In the end, I believe that only with a unitary state with full democratic rights for all will there be a just peace.  A two-state solution might be a stepping stone in that direction.

Dr. Raheb’s perspective has the ring of truth.  The notion that Israel’s assault on Gaza was necessary to preserve the promise of a two-state solution supposedly supported by Omert but opposed by other political parties in Israel poised to make gains in the upcoming election in Israel —this has the ring of the sort of false justifications and rationalizations that are all too common. 

 Isreal has committed major war crimes in Gaza.  In no way does this advance the "peace process".  The notion that Israel’s actions can be excused on the basis of political expediency is appalling. 

Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb
January 12, 2009

Watching the news these days is not an easy task, especially if you switch between Arab channels like Al Jazeera on one hand, and Western channels like Fox on the other. The same conflict is portrayed so differently that one sometimes might wonder if these diverse narratives are actually dealing with the same conflict.  On one channel, you see images of children slaughtered by Israeli troops and missiles; on the other, the main story is the rockets launched by Hamas into Israel.  The most …
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I cannot fathom a worse resolution for the House to pass. I urge you to contact your representatives right away and urge them not to support this resolution. Here is the link on thomas.gov:
http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:h.res.00034:">
http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:h.res.00034:

I am starting a forum discussion on this topic, so that we can collectively dissect and counter point by point. Perhaps that will help with our discussions with our respective representatives. …
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Richard Falk
United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories

For eighteen months the entire 1.5 million people of Gaza experienced a punishing blockade imposed by Israel, and a variety of traumatizing challenges to the normalcy of daily life. A flicker of hope emerged some six months ago when an Egyptian arranged truce produced an effective ceasefire that cut Israeli casualties to zero despite the cross-border periodic firing of homemade rockets that fell harmlessly on nearby Israeli territory, and undoubtedly caused anxiety in the border town of Sderot. During the ceasefire the Hamas leadership …
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No international activists have been killed as of now.  However, they are starting to send text messages that sound like "goodbye".

Will update as I find out more

It is a little more than a month since the world watched a bloody confrontation unfold between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia.  The conflict was sparked by a miscalculation on the part of Mikhail Saakashvili, President of Georgia, who apparently felt emboldened by perceived US backing, despite State Department warnings not to provoke Russia.  Russian President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin responded, predictably, in a crushing display of strength and aggression, and Russia remains an occupying force in some parts of Georgia today.  This lopsided struggle is only one in a long history of lopsided …
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I believe it was IVAW member Nathan Lewis who said at a July event sponsored by CAN at Cornell that the way he looks at it there has already been a civil war in Iraq.

Further talking points could be gleaned from his book, which would seem a worth while investment for anyone who needs the facts and detail to argue the points.  I guess that means I’ll have to buy the book.

By PATRICK COCKBURN

Will Iraq disintegrate if the United States withdraws its combat troops?

The US and Iraq are close to agreeing a security accord under which the US would pull its combat troops out of Iraqi cities, towns and villages on June 30, 2009 and out of Iraq by December 31, 2011. This will only happen if a joint Iraqi-American ministerial committee agrees that security in Iraq has improved to the point where the half million strong Iraqi security forces can take over. Other aspects of the draft agreement show that the …
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Wednesday August 13 2008 17:29 BST

Deliberate attempts by the Russian government to exaggerate the number of people killed in the South Ossetia conflict are provoking revenge attacks on Georgian villagers in the breakaway republic, a respected human rights group claimed today.

Anna Neistat of Human Rights Watch (HRW), who is leading a team investigating the humanitarian damage in South Ossetia, told the Guardian that Russian estimates of 2,000 dead in the conflict were "suspicious".

"The figure of 2,000 people killed is very doubtful," she said. "Our findings so far do not in any way confirm the Russian statistics. On the contrary, they suggest the numbers are exaggerated."

Neistat said that HRW investigators had, today and yesterday, recorded cases of Ossetian fighters burning and looting Georgian villages north of the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali.

"The torching of houses in these villages is in some ways a result of the massive Russia propaganda machine which constantly repeats claims of genocide and exaggerates the scale of casualties," she said. "That is then used to justify retribution."

Neistat said that doctors at Tskhinvali hospital had provided figures that 273 wounded people had been treated there during the conflict and a total of 44 dead people had been brought to the city morgue. Russian and South Ossetian officials have claimed that 1,400 people were killed in the first day of fighting, mostly in Tskhinvali.

There have been reports of Ossetians burying relatives in their allotments and there are no lists of the casualties. Neistat stressed that HRW’s investigation was not complete but she added: "By day five of a conflict one normally expects that there is some kind of list of the dead and injured, or at least an indication of their age and gender. But here there is no information. Absolutely nothing."

original article on guardian.co.uk

In regard to Russian charges that Georgia is not complying with the agreement, perhaps that has to do with the differing interpretations of what is meant by the "South Ossetian conflict zone", i.e., how far into Georgia.

The Russian News Agency srticle also asserts that "Russia says at least 1,600 civilians were killed in the Georgian attack
on the capital of Tskhinvali. South Ossetia says more than 2,000 people
were killed." 

 yorksjohn said:

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20080819/116133661.html

This story makes it clear the Russians aren’t done yet, and they seem to imply that the Georgians are not keeping the cease-fire. They appear to be building a base in the port city of Poti – to be finished on 8/22. Poti is the main port that was bombed inside Georgia. 

This story makes it clear the Russians aren’t done yet, and they seem to imply that the Georgians are not keeping the cease-fire. They appear to be building a base in the port city of Poti – to be finished on 8/22. Poti is the main port that was bombed inside Georgia.

I’ll see if I can find links to the articles you mentioned. As far as progressives and the peace movement being being caught off guard and wanting for analysis, this is quite understandable. Like the rest of the population, we are like mushrooms: kept in the dark and fed horse#&!t.

This morning, I listened to an extensive interview on Democracy Now! with Michael Klare, defense analyst for The Nation and author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy.

Here is an exerpt of the interview:

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, talk to us about the pipelines and the energy aspect that has received almost very little attention in all the coverage of the Russian-Georgia conflict.

MICHAEL KLARE: Well, I believe that this is what really underlies the conflict, and it has to do with the fact that the US has eyed the Caspian Sea, which lies just to the east of Georgia, as an energy corridor for exporting Caspian Sea oil and gas to the West, bypassing Russia. And this was the brainchild of Bill Clinton, who saw an opportunity, when the Soviet Union broke apart, to gain access to Caspian oil and gas, but he didn’t want this new energy to flow through Russia or through Iran, which were the only natural ways to export the energy.

So he anointed Georgia as a bridge, to build new pipelines through Georgia to the West. And it was he who masterminded the construction of the BTC pipeline, which is now the outlet for this oil, with new pipelines supposedly following for natural gas. And he chose Georgia for this purpose and also built up the Georgian military to protect the pipeline, and Russia has been furious about this ever since. And I think that’s the reason that they have clung so tightly to Abkhazia and South Ossetia ever since.

Russia’s Gazprom currently supplies about 25% of the natural gas supply for Europe and is aiming to double that, according to Michael Klare…

This has many Europeans and the United States deeply worried, because it kind of undercuts NATO’s independence. So, under American prodding, Europe has plans to build an alternative energy natural gas system called Nabucco, after the opera by Verdi, and this would go right through Georgia. And I think one of the major objectives of Russia’s incursion into Georgia is to say to the European leadership, “Your ideas about Nabucco are futile, because we can smash the Nabucco system anytime we want.”

While the question of who started this war is debated (I find it is pretty clear from information I have read thus far that Georgia strated it with likely encouragement by neo-cons in the US), the underlying issue is one of energy resources, and how to live in a world of dwindling supply. We can risk further military engagement, –a rekindling of the cold-war that the neo-cons lust for– or we can work to hasten the development of alternatives and seek cooperative agreements and peaceful relations.

CNN released a poll last Tuesday that had Obama and McCain in a dead heat. The polling data was taken before the developments in Georgia. I would expect that McCain might be ahead now, given his quick response.

Steve Kornacki writes in The New York Observer:

But Mr. McCain’s posture is nonetheless smart politics, because the specifics of the conflict are – and will remain – a mystery to most U.S. voters. American public opinion will favor Georgia in the conflict, simply because lingering Cold War animosity and a decade’s worth of headlines about Vladimir Putin’s assault on democracy have conditioned voters to regard the enemy of Russia as their friend. Mr. McCain’s response was quick, unwavering and tough-sounding, pretty much the traits that voters instinctively yearn for when confronted with an unnerving development on the global stage.

So, that pretty much illustrates what we are up against, and why the neo-cons relish the resuurection of cold-war conflict.

–Cris