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Zionism – Features

Fear of peace will be the death of Isarael

By Bradley Burston

(source: Haaretz)

Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem – As the grandson of anarchists, I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for fanatics. Expressions of extremism, and passionately reasoned, exquisitely twisted world views make me feel, how shall I put this, at home.

So it was with a certain relish that I approached the cover story of a recent issue of Commentary, "The Deadly Price of Pursuing Peace," written as it was by a talented colleague and friend, Evelyn Gordon.

The thrust of the piece, which Commentary Editor John Podhoretz understandably calls "groundbreaking," is that Israel’s international standing has plummeted to an unprecedented low – and the number of Palestinians killed by Israel has concurrently soared – specifically because of Israel’s having done much too much for peace.

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Barack Obama george bush the right to life

By Zackie Achmat

(source: Writing Rights)

What is President Barack Obama, Rahm Emmanuel and his brother Zeke Emanuel up to in Africa and South Africa? When people in the United States elected Barack Obama their President, it symbolised historic change in the US and elsewhere. The most important global expectations placed on the Obama administration included starting to mend the imperial legacy of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and to help save lives. Obama inherited a destroyed local and global economy, an environmental crisis, the deepest social inequalities in US society, the largest recorded budget deficit, global disgust and fear based on the Bush wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He cannot fix these in a day or a decade.

These wars were not simply neo-conservative over-reach that destroyed the US image abroad; increased its public debt to hasten the collapse of banks; lined the pockets of the Bush-Cheney war and oil companies; undermined international law; they were all these and more. The Bush Wars attacked the most fundamental right of all — the right to a dignified life. Foremost among its victims are the countless households in Iraq and Afghanistan that were destroyed through bullets, disease, sectarian strife, bombs, torture, imprisonment and neglect. He also blighted the lives of US soldiers and their families.

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Mcchrystal method out sacked by the truth

By Timothy Reeder

(source: Countercurrents.org)

General Stanley McChrystal wasn’t fired for the name calling and sarcasm in the recent Rolling Stone article, or for a lack of military decorum and good discipline. He was fired for telling the truth about the mission in Afghanistan in a statement he made in March.

"We’ve shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force." This statement is the most embarrassing and potentially crippling to Obama’s AFPAK effort, for it brings attention to how badly the war is going with a focus on the killing of innocent people.

McChrystal’s statement is candid admission of the futility and failure of the so called counter-insurgency campaign. Troops are supposed to be protecting more civilians by defending them and their villages, but with the price of that security coming in part from paying off warlords, and an Afghan military with shifting allegiances, the resulting chaos ensures lots of innocents who happen to look like the ”insurgents” are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And with simultaneous JSOC missions and drone attacks and bombardments, the human debris of collateral damage is piling up.

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