said there were only “rare” cases of Hizbollah operating in civilian villages.

“To the contrary, once the war started, most Hizbollah military officials and even many political officials left the villages,” he said. “Most Hizbollah military activity was conducted from prepared positions outside Lebanese villages in the hills and valleys around.”

The Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, rejected the findings. “Hizbollah adopted a deliberate strategy of shielding itself behind the civilian population and turning the civilians in Lebanon into a human shield,” he said.