U.S. Character in east-west Asia — unmasking dark side

 “U.S. Foreign Policy, Deniability, and the Political ‘Utility’ of State Terror” by Terry Lynn Karl in Marjorie Cohn’s United States and Torture

Excerpt, minor edit, italics by Carolyn Bennett

Torture breeds terrorism http://torturebreedsterrorism.wordpress.com/

“State terror, including torture, is widely used for both interrogation and social control. Its purpose is to destroy the voice, the self, the reality, and the existence of its victims, their families, friends, and supporters and to instill fear in opposition movements.

“Citizens of democracies tend to rest comfortably in the belief that liberal democratic states use repression and torture against their own citizens much less often than other states. But democracies have not only tortured, as the Bush administration’s orders and practices in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo so vividly demonstrate, but those with colonial histories or expansive ambitions have set the international standard in the development of the doctrines and techniques of repression.

“In fact, some democracies have taken the lead in pioneering and exporting methods of torture that ‘leave no marks’ as well as theories of ‘limited war’ that can sweep away civilian protections. Not only have they trained other military and state authorities in the science of coercive interrogation, but they and their allies have also used methods of torture and repression extensively in foreign wars … the French in Algeria, the British in Northern Ireland, and the Americans in Vietnam.

“These practices pose an enormous dilemma for the conduct of foreign policy in democracies that extend themselves abroad, especially the United States.

On the one hand, U.S. foreign policy embeds itself in notions of American exceptionalism with the concomitant belief that actions abroad should reflect the self-image of a people who stand for freedom everywhere. Although most governments (even dictatorships) attribute some sort of virtue to their actions abroad, the United States sees itself as blessed by a unique goodness. This strong moral streak in political culture, perhaps best captured by the oft-cited vision of a ‘city on a hill,’ as well as the desire to serve as a model to the world, would seem to preclude the adoption of policies that can be widely perceived as morally deficient.

Yet from its first efforts to establish dominance beyond its borders to its newer status as the sole superpower, the United States has developed a template for its operations abroad that conflicts with the self-image.”

RHETORIC v. REALITY

“Beginning with its first efforts to assert control over the Philippines in 1899, government rhetoric and reality clashed. In the Philippines, some U.S. troops tortured prisoners of war (most frequently with the ‘water cure’ currently known as waterboarding) and some commanders ‘took no prisoners’ even if this meant killing every male capable of bearing arms…. In Vietnam, tiger cages, waterboarding, electric shocks, assassinations, abuses, kidnapping, and the summary executions in the Phoenix program of more than 20,000 suspected Viet Cong operatives without trial or due process were prominent features of a war the American public eventually repudiated for its brutality. These same practices migrated to Latin America, largely through the teachings of U.S. advisers, where they helped keep military dictatorships in power.…

“For the United States, making palatable its support for the often-unpalatable actions of its own officials or its allies has been a central problem from Vietnam to the current conflicts in the Middle East.…

“[Though] every president since [Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon] has made rhetorical support for human rights and/or democratization a cornerstone of foreign policy — [and] however reassuring and popular the rhetoric has been — it seldom stands up against the primary goal of defending certain visions of national security. Nor has it ever been enough in situations in which allies or … rogue U.S. officials and advisers might be running amok. Under these circumstances, the temptation to dissemble [put on a false appearance: conceal facts, intentions, or feelings under some pretense] is not only enormous; it also can appear vital for protecting what an administration chooses to define as the ‘national interest.’”

UnMASKING TRUE FACE

Torture breeds terrorism http://torturebreedsterrorism.wordpress.com/

“Deniability is a collusive business. Allies use ‘deniability’ to hide or downplay (as much as possible) the extent of human rights violations. U.S. officials, in turn, use deceptive rhetoric to ‘reshape’ their allies into ‘freedom fighters’ in order to win and retain support from U.S. citizens. Together their actions produce a form of ‘double deniability.’”

Sources and notes

Notes from The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse edited by Marjorie Cohn. New York: New York University Press, 2011, pp. 70-71

Chapter 3: “U.S. Foreign Policy, Deniability, and the Political ‘Utility’ of State Terror— Case of El Salvador” by Terry Lynn Karl

Marjorie Cohn is a Professor of Law at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, San Diego, California, and a former president of the National Lawyers Guild, http://www.marjoriecohn.com/index.html

Terry Lynn Karl is Gildred Professor of Latin American Studies, Stanford University, Professor of Political Science, Stanford University, http://iis-db.stanford.edu/staff/2128/Terry_Karl-CV.pdf.

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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • Articles also at World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire

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Environmental responsibility is social responsibility—Wangari Maathai

Britannica Wangari Maathai © Adrian Arbib/Corbis

Inseparable — how we treat the environment, how we treat each other

By Carolyn Bennett

Hers was a holistic approach embracing democracy, human rights, and particularly women’s rights. She combined science, social commitment, and active politics. More than simply protecting the existing environment, her strategy was to secure and strengthen the foundation of ecological sustainability.

Wangari Maathai won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and the press sneered. They sneered because Wangari Maathai was a woman and fit none of the Western male supremacist stereotypes of woman. The press sneered because Wangari Maathai was an independent woman’s rights feminist woman. They sneered because she was a black African Ph.D., Professor, Member of Parliament, Minister-for-Environment woman. The press sneered because Wangari Maathai was an environmentalist, biologist, scientist, and a peace, justice, democracy, human rights worker— not unlike [the United States of America’s] own Fannie Lou Hamer — who had endured great suffering while working in the causes of peace and justice and democracy and human rights. She endured for the great and global cause of life on planet Earth.  

Britannica Wangari Maathai AFP/Getty Images

Wangari Maathai’s great contribution was to make the connection between the life of forests and  the life of humankind — to see justice and injustice, war and peace in the connection  —  and to devote her life to the struggle for life.  She planted trees. Millions of them and led a reforesting movement.

If deforestation (cutting down trees, commercial logging, clear cutting, burning and damaging forests) continues at the rate it’s going, the world’s rain forests will vanish within 100 years, said a NASA report.  The majority of the planet’s plant and animal species will die.  ‘When a forest is cut and burned to establish crop land and pastures,’ the Earth Observatory report said, ‘the carbon that was stored in the tree trunks ... joins with oxygen and is released into the atmosphere. .... From 1850 to 1990, deforestation worldwide (including the United States) released 122 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, with the current rate being approximately 1.6 billion metric tons per year.’  Fossil fuel burning (coal, oil and gas) releases  6 billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere annually. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere ‘enhances greenhouse effect and could contribute to an increase in global temperatures.’

All life needs trees. ‘Trees protect the soil against erosion and reduce the risks of landslides and avalanches,’ Stephen Hui reminds us in a 1997 article ‘Deforestation: Humankind and the global ecological crisis.’  Trees help to sustain freshwater supplies, he says, and therefore are an important factor in the availability of one of life’s basic needs. Forests affect the climate and are an important source of oxygen. ‘Humankind is the cause of deforestation,’ he says, and humankind can cure it.

Wangari Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize because she put her back to the wheel of reforestation by planting and leading communities in planting millions of trees in Africa.  She won it because she used her mind to make the connection between forests and peace, justice and life; between deforestation and war, poverty and death — taking particular toll on women and children of Kenya, of Africa, of the world.

Interviewed on Democracy Now shortly after the announcement of the peace prize, Environmental author Terry Tempest Williams said, ‘Wangari Maathai was the first of the global leaders to say the health of our communities is the health of the planet. She said that environmental responsibility is social responsibility. She was one of the first global leaders decades ago to say that there is no separation between how we treat the environment and how we treat each other.’

A butterfly flutters its wings on an East African coast, and winds, great storms touch down in North America. Great forests fall to rubber plantations, corporate cattle farms, massive Agri-businesses and logging capitalists; flood waters rise, mud slides rush down slopes, waters run  through streets wiping out cities and towns, clapboard houses, trailers of poorer people, mansions of the rich, carbon coughing SUVs of the careless.  

In richer countries taxpayers pay for cities and states declared states of emergency. Taxes fund shelters — for people made homeless by storms, for merchants who lose their places of business, for businesses whose payouts exceed projected loss. 

In poorer countries (and in sectors of rich countries), there is no such luck. As people suffer one after another storm, the effects worsened by deforestation, their debt to developed countries such as the United States rises. To pay down the debt, they sell off their forests and other resources sustaining double, deepening loss — often poverty in perpetuity. More hurricanes come. This is a simplified case of Haiti and corporate rubber (or robber) barons. Poor Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. With corporate greed, rising debt, great storms, foreigners (government, nongovernmental individuals and groups, profit and nonprofit coalitions and corporations) constantly meddling in domestic sovereignty, creating and perpetuating civil chaos (as in Afghanistan and Iraq), Haiti has broken down completely.

A BBC report in late September [2004] said the storm called Jeanne caused a thousand deaths and left tens of thousands of Haitians without food and water. Behind Haiti’s stream of natural disasters — ‘Environmental destruction and lack of economic development,’ the report said. Not only is Haiti one of the poorest, it is one of the most densely populated and most deforested countries on Earth. Lacking peaceful, unconditional human assistance, Haiti is destroyed over and over again.

Iraq and Afghanistan suffer a similar fate of plunder, devastation and debt. An article published [in 2003] by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting said since the start of the war in Afghanistan, forests have been depleted by a third because people had to have firewood for cooking and heating. ‘War, illegal hunting, deforestation and drought combined with grinding poverty,’ Rahimullah Samander wrote, ‘have had a disastrous effect on Afghanistan’s wildlife, pushing some species to the verge of extinction.’

A sneering press asks no questions about environmental, including wildlife destruction and devastated human lives. Where is the peace and justice in this? No peace. No justice. No future for families and children. Only war and death.

Britannica Wangari Maathai at a tree-planting ceremony
Nagakute-chō, Japan, AP

Wangari Maathai [was] an environmentalist/peacemaker, advocate for justice.  She was the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctoral degree. She also earned honorary doctoral degrees, including one from Hobart & William Smith Colleges in Western New York. She was born in Nyeri, Kenya, and to celebrate winning the peace prize, she planted a tree on nearby Mount Kenya. She [led] the world in the struggle for environmental conservation, democracy and human rights.  From the 1970s, Wangari Maathai planted trees and led communities and movements in planting more than 20 million trees in Africa. 

Terry Tempest Williams concluded her interview with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez that year saying that Wangari Maathai is a woman ‘who risked everything for the environment’; that her whole life [was] ‘a gesture of deep bows to women and children in the earth.’ The Nobel committee’s recognition of Maathai as peacemaker, Williams said, gives new meaning to peace. 

In announcing the Nobel committee’s decision to award the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize to Wangari Maathai, some of what the head of the Norwegian Nobel committee said [reprinted at Democracy Now.org] was that Wangari Maathai ‘has taken a holistic approach to sustainable development that embraces democracy, human rights, and women’s rights in particular. She thinks globally and acts locally. ... Maathai combines science, social commitment, and active politics. More than simply protecting the existing environment, her strategy is to secure and strengthen the very basis for ecologically sustainable development.’

Wangari Maathai was important among world leaders because, unlike many contemporary leaders, she looked at what is happening today and saw continuing consequences way down the road, far into the future. She saw the interlocking nature and impact of scientific, human and natural variables on human life all over the world. She used her entire human powers to address and correct the problems.

This week, the world lost a truly great leader.  Professor Wangari Maathai died Sunday in Nairobi, Kenya. As reported at Al Africa referencing officials at her Greenbelt Movement organization, “The environmentalist and politician died at the Nairobi Hospital at around 10 p.m. on Sunday.”

We owe immeasurable gratitude to Wangari Muta Maathai for dedicating her life to saving ours.   

Sources and notes

This main entry is the edited text of an article I wrote and published at http://hometown.aol.com/cwriter85/index.html on October 13, 2004: “Wangari Maathai makes environment, peace connection”

“Kenya: Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai Dies in Nairobi —Prof Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace laureate and conservation heroine, has died in Nairobi after a long battle with cancer. She was 71. The environmentalist and politician died at the Nairobi Hospital at around 10 p.m. on Sunday, officials at her Greenbelt Movement organization told Nation.co.ke.,” September 26, 2011, Daily Nation on the Web, http://allafrica.com/stories/201109260014.html

BRITANNICA NOTE (edited)

Born April 1, 1940 in Nyeri, Kenya [d. September 25, 2011, Nairobi, Kenya], Wangari Muta Maathai was a Kenyan politician and environmental activist whose work her country often considered “unwelcome and subversive,” her outspokenness as “stepping far outside traditional gender roles.”

While working with the National Council of Women of Kenya, Wangari Maathai developed the idea that village women could improve the environment by planting trees to provide a fuel source and to slow the processes of deforestation and desertification.

She founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977. By the early 21st century, the organization had planted some 30 million trees. Leaders of the Green Belt Movement established the Pan African Green Belt Network in 1986 in order to educate world leaders about conservation and environmental improvement. Resulting from the movement’s activism, similar initiatives started in other African countries — among them Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe.

In addition to her conservation work, Maathai was also an advocate for human rights, AIDS prevention, and women’s issues. She frequently represented these concerns at meetings of the United Nations General Assembly. In 2002, she took 98 percent of the vote in her successful election to Kenya’s National Assembly. In 2003, she accepted an appointment as assistant minister of environment, natural resources, and wildlife.

Receiving the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2004, Wangari Maathai became the first black African woman recipient of the award.

As author, her works include The Green Belt Movement: Sharing the Approach and the Experience (1988; rev. ed. 2003); her autobiography Unbowed (in 2007); The Challenge for Africa (2009) in which she criticizes Africa’s leadership and urges Africans to try to solve their problems without Western assistance.

Wangari Maathai took her Ph.D. at the University of Nairobi (1971), becoming the first woman in either East or Central Africa to earn a doctoral degree. After graduation, she began teaching in the Department of Veterinary Anatomy at the University of Nairobi. In 1977, she became chair of the department. Her earlier academic studies were in the United States: Mount St. Scholastica College (now Benedictine College (B.S. in biology, 1964); the University of Pittsburgh (Master of Science, 1966).

Images in Britannica:

Wangari Maathai 1 © Adrian Arbib/Corbis

Wangari Maathai 2 AFP/Getty Images

Wangari Maathai 3 at a tree-planting ceremony in Nagakute-chō, Japan, AP

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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • Articles also at World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire
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Mid-East “new diplomacy” rising — Bennis

Beyond Palestinian-Israeli impasse to a diplomacy rooted in international law, human rights, equality for all

Two articles excerpted, edited with re-reporting by Carolyn Bennett

Ancient Middle East Britannica image

What is essential after 20 years of failed U.S. diplomacy, says Institute for Policy Studies Fellow Phyllis Bennis, is “some means of moving the debate out of Washington and into the United Nations.”

“The challenge to and overthrow of U.S.-backed dictators across the Arab world is changing landscapes across the region and in countries far from the Middle East,” Bennis wrote in an article published on Wednesday, before President Mahmoud Abbas made the case for full Palestinian membership at the United Nations. “The notion spreading throughout the ‘Arab Spring’ — that a revolutionary process could contain both an internal focus (the shaking up of old social hierarchies) and an external focus (aimed at shaking out old leaders and old ideas) — had its roots in the first Palestinian uprising, the socially inclusive, grassroots-based and non-violent intifada that began a generation ago in 1987. So it should surprise no one that Palestinians are still engaged in nonviolent mobilization that aims both to end Israeli occupation, settlement, and apartheid, and to democratize and hold accountable its own internal leadership.

Arabia Britannica image

… For the first time since before World War II, the United States cannot rely on sycophantic Arab dictators willing to viciously suppress their own people in order to sign friendly oil contracts and make nice to Israel, while maintaining the good ties to Washington that keep the stream of arms sales and foreign aid flowing.

For the first time, some Arab regimes are being forced to at least partly take into account popular opinion.

… [I]n such a heated and high-profile atmosphere, a U.S. veto [of Palestinian full membership in the UN] will almost certainly lead to significant diplomatic challenges for Washington’s military, resource, economic and political relations.

After the Palestinian president’s Friday speech before the UN General Assembly, Bennis wrote this.

“There was a potential game changer in Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’s speech …  that  marks the end of the 20-year-long U.S.-backed failed peace process and the potential beginning of a whole new approach to Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy — one based on international law, human rights and equality for all.

No longer is the failed U.S.-controlled ‘peace process’ the only diplomatic game in town.

The Palestinian application for recognition as a full Member State of the United Nations places the diplomacy squarely where it has always belonged — in the UN, not in Washington. …

Middle East incl Occupied Territories Britannica image

“T]here is now at least the basis for laying a new diplomatic foundation, different from the current approach that maintains Israel’s huge disparity in power and accepts Israeli ‘red lines.’  … This could mean something entirely new — diplomacy grounded in international law and human rights that ends occupation, ensures the right of refugees to return to their homes, and replaces apartheid with equality for all.…

“… [T]he challenge is to make this new opportunity real and to take maximum advantage of it, not to let it dissolve into endless bureaucracy. There is a serious danger that the UN Security Council, rather than moving to schedule a rapid vote with its inevitable U.S. veto, will instead move to create a committee, to launch an investigation, to commission a report… and otherwise move to simply bury the Palestinian application in the labyrinthine mumbo-jumbo of UN diplo-speak. …”

But maybe, she says —

“… Maybe some governments will take seriously their obligation to protect an occupied population suffering under decades of occupation, apartheid and dispossession.

“Just maybe this will mark the beginning of a different approach to achieving Palestinian rights and equality — with the world, not the United States, as the ‘honest broker.’

“… Twenty years of a U.S.-controlled process designed to maintain Israeli power and privilege is over. ‘It is enough.’”

Sources and notes

“Bye-Bye ‘Peace Process -- Palestine Comes to the UN” (Phyllis Bennis), September 21, 2011, http://www.ips-dc.org/articles/bye-bye_peace_process_palestine_comes_to_the_un

“Abbas at the United Nations a Game Changer? Maybe” (Phyllis Bennis), September 23, 2011, http://www.ips-dc.org/articles/abbas_at_the_united_nations_a_game_changer_mayb

Also listen on CounterSpin:  “Phyllis Bennis on Palestinian statehood — Mainstream reporting on the Palestinian bid for UN recognition regularly employs loaded language in portraying the initiative as an underhanded gambit which is threatening to the U.S. and Israel. Exactly how does the Palestinian bid threaten anyone?

“Has the U.S. press always disdained unilateralism in Middle East? … CounterSpin talks with Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.

CounterSpin (9/23/11-9/29/11), http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4404

PHYLLIS BENNIS

Veteran writer, analyst and activist on Middle East and UN issues, Phyllis Bennis is a fellow at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies and director of its New Internationalism Project. She is also a fellow of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. In 2001, Bennis helped found and remains on the steering committee of the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation.

She works closely with the United for Peace and Justice anti-war coalition and co-chairs the UN-based International Coordinating Network on Palestine. Since 2002, she has played an active role in the growing global peace movement. She continues to advise several top UN officials on Middle East and UN democratization issues.

Books by Bennis include Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer and Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s UN. http://www.ips-dc.org/staff/phyllis

MAHMOUD ABBAS

A Palestinian politician, who served briefly as prime minister of the Palestinian Authority in 2003, Mahmoud Abbas was elected PLO president in 2005 after the death of PLO president Yāsir Arafāt.

In the early 1990s, Mahmoud Abbas shaped Palestinian negotiating strategy at both the peace conference in Madrid (1991) and in secret meetings with the Israelis in Norway. Through the resulting Oslo Accords (1993), Israel and the Palestinians extended mutual recognition to each other, and Israel ceded some governing functions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to a Palestinian Authority.

Abbas was a senior member of the Palestinian delegation to the Camp David peace talks in July 2000 and adamantly rejected Israel’s peace offer but opposed the violent Palestinian uprising called the intifāḍah (Arabic: ‘shaking off’) that followed. In 2003, after intense international pressure, Abbas was installed as Palestinian prime minister as an effort to circumvent Arafāt, who was considered an impediment to peace by Israel and the United States. Abbas quickly renounced terrorism, called for an end to the intifāḍah against Israel, and resolved to create a single Palestinian armed force. He soon resigned from office saying he had been undermined by Israel, the United States, and Arafāt.

Following Arafāt’s death in November 2004, Abbas was named head of the PLO. In January 2005, he garnered more than 60 percent of the vote and won the election to succeed Arafāt as president of the Palestinian Authority.

Mahmoud Abbas was born (1935) in the Arab-Jewish town of Zefat and fled with his family to Syria during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Despite the family’s refugee status, Abbas earned a law degree from the University of Damascus. In the late 1950s, Abbas was one of the founders of Fatah, which spearheaded the Palestinian armed struggle and came to dominate the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

As head of the PLO’s international department in the late 1970s, Abbas was instrumental in forging contacts with Israeli peace groups. In 1982, Moscow State University awarded Mahmoud Abbas a doctorate in history. [Britannica note]

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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY];  Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY];  • Articles also at World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire

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Despite Washington, Tel Aviv — Palestine pushes on to UN

U.S officials in a new season persist in obstructionism, entrenched global policy of violence — but not all lie down and play dead

Re-reporting, editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

Middle East incl Occupied Territories Britannica image

Palestinian President Delivers Full UN Membership Application

Mahmoud Abbas, President of the National Palestinian Authority today delivered an application and speech toward full Palestinian membership in the United Nations. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will transmit the application to the UN Security Council, whose recommendation is required before consideration by the General Assembly. These are excerpts from President Abbas’s statement.

“The occupation is racing against time to redraw the borders on our land according to what it wants and to impose a fait accompli on the ground that changes the realities and that is undermining the realistic potential for the existence of the State of Palestine.

“At the same time, the occupying Power continues to impose its blockade on the Gaza Strip and to target Palestinian civilians by assassinations, air strikes and artillery shelling, persisting with its war of aggression of three years ago on Gaza, which resulted in massive destruction of homes, schools, hospitals, and mosques, and the thousands of martyrs and wounded.

“The occupying Power also continues its incursions in areas of the Palestinian National Authority through raids, arrests and killings at the checkpoints. In recent years, the criminal actions of armed settler militias, who enjoy the special protection of the occupation army, has intensified with the perpetration of frequent attacks against our people, targeting their homes, schools, universities, mosques, fields, crops and trees. Despite our repeated warnings, the occupying Power has not acted to curb these attacks and we hold them fully responsible for the crimes of the settlers. These are just a few examples of the policy of the Israeli colonial settlement occupation, and this policy is responsible for the continued failure of the successive international attempts to salvage the peace process.

“This policy will destroy the chances of achieving a two-State solution upon which there is an international consensus, and here I caution aloud: This settlement policy threatens to also undermine the structure of the Palestinian National Authority and even end its existence.

“In addition, we now face the imposition of new conditions not previously raised — conditions that will transform the raging conflict in our inflamed region into a religious conflict and a threat to the future of a million and a half Christian and Muslim Palestinians, citizens of Israel — a matter we reject and being dragged into which [we do not] accept.

“All of these actions taken by Israel in our country are unilateral actions and are not based on any earlier agreements. Indeed, what we witness is a selective application of the agreements aimed at perpetuating the occupation.

Israel reoccupied the cities of the West Bank by a unilateral action, and reestablished the civil and military occupation by a unilateral action, and it is the one that determines whether or not a Palestinian citizen has the right to reside in any part of the Palestinian Territory.

It [Israel] is confiscating our land and our water and obstructing our movement as well as the movement of goods.

It [Israel] is the one obstructing our whole destiny.

All of this is unilateral.…

“… I confirm, on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people — which will remain so until the end of the conflict in all its aspects and until the resolution of all final status issues — the following:

1. The goal of the Palestinian people is the realization of their inalienable national rights in their independent State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, on all the land of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, which Israel occupied in the June 1967 war, in conformity with the resolutions of international legitimacy and with the achievement of a just and agreed upon solution to the Palestine refugee issue in accordance with resolution 194, as stipulated in the Arab Peace Initiative which presented the consensus Arab vision to resolve the core Arab-Israeli conflict and to achieve a just and comprehensive peace. 

To this, we adhere and this is what we are working to achieve.

Achieving this desired peace also requires the release of political prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons without delay.

2. The PLO and the Palestinian people adhere to the renouncement of violence and rejection and condemning of terrorism in all its forms, especially State terrorism, and adhere to all agreements signed between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel.

3. We adhere to the option of negotiating a lasting solution to the conflict in accordance with resolutions of international legitimacy. Here, I declare that the Palestine Liberation Organization is ready to return immediately to the negotiating table on the basis of the adopted terms of reference based on international legitimacy and a complete cessation of settlement activities.

4. Our people will continue their popular peaceful resistance to the Israeli occupation and its settlement and apartheid policies and its construction of the racist annexation Wall, and they receive support for their resistance, which is consistent with international humanitarian law and international conventions and has the support of peace activists from Israel and around the world, reflecting an impressive, inspiring and courageous example of the strength of this defenseless people, armed only with their dreams, courage, hope and slogans in the face of bullets, tanks, tear gas and bulldozers.

5.     When we bring our plight and our case to this international podium, it is a confirmation of our reliance on the political and diplomatic option and is a confirmation that we do not undertake unilateral steps. Our efforts are not aimed at isolating Israel or de-legitimizing it; rather we want to gain legitimacy for the cause of the people of Palestine.

We only aim to de-legitimize the settlement activities, the occupation and apartheid and the logic of ruthless force, and we believe that all the countries of the world stand with us in this regard.

“On behalf of the Palestinian people and the Palestine Liberation Organization: We extend our hands to the Israeli government and the Israeli people for peacemaking.

“… Let us urgently build together a future for our children where they can enjoy freedom, security and prosperity. Let us build the bridges of dialogue instead of checkpoints and walls of separation, and build cooperative relations based on parity and equity between two neighboring States — Palestine and Israel — instead of policies of occupation, settlement, war and eliminating the other.…

“…[B]efore delivering this statement, I — in my capacity as President of the State of Palestine and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization — submitted to H.E. Mr. Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, an application for the admission of Palestine on the basis of the 4 June 1967 borders, with AI-Quds AI-Sharif as its capital, as a full member of the United Nations.

“I call upon Mr. Secretary-General to expedite transmittal of our request to the Security Council, and I call upon the distinguished members of the Security Council to vote in favor of our full membership. I also appeal to the States that have not yet recognized the State of Palestine to do so.…

“…The support of the countries of the world for our endeavor is a victory for truth, freedom, justice, law and international legitimacy, and it provides tremendous support for the peace option and enhances the chances of success of the negotiations.

“…Your support for the establishment of the State of Palestine and for its admission to the United Nations as a full member is the greatest contribution to peacemaking in the Holy Land.”

Who is right — Israel or Palestine? Pravda.Ru asked Sergei Demidenko, an expert of the Institute of Strategic Estimations and Analysis.

“From the legal point of view,” Demidenko said, “the USA and Israel are absolutely wrong.  There is a great deal of international agreements about the establishment of a separate Arab state in Palestine [and] Washington, by the way, recognized those agreements.”

Dark character

Evidenced among U.S. and Western allies, proxies and pawns

Pravda published this from what might be called the anti-war movement in Rome. They seemed to have been protesting a march in Rome but the substance is tellingly apropos.

Britannica image

“Do you not realize that [attacking Libya] aggressor countries (USA, France, Great Britain, Italy, NATO, Arab reactionary monarchies such as Qatar and Emirates) speaking of an alleged act of ‘civilian protection’ — instead of their true objective of regime change by force of arms — were violating the spirit and letter of the UN resolution?

“Do you not realize that the insurgents were constantly supplied with weapons, military and logistical support and entirely not willing to join any sort of negotiations?

“Do you not see that the only purpose of this operation is the sharing of stolen Libyan resources in a neo-colonial context?

“Why do you not have a word of condemnation on the bombings and military actions of the aggressors?

“The only explicit condemnation you have turned against another country [is] Syria, where the government has opened dialogue with the opposition more responsibly. However, even in this case, as in Libya, fringes of Al-Qaeda, radical Islamic fundamentalists and Afghanistan veterans are provided with weapons, and stirred up by the U.S., France, Britain and the reactionary Arab monarchies (Saudi Arabia head) to destabilize the government by refusing any dialogue.…

“All previous wars and aggression were preceded by blatant lies: weapons of mass destruction, Saddam’s massacre, 10,000 civilians never happened with Libya with false images of mass graves and justified with the rhetoric of ‘human rights’ violated.

“The result is that the moral and material conditions of civilians in Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and today Libya… The people of the Libyan cities of Sirte, Bani Walid and Sabha are now in danger of being massacred by the rebels, under the aegis of an approved UN operation ‘to protect civilians.’  Your silence gives consent and support.…

“Are conditions improved after the armed western ‘humanitarian’ interventions?” U.S. Citizens for Peace and Justice at Rome, Italy, asks and concludes:  “THE ONLY RESULTS ARE MILLIONS OF DEATHS AND REFUGEES, CIVIL WAR, HUMANITARIAN DISASTER, and COLLAPSE OF ALL LIVING CONDITIONS.”

Leading wars into the fall

U.S. in PALESTINE

U.S. to Israel 2,000-pound bombs

U.S. President Barack Obama [has] secretly authorized the sale of 55 powerful bunker-buster bombs to Israel,” Pravda re-reports a Newsweek magazine report.

“When Israel first asked to buy deep-penetrating GBU-28 bombs in 2005, [the George W. Bush government] refused to sell these bombs because at that time the Pentagon had frozen joint U.S.-Israeli defense projects due to fears of Israel transferring advanced military technology to China.”  But in 2007, the Bush government “informed then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that the bombs would be ready for delivery in 2009 or 2010… Unnamed officials said,” according to the article, that “in 2009 [the Obama government] authorized the delivery of the bunker-buster bombs — 2,000-pound bombs designed to destroy hard targets.”

Britannica image

U.S. in AFGHANISTAN

Over the past few years, the security situation across Afghanistan has been deteriorating

Despite [or because of] the presence of some 150,000 foreign troops, violence has spread in the past year from Afghanistan’s volatile south to what had been relatively peaceful areas. Commensurately, anger has risen in the United States and in other NATO member states over the rising numbers of foreign troop casualties in Afghanistan.

Today, reports say five U.S.-led NATO soldiers died when road-side bombs exploded in eastern and western Afghanistan.

Three Italian soldiers were among the dead in Herat Province in western Afghanistan and two other soldiers died in eastern Afghanistan.

U.S. in BAHRAIN [home of U.S. fifth fleet]

Fake Democracy

Under brutal government attacks, hundreds of anti-government protesters reportedly marched today towards Pearl Square, the former epicenter of Bahrain’s revolution.

The reports said, amidst ongoing conflict, “Bahraini authorities have stepped up pressure on anti-government activists ahead of tomorrow’s elections and threatened jail for anyone calling for a boycott of the elections.

The top cleric, Sheikh Isa Qassim, accused Bahrain’s Al Khalifa dynasty (government) of practicing “‘fake democracy’” and called elections planned for Saturday “a meaningless vote.”

Today’s unconfirmed reports said countless people had been injured and arrested.  Witnesses reported regime forces maintained a heavy presence in central Manama, the capital, surrounded Pearl Square with barbed wire barricades, and fired tear gas on protesters.

U.S. in YEMEN

Since January, hundreds of anti-regime protesters have died and many more have suffered injuries at the hand of riot police or supporters of Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Since Sunday, “more than 100 people are believed to have been killed.”

Today, Ali Abdullah Saleh reportedly returned to the Yemen after spending more than three months in Saudi Arabia for medical treatment. His return follows the regime’s intensified crackdown on anti-government protesters [AFP].

U.S. in IRAQ

After eight years, an estimated 50,000 U.S. soldiers remain in this country. Nearly one year after the U.S. military announced an official end to combat operations in Iraq, the relatively new U.S. Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, disclosed in August that American forces had resumed military operations in this country.

On Wednesday, following a meeting with the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad (James Jeffrey), Iraqi vice president Khudair al-Khuzaie said, “U.S. forces deployed in the country will be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of this year.”

Drones in Southwest Asia, Horn of Africa

U.S. in PAKISTAN

In northwestern Pakistan today, a U.S. drone strike reportedly left at least three people dead.

Losing allies

U.S. Admiral Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff lays accusations against Pakistan for “playing a double game in the war against al-Qaeda” and Pakistan’s foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar counters that the U.S. “cannot afford to alienate Pakistan [or] the Pakistani people.” Choosing to do so “will be at [the United States’] own cost.”

Escalating the crisis in relations between the two countries, Khar said, will cost the U.S. an ally.

UN News Agency image 

U.S. in SOMALIA

Suffering poverty, drought, disease unstable government, and U.S. drones

Cholera yesterday in Somalia claimed the lives of 36 more people. The disease has spread among hundreds of thousands of famine victims. The World Health Organization has reported an estimated 75 percent of all Somalia cases of highly infectious diarrhea occur “among children under the age of five.”

The victims who died Thursday evening were in Kismayo, the capital of the lower Juba region and a port city about 500 kilometers (310 miles) south of Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. More than 340 people suffering from cholera and waterborne diseases reportedly flocked Kismayo’s Alanley hospital for medical treatment.

Despite these horrendous conditions, United States officials — as they have done in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen — have also used unmanned aircraft against Somalia. Today, a U.S. drone reportedly fired missiles in southern districts of Somalia. Eleven people (est.) died and dozens suffered wounds.

The U.S. assault near Taabto and Qooqani districts hit large numbers of livestock and many people, especially women and children, who fled their homes in fear of more attacks.

September 23, 2011

sites reporting (estimates only)

U.S.-led WAR DEAD

Iraq Body Count

Documented civilian deaths from violence

102,629 – 112,161

Full analysis of the WikiLeaks' Iraq War Logs may add 15,000 civilian deaths.

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

Icasualties dot org

AFGHANISTAN

1,779 U.S. • 2735 Coalition

http://icasualties.org/OEF/Index.aspx

IRAQ

4,475 U.S. • 4,793 Coalition

http://icasualties.org/Iraq/index.aspx

Antiwar dot com

Latest update September 19, 2011,

American Military Casualties in Iraq
The Human Cost of Occupation edited by Margaret Griffiths

Since Obama Inauguration (1/20/09): 247

Wounded: 33,145 Over 100000

320,000 Vets Have Brain Injuries

Vet Suicides Per Day: 18

http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

Sources and notes

United Nations, New York September 23, 2011, http://www.unmultimedia.org/photo/detail.jsp?id=488/488092

Statement by H.E. Mr. Mahmoud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, President of the Palestinian National Authority before United Nations General Assembly Sixty-sixth Session:

New York,   September 23, 2011, Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations, 115 East 65th St., New York, NY 10021, http://gadebate.un.org/sites/default/files/gastatements/66/PS_en.pdf

“Abbas makes statehood bid at UN,” September 23, 2011, ttp://www.presstv.ir/detail/200801.html

“Washington destroys all peace initiatives for Palestine and Israel,” September 21, 2011,

http://english.pravda.ru/world/asia/21-09-2011/119107-palestine_israel-0/

“Wake up Italian anti-war movement,” NOWAR – Rome, U.S. Citizens for Peace and Justice – Rome, September 22, 2011, http://english.pravda.ru/world/europe/22-09-2011/119115-Wake_Up_Italian_antiwar_movement-0/

U.S. in Palestine

“‘U.S. secretly sold Israel bunker-busters,’” September 23, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/200798.html

U.S. in Afghanistan

“Five NATO soldiers die in Afghanistan,” September 23, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/200783.html

PERSIAN GULF (Arabian Gulf)

A shallow marginal sea of the Indian Ocean that

Lies between the Arabian Peninsula and southwestern Iran

Bordered on the north, northeast and east by Iran;

On the southeast and south by part of Oman and by the United Arab Emirates;

On the southwest and west by Qatar, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia; and

On the northwest by Kuwait and Iraq

The term Persian Gulf sometimes refers not only to Persian Gulf proper but

Also to its outlets —

The Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman, which open into the Arabian Sea

GULF OF ADEN

A deepwater basin that forms a natural sea link between the

Red Sea and the Arabian Sea

Named after the seaport of Aden, in southern Yemen,

The gulf lies between the coasts of Arabia and the Horn of Africa

U.S. in Bahrain

“Bahrainis attacked near Pearl Square,” September 23, 2011 [also “New video shows Bahraini police cruelty — A newly surfaced video shows another instance of police brutality in Bahrain as Saudi-backed security forces continue their violent crackdown on anti-regime protests,” September 22, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/200799.html

U.S. in Yemen

“‘Saleh returns to Yemen from S Arabia,’” September 23, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/200711.html

U.S. in Iraq

“Iraq VP: U.S. pull-out on schedule,” September 21, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/200457.html

ARABIAN SEA

Lies in the northwestern part of the Indian Ocean covering about 1,491,000 square miles

(3,862,000 square kilometers) and

Forming part of the principal sea route between Europe and India

Bounded to the west by the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula

To the west, the Gulf of Aden connects it with

Red Sea via the Bab el-Mandeb Strait

To the north by Iran and Pakistan

To the north, the Gulf of Oman connects

Arabian Sea with the Persian Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz

To the east by India

To the south by the remainder of the Indian Ocean

The Arabian Sea has a mean depth of 8,970 feet (2,734 meters)

U.S. in Pakistan

“U.S. drone kills three in Pakistan,” September 23, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/section/3510204.html

“Pakistan says U.S. risks ‘losing an ally,’ — Officials hit back at Admiral Mike Mullen’s comments linking country’s spy agency to the Haqqani group,”  September 23, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/09/20119239126513803.html

Also: “Police officers killed in Pakistan blast  — Senior officer escapes unhurt as suicide attack targets his home in Karachi, leaving at least eight dead,” September 19, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/09/20119194194058327.html

U.S. in Somalia

“Cholera kills 36 in southern Somalia,” September 22, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/200656.html

“U.S. drone kills 11 in south Somalia,” September 23, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/200735.html

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