Happy New Year 2013

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 A Happy New Year to all those who stand for human rights, peace and justice in the world and oppose wars and war mongers everywhere.

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The Harappan Civilization

“Getting Home”… a Missive from India by Anuradha Roy

Editor’s remarks: Indian ‘democracy’ is said to be the largest in the world because of the size of India’s big population and its massive electorate. On paper, India has a democratic constitution that enshrines basic human rights for all and provides for a parliamentary system of government. But India has democracy only in form, not in substance. In practice, the whole democratic process in India has gradually become so corrupt and moribund that Indian politics is said to be akin to a big business where leading parties make political and economic deals and horse-trading for power. The only law that prevails in the union is the universal rule of corruption from the lowest levels of officials to the top officials and politicians. That’s where India stands. The protests and sustained pressures from the common people and workers and peasant organisations is often negated by big economic interests. But such voices and people’s movements are the only hope in a deeply flawed and corrupt political system.

Nasir Khan, Editor

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“Getting Home”… a Missive from India by Anuradha Roy

The Main Point, Dec 28, 2012

 Earlier this week I asked my friend the novelist and publisher Anuradha Roy about the recent protests over the gang sex attack in Delhi.  She offered this account, and then gave her permission to publish it here:

I came back to Delhi from travels elsewhere on Christmas eve. The roads were windswept and foggy and, unusually for any Indian city, almost deserted. Through a drive of about 20 kilometres, there was not a single pedestrian for long stretches. There were fewer than usual cars, hardly any auto rickshaws. Enormous state transport buses sailed past with no occupants other than the driver and conductor.

In response to the brutal gang rape in Delhi on 16th December of a young student, the state had taken several steps, the results of which I was witnessing from the window of my taxi from the airport: the Delhi metro, by which an average of about 1.8 million people travel every day, had been shut down; the state had cordoned off the entire central vista of Delhi where the protesters had been attacked the day before by the police, with water cannon (in freezing December weather), tear gas and batons. It had also set in force something called Section 144, which makes it punishable for more than five people to gather anywhere.

Gandhi described British colonial rule over India as ‘satanic’. It is hard to find any other word to describe the way India is ruled now.

The daily violence against women in India is nauseating enough but people are yet more livid because of the state’s routine indifference to it. The Home Minister has said that if he went to meet the protesters at India Gate today, as was being demanded, he might some day be asked to meet ‘Maoists.’  Both he and the police commissioner justified the violent action against the thousands of students agitating for justice, claiming that the protest had been taken over by hooligans.

Continues >>

Paul Craig Roberts: Agenda Prevails Over Truth

Paul Craig Roberts, IPE, December 28, 2012 

In the Western world truth no longer has any meaning. In its place stands agenda.

Agenda is all important, because it is the way Washington achieves hegemony over the world and the American people. 9/11 was the “new Pearl Harbor” that the neoconservatives declared to be necessary for their planned wars against Muslim countries. For the neoconservatives to go forward with their agenda, it was necessary for Americans to be connected to the agenda.

President George W. Bush’s first Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neil, said that prior to 9/11 the first cabinet meeting was about the need to invade Iraq.

9/11 was initially blamed on Afghanistan, and the blame was later shifted to Iraq. Washington’s mobilization against Afghanistan was in place prior to 9/11. The George W. Bush regime’s invasion of Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom) occurred on October 7, 2001, less than a month after 9/11. Every military person knows that it is not possible to have mobilization for invading a country half way around the world ready in three weeks.

Continues >>

Stephen Lendman: Bahraini State Terror

Bahrain is a tyannical police state

by Stephen Lendman, opednews.com, Dec 28, 2012

Al-Khalifa despots run Bahrain. State terror is official policy. Washington supports it. Generous aid is provided. King Hamad remains a close US ally. Double standard hypocrisy defines America’s foreign and domestic agenda.

Bahrainis want democratic change. They want popularly elected leaders. They want despotic monarchal rule, ruthless persecution, widespread corruption, and Shia discrimination ended.

For many months, they’ve braved tear gas, beatings, rubber bullets, live fire, arrests, torture, imprisonments, and disappearances. They won’t quit. The price of freedom is high.

King Hamad calls peaceful protests “foreign plots.” He banned them earlier. Unauthorized public meetings and seminars were prohibited.

Continues >>

Sayings of Gautama Buddha

Dec. 25,  2012

Buddha Sayings of inspiration

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“Do not believe in anything simply because you heard it.

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Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.

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Do not believe in anything because it is found written in your religious books. 

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Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.

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Do not believe in tradition because they have been handed down for many generations. 

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But after observation and analysis, when you find anything that agrees with reason and is conductive to the good and benefit of one and all,then accept it and live up to it.”

Richard Falk: Responding to the Unspeakable Killings at Newtown, Connecticut

Professor Richard Falk, Dec 15, 2012

Once again, perhaps in the most anguishing manner ever, the deadly shooting of 20 children (and 8 adults) between the ages of 5 and 10 at the Newton, Connecticut Sandy Hook Elementary School, has left America in a stunned posture of tragic bemusement. Why should such incidents be happening here, especially in such a peaceful and affluent town? The shock is accompanied by spontaneous outpourings of grief, bewilderment, empathy, communal espirit, and a sense of national tragedy. Such an unavoidably dark mood is officially confirmed by the well-crafted emotional message of the president, Barack Obama.

The template of response has become a national liturgy in light of the dismal pattern of public response: media sensationalism of a totalizing kind, at once enveloping, sentimental, and tasteless (endless interviewing of surviving children and teachers, and even family members of victims), but dutifully avoiding deeper questions relating to guns, violence, and cultural stimulants and conditioning. . .

Continues >>

Revealed: U.S. carried out 333 drone strikes in Afghanistan this year alone – more than the entire drone strikes in Pakistan over the past eight years COMBINED

• U.S. carried out 333 drone strikes in Afghanistan in 2012, report says, up from 294 in 2011

• Controversial method of fighting uses remote pilots to operate aircrafts

By Beth Stebner, Mail Online, Dec 21, 2012

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The United States carried out more drone strikes in Afghanistan this year than it has done in all the years put together in Pakistan since it launched the covert air war there eight years ago, it has been revealed.

The statistics, published by the U.S. Air Force and published by Wired’s Danger Room blog, show that there were 333 drone strikes in Afghanistan in 2012 alone, up from 294 in the previous year and 278 in 2010.

It is far more than an estimated 338 strikes carried out by the CIA in Pakistan since it began hunting down remnants of al Qaeda, the Taliban and other militant groups in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas eight years ago.

The U.S. carried out more drone strikes in Afghanistan this year than it has done in all the years put together in Pakistan since it launched the air war there eight years ago

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Continues >>

Sandy Hook: America’s culture of violence

Le Monde Diplomatique, Exclusive 17 December, by Heidi Morrison

Seeking an explanation for tragic violence, we often turn to history and ask ourselves how we got to this point.  Writing the historical narrative for the forces that led to the horrific elementary school massacre of 28 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook has already begun. Commentators correctly place Sandy Hook in a recent line of similar incidents (Aurora, Fort Hood, Virginia Tech…) — all testimony for America’s lack of dialogue on gun control and commitment to mental health services. The narrative holds that American culture is becoming increasingly violent.

In the last decade, children in places like Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq and Gaza have also died at the hands of America’s culture of violence. Yet, there is no national outpouring of grief and outrage in America for these children.  There is a disconnect in the American psyche between what causes our own children to die and what causes other children abroad to die.

Continues >>

Religious fanatics’ violence against the Shias of Pakistan

Anita Joshua,  The Hindu, Dec 17, 2012

 

As chilling as the killing of Shias by Pakistani terrorists, who want them to be declared non-Muslims, is the general acceptance of sectarian violence

Pakistan’s Shias are so regularly killed in targeted attacks that counting the numbers who were thus killed in 2012 is an uphill task. But just to give an idea, even before the start of the Muharram month, when anti-Shia violence is usually routinely anticipated and accepted as a given, the numbers killed had crossed 389 — the number of people the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says died in sectarian violence in 2011.

This time, the terrorists were emboldened enough to announce their intent. Ahead of Muharram, a number of Shias received text messages saying ‘Kill, Kill Shias.’ Sure enough, the self-appointed deciders of who is or is not a Muslim struck, killing 23 in two separate bomb blasts early on in the Muharram month.

Relentless targeting

Through the year, terrorists have been relentless in going after Shias; be it in Parachinar along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Gilgit-Baltistan, Quetta, Karachi or the garrison town of Rawalpindi. The clinical manner in which the terrorists have been going about their “mission” has been chilling, generating enough disquiet among the members of the community to take to the streets on December 8 outside the United Nations headquarters in New York protesting the “genocide in Pakistan.”

Continues >>

Merry Christmas and Season's Greetings, 2012

December 19, 2012

Merry Christmas and Season's Greetings 

to all our  friends, comrades and readers 

around the world!

In the US, mass child killings are tragedies. In Pakistan, mere bug splats

Barack Obama’s tears for the children of Newtown are in stark contrast to his silence over the children murdered by his drones

• • George Monbiot
  • The Guardian, Monday 17 December 2012 20.30 GMT

A memorial to the victims of the Sandy Hook school shootings in Connecticut. The children killed by US drones in north-west Pakistan ‘have no names, no pictures, no memorials of candles and teddy bears’. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty

“Mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts … These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.” Every parent can connect with what President Barack Obama said about the murder of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut. There can scarcely be a person on earth with access to the media who is untouched by the grief of the people of that town.

It must follow that what applies to the children murdered there by a deranged young man also applies to the children murdered in Pakistan by a sombre American president. These children are just as important, just as real, just as deserving of the world’s concern. Yet there are no presidential speeches or presidential tears for them, no pictures on the front pages of the world’s newspapers, no interviews with grieving relatives, no minute analysis of what happened and why.

Continues >>

Different responses to the killing of children and other people in Pakistan and America

Editorial

Nasir  Khan, December 16, 2012

Dr Kazerooni, I agree with your viewpoint. I also ventured to console myself with the thought that perhaps a tragic incident like the present school shooting in America may lead to some sort of soul searching and people may turn away from violence. But I know it is only an escapist illusion because the reality is something much different than our wishful reveries. America is a country where violence is glorified and it is regarded not something primitive and inhuman which civilised human beings ought to reject and seek other ways of dealing with conflicts and social tensions. The culture of violence, gun touting, fast shooting, random killings and uncouth cow-boyism provide the deep undercurrents that shape American psyche and outlook. Such a psyche and outlook at state level becomes a force utilised by American plutocrats for militarism and global hegemony of the American Empire. In short, America will continue to follow its traditional path as it has done in the past both at home and in foreign countries as long as it wields power and influence.
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  Click on the  URL to see the image:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=563718253642124&set=a.308804629133489.91877.308765225804096&type=1&ref=nf

Nasir Khan: That is a fact. We all are witness to what happens when American drones kill Pakistani children. We have never seen any large-scale sympathy for such victims or demonstrations in America against such killings by the American State. But when a lone American lunatic murders children in America, and that happens often in schools and colleges, then the conscience of the American people is stirred and public anger and remorse engulf the whole nation.

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Ibrahim Kazerooni Well put my friend. Do you think this is going to shake their conscience a bit?

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Ibrahim Kazerooni We are dealing with a mindset that sees white tragedy as real tragedy. Non whites are collateral damage.

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NB: My reply to Dr Ibrahim Kazerooni is  published as Editorial to  the post.

Israel and India: Brothers In Occupation of Kashmir

Editor’s remarks: In fact, right from 1947 Indian occupation forces in Kashmir have had an iron-fist policy to maintain Indian hold over Jammu and Kashmir and to crush any resistance or voice against the occupation. The architect of this colonial and fascist policy was none other than Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of Independent India. In crushing the rebellion in Kashmir that started in 1989, Israeli leadership has actively assisted India in suppressing the Kashmiris. The military and strategic partnership of the Zionists and extreme right-wing Hindutva rulers and India’s open tilting towards Washington after the collapse of the Soviet Union signalled the dawn of new geopolitical order. The beleaguered Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir were isolated and their long resistance and their demand for freedom from Indian occupation were most brutally crushed by the Indian army. The strategic partnership with Israel and US also saw the import of Israeli weapons to India which Indian rulers used against the Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir. India used Zionists advisers in dealing with Kashmiri Muslims because they (Zionists) had gained much experience in dealing with the captive population of Palestine.

Nasir Khan, Editor

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Jonathan Azaziah,  Mask of Zion,  September 29, 2010

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Torture. Secret prisons. Rape. Incessant murder of civilians. Military-enforced curfew. Suppression of information. Kidnapings. Property destruction. Ethnic cleansing. Scorched earth policies. Protests. Mass graves. Humiliation. Beatings. Missing persons. Intimidation. Occupation. No, this is not a description of the life of Palestinians under the 62 year occupation of the Zionist entity. No, this is not a description of the life of civilians living under brutal US-UK military occupation in Iraq or Afghanistan. This is a description of the life of civilians in Kashmir, under the despicable, savage and inhumane Indian occupation which has been in place for 63 years. Palestine has been politicized over and over by corrupt Arab and Muslim leaders. It has been used for propaganda by Western politicians vying for support from the Zionist lobby by bowing down to Israel, as well as the Zionist media to disseminate the ‘Israel is the victim’ theme and smear Palestinian Resistance. Kashmir however, isn’t even mentioned at all. It is disregarded by the dictators and monarchies of the Middle East. It is disregarded by the Zionist puppets and demagogues of the West. Kashmir has become a forgotten occupation (1).

Continues >>

An Interview With Noam Chomsky on Obama’s Human Rights Record

“Nothing Can Justify Torture”

by ERIC BAILEY, Counterpunch, Dec 12, 2012

Professor Noam Chomsky is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was educated at the University of Philadelphia and at Harvard University as a Harvard Junior Fellow. He earned his PhD in Linguistics from the University of Philadelphia in 1955. He has spent the 57 years since then teaching at MIT. In addition to his academic work in linguistics, Professor Chomsky has been a noted political activist and philosopher, gaining national recognition in 1967 over his opposition to the Vietnam War and since then has regularly spoken out against US foreign and domestic policies and mainstream American mass media. Between his academic career and his work as a political activist and dissident, he has published over 100 books. On the eve of the 2012 US presidential election, he discussed with Eric Bailey of Torture Magazine America’s human rights record under the administration of President Obama and the military intervention policies that have seen increased use during the Arab Spring.

EB: The US presidential elections are almost upon us and the last four years have seen significant changes in American Federal policy in regards to human rights. One of the few examples of cooperation between the Democratic and Republican Parties over the last four years has been the passing of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012. This bill has given the United States military the power to arrest American citizens, indefinitely, without charge, trial, or any other form of due process of law and the Obama Administration has and continues to fight a legal battle in Federal Court to prevent that law from being declared unconstitutional. Obama authorized the assassination of three American citizens, including Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16 year old son, admittedly all members of Al Qaeda, – all without judicial review. Additionally, the Guantanamo Bay prison remains open, the Patriot Act has been extended, and the TSA has expanded at breakneck speeds. What is your take on America’s human rights record over the past four years and can you contrast Obama’s policies with those of his predecessor, George W. Bush?

Continues >>

Francis A. Boyle: American Militarism Threatening To Set Off World War III

The Condition of Human Rights at the International Setting

By Professor Francis A. Boyle, ICH, Dec 10, 2012

Text of speech by Professor Francis A. Boyle at the Puerto Rican Summit Conference on Human Rights – University of the Sacred Heart – San Juan, Puerto Rico – December 09, 2012

Historically this latest eruption of American militarism at the start of the 21st Century is akin to that of America opening the 20th Century by means of the U.S.-instigated Spanish-American War in 1898. Then the Republican administration of President William McKinley stole their colonial empire from Spain in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; inflicted a near genocidal war against the Filipino people; while at the same time illegally annexing the Kingdom of Hawaii and subjecting the Native Hawaiian people (who call themselves the Kanaka Maoli) to near genocidal conditions. Additionally, McKinley’s military and colonial expansion into the Pacific was also designed to secure America’s economic exploitation of China pursuant to the euphemistic rubric of the “open door” policy. But over the next four decades America’s aggressive presence, policies, and practices in the so-called “Pacific” Ocean would ineluctably pave the way for Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 194l, and thus America’s precipitation into the ongoing Second World War. Today a century later the serial imperial aggressions launched and menaced by the neoconservative Republican Bush Junior administration and the neoliberal Democratic Obama administration are now threatening to set off World War III.

Continues >>

Indian officers named in report on Kashmir abuses

Report identifies 500 ‘alleged perpetrators’ of human rights abuses from low-ranking policemen to Indian army generals

• Jason Burke in Delhi
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 December 2012

Indian soldiers patrol a sector near the India-Pakistan border in the northern Indian state of Kashmir Photograph: MANISH SWARUP/AP

Hundreds of serving Indian soldiers, including senior officers, are accused of involvement in widespread human rights abuses in Kashmir in a new report to be published on Thursday.

Many have been decorated and promoted despite serious allegations against them, the authors say. In a move likely to provoke anger, the report, by a team of veteran legal activists in the Himalayan state, names 500 “alleged perpetrators” ranging from low-ranking policemen to Indian army generals.

The charges relate to incidents occurring throughout more than 20 years of violence pitting armed religious and separatist groups against New Delhi’s rule in Kashmir, and include shootings, abductions, torture and rapes.

Continues >>

Israel: Accelerating the Occupation

Implementing Israel’s Settlement Policy

by Binoy Kampmark, Dissident Voice,  December 5th, 2012

This is the answer. Outmanoeuvred in the UN, Israel has huffed and puffed against the house that is the international community and taken the policy of increasing settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank in the corridor of land termed E1 out of cold storage.  The air of desperation is palpable. The Palestinians, having gotten the crumbs of non-observer status at the UN in an overwhelming vote, have stirred Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his government into violent action.  Since they can’t launch an invasion in protest or initiate another wave of assassinations against the Palestinian moderates, they are left with a policy of unmitigated anger.

The plans for constructing settlements on E1, a policy that will connect Jerusalem with Maaleh Adumim, would effectively divide the northern and western West Bank.  Should that occur, a contiguous Palestinian state would be dealt a blow even before its formal creation (Al Bawaba News, December 4).  The structure for defeating such a move is effectively being laid.  Of those 20 or so Palestinian communities that are slated for forced evictions, 2300 are mostly Jahalin Bedouin.

Continues >>

The Reaper Presidency: Obama’s 300th drone strike in Pakistan

by Alice K Ross, Chris Woods and Sarah Leo, uruknet.info, Dec 3, 2012

A US drone strike in Shin Warsak, South Waziristan on December 1 2012 marked the 300th drone strike in Pakistan of Barack Obama’s presidency, according to Bureau research.The attack was the second since President Obama’s re-election on November 6. It reportedly killed Abdul Rehman al-Zaman Yemeni, described as an al Qaeda commander, along with up to three others. Although the pace of strikes has slowed considerably this year, CIA attacks have struck Pakistan’s tribal areas on average once every five days during Obama’s first term – six times more than under George W Bush. Here, we look at the key moments of Obama’s drone campaign. Continues >>

Noam Chomsky: Palestine 2012 – Gaza and the UN resolution

By Noam Chomsky, Israeli Occupation Archive – 1 Dec 2012

Noam Chmosky in Gaza – Oct 2012

An old man in Gaza held a placard that reads: “You take my water, burn my olive trees, destroy my house, take my job, steal my land, imprison my father, kill my mother, bombard my country, starve us all, humiliate us all but I am to blame: I shot a rocket back.”¹

The old man’s message provides the proper context for the timelines on the latest episode in the savage punishment of Gaza.  They are useful, but any effort to establish a “beginning” cannot help but be misleading.  The crimes trace back to 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled in terror or were expelled to Gaza by conquering Israeli forces, who continued to truck them over the border for years after the official cease-fire.  The persecution of Gazans took new forms when Israel conquered the Strip in 1967.  From recent Israeli scholarship we learn that the goal of the government was to drive the refugees into the Sinai, and if feasible the rest of the population too.

Continued >>

Andy Worthington: Accountability for Bush’s Torture

By Andy Worthington, OpEdNews, Nov 29, 2012

In June 2004, in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal,   a notorious memo from August 2002 was leaked . It was written by John Yoo, a lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and it claimed to redefine torture and to authorize its use on prisoners seized in the “war on terror.” I had no idea at the time that its influence would prove to be so long-lasting.

Ten years and four months since it was first issued, that memo – one of two issued on the same day that will forever be known as the “torture memos” — is still protecting the senior Bush administration officials who commissioned it (as well as Yoo and his boss, Jay S. Bybee, who signed it).

Those officials include George W. Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney, and their senior lawyers, Alberto Gonzales and David Addington. None of them should be immune from prosecution, because torture is illegal under U.S. domestic law and is prohibited under the terms of the UN Convention Against Torture, which the United States, under Ronald Reagan, signed in 1988 and ratified in 1994. As Article 2.2 states, unequivocally, “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”

Continues >>

The Heroic Life Of Dada Amir Haider Khan

Posted: 2008/08/08 From: Mathaba-

No matter what hardships Indo-Pakistani revolutionary Dada Amir Haider Khan came across, he held belief in the eventual emancipation of the toiling masses, not by any outside force or agency but through their own struggles shaped by their political consciousness for a worthy human existence. - by Nasir Khan - All those who oppose imperialistic wars and plunder, subjugation and oppression of weaker nations and peoples, and wide-spread violations of human rights in various parts of the world will be glad to see the publication of the two-volume autobiography of Indo-Pakistani revolutionary Dada Amir Haider Khan. The life and struggles of this eternal revolutionary who stood for advancing the cause of workers and peasants and firmly adhered to the world-outlook of proletarian internationalism is quite amazing. No matter what hardships he came across, he held belief in the eventual emancipation of the toiling masses, not by any outside force or agency but through their own struggles shaped by their political consciousness for a worthy human existence. - Dada Amir Haider Khan was not an idealist; he was a man of action. By his practical example he showed how to work and organise workers locally so that they could stand for and protect their political and economic interests. In his personal life, he always remained a fakir, a ‘homeless wanderer’, as he used to call himself. Neither did he own any valuable possessions. He had donated the share of his inherited land for building a school in his ancestral village, a poor and deprived area of small farmers. - I met Dada half a century ago, in 1957, when I started my college education in Rawalpindi. This early contact with him was to become a lifelong friendship and close comradeship. He was above all a sincere and trustworthy man and a political activist. But he was also a charismatic person; those who met him were drawn towards his magnetic personality. - Dr Hasan N. Gardezi edited and supervised the publication of Dada’s memoirs with great diligence and a sense of duty to preserve the historical role of a truly great and unique revolutionary who emerged from the part of the world now called Pakistan. I offer my thanks to Professor Gardezi for his tireless efforts to publicise the work of Dada, and also thank other friends who have in one way or the other contributed to the task. I believe all the progressive people who have known Dada or those who will come to know about him through the publication of his memoirs will highly appreciate the work of Professor Gardezi. He has preserved the legacy of the great revolutionary for the coming generations of radical and progressive people.Volume 1 was first published in New Delhi in 1989, prefaced by our esteemed Comrade V.D. Chopra. Now the memoirs in two volumes are available from Karachi.[ To obtain your copies please contact: Muhammad Kamran, Office Assistant, Pakistan Studies Centre, University of Karachi, Karachi, 75270, E-mail pscuok@yahoo. com For further information the editor can be reached at: gardezihassan@ hotmail.com ] - Historians and scholars in Marxist tradition may also find the following publications and references to Dada Amir Haider Khan helpful: Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik, Liberator Press, Chicago, Illinois, 1978, pp. 164-5, 509. Santimoy Ray, Freedom Movement and Indian Muslims, People’s Publishing House, New Delhi, 1978, p. 82. S.S. Mirajkar, ‘Reminiscences’, Marxist Miscellany No. 15, March 1979, New Delhi, pp. 21-22. Amir Haider Khan, ‘Reminiscences’, Marxist Miscellany No. 15, March 1979. (This is a memorable article written by Dada Amir Haider Khan on the 50th Anniversary of the Meerut Conspiracy Case.) Subodh Roy (ed.), Communism in India, Ganashakti Printers, 1972. Dada Amir Haider – Wikipedia I republish below a remarkable book review by Jamil Omar *************************************************************** Book Review by Jamil Omar Chains to Lose Life and Struggle of a Revolutionary Memoirs of Dada Amir Haider Khan Edited by Hassan N. Gardezi, Publisher: Pakistan Study Centre, University of Karachi An Indian Che Guevara The party had also begun extending its activities to Madras. A group of Andhra and Tamil students, amongst them P. Sundarayya were recruited to the CPI by Amir Hyder Khan … (E. M. S. Namboodripad Chief Minister of Kerala, The Communist Party in Kerala – Six Decades of Struggle and Advance.) Thus, the CPI divided into two separate parties. The group which assembled in Calcutta would later adopt the name ‘Communist Party of India (Marxist)’. The CPI (M) also adopted its own political programme. P. Sundarayya was elected general secretary of the party. (History of the Communist Movement in India) While he lived, Dada Amir Haider Khan struggled to change the course of history, now in death he would have us change our view of it. Dada surfed the crest of change all over the globe during the first half of the twentieth century, which makes a simple account of his life read like contemporary world history. The account is so reliable and close to life that that it should prove a major primary source for scholars of history and politics. For political activists who have carried on the tradition bequeathed by Dada, the account is essential reading for a critical understanding of their own past. His life So little is known about Amir Haider Khan’s very full life that it seems appropriate to start by presenting a very brief overview: 1900 born in a remote village in Rawalpindi district. Orphaned at an early age, put in a madrassah. Escapes to Calcutta, brushes with the underworld handling Afghan opium. 1914 joins British merchant navy in Bombay. Observes at close hand the dilemma of Muslim soldiers in the British army fighting their Turkish brethren in Iraq. 1918 jumps British ship in New York. Joins American merchant marine. An Irish nationalist, Joseph Mulkane, introduces Dada to anti-British political ideas. 1920 meets Indian Nationalists and Ghadar party members in New York. Starts distributing ‘Ghadar ki Goonj’ to Indians in seaports around the world. Passes the exam of Assistant Second Marine Engineer. 1922 dismissed from ship after the great post war strike. Works and travels inside the USA. Boiler engineer with the Pennsylvania Railroad. Airplane pilot. Autoworker in Detroit. Political activist, works with anti-Imperialist League and the Workers (Communist) Party of the USA. 1926 sent by the American party to the Soviet Union to study at the University of the Toilers of the East. 1928 completes the University course in Moscow and arrives in Bombay. Establishes contact with Ghate, Dange Bradley, senior communists in Bombay. March 1929 escapes arrest in the Meerut Conspiracy case and makes his way to Moscow to inform the Communist International (Comintern) on the situation in India and seek their assistance. 1929 arrives back in Bombay, meets and briefs B. T. Randive. 1930 Dada’s connection in Bombay with the Comintern turns informer. Dada rushes to Moscow to apprise them of the development and devise alternate plans. Attends the International Trade Union (Profintern) Congress as member of the presidium, also attends the 16th Congress of the CPSU. 1931 returns to Bombay. Sent to Madras to avoid arrest as still wanted in the Meerut Conspiracy case. Carries on political work all over South India under the pseudonym of Shankar. Sets up the Young Workers League. 1932 arrested by British for bringing out a pamphlet praising the Bhagat Singh Trio. 1936 transferred from Madras to Muzzafargarh jail, then transferred to Ambala jail. 1938 released. Starts open public political activity in Bombay. The Congress left elects him to the INC Bombay Provincial Committee. Attends the INC Annual General meeting in Ramgarh, Bihar. 1939 rearrested as Second World War breaks out. Interned in Nasik jail where Dada writes the first part of his memoirs. 1942 last of the Communists to be released after People’s War thesis. Trade Union work in Bombay. Attends the Natrakona (Mymansingh) All India Kissan Sabah in 1944. 1946 arrives in Rawalpindi on the eve of Pakistan to look after local party work. Organises a network to hide and safely repatriate Hindu families during the partition riots. 1949 arrested from Party office Rawalpindi under the Communal Act. Released after 15 months. Rearrested after a few months from Rawalpindi Kutchery for organizing the defence of Hassan Nasir and Ali Imam. When Liaqat government launches the Rawalpindi Conspiracy case Dada moved to Lahore fort and imprisoned with Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Fazal Din Qurban, Dada Feroz ud Din Mansur, Kaswar Gardezi, Hyder Bux Jatoi, Sobo Gayan Chandani, Chaudhry Muhammad Afzal, Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, Zaheer Kashmiri, Hameed Akhtar etc. Released after campaign in Pakistan Times and Imroze, but restricted to his village. Shifted to Rawalpindi when Dada seen influencing the military jawans from his area. 1954 Bogra [Prime Minister] to appease his masters in USA bans the Communist Party of Pakistan on 24 July 1954. Dada arrested later bailed out by Mohammad Ali Kasuri. 1958 Ayub imposes martial law. Dada arrested interned in Rawalpindi jail with Afzal Bangash, Kaka Sanober and other comrades from the Frontier Province. 1970s and 1980s Dada spends his twilight years in Rawalpindi. Donates his land and with his own labour builds a Boys High School in his village, then builds a Girls School together with a science laboratory. Gets them approved and hands them over to the Government. 26 December 1989 Dada passes away. The striking fact about the above chronology is that Amir Haider like Flash Gordon had an uncanny knack of being at the right place at the right time. But the analogy ends here. Flash is a fictional character representing the Imperial British, Dada was a real life adversary of Imperialism who fought the British with such skill and tenacity that American professors Overstreet and Windmiller were forced to admit that “Amir Haider Khan was the most dangerous individual in British India.” Throughout his life we see Dada, the born rebel, standing up against injustice and fighting to better the human condition. While Britannia ruled the waves, Dada fought for the rights of the Indian seamen working deep below the decks. When the sun did not set on the British Empire, Dada risked his life to distribute banned Ghadar Party literature to Indians all around the globe. As the new world started to prevail, Dada, a naturalized American at the age of twenty, learnt and struggled against the system from within – as an International Workers of the World activist, as a working class family member, as a hobo, as a Klu Klux Klan victim, as an avid reader of Popular Mechanics and Scientific American and builder and flyer of airplanes, as a political activist working closely with the great Agnes Smedley and much more. When the world was shaken by the great socialist revolutions, Dada, now a full member of the Bolshevik party in Moscow, was closely following on detailed maps the march of Chou En Lai forces towards Shanghai. And during the golden hour of the Indian freedom struggle, Dada almost single handedly broke the political isolation imposed upon India by the British. Despite being on the British most wanted list, Dada using different pseudonyms and covers carried on political and organizational work in various parts of India. Work, for which Dada is still loved in Rawalpindi, revered in Bombay and worshipped in South India. Dada was an international revolutionary – a Che Guevara of another age and on a bigger stage. He met and worked closely with some of the greatest socialist leaders of the twentieth century, which included besides others Thomas Mann (Engles’ student), Rosa Luxemburg (German revolutionary), Clara Zetkin (German women rights activist), Karl Radek (leader of Communist International), Liu Shao Chi (later president of China), Agnes Smedley (American anti-imperialist), Ralph Fox (historian who died resisting Franco’s march to Madrid), Piatniski (secretary to Comintern and Stalin) and nearly all the leaders of the Indian freedom movement. Dada’s steadfast struggle for freedom earned him the respect of Indian nationalists from the Andaman Islands to Peshawar, from gentlemen members of the parliament to Naujawan Bharat Sabah revolutionaries. His memoirs Writing with revolutionary responsibility, Dada is careful not to wash any dirty linen in public. Like a true Bolshevik, Dada chooses to maintain public silence on issues where he disagreed with the official Party line. On the face of it this should make Dada’s memoirs politically anodyne. But Dada’s actions were anything but politically neutral and they speak for themselves. ‘Dada’ may be an honorific title in Pakistan but in Bombay it was applied to Amir Haider Khan and others to denigrate them as obstinate seniors, for these ‘foggies’ doggedly waged inner Party struggle against political opportunism. It is also rumoured that Pakistan provided the new generation of comrades in Bombay with an excuse to shunt Dada from Bombay to Rawalpindi. Yet Dada’s memoirs are a testimony that he remained faithful to Party discipline to the very end of his life. Even in his rumblings as an old man he was careful not to insinuate against some of the old comrades or the People’s War thesis or a host of other issues which clearly troubled him. However, a close reading of the memoirs reveals that even Party discipline could not compel Dada to distort or deny facts. For example, Dada, the main representative of the Third International (Comintern) in India, puts it on record that on the China question Trotsky was correct and Stalin wrong; he criticizes M. N. Roy, who has since been rehabilitated, of fiscal irresponsibility and S. A. Dange, who has since been debunked, of weak character. It is perhaps on account of such ‘deviations’ that Dada’s memoirs nearly got suppressed. Once by our own publisher of Baluchistan insurgency fame – although this may well have been the far worse crime of sheer irresponsibility; and once by the CPI press – which on the face of it appears to be a more deliberate act of indexing. But thanks to the untiring zeal of Dr. Hassan Gardezi, the memoirs’ editor, Dada’s invaluable autobiography has finally been preserved for posterity. The memoirs in themselves are a straight forward narration of events, however, delayed availability of such rare and authentic material is bound to reopen many debates. A critical study of the memoirs would go a long way in helping us better understand and appreciate our past. Even a non-critical reading like the present one, sparked a number of politically relevant questions. I would like to briefly take up a few of these here. Muslim demagogy and Pakistani Hagiography Hagiography prefers to ignore rather than explain inconvenient facts. The mainstay of our local brand of hagiography is that Pakistan was created for Islam. However, our hagiographers have never bothered to explain that if so, then how come the Pakistan movement was led by modern secular Muslims and supported by the Communist Party while mullahs of all callings opposed it tooth and nail. Another enigma for local hagiography is the Khilafat Movement. Khilafat Movement based on pan-Islamic demagogic sentiments was popular among urban Muslims for a brief period towards the end of the First World War. But with its fantastic scheme of Tark-i- Amwaal and Hijrat it violated the interests of propertied Muslim classes. The propertied Muslim classes, for their part, were always more attracted to the option of a separate homeland where they could pursue their economic interests unhindered by the dominant Hindu bourgeoisie. Hence it comes as no surprise that while the Khilafat Movement was befriended by the Congress, it was vehemently decried by Jinnah. Pakistani hagiography has long taxed itself to square the Muslim demagogic Hijrat Movement with its exact opposite, that is, the Pakistan Movement. The hagiographic compromise is to gloss over the unsavoury details of the Khilafat Movement while awarding Bi Amma’s sons the status of national heroes. Dada’s memoirs clearly reveal the true nature of the Khilafat movement. In Bombay its support lay in the Urdu speaking Muslim mill workers in Madanpura, who were the descendents of ruined hand weavers of Bihar and UP. The Khilafat newspaper openly incited these Muslims to violence when Hindu-Muslim riots broke out in Bombay but with typical demagogic irresponsibility it blamed the Communists. This service must have been well appreciated by Khilafat’s bourgeoisie friends in the Congress, who watched with glee the fall of support for the fledging Red Flag Worker’s Union amongst Muslim workers and were keen to employ them as strikebreakers. The Khilafat demagogy also ruined the poor Muslim Mopla peasants of Malabar. Muslim Mopala peasant’s under the influence of Khilafat demagogy left their lands and chose to migrate to Afghanistan. Like most muhajirs they were simply herded back by the Afghans. But on returning to Malabar they found their lands occupied by Hindu landlords. What ensued was a full-scale civil war in which thousands died and even more were herded like animals into prisons. Dada through his historic jail struggle succeeded in winning for these poor and illiterate Muslim prisoners decent living conditions. Hagiography not only glosses over the crimes of yesterday, it makes us perpetrate new ones today. The truth of this aphorism is vividly demonstrated by the fact that while the Khilafat leader Mohammad Ali Johar is remembered through a prestigious Society in Karachi and a modern Town in Lahore, all trace of Dada Amir Haider Khan, the greatest of Indian Muslim freedom fighters, has been conveniently removed from our official history. The conspiracy of conspiracy cases: ‘Divide and Rule’ may well have been the first rule of British Imperialism, but ‘give the dog a bad name and hang him’ was a close second. The second rule was repeatedly employed by the British against the Communists in the guise of Conspiracy Cases. During the 1920s British attempted to crush the nascent Communist Movement through a spate of Conspiracy Cases such as the First Peshawar Conspiracy Case, Second Peshawar Conspiracy Case, Moscow Conspiracy Case (in all these cases Soviet trained Muslim Communists were the main accused); the Cawnpore Bolshevik Conspiracy Case (local Communists main accused); Lahore Conspiracy Case (Bhagat Singh main accused), the Meerut Conspiracy (Dada Amir Haider one of the main accused). Fortunately the outcome of the conspiracy of conspiracy cases seems to be determined by the Toynbee ‘Challenge-Response’ rule. Weak movements are destroyed by it while strong movements are strengthened by it. The Meerut Conspiracy case singularly backfired thanks to Dada’s efforts on an International scale, which resulted in Meerut solidarity campaigns all over the world. For its part the Communist Party of Great Britain put up Shaukat Usmani, who was a prisoner in Meerut, as its candidate in the 1931 general election for St. Pancras South East. The candidature of Usmani was aimed by the CPGB to ensure freedom for India, and to highlight the plight of the Meerut prisoners. In this election, the communists polled seventy five thousand votes. After Independence, this Imperialist conspiracy of conspiracy cases was continued by the government of Pakistan, with Liaqat Ali Khan launching the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case to counter the growing influence of the Communists. Remote controlling revolutions International movements never make successful local revolutions. The business is far to complicated to be successfully managed remotely. In his memoirs Dada, however, is of the view that had the Comintern trained and assisted the Indian communists on the scale it assisted the Chinese, he and his comrades could have built a strong United Front with the Congress and developed the Satyagarha Movement into a genuine revolutionary movement. But the facts as related in his memoirs show that the Comintern was unstinting in its assistance to India, the problem lay in more objective realities. Perhaps the most valuable lesson hidden in Dada’s memoirs is that revolutions are made locally not remotely. Culled from the memoirs, here are some of the reasons why: Priorities may change in the remote location. For example, under Lenin Central Asiatic Bureau of Comintern set up in Tashkent a school to train the Khilafat Movement muhajirs drifting in Central Asia into an Indian army of revolutionaries. However, the Indian Military School was closed in April 1921, as a quid pro quo for industrial assistance that Britain promised to Soviet Russia, under Anglo-Russian Trade Pact in March 1921. Stalin in 1943, to appease Roosevelt and Churchill, dismantled the whole Third International. Local political complexities cannot be fully determined from a distance nor can foreign representatives be relied upon to come up with correct on spot remedies. Comintern’s role in the Chinese revolution provides many examples of how the best of International intentions can create serious local problems. During the united front period the great debate in the Comintern regarding China was whether to launch the agrarian revolution or not. Trotsky as member of the Comintern Executive Committee proposed the immediate launching of the agrarian revolution in the countryside, however, the majority led by Stalin rejected Trotsky’s thesis on the ground that launching the agrarian revolution at this stage would split the National United Front and would throw the reactionary Kuomintang leaders into the imperialist camp. But when America and Japan got directly involved, split in the United Front became inevitable and saving the lives of the communist cadres became top priority, M. N. Roy, Comintern’s representative in China, bungled the situation by disclosing confidential instructions to the left wing of the Kuomintang, with the result that Kuomintang moved swiftly to liquidate all Communists they could lay their hands upon, more than 5000 were executed in Shanghai alone. Promotes Embassy Socialism: Reliance on material or intellectual assistance from outside weakens local confidence and resolve. In the long run it promotes a degenerate political culture that serves the interest of the foreign embassies (and donors) and not of the local masses. Epilogue Commenting on Dada’s quiet passing away the local press reported that “He lived and died virtually unsung. That did not diminish him. It makes the rest of us look more small.” One hopes that with the publication of Dada’s memoirs he would be better known and the long conspiracy to deny and defame him will come to an end. For this little known Indian Che Guevara is yet to take his rightful place in the pantheon of twentieth century revolutionaries.

Perpetual conflict by Israeli design

Media With Conscience,  27 November 2012

By Graham Peebles 

 

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And so for a moment or two the slaughter of Palestinian civilians and the destruction in Gaza City has ceased; the oppression, intimidation and terror throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories though continues unabated. The ‘Pillar of Cloud’ has done its destructive work and blown over, until the next time Israel feels the urge to wreak chaos, kill civilians and tear families apart. How many times must we watch this slaughter, how many more tears will be shed, lives ruined, futures denied, as the peace activist Izzeldin Abuelaish in The Observer 18/11/2012 asks “How many more massacres can Palestinians stand? How many can onlookers tolerate?”

During the week long Israeli military storm, and amid the circular argument espoused by the chief Israeli military spokespeople and repeated infinitum by Israel’s spineless allies, that ‘when Hamas stops firing rockets, Israel will cease its brutality’, 162 Palestinians were killed and according to Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights (AMHR)[i] 1,039 injured – half of which were women and children, so much for ‘surgical strikes’ Prime Minister Netanyahu; homes, schools, mosques, Universities, places of work and infrastructure were reduced to rubble. Six Israeli’s died according to the United Nations (OCHA) and 219 injured, from the 1,456[ii] rockets fired by Hamas into Israel. Despite the heavy Palestinian civilian loss of life, in particular children, Netanyahu, who loves a fight, said, the BBC report[iii] “Israel will do “everything in its power” to avoid civilian casualties in the conflict with Hamas.”

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Medea Benjamin: Ground the Drones

It’s time for the peace movement to challenge the president’s foreign policies.

The author protests on August 23 in front of a Raytheon building in Largo, Fla., where activists believe military drones are being built. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

BY Medea Benjamin, In these Times, Nov 25, 2012

The overwhelming majority of Americans think this war is not worth fighting.

Foreign policy played a minor role in a presidential election that focused on jobs, jobs, jobs. But like it or not, the United States is part of a global community in turmoil, and U.S. policies often fuel that turmoil. The peace movement, which lost steam during Obama’s first term because so many people were unwilling to criticize the president, has a challenge today to reactivate itself and increase its effectiveness by forming coalitions within the progressive movement.

 

This revitalized peace movement must address five issues.

 

The first is Afghanistan. Despite Obama’s talk about getting out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014, the U.S. military still has some 68,000 troops and almost 100,000 private contractors there at a cost of $2 billion a week. And Obama is talking about a presence of U.S. troops, training missions, Special Forces operations and bases for another decade. But the overwhelming majority of Americans think this war is not worth fighting, a sentiment echoed in a recent New York Times editorial “Time to Pack Up.” It is indeed that time. The peace movement must push for an immediate withdrawal and for ruling out any longterm presence in Afghanistan.

 

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Ira Chernus: President Obama Weaves Web of Deceit on Gaza War

by Ira Chernus, Common Dreams, Nov  19, 2012

 

When Barack Obama finally spoke out publicly about the Israeli assault on Gaza, at a press conference, he wove an astonishingly thick web of deception and distortion.
I’m no Obama-basher. But when I see him bashing and trashing the truth so blatantly, I have to speak out. I have to express my pain, because I know that his misleading words will increase the risks to my loved ones and fellow Jews in Israel and the much greater risks to the victims of Israeli aggression in Gaza.


Palestinians carry the body of a child belonging to the al-Dalo family during a mass funeral in Gaza City November 19, 2012. (photo: Mohammed Salem/Reuters)

Of course to hear Obama tell it, it’s the Israelis who are the victims. “The precipitating event here that’s causing the current crisis … was an ever-escalating number of missiles” fired from Gaza into Israel, he said. “And there’s no country on Earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.”

This is the same old tale Americans have been getting from their presidents, politicians, and press for decades: Those nasty Arabs, attacking Jews out of the blue for no good reason that we can see.

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Amy Goodman: In Gaza, It’s the Occupation, Stupid

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truthdig.com, Nov 21, 2012

By Amy Goodman

“The Palestinian people want to be free of the occupation,” award-winning Israeli journalist Gideon Levy summed up this week. It is that simple. This latest Israeli military assault on the people of Gaza is not an isolated event, but part of a 45-year occupation of the sliver of land wedged between Israel and the Mediterranean Sea, where 1.6 million people live under a brutal Israeli blockade that denies them most of the basic necessities of life. Without the unwavering bipartisan support of the United States for the Israeli military, the occupation of Palestine could not exist.

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The Re-Election of Barack Obama Nasir Khan, November 7, 2012 Those left-of-the-centre Americans who had opted to vote for a lesser evil than the bigger evil in the shape of Mitt Romney have some ground to celebrate. In fact, anything was possible; Romney could have also found his way to the White House. American political system is deeply flawed and has become more mouldy and outdated. It does not represent the hopes and aspirations of the American people any longer. The presidential election itself is a contest in which big money talks and imposes its decisions on the masses. Actual problems facing the superpower that has hegemony over a large part of humanity and regions of the world are brushed aside and a diversionary picture put before the electorate that produces much sound but signifies nothing. Big gala shows and rallies make the whole thing look comical and cheap advertisement. That’s not what the democracy is about or can ever be justified for hiding the concerns of millions of ordinary men and women and their economic and social hardships. President Obama in his first term proved to be a true representative of American military-industrial complex. He carried out where Bush had left. He also extended the Afghan war of aggression into Pakistan and in most cowardly fashion has been conducting the killings of Pakistani ‘militants’ in Pakistan by his drone attacks. The people of Pakistan and other places who become victims of such assassinations have no means at their disposal to combat the advanced technological robots that kill them at his orders. Now the question is: Will he continue his policy of such killings and disregard international law and the Geneva Conventions? Like Bush and Condi Rice, his foreign policy in the Middle East has been a total charade. Has he any sense of moral responsibility towards the Palestinian people who are still under occupation of Israel and its cruel policies? Without American military and financial support, Israel couldn’t have carried out the occupation or oppression of a captive population. These things are not a secret and certainly President Obama is well aware of all these things. Now he has a new four-year term of office. Will he be able to change the course of his foreign policy or will he continue what he did during the last four years? Only the time will tell. But he has some opportunity to show respect to international law, the Geneva Conventions and stop the illegal killing of people in foreign countries. He can also advance the cause of peace in the Middle East, not by reiterating the American mantra of the ‘security of Israel’ but stand for the legitimate rights of the Palestinians under Israeli Zionist occupation and oppression. We will judge President for

The Re-Election of Barack Obama

 Nasir Khan, November 7, 2012
Those left-of-centre Americans who had opted to vote for a lesser evil than the bigger evil in the shape of Mitt Romney have some ground to celebrate. In fact, anything was possible; Romney could have also found his way to the White House. American political system is deeply flawed and has become more mouldy and outdated. It does not represent the hopes and aspirations of the American people any longer. The presidential election itself is a contest in which big money talks and imposes its decisions on the masses. Actual problems facing the superpower that has hegemony over a large part of humanity and regions of the world are brushed aside and a diversionary picture put before the electorate that produces much sound but signifies nothing. Big gala shows and rallies make the whole thing look comical and cheap advertisement. That’s not what the democracy is about or can ever be justified for hiding the concerns of millions of ordinary men and women and their economic and social hardships.
President Obama in his first term proved to be a true representative of American military-industrial complex. He carried out where Bush had left. He also extended the Afghan war of aggression into Pakistan and in most cowardly fashion has been conducting the killings of Pakistani ‘militants’ in Pakistan by his drone attacks. The people of Pakistan and other places who become victims of such assassinations have no means at their disposal to combat the advanced technological robots that kill them at his orders.
Now the question is: Will he continue his policy of such killings and disregard international law and the Geneva Conventions? Like Bush and Condi Rice, his foreign policy in the Middle East has been a total charade. Has he any sense of moral responsibility towards the Palestinian people who are still under occupation of Israel and its cruel policies? Without American military and financial support, Israel couldn’t have carried out the occupation or oppression of a captive population.
These things are not a secret and certainly President Obama is well aware of all these things. Now he has a new four-year term of office. Will he be able to change the course of his foreign policy or will he continue what he did during the last four years? Only the time will tell. But he has some opportunity to show respect to international law, the Geneva Conventions and stop the illegal killing of people in foreign countries. He can also advance the cause of peace in the Middle East, not by reiterating the American mantra of the ‘security of Israel’ but stand for the legitimate rights of the Palestinians under Israeli Zionist occupation and oppression.
We will judge President for his actions, not his words. Let’s hope his words and actions match from now on. I congratulate him in the hope that he may have the courage to stand for what is right and not military might.

John Mearsheimer: What is Israel Really Up to in Gaza?

A Pillar Built on Sand

by JOHN MEARSHEIMER, Counterpunch, November  19, 2012

 

In response to a recent upsurge in tit for tat strikes between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza, Israel decided to ratchet up the violence even further by assassinating Hamas’s military chief, Ahmad Jabari. Hamas, which had been playing a minor role in these exchanges and even appears to have been interested in working out a long-term ceasefire, predictably responded by launching hundreds of rockets into Israel, a few even landing near Tel Aviv. Not surprisingly, the Israelis have threatened a wider conflict, to include a possible invasion of Gaza to topple Hamas and eliminate the rocket threat.

There is some chance that Operation ‘Pillar of Defence’, as the Israelis are calling their current campaign, might become a full-scale war. But even if it does, it will not put an end to Israel’s troubles in Gaza. After all, Israel launched a devastating war against Hamas in the winter of 2008-9 – Operation Cast Lead – and Hamas is still in power and still firing rockets at Israel. In the summer of 2006 Israel went to war against Hizbullah in order to eliminate its missiles and weaken its political position in Lebanon. That offensive failed as well: Hizbullah has far more missiles today than it had in 2006 and its influence in Lebanon is arguably greater than it was in 2006. Pillar of Defence is likely to share a similar fate.

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Paul C. Roberts: Puppet State America

by Paul Craig Roberts, Foreign Policy Journal,  November 21, 2012

The United States government and its subject peoples think of the US as “the world’s only superpower.”  But how is a country a superpower when its entire government and a majority of the subjects, especially those members of evangelical churches, grovel at the feet of the Israeli Prime Minister? How is a country a superpower when it lacks the power to determine its own foreign policy in the Middle East?  Such a country is not a superpower.  It is a puppet state.

In the past few days we have witnessed, yet again, the “American superpower” groveling at Netanyahu’s feet. When Netanyahu decided to again murder the Palestinian women and children of Gaza, to further destroy what remains of the social infrastructure of the Gaza Ghetto, and to declare Israeli war crimes and Israeli crimes against humanity to be merely the exercise of “self-defense,” the US Senate, the US House of Representatives, the White House, and the US media all promptly declared their support for Netanyahu’s crimes.

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Seumas Milne: It’s Palestinians who have the right to defend themselves

The US and Britain stand behind Israel’s onslaught on Gaza. Justice requires a change in the balance of forces on the ground

• Email

• Seumas Milne,
• The Guardian, Tuesday 20 November 2012

Egypt’s foreign minister and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (second and third from left) in a hospital in Gaza City on 20 November, visiting a Palestinian woman wounded in an Israeli air strike. Photograph: Ahmed Zakot/REUTERS

 

The way western politicians and media have pontificated about Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, you’d think it was facing an unprovoked attack from a well-armed foreign power. Israel had every “right to defend itself”, Barack Obama declared. “No country on earth would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.”

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Richard Falk: The Latest Gaza Catastrophe: Will They Ever Learn?

 Richard Falk, 18 November 2012

[This post is an updated version of an article published in the online English edition of Al Jazeera, 17 Nov 2012, taking account of some further developments in the new horrifying unfolding of violence in Gaza.] 

President Obama, upon his arrival today in Bangkok at the start of a state visit to several Asian countries, reminded the world of just how unconditional U.S. support for Israel remains. Obama was quoted as saying, “There is no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside of its borders. We are fully supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself.” Much is missing from such a sentiment, most glaringly, the absence of any balancing statement along the following line: “and no country would tolerate the periodic assassination of its leaders by missiles fired by a neighboring country, especially during a lull achieved by a mutually agreed truce. It is time for both sides to end the violence, and establish an immediate ceasefire.”

But instead of such statesmanship from this newly elected leader what we hear from Ben Rhodes, his Deputy National Security Advisor, who is traveling with the president in Asia is the following: that the rockets from Gaza are “the precipitating factor for the conflict. We believe Israel has a right to defend itself, and they’ll make their own decisions about the tactics they use in that regard.” Of course, these tactics up to this point have involved attacking a densely urbanized population with advanced weaponry from air and sea, targeting media outlets, striking residential structures, and killing and wounding many civilians, including numerous children. Since when does ‘the right to defend oneself’ amount to a license to kill and wound without limit, without some clear demonstration that the means of violence are connected with the goals being sought, without a requirement that force be exclusively directed against military targets, without at least an expression of concern about the proportionality of the military response? To overlooks such caveats in the present context in which Gaza has no means whatsoever defend itself indicates just how unconditional is the moral/legal blindfold that impairs the political wisdom and the elemental human empathy of the American political establishment. 

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Nasir Khan: The Re-Election of Barack Obama

 Nasir Khan,  Peace and Justice Post, November 7, 2012

Those left-of-centre Americans who had opted to vote for a lesser evil than the bigger evil in the shape of Mitt Romney have some ground to celebrate. In fact, anything was possible; Romney could have also found his way to the White House. American political system is deeply flawed and has become more mouldy and outdated. It does not represent the hopes and aspirations of the American people any longer.

The presidential election itself is a contest in which big money talks and imposes its decisions on the masses. Actual problems facing the superpower that has hegemony over a large part of humanity and regions of the world are brushed aside and a diversionary picture put before the electorate that produces much sound but signifies nothing. Big gala shows and rallies make the whole thing look comical and cheap advertisement. That’s not what the democracy is about or can ever be justified for hiding the concerns of millions of ordinary men and women and their economic and social hardships.

President Obama in his first term proved to be a true representative of American military-industrial complex. He carried out where Bush had left. He also extended the Afghan war of aggression into Pakistan and in most cowardly fashion has been conducting the killings of Pakistani ‘militants’ in Pakistan by his drone attacks. The people of Pakistan and other places who become victims of such assassinations have no means at their disposal to combat the advanced technological robots that kill them at his orders.

Now the question is: Will he continue his policy of such killings and disregard international law and the Geneva Conventions? Like Bush and Condi Rice, his foreign policy in the Middle East has been a total charade. Has he any sense of moral responsibility towards the Palestinian people who are still under occupation of Israel and its cruel policies? Without American military and financial support, Israel couldn’t have carried out the occupation or oppression of a captive population.

These things are not a secret and certainly President Obama is well aware of all these things. Now he has a new four-year term of office. Will he be able to change the course of his foreign policy or will he continue what he did during the last four years? Only the time will tell. But he has some opportunity to show respect to international law, the Geneva Conventions and stop the illegal killing of people in foreign countries. He can also advance the cause of peace in the Middle East, not by reiterating the American mantra of the ‘security of Israel’ but stand for the legitimate rights of the Palestinians under Israeli Zionist occupation and oppression.

People will judge President for his actions, not his words. Let's hope his words and actions match from now on. The oppressed and victimised people and nations at the hands of US imperialism and its allies will be truly glad if he shows resolute courage to stand for what is right and not military might.