Satyagrahi_Ji: December 2010

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Once Again, Turning Dissent Into Treason # BradleyManning #Wikileaks #Assange

by Abby Zimet

With U.S officials considering charging Julian Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act that killed his parents in the McCarthy era, the son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg has called on progressives to defend Assange from a law that criminalizes dissent. Robert Meeropol says he feels "the same chill winds that wreaked havoc on my life and many others once again sweeping our nation."
"In recent years, we have witnessed the most rapid and widespread erosion of our civil liberties since the 1950's. Those who speak out in opposition to our criminal war abroad and the growing repression at home are condemned as 'traitors' and treated as enemies of the state."

via commondreams.org

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Never Cast Lead Again #Gaza2

An Open Letter from Gaza: Two Years after the Massacre, a Demand for Justice

Posted by occupiedpalestine in Newsitems 2009/2010 on December 26, 2010

UK, December 26, (Pal Telegraph) – We the Palestinians of the Besieged Gaza Strip, on this day, two years on from Israel’s genocidal attack on our families, our houses, our roads, our factories and our schools, are saying enough inaction, enough discussion, enough waiting – the time is now to hold Israel to account for its ongoing crimes against us. On the 27th of December 2008, Israel began an indiscriminate bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

The assault lasted 22 days, killing 1,417 Palestinians, 352 of them children, according to main-stream Human Rights Organizations. For a staggering 528 hours, Israeli Occupation Forces let loose their US-supplied F15s, F16s, Merkava Tanks, internationally prohibited White Phosphorous, and bombed and invaded the small Palestinian coastal enclave that is home to 1.5 million, of whom 800,000 are children and over 80 percent UN registered refugees. Around 5,300 remain permanently wounded.

This devastation exceeded in savagery all previous massacres suffered in Gaza, such as the 21children killed in Jabalia in March 2008 or the 19 civilians killed sheltering in their house in the Beit Hanoun Massacre of 2006. The carnage even exceeded the attacks in November 1956 in which Israeli troops indiscriminately rounded up and killed 275 Palestinians in the Southern town of Khan Younis and 111 more in Rafah.

Since the Gaza massacre of 2009, world citizens have undertaken the responsibility to pressure Israel to comply with international law, through a proven strategy of boycott, divestment and sanctions. As in the global BDS movement that was so effective in ending the apartheid South African regime, we urge people of conscience to join the BDS call made by over 170 Palestinian organizations in 2005. As in South Africa the imbalance of power and representation in this struggle can be counterbalanced by a powerful international solidarity movement with BDS at the forefront, holding Israeli policy makers to account, something the international governing community has repeatedly failed to do. Similarly, creative civilian efforts such as the Free Gaza boats that broke the siege five times, the Gaza Freedom March, the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, and the many land convoys must never stop their siege-breaking, highlighting the inhumanity of keeping 1.5 million Gazans in an open-air prison.

Two years have now passed since Israel’s gravest of genocidal acts that should have left people in no doubt of the brutal extent of Israel’s plans for the Palestinians. The murderous navy assault on international activists aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in the Mediterranean Sea magnified to the world the cheapness Israel has assigned to Palestinian llife for so long. The world knows now, yet two years on nothing has changed for Palestinians.
The Goldstone Report came and went: despite its listing count after count of international law contraventions, Israeli “war crimes” and “possible crimes against humanity,” the European Union, the United Nations, the Red Cross, and all major Human Rights Organizations have called for an end to the illegal, medieval siege, it carries on unabated. On 11th November 2010 UNRWA head John Ging said, “There’s been no material change for the people on the ground here in terms of their status, the aid dependency, the absence of any recovery or reconstruction, no economy…The easing, as it was described, has been nothing more than a political easing of the pressure on Israel and Egypt.”

On the 2nd of December, 22 international organizations including Amnesty, Oxfam, Save the Children, Christian Aid, and Medical Aid for Palestinians produced the report ‘Dashed Hopes, Continuation of the Gaza Blockade’ calling for international action to force Israel to unconditionally lift the blockade, saying the Palestinians of Gaza under Israeli siege continue to live in the same devastating conditions. Only a week ago Human Rights Watch published a comprehensive report “Separate and Unequal” that denounced Israeli policies as Apartheid, echoing similar sentiments by South African anti-apartheid activists.

We Palestinians of Gaza want to live at liberty to meet Palestinian friends or family from Tulkarem, Jerusalem or Nazareth; we want to have the right to travel and move freely. We want to live without fear of another bombing campaign that leaves hundreds of our children dead and many more injured or with cancers from the contamination of Israel’s white phosphorous and chemical warfare. We want to live without the humiliations at Israeli checkpoints or the indignity of not providing for our families because of the unemployment brought about by the economic control and the illegal siege. We are calling for an end to the racism that underpins all this oppression.

We ask: when will the world’s countries act according to the basic premise that people should be treated equally, regardless of their origin, ethnicity or colour – is it so far-fetched that a Palestinian child deserves the same human rights as any other human being? Will you be able to look back and say you stood on the right side of history or will you have sided with the oppressor?

We, therefore, call on the international community to take up its responsibility to protect the Palestinian people from Israel’s heinous aggression, immediately ending the siege with full compensation for the destruction of life and infrastructure visited upon us by this explicit policy of collective punishment. Nothing whatsoever justifies the intentional policies of savagery, including the severing of access to the water and electricity supply to 1.5 million people. The international conspiracy of silence towards the genocidal war taking place against the more than 1.5 million civilians in Gaza indicates complicity in these war crimes.

We also call upon all Palestine solidarity groups and all international civil society organizations to demand:

- An end to the siege that has been imposed on the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a result of their exercise of democratic choice.
- The protection of civilian lives and property, as stipulated in International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law such as The Fourth Geneva Convention.
- The immediate release of all political prisoners.
- That Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip be immediately provided with financial and material support to cope with the immense hardship that they are experiencing
- An end to occupation, Apartheid and other war crimes.
- Immediate reparations and compensation for all destruction carried out by the Israeli Occupation Forces in the Gaza Strip.

Boycott Divest and Sanction, join the many International Trade Unions, Universities, Supermarkets and artists and writers who refuse to entertain Apartheid Israel. Speak out for Palestine, for Gaza, and crucially ACT. The time is now.

Besieged Gaza, Palestine

27.December.2010

List of signatories:

General Union for Public Services Workers

General Union for Health Services Workers

University Teachers’ Association

Palestinian Congregation for Lawyers

General Union for Petrochemical and Gas Workers

General Union for Agricultural Workers

Union of Women’s Work Committees

Union of Synergies—Women Unit

The One Democratic State Group

Arab Cultural Forum

Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel

Association of Al-Quds Bank for Culture and Info

Palestine Sailing Federation

Palestinian Association for Fishing and Maritime

Palestinian Network of Non-Governmental Organizations

Palestinian Women Committees

Progressive Students’ Union

Medical Relief Society

The General Society for Rehabilitation

General Union of Palestinian Women

Afaq Jadeeda Cultural Centre for Women and Children

Deir Al-Balah Cultural Centre for Women and Children

Maghazi Cultural Centre for Children

Al-Sahel Centre for Women and Youth

Ghassan Kanfani Kindergartens

Rachel Corrie Centre, Rafah

Rafah Olympia City Sisters

Al Awda Centre, Rafah

Al Awda Hospital, Jabaliya Camp

Ajyal Association, Gaza

General Union of Palestinian Syndicates

Al Karmel Centre, Nuseirat

Local Initiative, Beit Hanoun

Union of Health Work Committees

Red Crescent Society Gaza Strip

Beit Lahiya Cultural Centre

Al Awda Centre, Rafah

Photo: Sameh Habeeb

An Open Letter from Gaza: Two Years after the Massacre, a Demand for Justice.

via nevercastleadagain.wordpress.com

Monday, December 20, 2010

#Gaza under siege: great counter for your website « tweetextensions.com - Dec 27 #Israel op "Cast led "

From http://siegebreak.wordpress.com/2010/12/19/gaza2-campaign/

via luckykiwi.wordpress.com

On Dec 27 208 Israel lunched Operation cast led
On 27 December 2008, without warning, Israeli forces began a devastating bombing campaign on the Gaza Strip codenamed Operation “Cast Lead”. Its stated aim was to end rocket attacks into Israel by armed groups affiliated with Hamas and other Palestinian factions. By 18 January 2009 some 1,400 Palestinians had been killed and large areas of Gaza had been razed to the ground. Amnesty International believes that the deaths of so .... Continue reading

http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE15/015/2009/en

Monday, December 13, 2010

Cold War Air Defense Relied on Widespread Dispersal of Nuclear Weapons, Documents Show

Washington, D.C., November 16, 2010 - To counter a Soviet bomber attack, U.S. war plans contemplated widespread use of thousands of air defense weapons during the middle years of the Cold War according to declassified documents posted today at the National Security Archive's Nuclear Vault and cited by a recently published book, Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era: Nuclear Antiaircraft Arms and the Cold War (Palgrave Macmillan) by historian Christopher J. Bright. The U.S. government publicly acknowledged the facts of the deployments in the 1950s, yet they garnered surprisingly little public opposition, Bright concludes, in disclosing for the first time that air defense weapons comprised as much as one-fifth of the US nuclear arsenal in 1961. Still, nearly 25 years after the United States retired the last of them in 1986, their exact number remains secret.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the most perilous crisis of the Cold War, Bright shows that top Defense officials wanted to limit a response to a bomber attack to conventional weapons, not realizing how much plans and deployments rested solely on nuclear weapons. Bright's work also raises the possibility that air defense weapons may have been among the most dangerous nuclear arms because of their widespread deployment and the predelegated use arrangements that could have led to inadvertent nuclear use during a crisis.

Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era is a reminder of the extent to which nuclear weapons were integral to Cold War American military strategy. It comes at a time when U.S. policy makers are giving renewed attention to nuclear arms, occasioned in part by President Barack Obama's support for their ultimate abolition, and the suggestion by others that existing U.S. nuclear warheads should be replaced or refurbished, along with continuing political disagreement about the necessity and adequacy of a New START arms control treaty with Russia.

Bright's book recounts many other formerly secret details about the thousands of Army and nuclear air defense weapons built during the Cold War, the plans and procedures for their use, and their eventual withdrawal. Drawing upon declassified documents held by the National Security Archive (including material in ninety boxes of files donated in 2003 upon the death of nuclear researcher Chuck Hansen) and other once-secret information originating at the White House, Pentagon, Atomic Energy Commission and elsewhere, Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era discusses the development and deployment of:

3155 Genie air-to-air rockets (with two kiloton nuclear warheads) estimated to have armed scores of Air Force interceptor aircraft at 31 bases in 20 states starting in 1957

1900 Falcon guided air-to-air missiles (with a half kiloton warhead) which later also equipped some of these and other airplanes

2500 Army Nike-Hercules surface-to-air missiles (carrying two or 22 kiloton warheads) that the Army positioned at 123 launch sites around 26 cities and 10 Air Force bases in 25 states

409 Air Force BOMARC long range surface-to-air missiles (each with six and one-half kiloton warheads) located at eight launch sites in seven eastern and northeastern states (in addition to two locations in Canada)

Before the advent of intercontinental ballistic missiles, the fear of a surprise mass Soviet bomber attack spurred defense planners and government scientists to compensate for technological limitations of antiaircraft arms of the era. Recognizing the difficulty of targeting relatively high-flying, fast-moving airplanes, proponents of nuclear air defense believed that relatively small defensive nuclear warheads compensated for inaccuracy by producing comparatively large lethal blast zones. They further argued that nuclear warheads would assuredly destroy attacking planes and the bombs they carried, while posing minimal risk to those on the ground. Policy makers, including President Dwight Eisenhower, military service leaders, and members of Congress, agreed. Defense officials announced the deployments to the public; arms manufacturers and the news media also publicized them. There was little public dissent. Even members of the nascent anti-nuclear movement at the time devoted almost no attention to these arms. While this does not indicate their assent to the weapons, it suggests that they did not see nuclear air defense weapons as especially worrisome.

Among the related topics addressed in Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era:

Eisenhower authorized in advance (or "predelegated") the use of these arms in the event that an aerial attack upon the US was known to be underway but the president could not be contacted. Although intended to be secret, a senior U.S. Air Force officer, General Earle Partridge, disclosed this publicly in 1957 and 1958.

In February 1958, an Air Force publicist revealed the cost of the Genie's W-25 nuclear charge, one of only two occasions in which the expense of a U.S. nuclear warhead has been revealed.

The Genie rocket was test-fired from an Air Force plane over Nevada in July 1957. Five officer volunteers stood below in an attempt to demonstrate that the weapon could be utilized without endangering those on the ground.

In July 1958, extensive preparations had been made to test-fire additional Genies as well as Nike-Hercules missiles over the Gulf of Mexico. Days before the operation was scheduled to be conducted, Eisenhower canceled the test, in an Oval Office meeting with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and others.

The Soviet Union was interested in the details of American nuclear antiaircraft arms. In 1958, the USSR's military intelligence agency apparently recruited an Army lieutenant colonel (one of the highest-ranking US officials suspected of having engaged in espionage on behalf of a foreign power) to provide classified information about the Nike-Hercules. This alleged activity was not uncovered until several years later when Soviet colonel Oleg Penkovskiy, an American agent, reported that the Army missile information was in the USSR's possession.

Despite the ubiquity and visibility of air defense nuclear weapons to Americans a generation ago and the importance of many of these and other related issues, Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era marks the first book-length scholarly examination on the topic. Coinciding with the publication, the National Security Archive is posting thirteen documents which highlight many of these and other important topics covered in the book.

Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era is based upon a dissertation written at The George Washington University under the direction of Leo P. Ribuffo, the Society of the Cincinnati George Washington Distinguished Professor of History. Further guidance was provided by GW historians James G. Hershberg and William Becker; the National Defense University's David Alan Rosenberg; and William Burr, a senior analyst and director of the nuclear history documentation project at the National Security Archive.

Further details about Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era are available at www.ChristopherJohnBright.com.

Read the Documents