Friday, December 31, 2010

India: Sedition decision against Binayak Sen ‘misuse’ of laws

By Amartya Sen, ZNet, Dec 30, 2010

Source: Telegraph India

I am very upset about the court decision in Chhattisgarh about Binayak Sen. It is a huge perversion of our system of justice, and particularly of the laws concerning sedition. It’s not at all clear, to start with, that the thing he has been exactly accused of — of passing letters — has been really proved beyond doubt.


Secondly, even if this were correct, that doesn’t amount to sedition. He hasn’t killed anyone, he hasn’t incited anyone to rise in violent protest or rebellion. In fact, we know that in his writings he has written against the use of violence in political struggle, arguing that this is neither correct, nor is it ultimately successful. So, I think, even if this is the case — that the exact thing he is accused of is exactly what they are saying it is, which is by no means clear — even then the charge of sedition does not stand.


Thirdly, in exercising any kind of judgment, one has to take into account the character of the person. In this case, Binayak Sen is a very dedicated social worker, working extremely hard for the welfare of some of the most neglected people in the world. He has dedicated his life to doing that rather than having the prosperous, successful life of a doctor, and making a lot of money. So his dedication is not in doubt.


To turn the dedicated service of someone who drops everything to serve the cause of neglected people into a story of the seditious use of something — in this case, it appears to be the passing of a letter, when sedition usually takes the form of inciting people to violence or actually committing some violence and asking others to follow, none of which had happened — the whole thing seems a ridiculous use of the laws of democratic India.

This is part of a legal process, and we have to bear in mind that this is only the first step in a state which has been extraordinarily keen in keeping Binayak Sen behind bars.

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America’s Slide toward Totalitarism

By Abby Martin, Consortium News, December 27, 2010

Editor’s Note: The chance of an American getting killed by a terrorist remains miniscule, especially compared to other possible causes of mortality, like not getting timely medical attention because of the wasteful and costly health-care system. But Americans continue to surrender freedoms (and spend a fortune) to add a tiny bit of protection from terrorism.

The larger picture is even grimmer, since the accumulation of surrendered freedoms to fight the “war on terror” is shifting the United States piece by piece from a constitutional republic toward a new-age totalitarian state, as Abby Martin notes in this guest essay:

In George Orwell’s 1984, Britain is depicted as a totalitarian police state that is ruled by the Party, or Big Brother – an enigmatic, ubiquitous elite that controls society through heavy surveillance, nationalist propaganda and historical revisionism.

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The concept seems like a far-fetched portrayal of a democratic nation’s demise into totalitarianism, but in America’s “post 9/11” climate of fear, the United States government has been building a comprehensive grid of surveillance and control that bears frightening similarities to Orwell’s fictional narrative.

The glaring difference between the two is that Orwell’s dystopian society is overtly totalitarian. America, conversely, operates under a “soft fascism” – an insidious, systematic method of preventative action and corporate top-down control over society’s media, economy and politics – while maintaining the necessary illusion of personal choice and freedom.

A populace with little to no concept of their subjugation makes them the perfect subjects to rule.

Many Americans might not feel the government’s hand or Big Brother’s watchful eye directly in their lives. However, with the use of GPS, cell phones and the Internet, every move we make can be tracked, cataloged and divided into demographics that are used to increase corporate advertising efficiency and to create a “chilling effect” throughout our culture, stifling dissent and diminishing activism.

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Many Arab officials have close CIA links: Assange

By MOBIN PANDIT & AHMED EL AMIN, The Peninsula, Dec 30, 2010

DOHA: Top officials in several Arab countries have close links with the CIA, and many officials keep visiting US embassies in their respective countries voluntarily to establish links with this key US intelligence agency, says Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing website, WikiLeaks.

“These officials are spies for the US in their countries,” Assange told Al Jazeera Arabic channel in an interview yesterday.

The interviewer, Ahmed Mansour, said at the start of the interview which was a continuation of last week’s interface, that Assange had even shown him the files that contained the names of some top Arab officials with alleged links with the CIA.

Assange or Mansour, however, didn’t disclose the names of these officials. The WikiLeaks founder said he feared he could be killed but added that there were 2,000 websites that were ready to publish the remaining files that are in possession of WikiLeaks after “he has been done away with”.

“If I am killed or detained for a long time, there are 2,000 websites ready to publish the remaining files. We have protected these websites through very safe passwords,” said Assange.

Currently, his whistle-blowing website is exposing files in a ‘responsible’ manner, he claimed. “But if I am forced we could go to the extreme and expose each and every file that we have access to,” thundered the WikiLeaks founder. “We must protect our sources at whatever cost. This is our sincere concern.”

Some Arab countries even have torture houses where Washington regularly sends ‘suspects’ for ‘interrogation and torture’, he said.

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Thursday, December 30, 2010

At Least 42 Killed as US Drones Continue to Rock North Waziristan

Officials Don’t Know Identities of Any of Slain
 
by Jason Ditz, Antwar.com, December 28, 2010
 
Another 17 people were killed today in a flurry of US drone strikes against the North Waziristan Agency, bringing the two day toll to 42 slain and an unknown number of people wounded.

Officials have termed everyone killed a “suspected militant” but conceded that they don’t know any of the identities of the slain and that civilians are almost certain to be amongst the toll. With virtually no media allowed into the region, identifying the victims of US attacks is virtually impossible.

But we do know the circumstances of the attacks, including that a number of the people killed yesterday were not in the targeted vehicles but were simply nearby when the missiles landed. Today, the first drone strike destroyed a home and the second strike targeted neighbors who went to the site of the home to look for survivors.

The US has launched 115 strikes this year killing over a thousand people. Of these, only a handful were ever identified as “high value targets” and a number of those reemerged later, alive and well. The vast, vast majority will forever be known as “suspects,” despite mounting evidence that they are by and large civilians.

Greenwald: The merger of journalists and government officials

By Glenn Greenwald, Salon, Dec 28, 2010

The merger of journalists and government officials
CNN
(updated below)

The video of the CNN debate I did last night about WikiLeaks with former Bush Homeland Security Adviser (and CNN contributor) Fran Townsend and CNN anchor Jessica Yellin is posted below. The way it proceeded was quite instructive to me and I want to make four observations about the discussion: 

(1) Over the last month, I’ve done many television and radio segments about WikiLeaks and what always strikes me is how indistinguishable — identical — are the political figures and the journalists. There’s just no difference in how they think, what their values and priorities are, how completely they’ve ingested and how eagerly they recite the same anti-WikiLeaks, “Assange = Saddam” script.  So absolute is the WikiLeaks-is-Evil bipartisan orthodoxy among the Beltway political and media class (forever cemented by the joint Biden/McConnell decree that Assange is a “high-tech Terrorist,”) that you’re viewed as being from another planet if you don’t spout it.  It’s the equivalent of questioning Saddam’s WMD stockpile in early 2003.

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Enough Grandstanding About Khodorkovsky, Ms. Clinton!

By YVONNE RIDLEY, Counterpunch, Dec 29, 2010
 

I wonder if Hillary Clinton really believes in the pompous invective that sprays from her lips with the rapidity of machine gun fire.

We had a classic example of it just the other day when she let rip in her grating, robotic monotone over a Moscow court’s decision to jail an oil tycoon.

To be fair to Clinton, she was not alone. There was a whole gaggle of disapproving foreign ministers who poured forth their ridiculous brand of Western arrogance which has poisoned the international atmosphere for far too long.

The US Secretary of State said Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s conviction raised “serious questions about selective prosecution and about the rule of law being overshadowed by political considerations”.

Although Khodorkovsky, 47, and his business partner, Platon Lebedev, 54, were found guilty of theft and money laundering by a Moscow court, critics like Clinton say the trial constitutes revenge for the tycoon’s questioning of a state monopoly on oil pipelines and propping up political parties that oppose the Kremlin.

Clinton’s censure was echoed by politicians in Britain and Germany, and Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, urged Moscow to “respect its international commitments in the field of human rights and the rule of law”.

Now while it may appear to be quite touching to see all these Western leaders express their outrage over a trial involving the one-time richest and most powerful man in Russia’s oil and gas industry, you have to ask where were these moral guardians when other unjust legal decisions were being made in US courts, for example?

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Indian Human Rights Activist Dr. Binayak Sen Sentenced to Life in Prison in Widely Criticized Ruling


Sen
Renowned Indian physician and human rights activist Dr. Binayak Sen has been sentenced to life in prison on charges of sedition and conspiracy. Described as Indian’s most famous political prisoner, Dr. Sen is known as the “physician of the poor.” We play an interview with Dr. Sen, speaking while out on bail earlier this year, and we talk to his wife, Ilina Sen. [includes rush transcript]


Democracy Now, Dec, 28, 2010
 
Dr. Binayak Sen, interviewed in May 2010
 
AMY GOODMAN: The renowned Indian physician and human rights activist Dr. Binayak Sen has been sentenced to life in prison. On Friday, Dr. Sen and two others were convicted in court in India on charges of sedition and conspiracy.

Described as India’s most famous political prisoner, Dr. Sen is known as the “physician of the poor.” He spent many years working as a doctor in the rural-tribal areas of Chhattisgarh in central India and reported on unlawful killings of indigenous people by the police and private militias. The region is the site of intensifying conflict between India’s central government and the Maoist Naxalites.

In May of 2007, Dr. Sen was charged under the the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and the Chhattisgarh Special Public Safety Act. The allegations against him ranged from helping the Maoist insurgency, being a member of a terrorist organization, to waging war against the Indian state.

In a statement released after his conviction, Amnesty International called Dr. Sen a “prisoner of conscience.” Asia-Pacific director Sam Zarifi said, quote, “This sentence will seriously intimidate other human rights defenders who would provide a peaceful outlet for the people’s grievances… Amnesty International believes that the charges against Dr. Sen are baseless and politically motivated,” the statement said.

Immediately after the sentencing Friday, Dr. Sen was taken back into custody. He had been free on bail since May of 2009. Earlier this year, Democracy Now!’s Anjali Kamat had a chance to speak with Dr. Sen by telephone while he was out on bail.

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Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Indian Human Rights Activist Dr. Binayak Sen Sentenced to Life in Prison in Widely Criticized Ruling


Sen

Renowned Indian physician and human rights activist Dr. Binayak Sen has been sentenced to life in prison on charges of sedition and conspiracy. Described as Indian’s most famous political prisoner, Dr. Sen is known as the “physician of the poor.” We play an interview with Dr. Sen, speaking while out on bail earlier this year, and we talk to his wife, Ilina Sen. [includes rush transcript]


Democracy Now, Dec, 28, 2010
 
Dr. Binayak Sen, interviewed in May 2010,
 
AMY GOODMAN: The renowned Indian physician and human rights activist Dr. Binayak Sen has been sentenced to life in prison. On Friday, Dr. Sen and two others were convicted in court in India on charges of sedition and conspiracy.

Described as India’s most famous political prisoner, Dr. Sen is known as the “physician of the poor.” He spent many years working as a doctor in the rural-tribal areas of Chhattisgarh in central India and reported on unlawful killings of indigenous people by the police and private militias. The region is the site of intensifying conflict between India’s central government and the Maoist Naxalites.

In May of 2007, Dr. Sen was charged under the the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and the Chhattisgarh Special Public Safety Act. The allegations against him ranged from helping the Maoist insurgency, being a member of a terrorist organization, to waging war against the Indian state.

In a statement released after his conviction, Amnesty International called Dr. Sen a “prisoner of conscience.” Asia-Pacific director Sam Zarifi said, quote, “This sentence will seriously intimidate other human rights defenders who would provide a peaceful outlet for the people’s grievances… Amnesty International believes that the charges against Dr. Sen are baseless and politically motivated,” the statement said.

Immediately after the sentencing Friday, Dr. Sen was taken back into custody. He had been free on bail since May of 2009. Earlier this year, Democracy Now!’s Anjali Kamat had a chance to speak with Dr. Sen by telephone while he was out on bail.

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US drone attacks are no laughing matter, Mr Obama

The president’s backing of indiscriminate slaughter in Pakistan can only encourage new waves of militancy 
 
Mehdi Hasan, The Guardian, Dec 28, 2010

Speaking at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in May, Barack Obama spotted teen pop band the Jonas Brothers in the audience. “Sasha and Malia are huge fans, but, boys, don’t get any ideas,” deadpanned the president, referring to his daughters. “Two words for you: predator drones. You will never see it coming.” The crowd laughed, Obama smiled, the dinner continued. Few questioned the wisdom of making such a tasteless joke; of the US commander-in-chief showing such casual disregard for the countless lives lost abroad through US drone attacks.

From the moment he stepped foot inside the White House, Obama set about expanding and escalating a covert CIA programme of “targeted killings” inside Pakistan, using Predator and Reaper drones armed with Hellfire missiles (who comes up with these names?) that had been started by the Bush administration in 2004. On 23 January 2009, just three days after being sworn in, Obama ordered his first set of air strikes inside Pakistan; one is said to have killed four Arab fighters linked to al-Qaida but the other hit the house of a pro-government tribal leader, killing him and four members of his family, including a five-year-old child. Obama’s own daughter, Sasha, was seven at the time.

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All Pakistani Parties Demand End to Drone Attacks



Ahmad Noorani, uruknet.info, Dec 28, 2010 

ISLAMABAD: As another drone attack killed more than 20 people on North Waziristan on Monday, all leading political parties of the country unanimously declared that these attacks were tantamount to compromising the sovereignty of Pakistan and the government and the Pakistan Army should take immediate measures to stop them.

Leaders of these parties said the government and authorities should sort out the matter in accordance with parliament’s unanimous resolutions and take action against the extremists by itself wherever it is needed.

Senior leaders of these leading political forces say that compromising the sovereignty of the country would lead to making Pakistan a banana republic and foreign forces will keep on extending their targeted areas of attacks which consequently will damage the unity of the already troubled nation.

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Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

CIA drone strikes kill 25 in Pakistan

By Joseph Kishore, wsws.org, 28 December 2010
As part of an escalating US campaign in Pakistan, missiles from suspected CIA drones killed up to 25 people on Monday.

The latest slaughter took place in the North Waziristan region, which borders Afghanistan and has been targeted by the majority of US missiles fired from unmanned aircraft over the past year. The region is said to be a stronghold of the so-called Haqqani network, which operates in Afghanistan and opposes the US occupation.

The Los Angeles Times, citing “Pakistani intelligence officials,” reported that 25 were killed after three trucks were incinerated in two separate attacks in Mir Ali, a city that lies close to the border with Afghanistan.

One of the attacks destroyed two trucks in the village of Sher Tala, while the other destroyed a truck traveling in the village of Machikhel.

As always, those killed were described by Pakistani officials and the US media as “suspected militants” or “terrorists,” even though no concrete information was provided about those killed. The US did not make any comment on the killings.

The attacks in North Waziristan followed by 10 days the killing of 54 in the Kyber tribal region, located further to the north along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. (See “US drones slaughter 54 in Pakistan”)

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Tuesday, December 28, 2010

The drums of war are heard again in Israel

by Ilan Pappe, mondoweiss.comDecember 26, 2010


The drums of war are heard again in Israel and they are sounded because once more Israel’s invincibility  is in question. Despite the triumphant rhetoric in the various media commemorative reports, two years after ‘Cast Lead’, the sense is that that campaign was as much of a failure as was the second Lebanon war of 2006. Unfortunately, leaders, generals and the public at large in the Jewish State know only one way of dealing with military debacles and fiascos. They can be redeemed only by another successful operation or war but one which has to be carried out with more force and be more ruthless than the previous one with the hope for better results in the next round.

Force and might, so explained leading commentators in the local media (parroting what they hear from the generals in the army), is needed in order to ‘deter’, to ‘teach a lesson’ and to ‘weaken’ the enemy. There is no new plan for Gaza – there is no real desire to occupy it and put in under direct Israeli rule. What is suggested is to pound the Strip and its people once more, but with more brutality and for a shorter time. One might ask, why would this bear different fruits than the ‘Cast Lead Operation’? But this is the wrong question. The right question is what else can the present political and military elite of Israel (which includes the government and the main opposition parties) do?

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Pakistan’s blasphemy law seen as tool of oppression

In a country with countless ethnicities and religious minorities, the 1980s law against insulting Islam is used to settle scores, critics say. The case of a Christian woman sentenced to death has led to renewed calls for its repeal.

Pakistan blasphemy law Asia BibiDaughters of Asia Bibi hold an image of their mother at their home in Sheikhupura, in Pakistan’s Punjab province. Human rights advocates have urged the president to pardon her and to repeal the blasphemy law under which she was convicted. (Adrees Latif, Reuters / December 27, 2010)    

By Alex Rodriguez, Los Angeles Times, December 27, 2010

Reporting from Nankana Sahib, Pakistan —

Muslim cleric Muhammad Salim isn’t worried that a court or Pakistan’s president might spare a Christian woman from this village who has been sentenced to death on blasphemy charges.

After all, if Asia Bibi, a mother of two, escapes the hangman’s noose, he’s confident someone else will kill her.

“Any Muslim, if given the chance, would kill such a person,” Salim said calmly, seated cross-legged on a straw mat at a mosque here. “You would be rewarded in heaven for it.”
Salim isn’t the only one calling for vigilante justice. A cleric in Peshawar has offered 500,000 rupees, or $6,000, to anyone who kills Asia Bibi, if her execution doesn’t take place. Other hard-line clerics have warned they would mobilize nationwide protests against the government if President Asif Ali Zardari pardoned her.

Asia Bibi’s case has exposed deep rifts in Pakistan over the blasphemy law, seen by some as an appropriate measure to defend the tenets of Islam, but viewed by others as a dangerous tool easily abused in a society that is a volatile patchwork of ethnicities, religions and sects.

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Obama’s Afghanistan Review: A Whitewash of a Disastrous Occupation

According to the Obama administration, nothing can happen in the U.S. war in Afghanistan that doesn’t mean good news. 

By Phyllis Bennis and Kevin Martin, Alter Net, December 24, 2010
 


Apparently nothing can happen in the U.S. war in Afghanistan that doesn’t mean good news. If violence rises, it’s because “we’re taking the fight to the enemy.”  The Pentagon must be taking a lot of fighting to whoever they’re calling the enemy – this year alone the war has killed over 2500 Afghan civilians, and almost 500 U.S. troops and more than 200 other NATO forces have died too.  Of course in those isolated areas where violence may have dropped, it’s because “our strategy is winning.”

President Obama’s most recent Afghanistan review process resulted – surprise! – in the announcement that the U.S./NATO occupation will continue at least until 2014.  Another four years of war, death, and devastation for the people of Afghanistan, as well as for the young U.S. soldiers drafted by poverty and lack of opportunity and sent to kill and die there in escalating numbers.

That earlier promise of July 2011 as the pull-out date?  That one was always at least partially a sham – designed to pacify Obama’s powerfully anti-war base.  The language even when first announced was a carefully ambiguous version that sounded like “July 2011 will start a process to determine whether conditions might allow preparation for beginning consideration of when the partial transfer of some control to Afghan forces might allow for a partial withdrawal of a few U.S. troops…”

As is recognized by the 60% of people in the U.S. who understand that the war in Afghanistan is “not worth fighting,” this is a war we cannot win and cannot afford. There is no military solution – we’ve heard that for years now, from the very leaders orchestrating the war, in the Pentagon, in Congress, in the White House.  And yet, the military battle goes on, despite its inevitable failure.

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Monday, December 27, 2010

From The Archives: The Christian Myth of Jesus’s Birth

By the Rev. Howard Bess, Consortium News, December 24, 2010

(Originally published December 5, 2009)

Editor’s Note: In a modern era when ancient religious myths continue to set nations at war against one another at the cost of untold human suffering, it is no longer possible to look benignly even at some of the innocent myths like those that surround the birth of Jesus.

Anything that suggests the superiority of one religion over another carries with it the risk of justifying yet more killing. Indeed, one of the bitter ironies of this season’s joyful praise for the “prince of peace” is that his gentle teachings have been twisted into possibly the most violent and warlike religion in history.

If Christians don’t like to hear that – if they wish to think of, say, Islam as a particularly violent religion and Christianity as one of peace and human kindness – they should recall the endless bloodletting done in Jesus’s name, from the days since Christianity was adopted as Rome’s official religion through the Middle Ages to today. 

For instance, think of:

–The “heretics” tortured and burned alive for transgressions such as disagreeing over interpretations of the transubstantiation of Christ in the communion or for deviating from Christian doctrine that clashed with scientific discoveries;

–The Crusaders who slaughtered the Muslim and Jewish populations of Jerusalem in 1099, hailed in Europe as a great victory;

–The interminable religious wars that ravaged Europe for centuries and the suffering that kings inflicted on their subjects after claiming a divine right under Christianity.

–The Christian-led genocides against and enslavements of indigenous “heathens” of the Western Hemisphere, Africa and Australia as well as brutal imperial incursions into Asia;

–The European pogroms against the Jews based on an anti-Semitism rationalized by labeling Jews collectively as “Christ killers,” laying the groundwork for the Nazi Holocaust as the Vatican and many Protestant religious leaders stood by silently.

–The religious justification for even more torture and butchery against “godless” leftists during the Cold War, again aided and abetted by the Vatican and fundamentalist Christians;

–Today’s “war on terror” or “clash of civilizations” directed against Muslims with the strong support of many deeply religious Christians (and Jews) who decry Islam as a violent religion bent on conquest.

So, given that grim history – and in the hope that Christians might pause in their celebrations to reflect on how far Christianity has strayed from the peaceful teachings of Jesus – we are republishing the Rev. Howard Bess’s article from 2009 about some of the cherished myths about Jesus’s birth:

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Pentagon’s Christmas Present: Largest Military Budget Since World War II

By Rick Rozoff, opednews.com, Dec 23, 2010


On December 22 both houses of the U.S. Congress unanimously passed a bill authorizing $725 billion for next year’s Defense Department budget.

The bill, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011, was approved by all 100 senators as required and by a voice vote in the House.

The House had approved the bill, now sent to President Barack Obama to sign into law, five days earlier in a 341-48 roll call, but needed to vote on it again after the Senate altered it in the interim.

The proposed figure for the Pentagon’s 2011 war chest includes, in addition to the base budget, $158.7 billion for what are now euphemistically referred to as overseas contingency operations: The military occupation of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan.

The $725 billion figure, although $17 billion more than the White House had requested, is not the final word on the subject, however, as supplements could be demanded as early as the beginning of next year, especially in regard to the Afghan war that will then be in its eleventh calendar year.

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Latin America Recognizes Palestine


The reality is that Palestine is completely dominated by Israel and without outside support there can be no fair and equal negotiations. The US has pretended to play the role of mediator, notes Jim Miles

  Middle East Online, Dec 24, 2010

A curious turn of events is taking shape in Latin America, one that demonstrates at least two levels of international change. The leaders of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay have stated their recognition of a Palestinian state within the ‘green line’, the 1948 armistice line between Israel and the Palestinians.

The first level of international change is the recognition of the green line itself as the Palestinian-Israeli boundary, representing an area about forty-five per cent larger than the area proposed for the Israeli state by the UN General Assembly. In that sense, even recognizing the green line is a significant concession to Israeli claims and makes a very generous offer of Palestinian land to be recognized as Israeli territory. As it stands now, with the settlement patterns breaking Palestine into four or five bantustans, with Gaza nothing more than a large open air prison, there truly is no manner in which a sovereign contiguous state of Palestine existing side by side with an Israeli state can be formed. . . .

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Saturday, December 25, 2010

Bradley Manning Suffering Extreme Isolation Prison Torture by Our Goverment — Courageous Whistleblower ‘Physically Deteriorating’

Bradley Manning is suffering inhumane isolation in prison that numerous experts say is a form of real torture.
By Joshua Holland, Alter Net, December 23, 2010


Last week, Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of giving classified materials to Wikileaks, spent his 23rd birthday in the brig of the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Virginia. He has been convicted of no crime, but endures the kind of highly restrictive detention that’s usually reserved for the most dangerous criminals in America’s supermax prisons. He is kept isolated in his cell 23 hours a day, where he is cut off from most human contact, denied reading materials and personal items, prevented by the guards from exercising and regularly awakened from his sleep. He has been at Quantico for five months, following two months of detention in Kuwait.

The circumstances of Manning’s detention gained prominence last week after Salon’s Glenn Greenwald wrote a scathing exposé of what he called “conditions that constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture.” As AlterNet’s Sarah Seltzer noted, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture has started a probe to determine whether Manning’s solitary confinement constitutes torture under international law.

The Pentagon reacted to the story by claiming that Manning is “a maximum custody detainee” who can “receive the same privileges that a detainee classified as general population may receive … [including] daily television, hygiene call, reading and outside physical activity without restraint.” But David House, one of the few people able to visit Manning, said that Manning told him he’d only been allowed outdoors sporadically, and his exercise consisted of being placed in a room where he can only walk around in circles.

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Red Cross defends WikiLeaks exposé on Kashmir torture

SAYS CONFIDENTIALITY NOT UNCONDITIONAL

New Delhi, Dec 23: Barely few days after a WikiLeaks cable revealed that India was “condoning torture” in Kashmir, the International Committee of the Red Cross has defended passing sensitive information about the torturing of prisoners to US, saying it was “frustrated due to the lack of dialogue” with New Delhi.

AlertNet, a Thomson Reuters initiative,  Thursday quoted Alexis Heeb, the ICRC’s spokesman in New Delhi, as saying: “We confirm that a meeting took place between the ICRC and the US embassy in 2005 at a time in which the ICRC was very frustrated due to the lack of dialogue with the Indian authorities,”
Heeb said: “The ICRC works always in a confidential way with the authorities. However, in specific instances, when the dialogue is blocked for different reasons, we may change our strategy.”

According to a 2005 cable, released by WikiLeaks and published by the Guardian newspaper, the ICRC told American diplomats in New Delhi that it had found “systematic prisoner abuse by armed forces during detention centre visits in Kashmir from 2002 and 2004.”

The cable said the ICRC had told US diplomats that “police and paramilitary, who are fighting in Kashmir, beat suspects, subjected them to electric currents and tortured them with water in widespread human rights abuses.”

Among 1,500 detainees that the ICRC staff met, more than half reported “ill-treatment”, the cable reported. Of the 852 cases recorded, 171 detainees said they had been beaten, while the rest said they had been subjected to one or more of six forms of torture.

The cable revealed the ICRC had raised the issue of prisoner abuse with the Indian government for more than a decade, but because the practice continued, “it is forced to conclude that the government of India condones torture”.

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As drone strikes have increased, so have assassinations, Pakistanis say


By Karin Brulliard and Haq Nawaz Khan,Washington Post Foreign Service,
 
The Washington Post,  December 24, 2010

PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN – As drone-fired missiles drop with furious frequency in the tribal area of North Waziristan, so do the bodies.

As often as seven times a week, tribesmen there say, corpses appear in fields and on roadsides with dark warnings pinned to their tunics: All American spies will meet the same fate.

Espionage has long been viewed as an egregious offense in the lawless borderland, but residents say the current pace of assassinations is unprecedented. The escalation parallels a massive surge in CIA drone attacks on North Waziristan, home to a nest of insurgents that includes al-Qaeda and the Haqqani network, an Afghan militia considered the most lethal foe of U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan.

CIA drones have fired 112 missiles on Pakistan’s tribal areas this year, 88 percent of which hit North Waziristan, in a campaign whose effectiveness is hotly debated. But tribesmen say the U.S. campaign has had far-reaching consequences for the way of life in North Waziristan and provoked cycles of violence that, once in motion, are difficult to predict and impossible to control.

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The other story of Bethlehem

Morning Star Online, December 24,  2010
 
Churches will be crowded throughout Britain over the coming days in celebration of events believed to have taken place 2,000 years ago.

Christian clergy will commemorate the birth in the Palestinian town of Bethlehem of their saviour as the son of God who had no place to lay his head and was, accordingly, born in a manger.

In Palestine today, lack of shelter remains a major problem for the people of Gaza, many of whom have been condemned to live in tents for the past two years.
Monday will mark the second anniversary of Israel’s unjustified military assault on the coastal enclave, when its armed forces wiped out over 1,400 Palestinians in just over three weeks.

The attack was designed to destroy social infrastructure to make people’s lives unbearable as a way of turning the Palestinian people against Hamas, which they had backed in free and democratic elections.
Israel has tightened the blockade against Gaza, despite international condemnation of this collective punishment of civilians, which is classified by the Geneva conventions as a war crime.

The occupying power, which presses ahead with its illegal colonisation of the West Bank, refuses to allow concrete or other building supplies into Gaza, preventing both the Palestinians themselves and the United Nations from beginning vital reconstruction.

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Friday, December 24, 2010

Pakistan flood victims face harsh winter


by: Brian McAfee, People’s World, December 20,  2010

PakistanFloodIDPs520x318
Photo: A woman and her two children stand in their makeshift shelter in the northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Their home was destroyed in the floods that have affected an estimated 2.5 million of the province’s 3.5 million residents.
( UN Photo/UNICEF/ZAK/CC)

Reports indicate that the hardships from Pakistan’s earlier monsoon floods have been exacerbated by the onslaught of winter.
 
The floods affected 20 million people — more than 10 percent — of Pakistan’s population of just over 180 million people.

Yet, as the temperature dips, hundreds of thousands of displaced children and adults are susceptible to pneumonia and other cold-related diseases. According to Director of the National Institute of Child Health (Pakistan) Professor Jamal Raza, the flood victims becoming ill from cold related causes, particularly children, could almost double from the current number. Many are living in non-winterized tents, and there are shortages of dry firewood/fuel and other materials, such as adequate clothing, needed to create warmth.
Further, many of the flood ravaged areas from this year’s monsoon remain covered in water and millions are still displaced. Concurrently, many displaced are farmers whose fields are still flooded, and they have no source of livelihood. Food distribution is difficult to carry out under the circumstances.

Concerning the children, Raza says that it will be an uphill battle to save many of the them as they are malnourished, and have experienced a great deal of weight loss due to poor diet. Moreover, he says, their  capability for immunity is very low and, accordingly, they are susceptible to a wide range of respiratory diseases. Consequently, there is an urgent need for blankets, quilts and better shelter to fight the cold, as well as provisions for the obvious nutritional and medical needs.

Reports out of Pakistan indicate a further danger caused by the floods: the release of stored toxic chemicals into the flood waters. An article in New Scientist reports the floods released an estimated 3,000 tonnes of toxic chemicals into the environment. The chemicals known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs) include several insect repellents, such as DDT. At the same time, many of them do not biodegrade in nature, and are purportedly linked to hormonal, developmental and reproductive disorders. Pakistan’s floods have awakened some nations and scientists to this ongoing threat as changes in weather patterns become more evident.

Reputable organizations currently active in the relief effort in Pakistan include OXFAM, AmeriCares and United Nations Refugee Agency. If you consider helping the people of Pakistan through a  contribution to any one of them, be sure to specify that the donation is for Pakistan flood relief.

Please Mr. President! Some Truth About Afghanistan

Eric Margolis, The Huffington Post, Dec 20, 2010
 
After nine years of war in Afghanistan, costing over $100 billion in taxpayer money and 700 American lives, the full truth about this murky conflict remains elusive.
The government and media have colluded to paint the picture of a noble, heroic, flag-waving American enterprise in Afghanistan that is, alas, very far from reality. As the cynic Ambrose Bierce pointedly observed of patriots — “the dupe of statesmen; the tool of conquerors.”

Three interesting reports about Afghanistan emerged in Washington last week.
First, a political whitewash issued by the Obama White House claiming the war was going well and some US troops might be withdrawn next year. This ‘don’t worry be happy’ summary was trumpeted by the pro-war New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and other members of the government-friendly US media.

US generals spoke of “progress” in Afghanistan, whatever that means, as US forces conducted a brutal campaign around Kandahar to crush resistance to the occupation and punish communities that supported Taliban.

Second, the Red Cross issued a grim report showing that Afghans were suffering widespread malnutrition and serious health problems after nearly a decade of Western occupation. So much for US-led nation-building.

Third, there were leaks about a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), the combined findings of all 16 US intelligence agencies. This key intelligence report is explosive and may not be fully revealed.

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John Pilger – The War You Don’t See



Information Clearing House, Dec  22, 2010

Video Documentary,

John Pilger says in the film: “We journalists… have to be brave enough to defy those who seek our collusion in selling their latest bloody adventure in someone else’s country… In this age of endless imperial war, the lives of countless men, women and children depend on the truth or their blood is on us… Those whose job it is to keep the record straight ought to be the voice of people, not power.”

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US Plan for High-Risk Raids into Pakistan Is More Than Psywar

by Gareth Porter, CommonDreams.org, Dec 23, 2010

WASHINGTON – This week’s leak to the New York Times of a proposal for U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) raids against Afghan insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan may be intended to put more pressure on the Pakistani military to take action against those sanctuaries.

[Spc. Randy.J. Lockwood of Muskegon Michigan of 2nd Platoon Bravo Company 2-327 Infantry stand guard as Afghan men greet each other in Chowkay district near Pakistani border in Kunar province, eastern Afghanistan, Wednesday, Dec 22, 2010.(AP / Rafiq Maqbool)] 
Spc. Randy.J. Lockwood of Muskegon Michigan of 2nd Platoon Bravo Company 2-327 Infantry stand guard as Afghan men greet each other in Chowkay district near Pakistani border in Kunar province, eastern Afghanistan, Wednesday, Dec 22, 2010.(AP / Rafiq Maqbool)
 
But the proposal for such cross-border raids also reflects a real demand from the U.S.-NATO command in Afghanistan to target insurgent leaders inside Pakistan if the Pakistani military does not respond to the threat, according to a U.S. source familiar with discussions at the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters in Kabul.
And the position of the Barack Obama administration on the necessity of attacking insurgent safe havens in Pakistan appears to be in line with the proposal for cross-border raids.

Carrying out such raids would probably provoke a new level of anti-U.S. sentiment in Pakistan, with dangerous political consequences in that country, according to experts on Pakistan, but the behaviour of the national security organs of the United States in the recent past suggests that such dangers are being rationalised.

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Thursday, December 23, 2010

Obama walks back on Guantánamo

The president’s order for indefinite detention of ‘war on terror’ suspects marks continuity with Bush-era disdain for legal norms 

Karen Greenberg, The Guardian, Dec 22, 2010

guantanamo-inmates
Detainees held at the Guantánamo Bay detention centre. Photograph: Shane T McCoy/AFP/Getty Images

The Obama administration, ProPublica’s Dafna Linzer first reported, is about to issue an executive order that gives shape, contour and future life to indefinite detention for Guantánamo detainees. The order will provide for the continual detention of several dozen detainees – who will have access lawyers in order to periodically contest their detention.

On one level, we shouldn’t be surprised. In what has become a signature method of the Obama administration, the bad news was trotted out as an idea well ahead of time. In May of 2009, President Obama let it be known that indefinite detention was among the options that the administration would likely embrace in its efforts to close Guantánamo. Now, as their calculation may have predicted, what was once an unsavoury idea barely causes a ripple in the fabric of public opinion. Overshadowed by the continuing focus on the economy, and reflecting a growing callousness towards civil liberties issues in the “war on terror”, the public will likely greet the announcement with numbness.

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The death of the peace process



Osamah Khalil, uruknet.infohttp://www.uruknet.info


21-peace-process.jpg


This month marked a low point in the Obama administration's attempts to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Following the administration's announcement on 7 December that it was ending efforts to secure a 90-day extension of Israel's limited moratorium on settlement building in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton introduced "Plan B" for resolving the conflict three days later. Instead of emphasizing direct talks between the parties, Washington will now attempt to mediate between them to develop a framework agreement around the core issues of borders, refugees, and Jerusalem. Sound familiar? It should. The Obama administration is following the same failed path of its three predecessors to achieve peace. In other words, there is no Plan B.

Clinton explained that the conflict "is a source of tension and an obstacle to prosperity and opportunity for all the people of the region" and "at odds also with the interests of the United States" ("Remarks at the Brookings Institution"). Why then is the administration adopting such a well-trodden and ineffective approach? Because contrary to its public statements, Washington's policies reward Israeli intransigence and ensure that its occupation of the Palestinian territories continues indefinitely. 

INDIA: Burning of two Dalit girls is the lingering funeral pyre of the rule of law

Mr. Avinash Pandey, Asian Human Rights Comission, Dec 23, 2010 

The ghoulish killings of two Dalit girls in Moradabad, an industrial town not far away from the national capital Delhi, is yet another reminder of almost everyday recurrence of attacks on Dalit communities in India. They encompass, also the grim truth of the complete failure of the Indian state in containing, leave aside eradicating, violence committed against the Dalit communities. The incident is a sad indicator to the reality concerning the exceptional collapse of the rule of law institutions in the country.

The incident happened on 19 December. On that day, an angry mob burnt alive two young girls aged 25 and 22. The mother of the girls alleged that they were also raped by the mob. The crime they had committed to meet this ghastly fate was nothing more than the fact that they were Dalits and were sisters to two brothers accused in a double murder case. One of the brothers is absconding while the other, a sweeper by profession, is already in police custody.

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Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Rethinking Imperialist Theory

James Petras, Dec 3, 2010
The ‘fluidity’ of US power relations with Latin America is a product of the continuities and changes in Latin America. Past hegemony continues to weigh heavy, but the future augurs a continued decline. The current balance of power will however be determined by shifts in world markets, in which the US is destined to play a lesser role. Hence the greater probability of more divergences in policy, barring major breakdowns within Latin America.
Social Basis of Imperial Politics
Almost all theories of contemporary imperialism lack any but the crudest sociological analyses of the classes and political character of the governing groups which direct the imperial state and its polices. The same is true about the theorizing of the imperial state which is largely devoid of institutional analyses.

Most theorists resort to a form of economic reductionism in which ‘investments’, ‘trade’, ‘markets’ are presented as ahistorical disembodied entities comparable across space and time. The changing nature of the leading classes are accounted for by general categories such as “finance”, “manufacturing”, “banking”, “service” without any specific analysis of the variable nature and sources of financial wealth (illegal drug trade, money laundering, real estate speculation, etc.).

The shifts in the political and economic orientation of governing capitalist politicians, resulting in linkages with different capitalist/imperialist centers, which have major consequences in the configuration of world power, are glossed over in favor of abstract accounts of statistical shifts of economic indicators measuring capital flows.

Imperial theorizing totally ignores the role of non-economic socio-political power configurations in shaping imperial policy, over and against major economic institutions like MNC, up to and including major military commitments. The role of zionist power configurations and militarist ideologues in shaping US Middle East policy (2000-2010) is a crucial consideration in discussing contemporary imperialism in theory and practice.

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Struggle between classes in the ancient world

The permanent resistance
 
By Paul D’Amato, Socialist Worker, Dec 21, 2010

So long as society has been divided into classes and presided over by a ruling or exploiting class, there has been resistance from the exploited class.

The first recorded strike in history took place under Pharaoh Ramses III in 1158 B.C. The grievances of the strikers, who had fled work and found sanctuary in a local temple, were written down on a papyrus. 

“It was because of hunger and thirst that we came here,” the scroll reads. “There is no clothing, no ointment, no fish, no vegetables. Send to Pharaoh, our good lord, about it, and send to the vizier, our superior, that sustenance may be made for us.” They had to occupy two other temples in the next few days until their demands for wages (paid in rations of food and drink) were met. 

According to W.W. Tarn, strikes were an “an old Egyptian custom…not merely riots in which the manager got beaten, but regular withdrawals of labor.” According to Tarn, “The men had one weapon which officialdom feared; they could throw the machine of out of gear by leaving their ‘own place’ … and they usually took refuge in some temple with the right of asylum.

In ancient Rome, the class struggle took a different form–various kinds of slave resistance, up to and including slave insurrections and wars. The landed aristocracy of the Roman empire depended for its wealth not on wage labor, but on plunder–which included not only stealing wealth, but seizing war captives and selling them into slavery. The Roman historian Tacitus attributed these fitting words to a British general fighting the Roman conquerors: “Robbery, butchery, rapine, with false names they call Empire; and they make a wilderness, and call it peace.”

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Afghanistan: Taliban Body Count a Poor Measure of Success

For US Review, Security and Justice Are Best Tests of Progress, Not Kill/Capture Rates

Human Rights Watch, December 15, 2010

2010_Afghanistan_Wounded.jpg
Soldiers bring an Afghan civilian wounded in a crossfire to a Medevac helicopter near a camp in Helmand Province on November 2, 2010.
© 2010 Reuters
 
There is a danger that under pressure for ‘results’ the US will revert to Taliban body counts as a benchmark of success. President Obama should make clear that battlefield gains will be short-lived without a military and political strategy that protects rights.
Rachel Reid, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch
(New York) – The Obama administration should not backtrack on its commitment to make the protection of Afghan civilians a priority as it releases its assessment of the military situation in Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch said today. Strengthening civilian protection requires continued efforts to reduce civilian harm in military operations, improve due process for detainees, and sever US ties with abusive armed groups, Human Rights Watch said.

“There is a danger that under pressure for ‘results’ the US will revert to Taliban body counts as a benchmark of success,” said Rachel Reid, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch. “President Obama should make clear that battlefield gains will be short-lived without a military and political strategy that protects rights.”

On December 16, 2010, the US government will release an assessment of the impact of an increase of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan over the past year to its current strength of approximately 100,000 troops.

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Bitter Memories of War on the Way to Jail

By Chris Hedges, TruthDig.com, Dec 20, 2010


AP / Susan Walsh
One hundred thirty-one demonstrators, Chris Hedges among them, were arrested in front of the White House on Thursday.  

The speeches were over. There was a mournful harmonica rendition of taps. The 500 protesters in Lafayette Park in front of the White House fell silent. One hundred and thirty-one men and women, many of them military veterans wearing old fatigues, formed a single, silent line. Under a heavy snowfall and to the slow beat of a drum, they walked to the White House fence. They stood there until they were arrested.

The solemnity of that funerary march, the hush, was the hardest and most moving part of Thursday’s protest against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It unwound the bitter memories and images of war I keep wrapped in the thick cotton wool of forgetfulness. I was transported in that short walk to places I do not like to go. Strange and vivid flashes swept over me—the young soldier in El Salvador who had been shot through the back of the head and was, as I crouched next to him, slowly curling up in a fetal position to die; the mutilated corpses of Kosovar Albanians in the back of a flatbed truck; the screams of a woman, her entrails spilling out of her gaping wounds, on the cobblestones of a Sarajevo street. My experience was not unique. Veterans around me were back in the rice paddies and lush undergrowth of Vietnam, the dusty roads of southern Iraq or the mountain passes of Afghanistan. Their tears showed that. There was no need to talk. We spoke the same wordless language. The butchery of war defies, for those who know it, articulation.
What can I tell you about war?

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Public opposition can end US wars


Despite American officials continuing to disregard public opposition to the wars, the public can still have an impact. 
Jason C. Ditz, Al Jazeera,  21 Dec 2010
Secretaries Gates and Clinton discount American opposition to the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq [Getty]
After President Obama’s Thursday speech praising the illusory progress in Afghanistan, the floor was turned over to Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, and  Robert Gates, the secretary of defence. When asked about the growing unpopularity of the “long war,” they both replied that the administration’s intention is to ignore all popular opposition.

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