Mission & Justice

Desmond Tutu; 9/5/08

In the present scandal of the attempt to ship tonnes of arms and ammunition to Zimbabwe, it is the Chinese who have spoken the most sense. China’s foreign ministry said the country’s shipment of mortar shells, rockets and bullets was perfectly normal trade. It certainly is. Shipping arms to African governments who could use them to abuse their own people is an abhorrent but almost daily occurrence. And at present there is nothing the international community can do about it because there are no effective global controls on the arms trade. If you want to export weapons to a country that commits gross abuses of human rights, then you can. If you want to sell expensive kit to governments struggling to feed or educate their people, it’s really no problem. You might have to use a few tricks to get around the flimsy patchwork of controls that presently exist but it’s easy and it’s done all the time.

(more…)

On Behalf Of Graeme Ferguson; 7/5/08; Kevin Toomey OP

Peter Murnane OP became parish priest of St Benedicts shortly after I went to St David’s. I came to appreciate him as one of the most Christ-like priests I have met. Peter has the capacity to act in highly creative ways to ensure that the Gospel is demonstrated in life.

He planted - with others - a city garden on waste land on the edge of the Auckland motorway. With the Dominican nuns in St Benedicts, he had created an entire wall of the church property painted by graffitti artists who were being hounded by the city authorities. (more…)

24/4/08; See: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/977826.html

A state-run Lebanese news agency has said that an explosion of a cluster bomb left behind by the Israel Defense Forces from the Second Lebanon War wounded four young Lebanese in the country’s south. The report says that Friday’s incident occurred in the village of Adsheet when the four children, aged between 10 and 15, found the suspicious device and held it before it went off. The four were then taken to hospital in the southern province of Nabatiyeh. Lebanon has a huge problem with bombs left behind during the 2006 war. Twenty-seven civilians have been killed and 209 wounded since. UN and human rights groups say Israel dropped about 4 million cluster bomblets during the war. One million failed to explode and now endanger civilians.

22/4/08

USA authorities have arrested an engineer on suspicion of passing classified defence information to Israel during the 1980s, according to the justice department. Ben-Ami Kadish is suspected of passing nuclear weapons and air defence information to Israel while working as a mechanical engineer at an army base in New Jersey. Court papers say Kadish’s spying took place between 1979 and 1985, although he maintained contact with an Israeli offical until this year.

(more…)

Yossi Melman; 14/4/08

Israel and the United States signed an agreement several days ago to step up cooperation in the field of nuclear safety. The move is part of Israel’s efforts to receive foreign assistance in ensuring that the aging nuclear reactor at Dimona continues to operate safely. The new agreement broadens and upgrades previous accords between the two countries in this field, which were signed over the past two decades. It will enable the Israel Atomic Energy Commission to access most of the latest nuclear safety data, procedures and technology available in the U.S.

See: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/974486.html

12/4/08

Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu has asked for asylum in Norway for a second time, Norwegian officials said on Friday, but they held out no hope that he would be accepted. Vanunu, whom Israeli authorities have barred from leaving Israel, sent his application directly to Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg. His first asylum application to Norway in 2004 was rejected. “We received it yesterday and it has been sent to the Ministry of Labor and Social Inclusion, which will handle it,” a spokeswoman for the Norwegian prime minister’s office said. Vanunu was convicted of treason and imprisoned for 18 years after telling a British newspaper in 1986 about his work as a technician at Israel’s main atomic reactor, disclosures which cracked the secrecy around the assumed Israeli nuclear arsenal.

(more…)

Dalya Dajani; 1/4/08

The 2008 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Law officially comes into force in the Kingdom today following its endorsement by Royal Decree. Jordan, which signed the Mine Ban Convention in August 1998 and ratified it in November of the same year, has been committed to fulfilling its obligations to end the global threat of landmines. The convention prohibits some 156 signatory states from the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of anti-personnel mines and commits them to their destruction. It also obliges them to carry out a series of mine-action efforts to reduce the social, economic and environmental impact of mines on people and countries’ development. As a state party to the convention, Jordan has been taking the needed steps to remove all anti-personnel mines from its territory and render land safe for communities and national economic development plans.

(more…)

Antony Lowenstein; 30/3/08

Israel and the Clash of Civilisations; Jonathan Cook; Pluto Press

The September 11 attacks on New York and Washington caused the Western media and political elite to seriously examine their behaviour in the Middle East. Most concluded that maintaining client states was the only viable way forward; the desperate need for oil supplies supplanted most other considerations. The US-led invasion of Iraq was a radical form of shock treatment designed to unseat a once friendly Washington-friendly dictator. The nationalist insurgency crushed those plans, leaving the world’s sole super-power battling a relatively small number of fighters whose sole goal was the removal of an unforgiving occupation. One country that has received relatively little scrutiny in the years since September 11 has been Israel. The Jewish state has the most powerful military in the region, with an estimated 200 nuclear warheads, and an arsenal of cluster bombs that it used against civilians in Lebanon in the final days of its botched 2006 campaign against Hizbollah.

(more…)

24/3/08

Residents of Okinawa have gathered to protest against the US military presence on the southern Japanese island, following a series of incidents allegedly involving US personnel, including the rape of a schoolgirl. Thousands of people attended Sunday’s demonstration, despite pouring rain, though the numbers were less than the 10,000 hoped for. “We must bring our anger to both the governments of Japan and the United States,” Tetsuei Tamayose, one of the organisers, told the crowd. The rally was organised by local residents angered after a 14-year-old girl last month accused a US Marine of rape. The girl later dropped charges against the Marine and he was released to the custody of US military authorities.

(more…)

 6/3/008

Four US Marines based in Japan are to be court-martialled over the alleged rape of a local woman. They are accused of robbing and raping a 19-year-old woman in Iwakuni in southern Japan last October. The courts-martial will begin next month, an official with the US Marine Corps Air Station in Iwakuni in southern Japan said on Thursday. Japanese prosecutors investigated the incident but dropped the case in November without giving a reason. The rape case is the latest in a string of allegations to hit US forces based in Japan, triggering a wave of public protest against the American presence in the country. Last week Japanese prosecutors dropped the case of another US Marine accused of raping a 14-year-old girl on the southern island of Okinawa.

(more…)