WAR U.S. against Asia and itself
Springtime droned from America
March 20, 2010
PALESTINE
“Let us be clear, all settlement activity is illegal anywhere in occupied territory and this must stop.”
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has begun a two-day visit to the Palestinian territories. He has reaffirmed the Quartet of Middle East negotiators’ commitment to an independent Palestinian state. Ban’s next stop is the Gaza Strip, which has been for nearly three years under a crippling Israeli siege.
The Quartet on the Middle East (Diplomatic Quartet or Madrid Quartet) was established Madrid in 2002 by the Spanish Prime Minister Aznar as a result of the escalating conflict in the Middle East. The Quartet is comprised of nations and configurations involved in mediating a peace process concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the European Union, the Russian Federation, the United Nations and the United States.
However, in the face of speeches and good intentions, blood continued flowing.
Muhammad Qadus had been participating in a demonstration in the occupied West Bank; demonstrators threw stones at Israeli soldiers in the West Bank city of Nablus. Israeli forces opened fire with live bullets piercing 16-year-old Muhammad Qadus in the heart. He died before reaching the hospital. According to medical staff reported by Al Jazeera, Israeli forces had delayed the Red Crescent ambulance sent to collect him. Also during the demonstration Muhammad Qadus’s cousin, identified as 16-year-old Palestinian Useid Abed an-Nasser Qadus, was seriously wounded.
An Israeli air strike targeting southern Gaza’s defunct international airport located near the town of Rafah wounded an estimated 11 people on Friday.
Palestinians fought running battles on Friday with Israeli police tear-gassing hundreds of stone-throwing Palestinians in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron. These latest clashes follow Israel’s announced construction of 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem. Hebron is home to about 160,000 Muslims; Encased in heavy Israeli security, some 500 Israelis and Jews live in a center city settlement.
March 19, 2010
A rocket firing from Gaza on Thursday was answered by a series of Israeli air raids striking multiple targets on the Gaza Strip. The rocket firing killed a Thai farmer near Ashkhelon, the first death resulting from a missile launched from the strip since the end of Israel’s December 2008-January 2009 war on Gaza. A representative of Hamas said, “The government of the Zionist enemy, which has launched a war against the Palestinian people and against holy sites and al-Aqsa mosque, bears the responsibility for all the escalation.”
March 15, 2010
IRAQ
At rush hour, 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Baghdad, eight people died and 21 suffered wounds when a car bomb exploded in Fallujah, a city in Iraq’s western Anbar province.
Though security had improved in recent years, Fallujah was once a hotbed of the Sunni insurgency against the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Since 2006, Sunni tribesmen and former anti-U.S. fighters have joined forces with the U.S. military against al-Qaeda.
March 19, 2010
PAKISTAN/INDIA made in USA
U.S. citizen David Headley has pleaded guilty to scouting targets for the 2008 attacks in Mumbai. One hundred and sixty-six people died in those attacks. At his trial in Chicago, Headley also pleaded guilty to plotting a revenge attack against the Jyllands-Posten newspaper. The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005 published 12 editorial cartoons believed to be defamatory against Islam. Headley exchanged guilty pleas on 12 counts of conspiracy for life in prison and no extradition to India, Pakistan or Denmark.
March 19, 2010
ARENA of U.S. PROTEST
“Seeking real end to Iraq War” ─ Sarah Lazare quotes courageous U.S. resisters
Jeff Paterson, Gulf War resister and project director of Courage to Resist, an organization supporting U.S. military personnel who refuse to fight:
“The pursuit of war has outlasted the change in the White House. Barack Obama, the U.S. president, swept into office on an anti-Iraq War ticket and has recently been claiming that the Iraq War is winding down.” However, some critics are skeptical that the pledge to remove combat troops by September 1, 2010, leaving about 50,000 troops in non-combat roles, will end the war. “‘For nearly six years, the American people have been told by our government that the Iraq War will be coming to an end soon, always in about six months if everything goes as planned’”
ENDLESS ─ Investment goldmine turns all-out war to all-out occupation of Iraq
Ryan Harvey of the Civilian Soldier Alliance:
“‘Some believe the occupation is really just now beginning, as the drop in violence means the realization of very lucrative contracts for Western companies operating in Iraq. The big oil give-away has begun, privatization schemes of [former Coalition Provisional Authority head] Paul Bremer are now really taking effect in the economy.…
“‘Anti-war campaigners need to take their efforts to the military bases, the schools, the communities, and in the occupied-countries themselves. It is going to take organizing around [the issue] of withdrawing our consent from the power structures that created these wars to bring them to an end.’”
Summer 2010
KOREA not forgotten
This summer marks the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War, a bloody three-year conflict that set Communist North Korea against a South Korea supported by a United Nations coalition headed by the United States.
The war against Korea “was the first armed confrontation of the Cold War. When a truce was signed in 1953, “two million soldiers and two million civilians had died or suffered wounds. Now, six decades later, the conflict remains unresolved.…
“North Korea alleges that the United States used biological weapons against Korean civilians during the war – dropping ‘germ’ bombs containing insects, shellfish and feathers infected with anthrax, typhoid and bubonic plague on villages across the country. The United States has always vehemently denied these claims, dismissing them as crude and outlandish communist propaganda from a secretive and totalitarian state. Nevertheless, the accusations have refused to go away. Pyongyang continues to press for an apology for an ‘outrage’ that the Unites States insists never happened.”
March 20, 2010
AFGHANISTAN
Civilian Commander in Chief relinquishes power to Military
“U.S. commanders may send an additional 2,500 troops to fend off the Taliban in northern Afghanistan, a region that had been relatively peaceful until recently. U.S. officers were conferring with German commanders leading Regional Command North about shifting some of the forces in a U.S. troop buildup to the north instead of the south.” The chief of staff of the NATO-led International Security and Assistance Force, “General Bruno Kasdorf, told German ARD public radio Thursday the operation would be ‘similar’ to the offensive currently underway in the southern province of Helmand involving 15,000 U.S., NATO and Afghan troops.” [Agence France Presse]
March 21, 2010
PAKISTAN/AFGHANISTAN
United States at Counter purposes
The arrests in Pakistan of the Taliban’s second-in-command, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and others in the Islamists’ hierarchy slowed down Afghan government peace initiatives, says Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai’s representative, Siamak Hirawi. Hirawi spoke to AFP.
The president’s representative confirmed that the UN former envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, had held peace talks with Taliban figures and said Eide had kept the Afghan government informed. The talks were part of a UN initiated process to help the Afghan government’s peace plan; they were supplemental to Afghan government’s efforts. “‘The international community has agreed with us that those Afghans who are not linked to foreign intelligence or terrorist organizations’ can be part of the peace process.”
“Pakistan’s powerful spy agency the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) is believed to have been behind the arrests, in cooperation with the United States. Many in Afghanistan see the arrests as being aimed at destabilizing any peace process. Eide said the detentions in Pakistan had a ‘negative’ impact on attempts to find a political solution to the Afghan war and suggested Pakistan had deliberately tried to undermine the negotiations. The U.S. envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke praised the arrests, telling reporters on Friday he had been aware of the UN-Taliban contact but the United States played no role.” Holbrooke is reported saying the arrests were “‘a good thing for the simplest of reasons: good for the military efforts underway in Afghanistan.’”
AFGHANISTAN’s relentless 2010
Three or four times daily explosions rumble through Marjah, Afghanistan, a former Taliban stronghold. This is “an ominous sign that the insurgents have not given up despite losing control of the town several days ago to U.S. and Afghan forces. Taliban fighters scattered but have not abandoned the fight and are using homemade bombs as their weapon of choice. New bombs are planted every night even though Marines claim to find and render safe more of them than explode. “The bombs are often placed in spots where the Marines stopped on patrol the day before, or into holes from previous explosions so the upturned earth doesn’t look suspicious.”
Casualty sites reporting
March 20, 2010 (accurate totals unknown)
• Anti-war dot com March 19, 2003 ─ [Since the Obama inauguration January 20, 2009: 157] Wounded 31,716-100,000; U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000; Suicides 18 a day http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/Is it not fair to ask, indeed imperative to ask why Washington officials persist in killing and otherwise harming the world's peoples including Americans? Is it enough to answer decades later from Washington as the pontiff today answers from Rome: “Sorry?”
• Iraq Body Count figures: 95,724-104,427, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
• ICasualties IRAQ: 4,385 U.S., 4,703 Coalition; AFGHANISTAN: 1,024 U.S., 1,692 Coalition http://icasualties.org/oif/
• Just Foreign Policy: [not current] 1,366,350
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq.org/iraq
Sources and notes
“UN chief visits West Bank,” March 20, 2010 http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/03/2010320113956764437.html
“Israeli fire kills Palestinian teen,” March 20, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/03/2010320162053153537.html
“Gazans wounded in Israeli strike,” March 20, 2010,
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/03/2010319215541529583.html
“Israel hits Gaza after rocket death,” March 19, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/03/201031821950653943.html
“Car bomb blast strikes Iraqi center city, March 15, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/03/201031571112419343.html
“U.S. man admits Mumbai terror role,” March 19, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/03/2010318205118778482.html
“Seeking a 'real' end to Iraq War” in San Francisco Sarah Lazare (opinion), views expressed in this article are the author’s; do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy. Sarah Lazare is an anti-militarist and GI resistance organizer with Dialogues Against Militarism and Courage to Resist. She is interested in connecting struggles for justice at home with global movements against war and empire. http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/03/201031993452512230.html
“Dirty little secrets” (Diarmuid Jeffreys), Episode of Al Jazeera’s People & Power March 10-19, 2010
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/peopleandpower/2010/03/201031761541794128.html
“U.S. weighs more troops for north Afghanistan,” March 18-20, 2010, http://malaysia.news.yahoo.com/afp/20100320/tap-afghanistan-unrest-us-nato-military-eea7cf4.html
“Afghanistan says Taliban arrests had ‘negative impact,’” March 20-21, 2010, http://malaysia.news.yahoo.com/afp/20100320/tap-afghanistan-unrest-eea7cf4.html
“Taliban adjust, wage bomb attacks against Afghan town,” AFP, March 21, 2010, http://malaysia.news.yahoo.com/ap/20100321/tap-as-afghan-bomb-ridden-town-d3b07b8.html
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