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Report: Israeli armi abuses Palestinian child prisoners

2010-06-30T18:30:00.002-04:00

Jerusalem, May 29, (Pal Telegraph) According to a report published by Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Friday, that the Israeli army harasses Palestinian children that they detain and put in israeli jails and alongside with the Israeli police they threat those children with sexual assault। The report was based on statements the newspaper took last year by the Palestinian children of the branch of the Palestinian global movement to Defend the child immediately after their release।
It is clear from the facts that occurred and reported by the Palestinian children that the Israeli police and army abused them on different degrees and levels during their interrogation.
The report pointed out that 69% of children who were arrested said that they had been beaten, and 97% were held handcuffed for long periods, and 96% were detained, blindfolded, in addition to deprivation of water and being insulted. The Legal Counsel of the global movement to defend the child, Khaled Quzmar, said that these attacks come in the context of the systematic policy pursued by Israel. He added that the movement consistently request from the United Nations to intervene and to investigate these violations against children, but the mechanism of the UN is "frustrating”, as he described, because it was politicized and was unable to move on, he said. The Israeli occupation authorities have 350 Palestinian children in their unjust prisons in Tel Mond, Megiddo, Negev, and Ofer.
The number of children who are detained by the Israeli military each year outnumbers 700 children। The figures show that 65% of Palestinian children who have been arrested in 2009, relating to charges against them, were throwing stones at the Israeli occupying army, or on the separation wall.

Posted by Omar Ghraieb

المعجزة الالهية فى ماء زمزم

2010-05-10T15:45:00.002-04:00

سبحان الله و بحمده سبحان الله العظيم قال أحد الأطباء في عام 1971م إن ماء زمزم غير صالح للشرب استناداً إلى أن موقع الكعبة المشرفة منخفض عن سطح البحر ويوجد في منتصف مكةلمكة المكرمة ، فلا بد أن مياه الصرف الصحي تتجمع في بئر زم ما أن وصل ذلك إلى علم الملك فيصل رحمه الله حتى أصدر أوامره بالتحقيق في هذا الموضوع وتقرر إرسال عينات من ماء زمزم إلى معامل أوروبية لإثبات مدى صلاحيته للشرب ويقول المهندس الكيميائي معين الدين أحمد الذي كان يعمل لدى وزارة الزراعة والموارد المائية السعودية في ذلك الحين أنه تم اختياره لجمع تلك العينات وكانت تلك أول مرة تقع فيها عيناه على البئر التي تنبع منها تلك المياه وعندما رآها لم يكن من السهل عليه أي يصدق أن بركة مياه صغيرة لا يتجاوز طولها 18 قدما وعرضها 14 قدماً توفر ملايين الجالونات من المياه كل سنة للحجاج منذ حفرت في عهد إبراهيم عليه السلام وبدأ معين الدين عمله بقياس أبعاد البئر ثم طلب من أن يريه عمق المياه فبادر رجل بالاغتسال ، ثم نزل إلى البركة ليصل ارتفاع المياه إلى كتفيه وأخذ يتنقل من ناحية لأخرى في البركة بحثاً عن أي مدخل تأتي منه المياه إلى البركة غير أنه لم يجد شيئاً وهنا خطرت لمعين الدين فكرة يمكن أن تساعد في معرفة مصدر المياه وهي شفط المياه بسرعة باستخدام مضخة ضخمة كانت موجودة في الموقع لنقل مياه زمزم إلى الخزانات بحيث ينخفض مستوى المياه بما يتيح له رؤية مصدرها غير أنه لم يتمكن من ملاحظة شيء خلال فترة الشفط فطلب من مساعده أن ينزل إلى الماء مرة أخرى وهنا شعر الرجل بالرمال تتحرك تحت قدميه في جميع أنحاء البئر أثناء شفط المياه فيما تنبع منها مياه جديدة لتحلها وكانت تلك المياه تنبع بنفس معدل سحب المياه الذي تحدثه المضخة بحيث أن مستوى الماء في البئر لم يتأثر إطلاقاً بالمضخة وهنا قام معين الدين بأخذ العينات التي سيتم إرسالها إلى المعامل الأوروبية وقبل مغادرته مكة استفسر من السلطات عن الآبار الأخرى المحيطة بمدينة مكة المكرمة فأخبروه بأن معظمها جافة وجاءت نتائج التحاليل التي أجريت في المعامل الأوروبية ومعامل وزارة الزراعة والموارد المائية السعودية متطابقة فالفارق بين مياه زمزم وغيرها من مياه مدينة مكة كان في نسبة أملاح الكالسيوم والمغنسيوم ولعل هذا هو السبب في أن مياه زمزم تنعش الحجاج المنهكين ولكن الأهم من ذلك هو أن مياه زمزم تحتوي على مركبات الفلور التي تعمل على إبادة الجراثيم وأفادت نتائج التحاليل التي أجريت في المعامل الأوروبية أن المياه صالحة للشرب ويجدر بنا أن نشير أيضاً إلى أن بئر زمزم لم تجف أبداً منذ مئات السنين وأنها دائما كانت توفي بالكميات المطلوبة من المياه للحجاج ، وأن صلاحيتها للشرب تعتبر أمراً معترفاً به على مستوى العالم نظراً لقيام الحجاج من مختلف أنحاء العالم على مدى مئات السنين بشرب تلك المياه المنعشة والاستمتاع بها وهذه المياه طبيعية تماماً ولا يتم معالجتها أو إضافة الكلور إليها كما أنه عادة ما تنمو الفطريات والنباتات في الآبار مما يسبب اختلاف طعم المياه ورائحتها أما بئر زمزم فلا تنمو فيها أية فطريات أو نباتات فسبحان الله رب العالمين

Israel massacre in Gaza

2010-04-30T09:32:00.004-04:00

الحرب الصليبية على الإسلام ! شيء يصدم

2010-03-06T14:35:00.003-05:00

الحرب الصليبية على الإسلام ! شيء يصدم
تسجيل خطير ونادر لقناة ألمانية تبين حقيقة أن الحرب على العراق التي تقودها أمريكا هي حرب تنصيرية صليبية بكل معنى الكلمة ، وتبين أساليبها الملتوية ، واستغلالها لحاجات الناس وفقرهم ، وانفردت القناة بمقاطع خطيرة يخجل الإعلام العربي من ذكرها ، لأنها تعلن الحرب على الإسلام كدين ، وليس كما يقولون على المتطرفين أو بن لادن كما ستشاهد بنفسك
الحرب على المسلمين كديانة ، وليست الإرهاب كما يدعون.
ولا يحضرني هنا سوى البشرى الربانية التي نراها في قوله تعالى : { إِنَّ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ يُنفِقُونَ أَمْوَالَهُمْ لِيَصُدُّواْ عَن سَبِيلِ اللّهِ فَسَيُنفِقُونَهَا ثُمَّ تَكُونُ عَلَيْهِمْ حَسْرَةً ثُمَّ يُغْلَبُونَ وَالَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ إِلَى جَهَنَّمَ يُحْشَرُونَ } الأنفال 36
قال المفسرون عن هذه الآية الكريمة : إن الذين جحدوا وحدانية الله ، وعصوا رسوله ، ينفقون أموالهم فيعطونها أمثالهم من المشركين وأهل الضلال ، ليصدوا عن سبيل الله ، ويمنعوا المؤمنين عن الإيمان بالله ورسوله ، فينفقون أموالهم في ذلك ، ثم تكون عاقبة نفقتهم تلك ندامة وحسرة عليهم ؛ لأن أموالهم تذهب ، ولا يظفرون بما يأمُلون مِن إطفاء نور الله والصد عن سبيله ، ثم يهزمهم المؤمنون آخر الأمر ، والذين كفروا إلى جهنم يحشرون فيعذبون فيها.
ويقول الله تعالى أيضا : { يُرِيدُونَ أَن يُطْفِؤُواْ نُورَ اللّهِ بِأَفْوَاهِهِمْ وَيَأْبَى اللّهُ إِلاَّ أَن يُتِمَّ نُورَهُ وَلَوْ كَرِهَ الْكَافِرُونَ } (32) سورة التوبة
فالحمد لله الذي أنطقهم بما عجزت بعض القنوات العربية.
أتمنى مشاهدته كاملا وإلى النهاية حتى تتوضح الصورة لديكم ، وتمريره إلى أكبر عدد من المسلمين والأجانب للاطلاع على هذه الحقيقة.
تفضلوا الفيديو من هنا بارك الله فيكم

Eye-Witness Report on Gaza Freedom-March - Sunday, Feb. 14, 2010 Howard County Central Library Little Patuxent Pkwy Columbia, MD 21044

2010-01-21T12:12:00.005-05:00

Eye-Witness Report on
Gaza Freedom-March

In December 2009 almost 1400 activists from 43 countries took part in the Gaza Freedom March, an attempt to break the blockade of Gaza being imposed by the Israeli and Egyptian governments.
Jean Athey, who participated in the march, is Coordinator of Peace Action Montgomery and a member of the Board of Peace Action. In October 2008 Jean also volunteered with the International Solidarity Movement in Palestine for the olive harvest and at the Jerusalem home of a Palestinian family threatened with eviction by the Israeli government.

Sunday, Feb. 14, 2010
1:30 p.m. ~ 2:30 p.m.

Howard County Central Library
Little Patuxent Pkwy and South Entrance Road Columbia, MD 21044

شمعدان أركنساس في قصر بغداد

2009-12-30T09:34:00.015-05:00

الكاتبة : يهودية أمريكية برتبة رائد في الجيش الأمريكي المحتل للعراق .. تقول عن نفسها أنها ساهمت في تحرير العراق ، وأنها تنحدر من ولاية كاليفورنيا، وتسكن ولاية فرجينيا . تخرجت في الأكاديمية العسكرية الأمريكية (ويست بوينت ) في ولاية نيويورك .. وآخر خدمتها العسكرية خارج الولايات المتحدة قبل قدومها الى العراق ، كانت في كوسوفو من يوغسلافيا

عنوان المقال:

شمعدان أركنساس في قصر بغداد

فيما يلي ترجمة ما كتبته ( اليزابيث روبنس ) المذكورة :

تم الإحتفال هذه السنة بعيدنا اليهودي في القصر الجمهوري لصدام حسين في بغداد

مَن كان يصدق ذلك ....؟

نعم هذه الليلة تم الإحتفال في إحدى قاعات القصر المغلفة بالمرمر .. حيث قمنا بإيقاد الشموع في الشمعدان الضخم ( الرمز اليهودي ) والذي بطول ستة أقدام . لقد صلينا بالعبرية ، ورددنا الأناشيد والتراتيل ، وأكلنا طعامنا اليهودي التقليدي لمثل هذه الليلة

ولكن ماهو أهم من كل ذلك .. أننا نحتفل هذه السنة هنا على أرض العراق...... أرض أجدادنا الأقدمين

إن عدد الجالية اليهودية في السفارة الأمريكية في بغداد آخذ بالإزدياد والإزدهار الى المدى الذي يجعلنا نطلق على أنفسنا " بني بغداد " ، حيث يوجد الجيش الأمريكي بملابسه الرسمية ، وكذلك عدد كبير من المدنيين الأمريكان فيما يسمى " المنطقة العالمية " والتي تعارف العراقيون على تسميتها شعبياً بالمنطقة الخضراء ..! ، حيث توجد المقار الحكومية ، وبيوت المسؤوليين ، وبعض السفارات ، ومقرات قيادة الجيش والشرطة العراقية ، والبرلمان ، وحتى بعض مقرات لجان إغاثة دولية
إن القصر الجمهوري، هو الآن المقر المؤقت للسفارة الأمريكية في بغداد ! وهو يقع على منحنى لنهر دجلة ، ولكن ، ومع الأسف ، لايمكن رؤية منظر النهر من الداخل ، بسبب الجدران العالية التي شيدت والحواجز التي أقيمت

أكبر القصور في المنطقة العالمية ، وقد كان سابقاً مقراً لصدام حسين

أما هذه السنة فقد أصبح مقراً " لشمعداننا اليهودي " ، ومكاناً لإحتفالاتنا

بعد عودتي الى بغداد وذلك في شهر مارس / يونيو الماضي لإستلام عملي .. حصلت على مركز مهم يتعلق بقيادة اليهود المتواجدين هناك ، وإدارة شؤونهم ، وتلبية إحتياجاتهم وأعمالهم في العراق ..! وبسبب رتبتي العسكرية ، وبمساعدة أصدقاء في اللجنة اليهودية .. بدأت

بتنظيم الخدمات وبالتنسيق مع قيادة الجيش الأمريكي في العراق ! وعلى سبيل المثال ،

طلب التجهيزات اللازمة لنا كيهود ، وإدارة شؤوننا ، والإشراف على المخازن المخصصة لنا والتي تضم كتب الصلوات ، والشمعدانات ، وبعض الأغذية أيضاً
هذه الواجبات قد يعتقد البعض أنها كثيرة ، ولكنني حقيقةً أعتبرها نوع من البركات لأنها تأخذ كل وقتي ، وتشمل كل كياني الشخصي . نجتمع عادةً في محل تم تحويله وبشكل مؤقت الى مكان للعبادة .. إنه عبارة عن شاحنة كبيرة تقف بالقرب من السفارة الأمريكية المحاطة بسياج كونكريتي
في مساء كل يوم جمعة ، أصل الى المكان ومعي أحد الجنود اليهود لمساعدتي ، حيث نضع الستائر المزركشة على جداري الشاحنة من الداخل ، ونقوم بعدها بإشعال القناديل التي يرسلها لنا أحباؤنا وأهلنا في أميركا وإسرائيل للتبرك ، ثم نقوم بفتح قناني الخمر المعتق ، وعصير العنب .. ونضع القوس الخشبي المزخرف يدوياً في مقدمة المكان

كرمز لإقامة الصلوات ..!
إن لحظاتي المفضلة ، هي تلك التي أفعل فيها كل ذلك .. فقد كنت دائماً في أميركا أهيئ لليلة السبت بنفسي.. وينتابني شعور رائع ، أنني أفعل نفس الشيء هنا في بغداد ضمن قصر صدام ، نيابة عن عائلتي الكبيرة من اليهود المتواجدين في بغداد ... وأتصور ، أن زوجي سيفعل نفس الشييء بعد سبع ساعات من الآن ، وكذلك والدتي في كاليفورنيا ، بعد عشر ساعات ، وبحسب توقيتنا المحلي هنا في بغداد
إنه نوع من التحدي والفخر أيضاً ، أن تًمارس اليهودية في الجيش الأمريكي وفي الخدمة الخارجية الرسمية خارج الولايات المتحدة وبتناغم رائع......!

لقد كنت أقوم بمفردي بهذه الإحتفالات والطقوس خلال خدمتي في كوسوفو ، حيث كنت اليهودية الوحيدة هناك في ذلك الوقت .!
لكن ...... مثل هذا التحدي ، يبدو شاحباً بالقياس الى إخواننا اليهود العراقيين . ففي آب / أغسطس من هذه السنة ، إنضمت الينا للإحتفال في موقع السفارة ، إمرأة من يهود العراق . وقد تم تأمين دخولها وخروجها بجهودنا وبمساعدة أمنية عراقية رسمية

لقد أخبرتنا ، أنها واحدة من ثماني يهود بقوا في العراق ، وأنها قبلت المخاطرة بالقدوم الى المنطقة العالمية والمشاركة في إحتفالات ليلة السبت ، لشعورها بالأمان ومرافقتها ذهاباً وإياباً ...!! فرحنا ، وشعرنا بالإمتنان لمساعدتها ، وقمنا بإهدائها بعض الكتب الدينية ، والشمعدانات . لقد حكت لنا عن كنائس يهود العراق وكيف أنها حزينة وفارغة ، وشعرت بالأسى .. ولكنني أيضاً شعرت ، ومن

خلال خططنا وما نقوم به ، أن هذه الكنائس سوف تمتلأ يوماً مرة أخرى
بعد الطقوس والصلاة ، نتناول عشاؤنا على منضدة طويلة . لقد كان عددنا في رأس السنة اليهودية 26 شخصاً ، ولكن الآن ، ومما تجدر الإشارة إليه ، أنه ومنذ ستة أشهر فقط ، أي منذ وصولي إلى بغداد تقريباً ، فقد

إزداد عدد اليهود العاملين في الجيش الأمريكي في العراق من ثلاثة أفراد ليصل الى 40 عسكرياً ، من ضباط وجنود وموظفين وبعض المقاولين اليهود العاملين في العراق ...!!!
وبالعودة إلى قصة شمعداننا " شمعدان أركنساس " ، فإن الفضل في ذلك يعود الى المقدم " داك هاوس " الذي ينحدر من عائلة ثرية في أركنساس ، وفي حقيقة الأمر ، فإن بعض روابط الدم تربط عائلته باليهودية .. لقد سألنا يوماً عن إحتياجاتنا وطلباتنا ، عندها أجبت على الفور وبالعبرية ( مينورا ) ، يعني الشمعدان ...... وقلت له نريده كبيراً هذه المرة .. وأجابني : إعتبريه قد وصل إليكم ...وفعلا قام بالإتصال بوالده في أركنساس ليبلغه بطلبنا ، حيث لبى ذلك بصنع شمعدان كبير بطول ستة أقدام ومن الألمنيوم المطلي ، وقام بشحنه إلينا ، ووصلنا في الشهر الماضي ..! حين وصل الشمعدان ، قررنا أن نضعه في قصر صدام الجمهوري .. وبكل فخر

إننا حين نجتمع حوله محتفلين ، نشكر أصدقاؤنا من العراقيين ، وأهلنا من الأمريكان لما تم تحقيقه لنا .. كما أننا نشكر الرب على وجودنا في بغداد ، وعلى أرض العراق

Israel plans to attack Iran

2009-09-21T11:46:00.003-04:00

Israeli officials said on Monday that it is unlikely a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities and that all options were still on the table within the framework of self-defense, comes following the statements of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev That Israel will not attack Iran.

The chief of General Staff of the Israeli army, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi said in an interview with Israeli Army Radio in response to the question of whether Israel could attack or not, if you feel threatened by Iran, "Israel has the right to defend itself and that all options remain on the table."

For his part, "said Danny Ayalon, Deputy Israeli Foreign Minister, Medvedev said that the words certainly not a guarantee, he said, adding that" with all due respect I do not think that Russian President authorized to speak on behalf of Israel and of course do not rule out any option against Iran. "

The Russian president said in an interview with the channel "CNN" American TV broadcast on Sunday that Israel is not planning a military strike against Iran, terming the attack as "the worst thing imaginable."

Israeli pledge

Medvedev said he received Israeli assurances not to attack Iran (French - Archive)
Medvedev stressed that the Israeli president Shimon Peres Pledged during a meeting with him in August last year when he visited him in Sochi that Israel does not intend to any strikes on Iran, saying, "We are a peaceful country and will not do that." As we all know its a lie and Israel will attack Iran to force the American fight their war and clean up their mess as usual.

It was such an attack would lead to a "humanitarian disaster and a huge number of refugees from Iran and the desire for revenge, not only of Israel to be frank, but also from other countries."

He said Medvedev, according to a transcript of the interview distributed by the Kremlin, "but my colleagues in Israel have told me that they do not intend to act in this way and I trust them."

The news has spread about the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Ntiniaho This month and perhaps other officials to Moscow to press Russia not to sell systems to Tehran, "S-300" anti-aircraft or to inform the Kremlin plot to attack Iran.

Russia has signed an agreement last year to sell the systems, "said S-300" to Iran, a move that embarrassed Israel, because these missiles would strengthen Tehran's ability defense, but has not announced so far to deliver these systems.

Medvedev said in that regard, Russia has the right to sell defensive weapons to Iran, adding that sanctions are often ineffective and should not take any action against Iran only as a last resort.

Al-Tantura massacre

2009-09-11T11:31:00.001-04:00

Al-Tantura: a massacre denied for more than fifty years

By Ramzy Baroud

Israel's history is based on two strategies: denial of actual history, and defaming those who deny Israel's twisted version of history. Yet throughout its long history of denial, empowered by highly-trained professionals capable of enlightening the world on anything but the truth, even Israel sometimes manages to admit some of its wrongdoing. Such unusual confessions are resented by most Israelis, who fear that the unveiling of their dark secrets will shake the image of the victim which they have fought so long and hard to establish. Although the reasons for its occasional confessions are unclear, it is vital not to let such disclosures go unconsidered, because they might shed light on many more stories, which have been always denied.

When Israeli historian Teddy Katz began his historical research at the University of Haifa, the last thing he wanted to find was a massacre that his country committed against unarmed Palestinians in a northern village named Al-Tantura during the 1948 Jewish occupation of Palestine. What was even more astonishing for Katz was the fact that the number of victims was greater even than the number killed in what was previously known as Israel's worse massacre in Palestine, Deir Yassin.

The findings, which were first published by the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv, were little more than shocking for most Palestinians, for they have witnessed even worse massacres in the years since the establishment of the Jewish state. Israeli society, however, is divided in its response, and as always the division is not even. The government, main army sources, major newspapers, and most Israelis refuse to believe that their "humane army" could commit such an act. The minority who apparently believed the "discovered massacre" were filled with shame that their prosperous and comfortable lifestyle was built on the blood of innocents. As always the split was clear: some hid in shame while others utterly denied the allegations.

Al-Tantura, a village of 1,500 people, sat gently on a hillside overlooking the beautiful scenery of northern Palestine, the rich land and the captivating sea. After a Jewish gang seized control of the area, and in the matter of a few hours one night, the village population was reduced by more than 200 men, women and children.

By dawn, the village was empty; those who had not been killed had fled. Frightened, with no food and little else, Al-Tantura villagers ran north, south, east and beyond the sea.

74-year-old Fawzi al-Tanji was one of those who miraculously survived the massacre. Fawzi, who fled the village with the few that remained of his family, has lived as a refugee since that day, with a broken spirit and a story that very few truly believed. Fawzi was interviewed by the Israeli newspaper, Ma'ariv. As soon as he was asked to revive the memory of the massacre, the old man began to sob. "They took us to the village graveyard," he said, referring to troops of the Jewish gang. He went on, "They lined us up in several rows. A Jewish commander came and ordered his troops to pick ten. They did and the chosen ten were lined up beside the cactus plants and shot. " He added, "They came back and chose another ten to remove the bodies of the murdered ten and then they themselves were killed." Fawzi lamented "Oh, how I wish I was also shot that day. It would have been much easier than living with the pain all these years."

Abdallraziq al-Ashmawi, another survivor of the massacre, told the story of how he lost 12 members of his family who were all shot on the doorsteps of their homes. Al-Ashmawi, now 64 years old, also described how more than 25 men were lined up front of the village mosque and shot by Jewish troops.

The Palestinian villages had heroically resisted the troops and fought in defence of their land with all the means they possessed. Despite their bravery and sacrifice, the villagers were defeated, for their knives and their few old rifles were no match for the well-armed, well-trained invaders. When the battle was over, the massacre began. According to a Palestinian eyewitness testimony documented by Katz, after the line-up killings, troops roamed the streets and shot everything that moved.

Colonel Bints Frieden, who led the Jewish gangs in al-Tantura and was later promoted to lead a larger Israeli army unit, admitted to the killings, justifying them by saying that those who were killed in the street had no signs on their backs saying that they were not going to shoot at the Israelis. "This is what happens when a battle breaks out in a residential area," he said. Colonel Frieden claims that he did not realize that those who defended the village were the village inhabitants themselves, not a group of outsiders seeking protection and a place to hide.

Many claim that all al-Tantura's residents became refugees. Yet Teddy Katz's research has concluded that over two hundred residents are still buried in mass graves. Those who once watered the rich land have remained to enrich its soil with their blood. Above these mass graves now stands a kibbutz and a large parking lot, paved so that Israeli beach lovers can enjoy what al-Tantura's residents once enjoyed: the rich land and the captivating sea.

Once upon a time there was a village that we all must remember. There were heroes who defended our honour; they must also be remembered. If we let go of such memories, and those of the other 417 villages that were savagely 'cleansed' of their communities, our future generations might never know that the Israeli kibbutz and the large beach parking lot in that very special place was once a village, a Palestinian village named al-Tantura.

Muslimedia: February 16-29, 2000

Free Palestine - Sami Yusuf ft Outlandish - Try Not To Cry

2009-03-21T13:29:00.003-04:00

Sami Yusf - Forever Palestine

2009-03-21T13:27:00.001-04:00

We will not go down (Song for Gaza) - by Michael Heart

2009-03-21T13:18:00.000-04:00

Vampire Skeleton

2009-03-08T17:55:00.003-04:00

To stop the "vampires" supposedly chewing shrouds and spreading disease, grave-diggers put bricks in the mouths of plague victims (Image: Matteo Borrini)

A SKELETON exhumed from a grave in Venice is being claimed as the first known example of the "vampires" widely referred to in contemporary documents.
Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence in Italy found the skeleton of a woman with a small brick in her mouth (see right) while excavating mass graves of plague victims from the Middle Ages on Lazzaretto Nuovo Island in Venice (see second image here)।

At the time the woman died, many people believed that the plague was spread by "vampires" which, rather than drinking people's blood, spread disease by chewing on their shrouds after dying। Grave-diggers put bricks in the mouths of suspected vampires to stop them doing this, Borrini says.

The belief in vampires probably arose because blood is sometimes expelled from the mouths of the dead, causing the shroud to sink inwards and tear. Borrini, who presented his findings at a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Denver, Colorado, last week, claims this might be the first such vampire to have been forensically examined. The skeleton was removed from a mass grave of victims of the Venetian plague of 1576.
However, Peer Moore-Jansen of Wichita State University in Kansas says he has found similar skeletons in Poland and that while Borrini's finding is exciting, "claiming it as the first vampire is a little ridiculous"।

Borrini says his study details the earliest grave to show archaeological "exorcism evidence against vampires"।

by New Scientist

FADIHA فضيحة عربية

2009-02-09T09:33:00.005-05:00

Laughing cow president Mubarak

2009-01-15T16:26:00.003-05:00

Laughing cow president Mubarak

Gazans fear Israel using phosphorus

2009-01-11T18:13:00.002-05:00

Human Rights Watch said it was clear Israel had fired shells containing white phopshorus[GALLO/GETTY]

Doctors in Gaza City have told Al Jazeera that people have been admitted suffering burns consistent with the use of the controversial chemical white phosphorus.Human rights campaigners say that Israeli forces have used the munition, which can burn away human flesh to the bone, over Gaza City and Jabaliya in recent days.
Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting from the Shifa hospital in Gaza City, said: "Doctors here say they are seeing unprecedented levels of deep burns."They cannot categorically say that white phosphorus is being used, they are saying that the munitions being dropped are unprecendented."
Residents in densely-packed Jabaliya have described Israeli forces exploding shells that drop scores of burning fragments and spread suffocating smoke.
"Its the first time we see this type of weapon, it must be new and its seems like its phosphorous," one resident told Al Jazeera.
"Its suffocating and has a deadly poisonous smell that I am sure will cause a lot of sickness and disease on all of the civilians here," he said.Another witness said she saw "... a bright flash and then all of these sparks fell on our area ... landing all around us and in our homes. Our mattresses caught on fire".
Law 'violated'
The use of the munition in densely-populated areas violates the requirement under international humanitarian law for all feasible precautions to be taken to avoid civilian injury and loss of life, Human Rights Watch said।

International law permits the use of white phosphorus in order to cover troop movements and prevent enemies from using certain guided weapons.Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst at the human rights group told Al Jazeera on Saturday that he had watched Israeli ground forces using white phosphorus.
"Clearly it is [white phosphorus], we can tell by the explosions and the tendrils that go down [and] the fires that were burning," he said."Today there were massive attacks in Jabaliya when we were there. We saw that there were numerous fires once the white phosphorus had gone in."We went by Israeli artillery units that had white phosphorus rounds with the fuses in them."
Major Avital Leibovich, an Israeli military spokeswoman, told Al Jazeera that the Israeli army was "using munitions with accordance to international law".
"The policy of the IDF [Israeli Defence Force] is to not specify the types of munition, we have not done it before and we will not do it now."
Mark Regev, the Israeli government spokesman, said he was unable to confirm or deny whether the military was using the chemical, but that Israel did not use munitions that were banned under international law."I don't have the knowledge of the detail of what ammunition we are using. I can only know for a fact that Israel uses no ammunition that is outlawed under conventions and that Nato forces would not use in a similar combat situation," he told Al Jazeera.Israel used white phosphorus during its 34-day war against Lebanon's Hezbollah movement in 2006, while the United States used it during the controversial siege of the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004.
Source:
Al Jazeera and agencies

Boycott Starbuck & McDonalds

2009-01-06T13:43:00.032-05:00

Starbucks and McDonalds are donating their next two weeks of earned
revenue to Israel?

Your money created a Massacre in Gaza

NOW DID YOU SEE WHAT YOUR MONEY DID!!!!!!

Hundreds die in Israel raid on Gaza.

2008-12-29T15:39:00.003-05:00

" Israel pounded Hamas-run Gaza on Thursday, killing 10 militants, five children and four civilians(…)The children, aged 8 to 12 were killed as they played in a field during an Israeli air strike around the northern town of Jabaliya, Palestinian medics said।Another 12-year-old boy died of wounds sustained in a Gaza raid the previous day, and a shepherd was killed in northern Gaza। “”" [ AFP ]

“”" Five boys playing football have been killed in Gaza by Israeli air strikes(…) At least 16 Palestinians – including the four children – were killed yesterday as Israel responded to the deadly attacks the previous day. “”" [ The Independent ]

“”" The air strikes brought the toll to more than 30 dead and more than 60 injured in two days of attacks. Israeli military continued to pound Gaza on Thursday, killing 20 Palestinians, including five children playing football. “”" [ AlJazeera ]

This the same old Israeli technique: just a few days from the inauguration of new US President, the Israelis create a new serious situation as they are sure that new US goverment will continue as their ally and ture friend.
The Palestinian helped the Jews after World War 2 and this is the return! The Israelis should find a dignity or at least focus on who killed them in the past instead? Israelis had been killed by European for years not by Palestinian।

There is an old American say"What goes around comes around"

So it's only matter of time, the Israelis will find them self alone in this world and cry for help, but God will revenge for all the Children and women were killed by the Isralis and their सेट

Tony
Tony1@newsclock.com

Terrorist attack on Gaza by Israelis war vampires

2008-12-29T15:20:00.003-05:00

Israel in 'all-out war' with Hamas
Israel's military is in an "all-out war" with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Ehud Barak, the defence minister, says.Palestinian medical sources say at least 345 Gazans have been killed and another 1,450 wounded in three consecutive days of Israeli bombardment in the heavily-populated territory.
"We have nothing against Gaza residents, but we are engaged in an all-out war against Hamas and its proxies," Barak said on Monday.There were also growing fears that a ground offensive was being planned after Israel declared a "closed military zone" around the Gaza Strip.
Israel says the creation of a buffer zone along the border will help protect it from rocket attacks. Civilians, including journalists, could be banned from an area between 2km and 4km deep under the policy. On previous occasions, such a move has sometimes been followed by military operations. "This operation will expand and deepen as much as needed," Barak said. "We went to war to deal a heavy blow to Hamas, to change the situation in the south."
Trapped Palestinians
Tanks and troops have been massed in the area since the attacks, referred to by the Israeli military as Operation Cast Lead, was launched on Saturday।
Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting from Gaza City, said that there was little the residents of Gaza could do to prepare for any possible ground assault.
"In a city that is so densely-populated, a ground offensive would mean urban warfare, street-to-street fighting ... leaving many Palestinians in the crossfire," he said.
"Unlike other conflict zones where there is the possibility to flee the war zone, Gaza itself has become the war zone. There is nowhere for the population to go, they are in the middle of all these attacks."Israel said it began pounding the Gaza Strip with missiles fired from warplanes and helicopter gunships in order to halt the rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian fighters."Military officials said yesterday that this operation will go on until Hamas stops firing missiles into southern Israel," Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel Hamid, reporting from southern Israel, said."They are also very much aware that they wouldn't really be able to stop that, but at least they will try to degrade the capability of Hamas."
Israeli justificationScores of rockets have hit southern Israel since the offensive got under way. On Monday, an Israeli Arab was killed and eight others wounded when one of the missiles hit a construction site in the city of Ashkelon.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister, said the Israeli offensive was aimed at Hamas and not the Palestinian people.
"We tried to avoid this. You know that Israel accepted the truce that was initiated by the Egyptians in order to create peace and quiet. We adopted the truce. What we got in return? We got in return daily attacks, we got in return smuggling of weapons to Gaza Strip with long-range [capabilities]," she said.
Livni also appealed to Palestinian civilians to leave for safer places within the Gaza Strip and advised them against staying in places close to Hamas infrastructure.
Support for Israel came from the US, with the White House saying Hamas must halt cross-border rocket fire.
"In order for the violence to stop, Hamas must stop firing rockets into Israel and agree to respect a sustainable and durable ceasefire," Gordon Johndroe, a White House spokesman said.
Ban Ki-Moon, the UN secretary-general, meanwhile, urged Arab and world leaders to press for an end to the violence in the Gaza Strip।

Egyptian gesture
On Monday, Egyptian authorities allowed ambulances carrying several wounded Palestinians to cross into Egypt through the Rafah border crossing for medical treatment.
Hospitals in Gaza have been overwhelmed by casualties since Israel started its aerial blitz on the territory.
Egypt also allowed lorries loaded with humanitarian aid to enter its border crossing with the Gaza Strip। Lorries with food and medical supplies have been lining up outside the Egypt-Gaza border since early morning.The UN relief and works agency said on Monday that at least 51 Palestinian civilians, including women and children, were confirmed to be among those killed in the Gaza Strip.
An UNRWA spokesman said the figure, which was based on visits to hospitals and medical centres was "conservative" and "certainly rising"।Four young girls from the same family in the northern town of Jabaliya and two young boy from Rafah were among those killed in the latest raids, Palestinian medics said.Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros said the situation at the Shifa hospital in Gaza City was chaotic as the territory's health system struggled to cope with the more than 1,400 people injured."Hundreds of people are just waiting outside ... the problem is that there simply aren't enough beds to cope with the number of injured," she said."Medical sources here are telling us they are running out of everything, from gauzes to saline solutions, and critically now they are running out of almost every type of blood."A six-month truce between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip ended on December 19.
बी Aljazeera

Iraqi Journalist Throws Shoes at President Bush Over Iraq War

2008-12-16T10:05:00.001-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQAI9fNWBD8

Fuel-starved Gaza faces blackouts

2008-11-10T08:24:00.001-05:00

Israel repeatedly closes the crossings into Gaza in response to rocket attacks

Citizens in the Gaza Strip are bracing for more electricity blackouts after Israel cut off fuel shipments to the territory's only power plant.
Israel has closed crossings into Gaza, making it likely that electricity would be completely cut off in the territory from about 1600 GMT, Palestinian officials said.
Israel's defence ministry closed the crossings on Sunday after Palestinian fighters fired rockets into southern Israel. No one was hurt in the attack.
"More than 30 per cent of the electricity supply in the Gaza Strip could not be guaranteed this evening," Jamal al-Kudari, head of a committee campaigning to end Israeli sanctions, said on Sunday.
"Our fuel reserves are on the verge of being exhausted."
The Gaza City plant provides about a quarter of Gaza's electricity, while most of the rest comes over lines from Israel. Egypt also provides a small amount.
Fuel needed
"Right now about a third of the Gaza Strip is being effected by these [power] outages," Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin, reported from Gaza.
"The situation is getting worse by the hour ... The power generating plant here in the Gaza Strip powers about a third of the homes, business and factories in the northern part of the Strip. We're talking about five hundred thousand people that as of 6.30pm local time [16:30 GMT] will be without power."
A network of tunnel linking Gaza to Egypt is known to be used by Gazans to bypass Israel's blockade of the territory and bring products, including some fuel, into the Strip.
"That is one way the Palestinians in Gaza have been able to get by," Mohyeldin said.
"But none of the fuel that comes through the tunnels can be used to power the critical infrastructure of Gaza. There's two reasons for that - the Egyptian quality of petrol isn't high enough to power the generator, but at the same time the generator is monitored by EU observers and they will not allow any blackmarket fuel to be used to generate electricity for Gazans."
Palestinian appeal
Peter Lerner, the co-ordinator of Israeli activities in the Palestinian territories, said: "We received a request [from the Palestinians] for deliveries of fuel to resume and we forwarded the request to the defence ministry in Tel Aviv."
The Israeli defence ministry has given no indication of when fuel supplies will be renewed.
Most of the fuel and gas supplies needed by the Gaza Strip usually goes through the Nahal Oz terminal between Israel and the Palestinian territory.
Israel repeatedly closes the crossings into Gaza, derailing the Gazan economy and putting the territory's citizens under pressure, in response to rockets fired from the Strip by Palestinian fighters.
Even as the crossings were closed, there were fresh calls for the largely stagnant peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians to be revived.
The Middle East Quartet - which groups the EU, Russia, the UN and the US - held a meeting in Egypt on Sunday and called for peace talks to be carried forward.

Source: Al Jazeera

Islamic Banking: Steady in Shaky Times

2008-10-31T08:59:00.005-04:00

Islamic Banking: Steady in Shaky Times

Principles Based on Religious Law Insulate Industry From Worst of Financial Crisis

By Faiza Saleh AmbahWashington Post Foreign Service

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia -- As big Western financial institutions have teetered one after the other in the crisis of recent weeks, another financial sector is gaining new confidence: Islamic banking.
Proponents of the ancient practice, which looks to sharia law for guidance and bans interest and trading in debt, have been promoting Islamic finance as a cure for the global financial meltdown.
This week, Kuwait's commerce minister, Ahmad Baqer, was quoted as saying that the global crisis will prompt more countries to use Islamic principles in running their economies. U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert M. Kimmet, visiting Jiddah, said experts at his agency have been learning the features of Islamic banking.
Though the trillion-dollar Islamic banking industry faces challenges with the slump in real estate and stock prices, advocates say the system has built-in protection from the kind of runaway collapse that has afflicted so many institutions। For one thing, the use of financial instruments such as derivatives, blamed for the downfall of banking, insurance and investment giants, is banned. So is excessive risk-taking.

The beauty of Islamic banking and the reason it can be used as a replacement for the current market is that you only promise what you own. Islamic banks are not protected if the economy goes down -- they suffer -- but you don't lose your shirt," said Majed al-Refaie, who heads Bahrain-based Unicorn Investment Bank.
The theological underpinning of Islamic banking is scripture that declares that collection of interest is a form of usury, which is banned in Islam। In the modern world, that translates into an attitude toward money that is different from that found in the West: Money cannot just sit and generate more money. To grow, it must be invested in productive enterprises.

"In Islamic finance you cannot make money out of thin air," said Amr al-Faisal, a board member of Dar al-Mal al-Islami, a holding company that owns several Islamic banks and financial institutions. "Our dealings have to be tied to actual economic activity, like an asset or a service. You cannot make money off of money. You have to have a building that was actually purchased, a service actually rendered, or a good that was actually sold."
In the Western world, bankers designing investment instruments have to satisfy government regulators. In Islamic banking, there is another group to please -- religious regulators called a sharia board. Finance lawyers work closely with Islamic finance scholars, who study and review a product before issuing a fatwa, or ruling, on its compliance with sharia law.
Islamic bankers describe depositors as akin to partners -- their money is invested, and they share in the profits or, theoretically, the losses that result. (In interviews, bankers couldn't recall a case in which depositors actually lost money; this shows that banks put such funds only in very low-risk investments, they said.)
Rather than lend money to a home buyer and collect interest on it, an Islamic bank buys the property and then leases it to the buyer for the duration of the loan. The client pays a set amount each month to the bank, then at the end obtains full ownership. The payments are structured to include the cost of the house, plus a predetermined profit margin for the bank.
Sharia-compliant institutions also cannot invest in alcohol, pornography, weapons, gambling, tobacco or pork.
Computer engineer Tarek al-Bassam said the crisis made him glad that he had chosen an Islamic bank to take his money। His Islamic savings account has made about 4 percent profit, he said. "Usually it's a very low risk or a very low gain. But I'm happy with it," Bassam said.

He has also borrowed from an Islamic bank, to buy a building. Even if he's late in his payments, he said, he will not have to pay cumulative interest or a larger sum than the one agreed upon. But he notes that under this system, it can be harder to get a loan than from a conventional bank. Islamic banks have stricter lending rules and require that their borrowers provide more collateral and have higher income.
Islamic banking has grown by about 15 percent a year since its modern inception in the 1970s, fueled by the Middle East oil boom of that decade. "There was a lot of hostility when we first started out. We were regarded with suspicion, especially by the regulatory authorities. We were an odd fish. Authorities only acquiesced when they saw the huge demand," said Dar al-Mal al-Islami's Faisal, who has been in Islamic finance since the late 1970s.
Islamic finance now accounts for about 1 percent of the global market, according to Majid Dawood, chief executive of Yasaar, a Dubai-based sharia financing consultancy. "We had expected to be at 12 percent of the global market by 2025, but now with this financial crisis, we expect to get there much faster," he said in a telephone interview from New York, where he was speaking at a conference on Islamic banking.
Growth in Islamic banking picked up even before the current financial crisis, mainly because of strong client demand for safe, religiously acceptable investments and a recent explosion in new and innovative financial instruments, said Jane Kinninmont, an analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, a research and advisory company।

Islamic banks now offer credit cards in which the full balance must be paid off at month's end. They have devised a kind of commercial paper known as sukuk, which generates a predetermined return that is called a profit, not interest. It is tied to a specific asset and conveys ownership of it. A sukuk might be issued by a government or a company that is building a hospital or a bridge, for example.
Work in Islamic banking by the King & Spalding law firm has grown roughly 40-fold in the past four years, according to Jawad Ali, a Dubai-based partner at the firm. The firm has 35 lawyers "who do nothing but structure sharia-compliant investment and financing on a daily basis," he said.
Islamic finance first sparked interest in the United States in the late 1990s. The Dow Jones Islamic Index was established in 1999, and the Dow Jones Islamic Fund, which invests in sharia-compliant companies, the following year.
But interest cooled after some Islamic banks were accused of financing terrorism in a lawsuit filed by family members of Sept. 11, 2001, victims, and a lot of Persian Gulf money left the United States for Europe.
In 2004, the German state of Saxony-Anhalt issued a 100 million-euro sovereign Islamic bond. That same year, the first Islamic bank opened in Britain, which now has six Islamic financial institutions, including a retail bank.
Although the biggest Islamic banks are in the Persian Gulf -- Dubai Islamic Bank, Kuwait Finance House and Saudi Arabia's al-Rajhi Bank -- Malaysia and London are growing as major centers of Islamic banking as well.
Islamic institutions are not immune to ills plaguing other banks, such as corruption charges and bad investments. Differences of interpretation between sharia scholars about what is permissible and what isn't also create confusion. The sukuk market, which had doubled each year since 2004, growing to a total of about $90 billion in bonds issued, fell 50 percent this year after a Bahrain-based group of Islamic scholars decreed that most of the bonds were not compatible with sharia law.
But as banks turn borrowers away in these times of economic turmoil, Islamic institutions continue to close deals in Europe, the Gulf and the United States, bankers said. "Banks feel safer and more comfortable with us because we put down more money, more equity. We are not allowed to borrow with very little down," said Tariq Malhance, a former chief financial officer for the city of Chicago who now heads Unicorn Investment Bank's U.S. office.
And those who have been in Islamic banking for a long time now feel vindicated.
"The current financial collapse is an opportunity. The ugly side of Wall Street is exposed; it's always been there but covered by a layer of glamour that is now stripped away," Faisal said. "We are more conservative and sober in our investments. That used to be considered a handicap. Now it's considered the height of wisdom."

Why the West attacking Muslims

2008-10-15T20:07:00.004-04:00

I am not a terrorist, I am not a criminal, I am not rapist, neither a racist.
I am a Muslim with an Arabic name.

There are terrorists in all communities, including Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and Muslim. On the other hand, like other religious communities, Islam also has artists, intellectuals, athletes, entertainers, and rebels.

I asked my self WHY? Why the western media and specifically the American media do want to destroy the Muslims image and make their citizens think that Muslims are terrorists and they are the bad people as they see it in the movies.

I can answer this question for you, but I want you to answer it for yourself, after reading what people think, and what I think.

1) The western media brain washed their viewers by associating the Islamic religion with terrorism, so every time the average viewer sees a headline that talks about terrorists they think about Muslims and every time they see a headline that talks about Muslims they think about terrorists.
My comment:
The western countries are very concerned about the Muslim religion, after seeing lots of reports that there more people are converting to Islam from Christianity, especially after Kosovo got their independence as a Muslim country in the heart of Europe. The European countries decided to fight Islam by the media or let’s call it the new 21st century war.
The western countries were hoping that the Serbs will wipe out all Muslims in Kosovo, and let the Serbs kill and massacre women and children for 4 month till the whole world start looking at the European countries to do something and end it. Since they are not able to kill all Muslims in Kosovo, United Stated decided to lead the attack on the Serbs and called it a victory.

And let’s not forget why are the European countries are against Turkey joining the European Union because it will be another Muslim country in Europe. So I can see why the western countries are fighting Islam.

2) Some people think that Zionists got hold of the western media and churches and played a big role in destroying and fabricating stories against Muslims and the Islamic religion, and unfortunately lots of people believe their lies.
My comment:
The Zionism movement is a very dangerous movement and their goal is to destroy who ever stand in their way even if you saved their lives in the past. They see them self between two strong religions the Christianity and Islam, the Muslim religion is very close to Christianity; the Zionists decided to get closer to the Christian extremists and have them fight the Muslims hoping they kill each other.
The Muslims saved the Jews when the Crusaders attacked the Muslims countries and rolled them. The Zionists want to revenge from what the Crusaders did to them by having them fight the Muslims and let the Muslims fight their war. Very smart move both Christians and Muslims don’t know that they are fighting someone else’s war.

3) Some people think that Arabs are primarily responsible for their tarnished image in Western media since they don’t have people who write in Western newspapers on this issue and they don’t’ have English channels that can reach the Western people and present their programs so they can get a real picture of Arabs and Islam.
My comment:
That’s true as well, the Arabs and Muslims failed big time in reaching out to the west and explain their religion and left the Zionists and the Christian extremist like Pat Robertson do their work for them by giving lies and fabricated stories.

Tony
NewsClock.com

Al-Buraq Wall Not Wailing Wall

2008-08-25T13:06:00.008-04:00

Inside of Al-Buraq mosque
Posted by www.jerusalemites.org

This study is released in line with the Centre’s message to serve Arab causes and refute

the false Zionist allegations in regard to Palestine.

The study highlights the cultural and religious importance of the City of Al Quds (Jerusalem) and shows the falsehood of the Zionist religious claims and anthropological fabrications.

The study gives a historical account of the Jews from the days of the Temple of Solomon, which was destroyed in 586 B.C. through their persecution under the Roman rule to the and the occupation of Al Quds in the 20th century and the immergence of the Guardians of Temple Mount Movement.

The study also underlines that Al Aqsa Mosque was built over more than a thousand years before Solomon, giving evidences that refutes the Zionist allegations that the Mosque was constructed on the ruins of Solomon’s Temple. It also shows that Al Buraq Wall, at the Western boundary of Al Haram Al Sharif (the holy Sanctuary), is sacred to Muslims because they believe that it was the place that Messenger of Allah Muhammad (may peace be upon him) had honoured and blessed by tying Al Buraq (a riding animal) to the wall, during Night Journey and Nocturnal Ascent (Isra Wa Al Mi'raj) and this Wall is an integral part of Al Haram Al Sharif.

The study explained in detail the stages of the conflict over the Wall, supported by the

documents that shows the falsity of the Zionist allegations. It also gives an account of the

court proceedings that reconfirmed that the Wall is Arab property and part of Al Aqsa

Mosque.

Annexed to the study are historical documents that shows the history of Al Quds in general

and Al Aqsa Mosque and Al Buraq Wall in particular, all of which demonstrate that the

Zionist alleged rights to the Wall are simply baseless.

Crimes against Christianity

2008-08-15T12:48:00.007-04:00

For the Zionists the Palestinian Christians represent an obstacle to their plan to create a Jewish State in Palestine that would be 100% Jewish.
In 1948, the Zionists expelled from Palestine 100,000 Christians. During the 1948 war, Zionists destroyed desecrated and profaned Christian churches, convents and institutions throughout the Occupied area of Palestine.
During the June the June war of 1967 Israeli forces shelled and damaged many churches in the old city of Jerusalem and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
Israeli forces opened the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to Jews who poured into the holiest place in Christendom indecently dressed behaving disrespectfully joking, singing and pouring pharisaic hate and insults against Christianity and against Jesus Christ inside the Holy Sepulchre and next to the tomb of Jesus Christ.
Israeli Authorities censor all films and plays to prevent mentioning the name of Jesus Christ.
The Zionist reflected with their action the deep-felt hatred of everything Christian embedded in the Zionist ideology. Testimony shows that this hatred went so deep that the Zionist authorities removed the international “+” sign from mathematics textbooks because of the resemblance of the plus sign to the Christian Cross.

Destruction of a Christian Site on Mount Abu Ghniem

Occupied Jerusalem- Palestinian archaeologists said on Sunday that Israeli bulldozers destroyed the ruins of an important Christian church on mount Abu Ghniem known as Al-Istiraha (resting place) church constructed in the fifth century on the road from Jerusalem to Bethlehem.
The Palestinian archaeological department issued a report on the dangers of constructing a Jewish settlement on mount Abu Ghniem since it threatens archaeological and historical sites in the area.
The report contained an account of the archaeological sites on Abu Ghniem, indicating that this hill is a religious site where there is a water well that is known Al-Istiraha and was later named Virgin Mary’s well. It is situated 500 meters away from Mar Elias monastery on the road to Jerusalem, and filled with rainfall water. Historic findings indicate that the well was dug 3000 years ago like many other wells of this commercial road. The Israeli occupation authorities closed the well with concrete in 1968-1970 and switched the water to the illegal Jewish settlement of Gilo. According to some religious accounts, Virgin Mary and Joseph rested near the well when they were on their way to Bethlehem when the Virgin was feeling tired from the pregnancy. Another legend says that the Wise Men on their way to see the new born Jesus in Bethlehem rested near the well, where they saw the star again which led them to the place of Jesus. A third legend says that this well was suddenly discovered with an explosion so virgin Mary can drink while she passed from the area and the well was therefore named Virgin Mary’s well.
According to the report, there are many other religious sites in the area; for example, there are the ruins of a church that has a large ground of mosaics.
Another place is the Seir Al-Qalam, a traditional location for the Shepherds Field in Bethlehem, and Mar Elias Monastery that was maintained by the Byzantine Emperor Manuel Komeinous in the twelfth century A.D. This is in addition to the Al-Istiraha church ( Resting place) constructed in the fifth century to revive the memory of the Holy Family resting in this occupied Palestinian spot.

In reality, the Christian Holy Places were targeted by the Zionists as early as 1948.
During the Palestine war of 1948-49, Zionist forces desecrated, profaned, destroyed and looted Christian Holy Places in Palestine.
On May 31, 1948, the Committee of the Christian Union of Palestine issued an important statement in Jerusalem denouncing the raids mounted by the Zionist gangs against the Christian Holy Places of Palestine.
The statement said, “…The Jews took advantage of this opportunity [the cease fire for eight days on May 14, 1948] and immediately occupied the main strategical points from where they tried to attack the Arabs and to launch their attack on the Holy city. We immediately informed the Consular committee of Armistice and the representative of the International Red Cross of this infringement of agreement by the Jews. The reply received was that the Jewish Agency declared that the Stern Gang, which is working separately, broke the ceasefire agreement and that the Jewish Agency had no control over this group. We then realized that the terrorists are controlling the Jewish movement…”
The statement enumerated some of the damage sustained by the Christian Convents and Institutions at the hands of the Zionists.

During the June war of 1967 Israeli forces shelled and damaged many churches in the old city of Jerusalem and the church of Nativity in Bethlehem. Israeli forces opened the church of the Holy Sepulchre to Jews who poured into the holiest place in Christendom indecently dressed, behaving disrespectfully, joking singing and pouring pharisaic hate and insults against Christianity and against Jesus Christ inside the Holy Sepulchre and next to the tomb of Jesus Christ.
posted by www.jerusalemites.org

The Russian empire strikes back

2008-08-15T12:48:00.005-04:00

By Adi Schwartz, Haaretz Correspondent
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1011861.html
Tags: Georgia, Russia

Exactly 40 years ago, on a hot August day in 1968, Alexander Dubcek stood looking out his office window as thousands of Soviet soldiers poured into his city, Prague. The First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the architect of the "Prague Spring" knew it was only a matter of time until he heard a knock on the door.

In his memoir, "Hope Dies Last," Dubcek wrote, "The main door flew open again, and in walked some higher officers of the KGB, including a highly decorated, very short colonel. The little colonel quickly reeled off a list of all Czechoslovak Communist Party officials present and told us that he was taking us 'under his protection.' Indeed we were protected, sitting around that table - each of us had a tommy gun pointed at the back of his head."

Two days later, Dubcek was taken to the Kremlin, where then Soviet president Leonid Brezhnev explained the prevailing reality to him and cut short the democratic reforms by thumping his fist on the table. Dubcek was sent back to his country, where he spent the next 20 years as a forester in a remote region of Slovakia.
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At least for now, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is being spared that fate. He is still the ruler of the small Caucasian state. The outcome of this week's events, however, could prove quite similar to the drama of 40 years ago. The Soviet oppression of Czechoslovakia showed the whole world that the U.S.S.R. would not tolerate democratic adventures within its sphere of influence. The Soviet Union made it clear to Eastern Europe that the West, including the United States, would not lift a finger as Soviet tanks crushed a small sovereign state. The defeat of the Prague Spring truncated a wave of openness and democratization that had washed over both Eastern and Western Europe in the late 1960s.

The two decades that have passed since the fall of the Iron Curtain can now be divided in two. The first 10 years, dubbed the "end of history" by U.S. political philosopher Francis Fukuyama, lasted from 1989 until September 11, 2001, and were characterized by unflappable optimism. The cold war made way for globalization. The Western model trumped all available alternatives. The U.S. became the world's sole superpower, with unchallenged military, diplomatic and economic hegemony. China was taking baby steps toward a free-market economy and Russia was getting its first tastes of democracy.

Then came the terror attack against New York's World Trade Center. Suddenly it turned out that not everyone wanted to join the McDonald's and laptop festivals. The failed U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq caused a deep rift in the Western camp. Russia, which felt severely humiliated over the loss of Eastern Europe and the 15 republics that had made up the Soviet Union, switched gears. Under the scepter of former KGB officer Vladimir Putin, Russia reverted to tricks that were thought forgotten, such as poisoning the Ukrainian president or eliminating journalists and potential political rivals. Instead of human rights, a free-market economy and democracy, we got nationalizations, the imprisoning of rebellious oligarchs and tight supervision of the press.

'History is returning'

This week's events in Georgia are the most obvious manifestation of that shift. On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, with inelegant tardiness, that Washington will not allow Georgia to fall, as it did with Czechoslovakia in 1968. President George W. Bush, for his part, promised humanitarian aid and even delayed his vacation "for a day or two, at least," but for now the American response looks hesitant and anemic.

For the first time in 30 years, Russia has initiated a war beyond its borders. For the first time in 20 years, an elected democratic regime is being threatened by force. For the first time in 20 years, the West is standing exposed and helpless, with its stock exchanges, galloping euro, flourishing economy and highfalutin talk of human rights. The planes and tanks in Georgia have returned to Russia its status of superpower.

In a twist on Fukuyama's "end of history" hypothesis, former Israeli ambassador to Washington Itamar Rabinovich asserted that this week it seemed as though "history is returning in a big way, and America has to cope with a new reality." According to Rabinovich, "The Russians' power play succeeded and is likely to have a great many implications."

The most immediate change will be felt in the Caucasus, a region of utmost strategic and economic importance for both Russia and the West. Dr. Brenda Shaffer, an expert on the Caucasus from Haifa University, explains that the region's natural gas reserves are even more important than its oil. "It is too late to be talking about oil as a global weapon," she says. "In Israel and around the world people still think in terms of the energy crisis of the 1970s, but oil is a fluid that can be transported relatively easily. Oil can be purchased from Russia today, from Norway tomorrow and from Saudi Arabia next week. Gas, on the other hand, must be supplied via pipelines that cost billions of dollars to build. Gas pipelines must pass through several countries and are extremely dependent on local political conditions."

Shaffer notes that in the past few years, European countries have been trying to develop direct supply lines from Central Asian states holding large natural gas reserves. Europe's growing dependency on Russian oil and gas spurred the continent's efforts to find alternatives, which is irritating Russia. "Natural gas, which the Europeans find very attractive because it is more environmentally friendly than oil, has so far traveled from Central Asia to Europe only via Russia," continues Shaffer. "Of course oil also has its problems: The fact that a Sukhoi SU-25 fighter jet 'almost' hit the oil pipeline running from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean Sea is interesting. The SU-25 is a very sophisticated plane that could easily have bombed the pipeline. Indeed, this doesn't seem like a miss but more like a message to the West: Don't mess with us."

This means that Europe is becoming increasingly dependent on Russia for energy. "Massive projects have been planned in recent years," says Shaffer, "such as the Nabucco Pipeline, to bring Central Asia's natural gas by way of the Caspian Sea and Georgia to the Mediterranean. We can forget about that project now. Russia has made that very clear. Russia did not invade Kazakhstan, but rather a small country that is a bottleneck between Central Asia and the West. No one will want to take the risk of angering the Russians again."

Beginnings of a new world order?

But Russia's message is not merely economic. "Several regimes in this region are wondering about where they are headed," says Shaffer. "America's blatant abandonment of its best friend in the region, President Saakashvili, will certainly prompt a policy reevaluation in countries like Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. If until now these states were certain that it was in their best interest to befriend the Americans - and we saw how they responded to the war in Afghanistan - now they may think it more worthwhile to befriend Iran or Russia. Maybe these two states can protect them where the Americans have failed. From the point of view of U.S. foreign policy, this conclusion has very negative repercussions. The Russian invasion of Georgia exposed the Europeans and Americans' bluff, and left the Georgians on their own. I would even go so far as to say that maybe the presidents of Afghanistan and Iraq are already considering their next steps." This week's unprecedented support for Saakashvili by the presidents of Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania and Estonia indicates that the picture extends beyond the Caucasus. Alexander Rahr, a member of Germany's Council on Foreign Relations and author of a biography of Vladimir Putin, believes this marks the beginning of a new world order. "Bush's legacy is a foreign policy disaster," says Rahr. "The dream of democratizing the Middle East has been shattered. As his final months in office approached, he was at least trying to bring Ukraine and Georgia closer to NATO, and now that won't happen. He tried to install missiles in the Czech Republic and in Poland, and that won't happen either. It turns out that American influence has its limits, and that Russia has regained a sphere of influence. This is no longer the Russia of the 1990s, beaten and bruised, unable to act on behalf of its own interests. Russia is now in a position to respond, and that is exactly what it did.

"A very similar crisis could develop in the Crimean peninsula, which now belongs to Ukraine, but used to belong to Russia, and has a large Russian population. Now everyone realizes that the Russians are serious. The same thing could also happen in Azerbaijan. Public opinion in those countries could change - from pro-Western to not wanting to rankle the Russian neighbor." Rahr also feels this week's events could affect a possible military campaign against Iran, too. "America's space for maneuver has shrunk," he says, "both strategically and logistically. Now it will be much harder for America to operate in Russia's southern part. Diplomatically, too, Russia's voice will increasingly be heard."

Twilight of U.S. hegemony

The roaring of the Russian artillery near Tbilisi, which clearly revealed that the issue was not South Ossetia but rather Russia's status in the world, also prompted a reevaluation by Sovietologists and Russian historians.

"This is without a doubt a founding moment," says Anne Applebaum, a historian and author of the international best-seller "Gulag: A History." "This week the Russians set an example. Just like when they killed journalist Anna Politkovskaya. There is no need to kill all the country's journalists. One is enough, and all the rest get the message. That's what [Russia] did this week: There is no need to invade all the countries in the region, but they will all get the message.

"In recent years we have seen a deterioration in the human rights situation in Russia," Applebaum continues. "Now it is clear that rising Russian nationalism will extend beyond the country's borders. This week's events also made it clear that the belief that only the U.S. can flex its muscles is mistaken. They marked the end of an era in which the U.S. behaved like the only superpower. It was interesting to follow the events on a split-screen television, showing both the amazing spectacle China organized for the opening of the Olympic Games and pictures from Georgia. We saw two new superpowers, evincing different behavior, of course, but which completely undermine America's global hegemony. We saw history in the making, right before our eyes."

Historian Simon Sebag-Montefiore, author of two biographies of Josef Stalin, believes this is "the start of the twilight of America's sole world hegemony.

"The retaking of Ossetia is a minor part of the Russian campaign," says Montefiore, who has visited Georgia many times and is personally acquainted with the three presidents who have headed the country since the Soviet Union's disintegration. "More significant is the attack on Georgia proper, which reasserts Russia's hegemony over the Caucasus and defies American superpowerdom.

"The prospect of encirclement by triumphant America infuriated Russia," he continues. "Imagine if newly independent Wales joined the Warsaw Pact. This war is really a celebration of ferocious force in the realm of international power, a dangerous precedent. Russia has demonstrated the limits of U.S. power and Moscow's historic destiny as regional and world superpower. The Empire has struck back and shaken the order of the world."

Israel and the US behind the Georgian aggression?

2008-08-15T12:48:00.000-04:00

There is an obvious Israeli involvement in the present conflict between Georgia and Russia. There are hundreds of Israeli military advisers in Georgia and this is not just the claim of the rather unreliable DebkaFile but also the more respected Ha'aretz expert Yossi Melman, the daily Ma'ariv and also the rather reliable website "News First Class" (NFC).

Melman wrote on 25.6.2008 that Georgia became a real El Dorado for Israeli arms dealers and numerous representatives of the army and intelligence services. Some former generals like Israel Ziv and Gal Hirsh (with his company Defensive Shield) are very active there.

"Gal Hirsh and Israel Ziv are mainly training and consulting Georgian arm units. They are using the "chain" method common among Israeli arm dealers: a main contractor wins a tender and employs then sub-contractors – in this case Israeli officers and former Shin Beth employees," wrote Melman.

According to him there was a project to sell Merkava tanks to Georgia, but allegedly the Israeli foreign ministry prevented the deal and a policy was outlined that only defensive weapons are allowed to be sold.

Just the same Russia protested agains the Israeli military support to Georgia after an Israeli produced UAV was shot down. On August 5 Israel reiterated its official policy that it allegedly sells only defensive and not offensive weapon systems to Georgia. This is the version published e.g. in the Jerusalem Post; other sources, like the Israeli daily Ma'ariv on 8.8, claim that Israel decided to stop altogether the military support to Georgia. Just the same Ma’ariv points out that the Georgian defense minister, David Kezerashvili, lived for a while in Israel and speaks Hebrew. In a lengthy article the military exports to Georgia are described. Ma’ariv estimates them to be of a value of at least USD 300 million. An Israeli marketing expert told Ma'ariv: "To every Israeli agent representing an Israeli defense company is attached a cousin of the defense minister, who opens the doors for him."

Also NFC confirms the massive presence of Israeli advisers in Georgia and writes: "The Israeli military industries upgraded in recent years the Georgian air force, sold unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), advanced artillery systems and trained infantry units." (9.8) The NFC claims that according to sources in Washington in Moscow the war started because Georgia wants to reverse Israel’s decision and achieve the continuation of the support. Israel, according to NFC, conceded to the Russian threatening that it would otherwise go through with the sale of its most advanced anti-aircraft missile system S-300 to Iran and Syria.

Actually the opposite conclusion is also possible, namely that Israel wants to pressure Russia not to sell the S-300 and stop its support to Iran.

The Israeli website DebkaFile, that is known to publish mainly conspiracy theories, believes that up to 1,000 Israeli advisors are active in planning and implementing the present Georgian military action (8.8). This conclusion sounds plausible.

Actually it has to be taken into consideration that also U.S. "consultants" are helping the Georgian army, as according to Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, there are 127 U.S. military trainers there, of whom about 35 are civilian contractors.

In addition to the trainers, 1,000 soldiers from the Vicenza, Italy-based Southern European Task Force (Airborne) and the Kaiserslautern-based 21st Theater Sustainment Command, along with Marine reservists with the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines out of Ohio, and the state of Georgia’s Army National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry participated in "Immediate Response 2008."

Operation Immediate Response 2008 was held from July 15-July 30, with U.S. personnel training about 600 troops at a former Soviet base near Tbilisi, the largest city and capital of Georgia. The goal of this operation was allegedly teaching combat skills for missions in Iraq. The Marines left already the country, but not the airmen.

It is obvious that there are numerous Israeli and U.S. interests in Georgia and it is highly likely that they are behind the dangerous Georgian move.

Posted by uruknet.info
:: Article nr. 46326 sent on 10-aug-2008 12:31 ECT

www.uruknet.info?p=46326

Israel returns Lebanese prisoners

2008-07-16T15:36:00.004-04:00

Sameer Alqantar free from prison

Five Lebanese prisoners have been handed over to the Hezbollah movement by Israel, as part of a swap for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers.

The freed men arrived to a heroes' welcome at the Naqoura border crossing on Wednesday, just hours after Israel received coffins containing the remains of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, two Israeli army reservists captured in 2006.

The prisoners released were Samir Kuntar, who was jailed for three murders in Israel in 1979, and four men captured during the 34-day war sparked by the capture of Goldwasser and Regev.

They were the last remaining Lebanese in Israeli custody.

Hezbollah also received the bodies of almost 200 people, including the body of Dalal al-Maghrebi, a female fighter with the Palestinian Fatah movement.

Cheering supporters

The prisoners were brought across the border in a convoy of four International Committee of the Red Cross vehicles before changing in military fatigues to greet crowds of well-wishers.

Kuntar wiped away tears as he stood in front of the cheering crowd.

"We knew that you were waiting for the resistance and it reached you. You came back free and heroes," Ibrahim Amin al-Sayed, head of Hezbollah's political bureau, said.

The five men then boarded Lebanese army helicopters for a flight to Beirut, to be received by the country's president, prime minister and other officials.

"Your return is a new victory and the future with you will only be a shinning march in which we achieve the sovereignty of our land and the freedom of people," Michel Sleiman, the president, said at the airport.

"I tell Samir and his companions that they have a right to be proud of their country, their army and their resistance."

In south Beirut, tens of thousands of people, many of them waving Hezbollah's green and yellow flag, waited for the men to arrive at a huge rally during which Hassan Nasrallah, the group's leader, was expected to speak.

Hezbollah named the exchange "Operation Radwan", in honour of Imad Moughniyah, known as "Hajj Radwan", the group's military commander who was assassinated in Syria in February.

Israelis sombre

In contrast to the upbeat mood in Lebanon, the scene across the border in Israel was sombre.

At the family home of reservist Regev, a crowd of about 50 mourners gathered and his family wept, seeing their son's coffin displayed on television for the first time.

"It was hard to see one coffin being lowered to the ground and then another one. It was awful to see it. I asked them to turn off the television because I didn't want to see it," Regev's father Zvi told public radio.

"We always hoped that Eldad and Udi would return home alive and that we would be able to hug them."

Before the exchange there had been speculation that at least one of the Israeli soldiers had been alive, but Hezbollah TV confirmed that both were dead.

"The Lebanese people sacrificed almost 800 soldiers, its entire economy," he said. "For what? For the killer of a three-year-old girl? Is that a hero? For me he is nothing more than a little bigot."

'Difficult decision'

Miri Eisin, a former aide to Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, said Israel found the release of Kuntar an "incredibly difficult decision".

"Today in Israel we are mainly reflecting on the price we pay in our country to defend our borders," she told Al Jazeera.

David Chater, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Rosh Hanikra on the Israeli side of the border, said that the Israeli cabinet had "agonised" over the exchange.

"[They] voted in favour of it against the advice of the Israeli intelligence service ... which thinks it will only encourage kidnappings," he said. "But the bulk of Israeli public opinion is behind this deal".

Robert Fisk, a Middle East expert and journalist with the Independent newspaper, told Al Jazeera: "It's regarded as being the final chapter of the 2006 war."

"The Israelis certainly lost that war, they did not get their prisoners back - not until now and they're getting them back dead. So more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians and more than 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers, all died for absolutely nothing and that's what today's prisoner exchanges prove."

Lebanon has declared a national holiday to celebrate the prisoner swap.

"This is a big day because it's the day we [Lebanon] have the liberation of four or five heroes," Wassim Manssouri, a professor in constitutional law at Beirut's Lebanese University, told Al Jazeera from the capital.

Palestinian reaction

Celebrations were also under way in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank.

"The exchange is seen as a victory for Arab resistance," Nour Odeh, Al Jazeera's correspondent, in the West Bank, said.

Kuntar is a member of Lebanon's Druze population.

Walid Jumblatt, Lebanon's Druze leader, told Al Jazeera: "My father was the founder of a Lebanese-Palestinian coalition to fight Israel and recover the Palestinians' rights. My father would be happy."

"I am happy [too], but we should not forget the Palestinians who are detained in their own land," he said.

The Hezbollah exchange has prompted the public in Arab countries such as Jordan and Egypt - which have both signed peace deals with Israel - to question why their governments have not been able to repatriate the bodies of their soldiers.
Posted By Aljazeer.net

Trauma prosecute Israeli soldiers anniversary of the war in Lebanon

2008-07-13T13:52:00.002-04:00

On the second anniversary of the war in Lebanon, which coincides with the second today, Saturday, the channel revealed that one third of the Jewish tenth soldiers participants infected with the psychological shock of Israeli views differ on the impact of war on Israel strategically.

The channel According to army figures that about 800 Israeli soldiers are still scenes and sounds of war and pursued a nightmare, and that they are infected with "shock of war" and that the army is mostly "disabled" psychologically.

The channel by a competent bodies in the army that the number of soldiers infected with anguish after the shock result of the horrors of the Second Lebanon war and viciousness of resistance, far exceeds the number mentioned because of a tendency not to permit people living with suspected shocked.

Mentally disabled

And the channel added that the proportion of Canal reservist soldiers traumatized by the whole amount to 60% infected, pointing out that given the magnitude of the numbers fighting traumatized psychological effects of the war in Lebanon is the second highest in the history of the wars of Israel.

Manifested symptoms of traumatized soldiers not to focus at work, insomnia and tension and lasting decline in the post injured husband and father.

The President of the Assembly of service "in the war traumatized" Brigadier General Uri Segl in a statement on radio today, wounding the soldier to be reported in the absence of processing including shield them beforehand.

He disclosed that Israel Segl morally city of its soldiers injured psychologically, considering them "disabled" and that there are about 5000 troops suffered shock today enrolled in the Department of Mental Health's army, stressing the presence of tens of thousands of others are not receiving the recognition or fear of detection as they are exposed.

Erase memory

According to local commentators are preoccupied Israelis investigating the new developments with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on issues Filsad has dominated the political scene and media for the second anniversary of the war on Lebanon, perhaps reflecting the desire of Israelis popular and officially erase those from the collective memory.

For his part, Olmert said in statements to local Arabic newspapers yesterday that calm continued, "unfamiliar" by the northern border is a significant achievement for the war, while the Defense Minister Ehud Barak told reporters yesterday that Hezbollah will regain strength in the south under the "erosion of the resolution Volitional "1701

Deterrence force

In return for warnings that the loss of the war deterrent force struck the Israeli, Dror is Dr. Zeev specialist in the history of the Middle East, told Army Radio that Israel did not lose power deterred even after the war in Lebanon, but stressed that this force has shown limited.

From the military point of view finds commander in the army Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, Israel will triumph in the coming war, though not updated draw lessons from the Lebanon War II and military exercises, also said the military correspondent in the "Yediot Ahronot" Alex Ashman Friday.

Ashman said that the army afflicts hundreds of lessons to learn the lessons of Lebanon War II but preferred Pivoting in three of them: Facing the crisis of confidence in Israeli society toward the army after losing in Lebanon, and updating professional deficiencies, and put the right man in the right place.

Winning and loosing

In the opinion specialist in Arab-Israeli conflict Shlomo Prum, the balance of the Lebanon War II was still negative for Israel, shows that there is almost unanimous agreement that Israel has paid a heavy price in war the result of "lack of military exercises."

On the other hand, refers Prum in a statement to the island today to the Net difference in opinion about the state of Israel's deterrent power after the war, and says it is not possible to ignore the tranquillity in the northern front, in an allusion "to Artdaa Hezbollah for provocation and playing with fire" as he put it.

According to that excluding the Secretary General of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah, appearing publicly until today, but it also refers to "crash resolution 1701, and doubled the smuggling of arms and military infrastructure renewal of the resistance in the south."
Posted by Aljazeera and translated by NewsClock.com

Tantur .. The worst Zionist massacres in Palestine

2008-05-25T19:53:00.005-04:00

May 15, 1948 (Palestine): "From testimonies and information I got from Jewish and Arab witnesses and from soldiers who were there, at least 200 people from the village of Tantura were killed by Israeli troops...
"From the numbers, this is definitely one of the biggest massacres," Teddy Katz an Israeli historian said Tantura, near Haifa in northern Palestine, had 1,500 residents at the time. It was later demolished to make way for a parking lot for a nearby beach and the Nahsholim kibbutz, or cooperative farm.
Fawzi Tanji, now 73 and a refugee at a camp in the West Bank, is from Tantura he said: I was 21 years old then.They took a group of 10 men,lined them up against the cemetery wall and killed them.Then they brought another group, killed them, threw away the bodies and so on, Tanji said. I was waiting for my turn to die in cold blood as I saw the men drop in front of me.
Katz said other Palestinians were killed inside their homes and in other parts of the village. At one point, he said, soldiers shot at anything that moved.

Israel 60th anniversary

2008-05-15T19:29:00.006-04:00

Israel 60th anniversary

Israel celebrating 60 years of killing the Palestinian people, and some world leaders are congratulating them for doing such a great job of killing children, women and elderly people.
They called the Israelis people and its government brave people and smart for taking someone else’s land and massacring them and kicking them out of their homeland.

Lots of people around the world are brain washed by their news media on what they called Israel, thinking that Israel was celebrating its independence, in the mean time they are celebrating their establishment on the Palestinian people's blood and land.
As you see there is a big difference between independence and establishment.
Independence when your country was under occupation and they got their independence from their occupier.
Establishment when you establish new country, meaning that establishing it on someone else’s land like what happened to Palestine.
Palestine is the only country occupied in the whole world.

As a Jewish person I believe that the holy land belongs to the Palestinian people. God created us to serve the human race and not to create countries and kill people.
What happened to us as Jewish people in Germany made us so mad and angry that we can not think of any one but our self.

So the abused became an abuser, that's us the Israelis.
What the Natzis did to us, we are doing it to the Palestinian.
Tony

The most beautiful Turkish actress Tuba Büyüküstün

2008-05-13T10:20:00.006-04:00

2008-05-09T13:15:00.008-04:00

Algerian civilians were killed by the French army the French army killed 1 Million in Algeria most of them Children, women and elderly people.
French soldiers holding heads of Algerian civilian, and the French protending that they are fighting for people rights.

تحيي الجزائر الذكرى الـ63 لمجازر 8 مايو/ أيار 1945 التي راح ضحيتها 45 ألف جزائري, في وقت صدر فيه عن مسؤولين فرنسيين تصريحات لافتة تميل إلى الاعتراف بما حدث।
فقد ألقى السفير الفرنسي بالجزائر برنار باجولي قبل أيام محاضرة بجامعة قالمة في شرق البلاد قال فيها "تتحمل السلطة الفرنسية مسؤولية المجازر التي وقعت يوم 8 مايو/ أيار 1945 التي لطخت تاريخ فرنسا، وتلك الجرائم تعتبر استهانة بمبادئ الجمهورية الفرنسية".
باجولي قال إن فرنسا تتحمل مسؤولية مجازر مايو/ أيار 1945 (الفرنسية-أرشيف)كما أدلت وزيرة الداخلية الفرنسية ميشال إليو ماري التي أنهت زيارة إلى الجزائر بتصريحات بدت أقرب إلى اعتذار عن الأحداث التي بدأت بمظاهرات لآلاف الجزائريين تطالب بالاستقلال مع نهاية الحرب العالمية الثانية, فتصدى لهم جنود الجيش الفرنسي والمستوطنون.

وقد اغتنمت حركة الإصلاح الوطني هذه المناسبة لتواصل نضالها من أجل قانون يجرم الاستعمار طرحت مشروعه منذ سنوات، ردا على قانون تمجيد الاستعمار الذي أصدرته الجمعية الوطنية الفرنسية (البرلمان) يوم 23 فبراير/ شباط 2005, قبل أن يقرر الرئيس الفرنسي السابق جاك شيراك مراجعته.

مطالب أساسية
ويقول المكلف بالإعلام في الحركة جمال بن عبد السلام للجزيرة نت إن المشروع ما زال حبيس الأدراج ولم يجد من يدفع به.

ويضم مشروع القانون أربعة مطالب أساسية هي اعتراف فرنسا رسميا بجرائمها في الجزائر، واعتذار رسمي، وتعويض مادي ومعنوي عن كل ما لحق بالجزائريين من أضرار بشرية ومادية، والوصول إلى ميثاق أممي يعتبر الاستعمار ظاهرة إجرامية.

ويقول بن عبد السلام إن الحركة تريد -بعد تصريحات سفير فرنسا ووزيرة داخليتها- أن تدفع الحكومة الفرنسية باتجاه الاعتراف بجرائمها رسميا ثم الاعتذار ودفع التعويضات.

عبد السلام: حركة الإصلاح تسعى لدفع فرنسا إلى الاعتراف بجرائمها رسميا (الجزيرة نت)رئيس حركة الإصلاح الوطني محمد بولحية قال للجزيرة نت إن "فرنسا لم تأت بالحضارة للجزائريين وإنما تسببت في تأخرهم".

ويقول بولحية إنه إذا كان مقياس التحضر هو التعليم فبعض المؤرخين الجزائريين يذكرون أن نسبة الأمية عند دخول فرنسا عام 1830 كانت 20%, لكنها بلغت وفرنسا تغادر الجزائر عام 1962 نسبة 87%. واستشهد بمقولة الباحث طوك فيل الفرنسي الذي قال إن نسبة التعليم في الجزائر كانت أعلى من نسبة المتعلمين في الجيش الفرنسي الذي أرسلته فرنسا إلى الجزائر.

مجتمع الطبقتينمحمد صادق بن يحيى (75 عاما) الرائد في جيش التحرير الوطني استنكر أن تضغط فرنسا على تركيا لتعترف بما يسمى جرائم ضد الأرمن وترفض أن تعترف بجرائمها في الجزائر.

وقال إن "فرنسا لم تأت بأي خير للجزائر وإنما كونت مجتمعا من طبقتين: الطبقة الأولى خاصة بالفرنسيين واليهود ولهم كل المميزات وخيرات الجزائر، أما الجزائريون فيصنفون كطبقة ثانية محرومة من أبسط الحقوق".

Algérie salue les 63 anniversaire des massacres de Mai 8, 1945 que a coûté la vie de 45 mille algérien, a été publié à un moment où les fonctionnaires français devaient signer des déclarations ont tendance à reconnaître ce qui s'était passé. L'ambassadeur de France Bernard Algérie a donné des sacs jours avant une conférence à l'Université de Guelma est du pays qui, selon lui, "porte la responsabilité des massacres français qui a eu lieu le Mai 8, 1945, qui ont terni l'histoire de la France, et ces crimes sont bafoue les principes de la République française." Tajol dit que la France porte la responsabilité des massacres en Mai 1945 (Français - Photo) Il a également fait ministre français de l'Intérieur Elio Michel Marie, qui a conclu sa visite en Algérie semble plus proche des déclarations à des excuses pour les événements qui ont commencé les manifestations de milliers d'Algériens demandent l'indépendance avec la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, a fait écho français les soldats de l'armée et les colons. Le Mouvement national de réforme saisi cette occasion pour continuer leur lutte pour la décolonisation a présenté une législation qui érigerait en infraction pénale illégale ans, en réponse à glorifier le droit colonial émis par l'Assemblée nationale française (parlement) sur Février 23, 2005, avant de décider de l'ancien président français Jacques Chirac a examiné. Principales exigences Selon les informations en charge du mouvement, Jamal Abdel Salam ibn de l'île a révélé que le projet est toujours incarcéré dans un tiroir de bureau n'a pas trouvé l'élan. Le projet de loi se compose de quatre exigences fondamentales sont la reconnaissance par la France officiellement ses crimes en Algérie, des excuses formelles et une compensation pour le matériel et le droit moral de tous les Algériens humaines et des dégâts matériels, et l'accès à la Charte des Nations Unies est un phénomène criminel du colonialisme. Il a dit bin Abdel-Salam que le mouvement veut - après des déclarations faites par l'Ambassadeur de France et ministre de l'intérieur - de payer le gouvernement français vers la reconnaissance de ses crimes et a alors officiellement des excuses et verser des indemnités. Abdul Salam: mouvement de réforme visant à pousser la France à reconnaître officiellement ses crimes (Jazeera Net) Président du Mouvement national de réforme, a déclaré Mohammed Boulahya de l'île a révélé que "la France n'a pas de la civilisation algérienne, mais causé d'autres." Boulahya, dit que si la mesure est l'éducation urbanisation Certains historiens Algériens rappeler que le taux d'analphabétisme à partir de l'entrée en France en 1830 était de 20%, mais s'élevait à quitter l'Algérie et la France en 1962, la proportion de 87%. Il a cité à jouer Tok Phil scientifique français qui a déclaré que la proportion de l'éducation en Algérie a été plus élevé que la proportion des apprenants dans l'armée française envoyés par la France en Algérie. Deux-société de classes Mohammed Sadiq Ben Yahia (75 ans) la tête de l'Armée de libération nationale a condamné la France à faire pression sur la Turquie de reconnaître le soi-disant crimes contre les Arméniens et refuse de reconnaître ses crimes en Algérie. Il a déclaré que "la France n'a pas à se mettre tout bon pour l'Algérie, mais une communauté formée de deux étages: au premier étage et en particulier les Juifs français et leurs caractéristiques respectives et de l'histoire de l'Algérie, des Algériens et classés en fonction seconde privés de droits fondamentaux."

Algeria hails the 63 anniversary of the massacres of May 8, 1945 that claimed the lives of 45 thousand Algerian, was issued at a time when French officials were to sign statements tend to recognize what had happened. The French ambassador gave Algeria Bernard sacks days before a lecture at the University of Guelma east of the country which he said "bears the responsibility of the French massacres that took place on May 8, 1945, which tarnished the history of France, and those crimes are flouting the principles of the French Republic." Tajol said that France bears responsibility for the massacres in May 1945 (French - Photo) It also made French Interior Minister Michel Elio Mary, which concluded its visit to Algeria statements seemed closer to an apology for the events that began demonstrations of thousands of Algerians demanding independence with the end of World War II, echoed them French army soldiers and settlers. The National Reform Movement seized this opportunity to continue their struggle for decolonization put forward legislation that would criminalize illegal years ago, in response to glorify the colonial law issued by the French National Assembly (parliament) on February 23, 2005, before deciding to former French president Jacques Chirac reviewed. Key demands According to information in charge of the movement, Jamal Abdel Salam ibn of the island revealed that the project is still imprisoned in a desk drawer did not find the push it. The draft law comprises four core demands are the recognition by France officially its crimes in Algeria, a formal apology and compensation for material and moral right of all Algerians human and material damage, and access to the UN Charter is a criminal phenomenon of colonialism. He says bin Abdel-Salam that the movement wants - after statements made by the Ambassador of France and Minister of internally - to pay the French government towards the recognition of its crimes and then formally apologize and pay compensation. Abdul Salam: reform movement seeking to push France to formally recognize its crimes (Jazeera Net) Chairman of National Reform Movement said Mohammed Boulahya of the island revealed that "France did not come civilization of Algerian, but caused others." Boulahya, says that if the measure is education urbanization Some historians Algerians recall that the illiteracy rate from entry into France in 1830 was 20%, but amounted to leave Algeria and France in 1962 the proportion of 87%. He cited playing Tok Phil French scientist who said that the proportion of education in Algeria was higher than the proportion of learners in the French army sent by France to Algeria. Two-class society Mohammed Sadiq Ben Yahia (75 years) the lead in the National Liberation Army condemned France to put pressure on Turkey to recognize the so-called crimes against Armenians and refuses to recognize its crimes in Algeria. He said that "France did not come to any good for Algeria, but formed a community of two floors: the first floor and especially French Jews and their respective characteristics and history of Algeria, and Algerians categorized according seconds deprived of basic rights."

Rabbis against the Zionist calling for the demise of Israel

2008-04-30T20:28:00.006-04:00

Sheikh Qaradawi during his meeting with a delegation from the group Jews against Zionism

A delegation of rabbis "movement against the Zionist Jews" asked to the need for the demise of Israel, adding that the establishment of the State, which describes itself Judaism explicit violation of the Torah।
وأوضح أعضاء الوفد الذين التقوا رئيس الاتحاد العالمي لعلماء المسلمين الشيخ يوسف القرضاوي اليوم الأربعاء بالعاصمة القطرية الدوحة أن مشاكل الصراع بالمنطقة ستختفي بين يوم وليلة إذا زالت إسرائيل

The members of the delegation who met the President of the World Federation of Muslim Scholars, Sheikh Yussef Qaradawi today, Wednesday, the Qatari capital Doha that the problems of the conflict zone will disappear from one day to night if Israel continues.
وقال الحاخام ديفد شلومو فيلدمان من بريطانيا "هناك أمر يقلقنا اليوم॥ نريد أن نقول للعرب والمسلمين إن الإرهاب والوحشية في فلسطين بعيدان كل البعد عن الدين اليهودي" مضيفا أن ذلك جانب من الممارسات الصهيونية।

He said Rabbi David Shlomo Feldman from Britain, "There is concern today .. want to say to the Arabs and Muslims to terrorism and brutality in Palestine, far from the Jewish faith," adding that this aspect of the Zionist practices.
ويرى فيلدمان في قيام دولة إسرائيل شرا على اليهود في العالم، وأن الحركة ضد التوسع الصهيوني والاعتداء على القدس. Feldman believes in the state of Israel to hate Jews in the world, and the movement against the expansion of the Zionist attack on Jerusalem.
أما الحاخام دوفد يتسرائيل وايس من الولايات المتحدة والمتحدث باسم الحركة فأشاد بحسن بالمعاملة والمعايشة التي وجدها اليهود من المسلمين، مؤكدا أنهم لم يضطهدوا اليهود يوما بل احترموا عاداتهم ودياناتهم।

The Dovd Itsraiel Rabbi Weiss of the United States and spokesman for the Movement commended the good treatment and found that cohabitation of Jews from Muslims, saying they were not persecuted Jews days but respected the customs and religions.
وتطرق الرجل إلى نشأة الصهيونية ومؤسسها فقال إن الصهيونية حركة ظالمة ومعتدية وتقلل من قيمة الحياة اليهودية، وأن هرتزل لم يكن متدينا وأراد نقل الحركة من الدين إلى القومية واستغل جهل اليهود وأقنعهم بأن السبيل الوحيد للتخلص من منفاهم هو انتهاك التوراة. Turning to the emergence of the Zionist man and founder, said that the Zionist movement and unjust aggressor and reduce the value of Jewish life, and that Herzl did not extend and wanted to transfer the movement of the national debt, taking advantage of the ignorance of the Jews and convinced that the only way to get rid of exile is a violation of the Torah.
كما أشار وايس إلى أن هناك الآلاف من اليهود داخل الأراضي الفلسطينية المحتلة، إلى جانب مئات الآلاف من اليهود حول العالم ضد الفكرة الصهيونية।

Weiss also pointed out that there were thousands of Jews in the occupied Palestinian territories, along with hundreds of thousands of Jews around the world against the Zionist idea.
وأضاف: حين وصل الصهاينة إلى فلسطين كان اليهود يعيشون مع جيرانهم العرب وأسسوا مجلس حاخامات لمحاربة الحركة الصهيونية، وفي عام 1947 أرسل كبير الحاخامات دوشنكي إلى الأمم المتحدة قائلا "لا نريد دولة صهيونية" معتبرا أن الأوفياء للتوراة لا يريدون دولة. He added: When the Zionists arrived to the Jews of Palestine living with their Arab neighbours and founded the rabbis to fight the Zionist movement, and in 1947 sent a large Duschnki rabbis to the United Nations, saying "We do not want a Zionist state," saying it loyal to the biblical do not want the State.

إلى زوال To the demise
ويرى الحاخام الأميركي أن دولة إسرائيل لا تتكلم باسم اليهود وإنما قامت بسرقة اسم إسرائيل من الشعب اليهودى، وهى كذلك السبب الرئيسي فى تصاعد الكراهية ونزعات اللاسامية فى أرجاء العالم।

Rabbi finds that the U।S। state of Israel does not speak on behalf of Jews but of stealing the name of Israel from the Jewish people, which is also the main reason for the escalation of hatred and anti-Semitic tendencies around the world.
ويؤكد وايس أن "كل الانتهاكات في الشرق الأوسط يمكن أن تنتهي في ليلة واحدة وهي انتهاء دولة إسرائيل لكن الدول الكبرى مثل أميركا وبريطانيا لا تريد أن تدرك تلك الحقيقة"।

The Weiss said "all violations in the Middle East could be finished in one night is the state of Israel but the big powers like the United States and Britain did not want to be aware of that fact."
ويضيف الرجل أن مصير إسرائيل إلى زوال، وأن "من يعمل ضد التوراة فلن ينجح" مستشهدا بتفكك الاتحاد السوفياتي وزوال النظام العنصري من جنوب أفريقيا।

He adds that the fate of men to the demise of Israel, and "works against the Torah will not succeed", quoting the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the demise of the racist regime of South Africa.
كما طالب الأمم المتحدة باستحداث إدارة لحماية ضحايا الظلم الصهيوني، مضيفا أن ناشطي الطائفة اليهود يضربون في بيوتهم ويظلمون ويضطهدون।

They also demanded the introduction of United Nations administration to protect the victims of the Zionist injustice, adding that the Jewish community activists beaten in their homes and persecuted and wronged.
وحول الموقف من الانتهاكات التي يتعرض لها الفلسطينيون، قال وايس "قلوبنا تدمي لما يحدث لإخوتنا في فلسطين، ونرى أنفسنا أمام مأساة مزدوجة لأنها وقعت باسم الديانة اليهودية ولكن الناس لا يسمعون أصواتنا॥ والصوت الصهيوني أقوى.. الضغط الصهيوني قوي عليهم"।

Regarding the attitude of violations against the Palestinians, Weiss said, "Our hearts bleed for what is happening to our brothers in Palestine, and we see ourselves in front of a double tragedy because they signed on behalf of the Jewish religion, but people do not hear our voices and sound .. .. stronger Zionist forces of the Zionist pressure on them."

أما الشيخ القرضاوي، فقال إنه لولا المال والسلاح والفيتو الأميركي ما استطاعت إسرائيل أن تصول وتجول وتعربد وتفعل ما يحلو لها. The Sheikh Qaradawi, said that were it not for money, weapons and the U.S. veto Israel was able to roam about the depravity and do what feels to them.
كما نبه إلى وجود مجالات واسعة للتعاون بين أهل الإيمان، يأتي في مقدمتها الوقوف أمام الموجة الإلحادية والفلسفة المادية التي لا تؤمن بكتب السماء।

It also drew attention to the existence of broad areas of cooperation between people of faith, he said cope with the wave irreligious and philosophy of physical books does not believe the sky। وأشار إلى أن كثيرا ممن حكموا إسرائيل ملحدون।

He pointed out that many of those who ruled Israel atheists. he called d.

القرضاوي للوقوف ضد التحلل والإباحية التي تريد أن تبيح كل شيء للإنسان، وتريده أن يتبع شهواته لا يحجزه شيء عما يشتهي. Qaradawi to stand against decay and permissiveness that want to allow everything to everyone and wants to follow the appetite is something about long for booking.
أما مجال التعاون الثالث الذي ذكره القرضاوي فهو إقامة العدل بين الناس ومحاربة المظالم، فقال إن رسالات السماء كلها جاءت لإقامة العدل وإن أولى الناس بالدع

The third area of cooperation mentioned by Qaradawi is the administration of justice among the people and fighting injustices, said that all consignments of the sky came to the administration of justice and that the first people Bada'

وة إلى العدل ومحاربة الظلم هم رجال الأديان لأن الظلم سبب هلاك البشرية

Justice is to fight injustice and religions are men because the cause of loss of human injustice.

Posted by aljazeera

Facility 1391: Israel's secret prison

2008-04-27T22:27:00.005-04:00

Facility 1391: Known as "Israel's Guantanamo

The men under the black hoods all have the same question once the blindfolds and manacles are off: Where am I? A voice filtering through a narrow slit in the steel door told Sameer Jadala he was "in Honolulu", Raab Bader that he was "in a submarine" and "outside the borders of Israel", Bashar Jadala that he was "on the moon". None of them imagined it at the time, because only a handful of the political and security establishment knew such a thing existed, but they were prisoners in Israel's Guantanamo: Facility 1391.
"I was barefoot in my pyjamas when they arrested me and it was really cold," says Sameer Jadala, a Palestinian school bus driver. "When I got to that place, they told me to strip and gave me a blue uniform. Then they gave me a black sack. They told me: 'This is your sack. You need to keep it with you. Any time someone comes to your cell, you must put it on your head. Any time they deliver the food, you must put it on your head. You must never see the soldiers' faces. You do not want to know what will happen if you take it off.' Sometimes I thought I would die in that place and no one would ever know."

Facility 1391 has been airbrushed from Israeli aerial photographs and purged from modern maps. Where once a police station was marked there is now a blank space. Sometimes even the road leading to it has been erased. But Israel's secret prison, inside an army intelligence base close to the main road between Hadera and Afula in northern Israel, is real enough. For 20 years or more it has been housed in a large, imposing, single-storey building designed by a British engineer, Sir Charles Taggart, during the 1930s as one of a series of garrison forts designed to contain growing unrest in Palestine. Today, the thick concrete walls and iron gates are themselves protected by a double fence overseen by watchtowers and patrolled by attack dogs.

The prison has held Lebanese abducted by the Israeli army as hostages, Iraqi defectors and a Syrian intelligence officer who tried to defect but was accused of spying and chose to remain in another prison rather than return home and face a firing squad. More recently, scores of Palestinians were incarcerated in 1391 for interrogation, which finally led to the almost accidental disclosure of a prison the state decreed did not exist.

Those who have been through its gates know it is no illusion. One former inmate has filed a lawsuit alleging that he was raped twice - once by a man and once with a stick - during questioning. But most of those who emerge say the real torture is the psychological impact of solitary confinement in filthy, blackened cells so poorly lit that inmates can barely see their own hands, and with no idea where they are or, in many cases, why they are there.

"Our main conclusion is that it exists to make torture possible - a particular kind of torture that creates progressive states of dread, dependency, debility," says Manal Hazzan, a human rights lawyer who helped expose the prison's existence. "The law gives the army enough authority already to hide prisoners, so why do they need a secret facility?"

Unlike any other Israeli prison, the International Red Cross, lawyers and members of the Israeli parliament have been refused access. One leftwing MP, Zahava Gal-On, describes Facility 1391 as "one of the signs of totalitarian regimes and of the third world". The Israeli government declines to discuss the secret prison other than to issue a standard response: "Facility 1391 is situated on a secret military base. The base is used by the security services for various classified activities and thus its location is kept confidential."

But it is not just human rights lawyers and leftwing MPs who have a problem. Ami Ayalon is a former head of Israel's intelligence service, the Shin Bet. He was told about 1391 but says he refused to have anything to do with it. "I knew there was a facility not under the responsibility of the Shin Bet, but under the responsibility of the military. I didn't think then, and I don't think today, that such an institution should exist in a democracy," he says.

Sameer Jadala was detained at his home in Nablus last year at 3 o'clock on a December morning. For three days, the 33-year-old Palestinian was moved from one prison cell to another. On the fourth day, he was blindfolded, handcuffed and his feet manacled. Blacked-out glasses were pushed over his eyes as he was forced into the back of a car and on to the floor. Then he was covered with a blanket.

Jadala estimates that he was driven for about an hour. "We were taken out one by one. The only reason I knew there were two other prisoners in the car was the sound of the chains," he says. "I was blindfolded right up to the time they took me to the cell. There was a small slit in the door. It was not even wide enough to push a cigarette through. A voice said, 'Take the blindfold off but any time I come you must put it on and put your hands on the wall.'"

Raab Bader, a 38-year-old accountant and father of two, was also in the cells, although the two men had no contact. He too had been detained in Nablus, though he was convinced he had nothing to hide. "I was held like a blind mole, except for the prolonged hours that an [intelligence] agent interrogated me," he says.

Bader was variously told that he was on a submarine, in space or outside the borders of Israel. He was pushed into a windowless cell, 6ft square. A fan high in the ceiling drives air into the cell, but inmates say the noise is deafening.

"The cell walls were painted black. I never saw the ceiling. When I looked up, I saw only darkness. Light no stronger than the power of a candle penetrated in a peculiar way from one side of the room," he said in an affidavit.

The bed was a thin, damp mattress on a concrete slab a few inches above the ground. The toilet was a bucket, emptied every few days. Water to the cell came out of a hole in the wall, controlled by the guard. "On the ninth consecu tive day in the stench-filled cell, one of the soldiers was supposed to come and take me out. He almost vomited and rushed out of the cell," Bader says. "I spent many days in that solitary confinement cell and in others like it, and hour after hour I would talk to myself and feel that I was going crazy, or find myself laughing to myself."

Jadala was still trying to work out why he had been arrested in the first place. "I asked the interrogator: why am I here? What do you want from me? When I asked where I was, they told me I was in Honolulu. I didn't ask again," he says.

It later dawned on Jadala that he was there because days earlier his brother, Mohammed, and a cousin, Basher, had been arrested while crossing into the West Bank from Jordan. Israel's intelligence service suspected that Mohammed was a member of Hamas. Sameer Jadala now believes he was detained as part of an elaborate psychological game to pressure his brother into talking. Mohammed Jadala, who is still a prisoner, has signed an affidavit alleging he was tortured into a confession. He says he was beaten during his initial interrogation at a regular prison and then moved to 1391. When he asked where he was, the reply was "on the moon".

"They kept me there in a solitary cell for about 67 days. During this period, they continued with the torture, but they used a different method. They did not let me sleep more than two hours a day. When I started to get drowsy, they woke me up by making noise or by throwing water on me. As a result of the torture, they were able to get me to admit to all kinds of offences," he says.

The interrogators brought the brothers together briefly, apparently as a means of letting Mohammed know that Sameer would pay the price if he didn't talk. "They took my brother and cousin to the secret facility and showed me them crying; the interrogators said that they would be tried because of me," Mohammed says.

Probably the first prisoners at Facility 1391 were Lebanese. The prison is part of a military camp that is home to an army intelligence group, Unit 504, which specialises in interrogation. The unit has a hard reputation, and some of its members have badly blemished records. One has been accused of murder, another of spying. Unit 504's glory days were during Israel's 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon, interrogating captured Hezbollah fighters and running an extensive network of collaborators, some of whom are still being put on trial for their lives by the Lebanese authorities.

In the late 80s, Unit 504 went in search of another kind of prisoner; men who could be held hostage and exchanged for captured Israeli soldiers and airmen. In 1989, the Israelis seized Sheikh Abd al-Karim Obeid, a spiritual leader to Hezbollah. Five years later, they snatched Mustafa Dirani, a leading Shi'ite fighter. Both were taken directly to Facility 1391.

The soldiers who grabbed Obeid also abducted his bodyguards, members of his family and Hashem Fahaf, a young man who happened to be visiting the sheikh to seek his blessing and who found himself locked up for the next 11 years, initially at 1391.

Fahaf was never accused of any crime, but he was refused access to a lawyer and any other contact with the outside world. For the first few years, the Israelis denied they were even holding him. In April 2000, the Israeli supreme court finally ordered Fahaf's release. The government said it had been holding him and another 18 Lebanese as hostages - or "bargaining chips", as Israeli officials prefer to call it - in the hope of winning the release of an airforce navigator, Colonel Ron Arad.

Mustafa Dirani, the primary target of the abductions, had been the head of security in the Shi'ite movement Amal, and held Arad for about two years, at times driving around with the Israeli colonel in the boot of his car. Dirani was questioned for five weeks around the clock. Freed from Facility 1391 eight years later but locked up in another Israeli prison, he filed a lawsuit in the Israeli courts alleging that he was sodomised by his Israeli interrogators. The legal action names a "Major George" who, Dirani alleges, ordered a soldier to rape him. On another occasion, the Lebanese prisoner accuses the major of thrusting a stick up his rectum. Other former prisoners at 1391 have described how they were stripped naked for interrogation, blindfolded and handcuffed, and a stick was pressed against their buttocks as they were threatened with rape.

In its response to the lawsuit, the Israeli government denied Dirani was raped but it confirmed that prisoners were routinely stripped naked for interrogation. However, the state attorney's office later went further and said that "within the framework of a military police investigation the suspicion arose that an interrogator who questioned the complainant threatened to perform a sexual act on the complainant".

"Major George" was sacked. Dozens of other interrogators signed a petition objecting to his punishment for using methods they said were sanctioned by the authorities.

Another Lebanese prisoner, Ahmed Ali Banjek, was convicted of smuggling a surface-to-air missile into the Israeli-controlled zone of southern Lebanon on the basis of a confession made at 1391. He later told a military court that it had been extracted under torture, including being forced to sit on a stick until it penetrated his anus. The court was persuaded that the confession was not reliable, and released Banjek.

Facility 1391 remained a secret for two decades or more because those delivered to its clutches could be made to disappear. But even amid the severity of occupation, Israel does recognise that Palestinians have rights. Last year, as the army rounded up thousands of Palestinians during the reoccupation of West Bank cities, it ran out of places to interrogate them. Some were delivered to 1391.

A Jerusalem human rights organisation, the Centre for the Defence of the Individual (Hamoked), went in search of one man, Muatez Shahin, who was taken from his home by the army a year ago. The military insisted he was not on any of their lists of prisoners. Hamoked petitioned the high court and, after various attempts by the state to block the truth, won an unprecedented admission earlier this year that Shahin had disappeared into the previously unknown prison. State prosecutors initially told the court that the prison was no longer in use. A few weeks later, the state was forced to confess otherwise.

"The circumstances have changed, and the security people have informed us that detainees are currently being held at Facility 1391," prosecutors told the court.

Hamoked's director, Dalia Kerstein, an Israeli, was horrified. "I was shocked to find out there is such a facility. I don't want the country I live in to have such a secret prison," she said. "We're challenging the legality of this place. We're seeking to close it and we're challenging the whole system of interrogation that goes on in the facility and is a byproduct of the fact that this place is secret, including torture.

"The psychological torture is very intense. People have been there for months at a time. I've met five people from different cities across the West Bank, from different organisations, and they all describe the same methods of torture. They're not beating people but there is very strong psychological torture that results in people hallucinating or having breakdowns."

Sameer Jadala was close to breakdown as he was dragged through interrogation after interrogation that seemed to lead nowhere as his inquisitors tried to get him to implicate his brother or to confess to being a member of Hamas. Then his inquisitors offered him the chance to win his freedom with a lie-detector test.

"I said I know beyond doubt that there is nothing on me. I took the test. At the end, they said 'Congratulations, Sameer' and I never saw them again," he says. "During the night I was visited by soldiers. I was blindfolded and had chains on my hands and legs. They put me into the car, covered me in a blanket and I was driven to a court near Jenin.

"First I had to see a doctor, who asked me where I had been. I said: 'I don't know, I really don't know.' The doctor asked the soldier where I had been. The soldier waved his hand in the air as though he were pointing to a distant planet. The doctor stopped asking questions."

Eventually, Jadala was dragged before a judge, who also wanted to know where he had been held. The prosecutor said he didn't know. "The judge wanted to know if I had a lawyer. I asked how I could appoint a lawyer when I didn't even know where I was. There was no way to contact anybody outside," he says.

It wasn't the end of the ordeal. Government lawyers repeatedly asked the military courts to extend his detention on "security grounds" - by a week or two at a time - but never said what it was he was suspected of.

"During one hearing I burst into tears. The judge asked me why I was crying. I said that for 30 days I didn't know where I was, I had no contact with a lawyer, I was transported in a brutal way. The judge finally said they had to come up with some evidence against me or let me go. So they let me go."

Posted by the Guardian

Palestine- Aaka Prison in Israel song (Sijen Aaka)

2008-03-24T12:52:00.000-04:00

Palestine Mohammad Aldura

2008-03-24T12:39:00.001-04:00

Dameer Al arabi-الـضـمـيـر الـعـربـى

2008-03-19T21:56:00.005-04:00

2008-02-24T19:50:00.002-05:00

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge

American missile shield system

2008-01-16T11:59:00.000-05:00

American missile shield system

Definition of the system and the position of the American administrations - the rationale to justify the American system - reflections and reactions Almtoukahowla strategy: level Alaalmithania: in the Middle East With the advent of the new American administration Republic returned System Shield American anti-missile (National Missile Defense - NMD) and issued agenda concerns in the international arena since the administration announced its decision to proceed with the implementation of this project, which the Clinton administration had postponed a decision on it at a crucial year. Combines observers on the existence of security reflections of the system affect the strategic balance between the big powers, namely the United States, China, Russia, and also affect the international treaty limiting the proliferation of ballistic missiles, the prohibition of nuclear weapons, and accelerate the arms race and destabilize the international balance in general and the Middle East in particular. The definition of the position of the American administrations Definition of the system: "means a shield American anti-missile" building protection networks composed of ground missile systems, based on the geographic focal points of several, capable of shooting down any missile ballistic missiles aimed at passing American land. This system - if implemented - applied for the first time in the world by major country, which is prohibited by the Treaty on the Limitation of ballistic weapons (ABM), which went roadmap deliberately keep the airspace open, unprotected view to finding mutual deterrence between the major countries. The threat potential sources upon which the American system strategy Shield and expected departure missile attack against the United States is primarily Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Cuba and any country fall under the classification of "rogue States", as adopted by Washington. As is clear occupies two important Ostitan East, one Arab and other Islamic site "heart" in the sources of threat to the United States and encouraging the construction of this system. Meanwhile, the process of advancing Iran and Iraq because existing American detente in relations - North Korean and continues to expect internal collapse of the latter in the coming years and increase the likelihood of integration with the South Korean section as the integration of East Germany with the West, this is the one hand and on the other hand due to the deteriorating economic conditions in Cuba, which seems to be the other in the final fifteen minutes of her revolutionary, and expected many to conclude after an absence Castro. Even his presence back militarism and menacing supposed to problems of poverty and the economy exhausted and the efforts to maintain the cohesion of the state itself. American administrations position of the improvement noted beginning to return this issue strongly to the front of the international political events coincided with the election of George Bush and the Republicans the White House, who adopted the "acceleration" in the building of missile defense network as a national security issues that have been invested in the election campaign on the background of a "slowdown" shown by the Democrats to move forward with the project. The Clinton administration months of the recent decision has been taken to postpone a decision on the matter, which exploited until the end, Republicans accused their opponents of being Itrakhun to defend sensitive national security of the United States. The reasons for the postponement of the Clinton administration to take a crucial decision back to a combination of factors, including: Non get Russia and China, the European Union and hope to reach a compromise formula with those parties not provocative to implement the project. Deep suspicions in practical effectiveness of the entire system after the failure of several famous test launch test went fishing missiles to attack American targets on American land. The high financial cost of the program, which is in some estimates exceed forty billion dollars.This background showing their location by the missile defense strategy in electoral campaigns bid for the presidency important because it sets an initial question about how serious the risks assumed strategy and the extent of overstatement, which quickly pushed the idea that occupies huge "essence of American national security" in the next stage. American justifications to justify the Justifications cited by Washington for its allies and enemies alike are based mostly on two key elements: That the missile defense system is not causing any radical changes in the status quo of the global security and balance, this network is designed to repel missiles limited individual may give intentionally or by mistake on this state "rogue" or those, and not designed to - can not - be overwhelming repulsed an attack by missiles Menhmrh profusely Whether such an attack comes from Russia or China, the countries most affected by the imbalance caused by this network. Thus, the "mutual deterrence" by keeping international balance remains and fears of disruption of that balance between the major powers exaggerated. This network may evolve to include the future of NATO itself, and thus the harmony of the partnership with Europe rather than keeping away from them.
But the American justification involves example: It tends value of the project "defensive and propaganda" as a major essential component of a strategy the Republicans in defending the potential risks. If such a system can not effectively repel an attack from Russia or China, it is no exaggeration to give him and trying to persuade potential public opinion vitality and decentralize the region. The attempt this with the Washington marketing idea defense limited the effectiveness of the system remains surrounded by deep doubt, it is natural that the design of such a system taking into account the possibility converted and developed quickly, in emergency situations, to be able to repel the attacks heavy. The fact that any of the States that go to this system any "rogue States" on an advance suicide when it launched a missile against the United States. And discussion of this contradiction is the essence of the talk about the Middle Eastern dimension of the system. Reflections and reactions Strategy Expected Multiple levels of the strategic repercussions and reactions anticipated by the American missile defense system at the level of global security generally, and in the Middle East in particular: First: the level Alaalmimn expected to create implications of this system at the global level a climate similar to the Cold War atmosphere where security threats are global mutual continental arms race and paid enormous strides forward, due to a number of important strategic considerations, in the forefront: This system works on the strategic imbalance specifically with China and Russia can not be tolerated by those two countries. On one hand, if the process of completing its application provides the United States an unprecedented strategic superiority on those two leaving them Msfti back to the strategic vulnerability of utmost not Tslaha in maximum tension in the post-war era. The use of the system across the United States can bring down any ballistic missile based on it, in theory, from China or Russia, while not able either of these two refute any American rocket from the same level ballistic. In other words, at a time when the United States is immune from any rocket attack outside because they can irreversible countries of the world all be exposed to any American rocket attack since none of the nations of the world do not have the capacity buffer itself owned by the United States, a situation that did not happen strategic flawed in any time in past decades that followed World War II. This system works to expose convention limiting the spread of ballistic missiles (ABM) to the risk of cancellation. This Convention, which took place between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1972 had banned the establishment of such networks, national defense, and kept the airspace open and exposed to attack as a means of mutual deterrence to all States, where not make any state to use ballistic missiles intercontinental missiles for fear that the response will be in kind of by the State, which was exposed to an attack. Now theoretically the United States can progress so without fear of retaliation from the same type. Fear that this system will not only protect the land specifically American, and that it will not only be the first phase of the American security strategy "globalized" more serious than might appear at first glance. There will be subsequent stages in the context of this strategy aims to provide cover similar missile defense for Washington's allies, such as geographically distant from Japan, Taiwan, or on the borders of China and traveling vital and frustrate its supremacy in the regional, which brings the relaxed sleep eyes of Chinese strategists. Concern of the EU countries, ally across the Atlantic to Washington and the historic partner in NATO, from the system and felt that Washington does not receive not the Atlantic partnership to adopt strategies for global security, while criticizing it Alo'roureyen strongly when deciding on the European security alone and without consultation. The idea was met with severe criticism missile system and Brod, even before the Great State closest political and strategic to the United States. It may be noted that the increasing frequency of the draft shield American anti-missile accompanied by the European Bank for Atlantic escalation projects "Europeanization" security of the European continent through the formation of a European security force separate from NATO, or deepen component and the European identity of NATO itself. Despite all the criticism, direct or indirect attack on the American project by the European allies, and threats internalized the transatlantic partnership between the United States and Western Europe, Washington stubbornly insists on the move until posed with some voices from European prospects, even far-reaching that this the beginning of the disintegration of NATO and the same isolation United States and Europe each individual to establish a special security away from the long-standing partnership of the Second World War and the evolution of the cold war. Second: in the Middle Alaustrgem central strategy in the Middle East, the missile defense debate and controversy going around not give this parallel dimension size of its importance, particularly in terms of its negative effects on the region. There is no calculation for the opinion of the Governments and peoples of the region in their interest, particularly since the Arab states silent on the subject and heard no objection seriously by the United States does not pay even forced to explain and justify this program for the region's countries and public opinion. The dimension of the Middle Eastern American missile defense system in three dimensions: Serious allegations of threat to the security of states and cities by American missiles Iranian or Iraqi. Israel's role and its place in this system. Marketing missile defense systems in the Gulf region and the revitalization of American sales. First: Suppose sensation serious risk that both Iraq and Iran possess, or Simlkan, missiles that can hit American cities, as opposed to estimates of the UN disarmament committees at least as far as the side of Iraq. Although this hypothesis and to detect the seriousness of the allegation Iranian danger or the Iraqi question should be directed meditation and following it: Is it possible that Baghdad or Tehran to the suicide voluntary and even launch missiles at any one American city, in the light of estimating profits and losses as a result of this step? Is it possible to Baghdad in the light of the solution and continues to solve Iraq from destruction and siege at the hands of Washington and governed by the Iraqi file in the Security Council for ten years although it did not launch even one shot on any American city, as well as to launch a missile? Is it possible to provide Tehran in the light of the solution and still solve Iran because of the embargo and tighten the American - the western and without even fired one shot at the American land, as well as to launch a missile? Can any analysis equally strategic objective and rational say that the two countries are looking at the amount of retaliation and revenge event expected to step foot launch missiles against American cities? Allen asks decision-makers in the capitals of any of the proceeds of military, political and diplomatic than can be achieved against such adventure suicide? Wallis more logical to think the enemies of the United States in the Middle East, whether states or organizations who have, presumably, intercontinental missiles and worried Washington, that it is better for them a thousand times, that they want to go to war breaking bone with the United States to strike its interests in region instead fight a losing war across missiles against cities and lands? Probably say here that such accounts are inside the "rationality and rational policy," which does not apply to politicize any of the two countries, but in fact denies this statement through its policy of the two countries themselves in recent years, which is governed by profit and loss accounts especially in dealing with major countries and the United States in particular. Even possible to say that even step invasion of Kuwait, despite the wishes of, the decision has been taken when the Iraqi side to the logic of profit and loss accounts, and after that understanding Hints American, rightly or wrong, that Washington would not care about the case to step oldest Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. As to Iraq itself, subject to the profit and loss accounts of rationality at the height of his military defeat during the war did not resort to the use of nuclear or chemical weapons against the coalition armies application of the logic of estimating the response expected by the opponent. And applies to Iran, which refrained from engaging in the war according to the profit and loss accounts delicate political governed by the logic of a realistic and pragmatic. It also abandoned the idea of "exporting revolution" docile to the logic of political realism. It years ago to pursue a moderate foreign policy objective of changing the image of Iran in the West and the world of a "terrorist and fanatic" to a modern and rational. It is therefore likely even a 1% say that the Iraqi or Iranian missiles will be brought to the American territory in the coming years is, I do not deserve to be generated strategic missile defense searching for the enemy in parts of the earth. This eventuality is also assumed that the United States policy towards those countries had not changed and remained intransigent and not open. Certainly, the lack of possibility launching of an Iraqi or Iranian missile towards the United States will take hold in if Washington decided to adopt a policy of hostility towards the two lower heading towards cooperation and not beating the drums of war. If we have noted that the system of sanctions and the embargo on Iraq Il to the disintegration at the end of the day, and that the policy of moderation in the Iranian foreign policy is Baltrsch even among the hard-liners (especially in the decision-making circles military and strategic) may we expected the American relations - Iraqi and American - Iranian direction less escalation and hostile in the next ten years, despite what now seems tense sudden carrot review by the American administration Republic to prove oneself and chart a course different view different than any other clear goal, which means that the course will not go much will boomerang into reality says that the blockade Iraq is on the downtrend in the curve. For all this, the development of the two countries, Iraq and Iran, on top of the list of risks that threaten the delusional American national security is directly exaggeration meaningless unless it has other goals undeclared. Second: The location of Israel in the Aldvaaihna There intersections between Israeli missile defense strategy and its American spoke for the first time and justified in terms of the development of Iraq and Iran at the site of Advanced threatening to American national security, and notes on the future of the strategic relationship between the two parties and outward towards new horizons unprecedented. It is the first foundation for a strategic change that has occurred is on the agenda priorities of the Israeli strategy after the Gulf War and the arrival of Iraqi missile to Tel Aviv. Shortly war, and the impact of the failure of the American Patriot system in toppling Iraqi missile, Israel worked to develop the program tremendous Arrow missile systems aimed at establishing a network of missile defense is not penetrated by any Iraqi missile, or Iranian or Syrian or Egyptian. The United States engaged in the program from the outset strongly support and coordination, which made him more than $ 1.1 billion, as well as the substantive participation and bilateral programs. Israel has succeeded in the development of the sophisticated missile defense systems and facilities excelled at the American technology itself. Israel announced in the last quarter of last year, it published regulations Soaik Arrow defensive missile is protected from attack from abroad. In perspective, the Israeli threats against the first built Arrow defense system comes from Iraq and Iran. This means that the Israeli strategy here in line with their counterparts in the American perception that the threat to the territory of the two countries comes from Iraq and Iran. The new thing here is that this consensus is happening for the first time such depths, especially by the United States. Previously, Alnzertan match against American and Israeli sources danger in the Middle East against the "interests of the two countries" and not against "the territory of the two countries." The danger which threatens the "land of Israel" was not considered by the Americans a threat to their land (Syria, Egypt, Iraq, the PLO and the Soviet influence, and the States and the revolutionary organizations in the region ...). Now, because of active American policy escalating this consensus emerged and the evolution clearly fueling him certainly new patterns of tension "missile" will beset the region in the next phase. The imbalance missile defense systems and associated for Israel blatantly will not receive intimate reception by Arab capitals in the Orient. The rates will increase from the race and a further drain on resources of the region and opens a new chapter in the chapters of duplication of American policy in the region, which claims that it wants to support the development and stability in the region and on cords wars and tension. Third: Marketing defense systems in the American Alkhalijama third issue is linked to the idea above is the impact of the recent missile defense system on the attempts to market the American air defense systems in the Gulf. It certainly create an atmosphere "missile tension" in the region accompanied by several developments such as heating outlook hostile to Iraq and Iran from this angle, and the superiority of Israel in missile defense systems, and the disillusionment of Arab States, the Gulf states continue to notice the potential threat from Iran and Iraq, and oppose any Gulf collective security system that does not depend on the outside world, all that will expand the sales market American missile defense systems and invigorate. Did not leave the United States this in the guesswork and analysis by the William Cohen, Secretary of Defense, former American, in November 2000 to visit an expanded marketing in the Gulf by offering to engage in the "defense cooperation initiative", based on the deployment of Patriot batteries regimes in the region to intercept any missile attack (and presumably implies coming from Iraq or Iran). Strangely enough, the topic that these systems to be marketed on the Gulf States are the regulations for Feztha Israel because of ineffectiveness tested in the Gulf War, Israel and replaced by Alvaro missile systems. * Visiting Fellow, Department of Middle Eastern Studies and Islamic University in Cambridge.

Protests after Israel prison riot

2007-10-23T11:22:00.000-04:00

Violence broke out after guards began searching the prisoners' bunks [AFP]

A riot in an Israeli jail that left one inmate dead has provoked an angry response from other Palestinian prisoners and sparked protests in the occupied territories. The Prisoners Club, the main group representing Palestinian prisoners, said on Tuesday that most of the nearly 10,000 security detainees held in Israel had gone on hunger strike.
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"This is a one-day hunger strike to protest against what happened at Ketziot," Issa Qaraqi, a Palestinian MP, said. However, Yarona Zamir, a spokeswoman for Israel's prison service, said that although some prisoners had refused their breakfast there was not a widespread hunger strike.
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Clashes broke out at the Ketziot prison in the southern Negev desert early on Monday as about 1,000 inmates attacked prison guards and torched the tents where they were being held.The guards fought back with tear gas, rubber bullets and batons. At least 15 prisoners and 15 guards were injured in the violence. 'Non-lethal weapon'The Israeli prison service said that it was a "non-lethal weapon" that had injured the prisoner who later died in hospital.It did not reveal his identity, but said he was 30-years old and serving a two-year sentence.Ashraf Ajrami, minister of prisoner affairs in the Palestinian government, said he was Mohammed al-Ashkar, a member of the Islamic Jihad group. The relatively short sentence suggested his offence must have been minor, he said. Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland in Ramallah said the violence at the Ketziot jail had provoked protests in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as almost every Palestinian family has a relative who is, or has been, a prisoner in Israel.Another protest was planned for the West Bank town of Ramallah on Tuesday.Rowland said the timing of the incident was important coming just weeks ahead of peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in the United States."Many Palestinians are saying, look if this type of thing going on just weeks before the peace talks what does it say about the extent to which the Israelis are really dealing in goodwill," she said.'Provocative' searchThe violence broke out after guards began searching prisoners' bunks for contraband.

The Prisoners Club said that the cell searches had been "provocative".Ajrami said the security sweep violated an agreement between the prisons service and inmates barring night-time searches and appeared to be aimed at intimidating imprisoned Palestinian fighters.
"It was intended to destroy the political movement," he said. "It was intended as an oppressive act."About 2,000 Palestinians are held at Ketziot, 700 of them have never had charges brought against them. The jail is set up like a military camp, with prisoners quartered in tents rather than buildings.

Israel and Hezbollah swap bodies

2007-10-15T20:55:00.000-04:00

Two bodies were exhumed from the Amiad military zone in northern Israel ahead of the exchange [AFP]

Lebanon's Hezbollah movement handed over the remains of an Israeli in exchange for a Lebanese prisoner and the bodies of two of the group's fighters.An Israeli military vehicle carrying the bodies of the dead Lebanese entered the no-man's zone along the border on Monday, crossing paths with Lebanese ambulances that were heading the other way.
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Lebanese troops kept journalists and civilians away from the Naqoura crossing as the exchange took place.The two dead Hezbollah fighters went missing last summer during the 34 day war between the Shia Muslim group and Israel in southern Lebanon.
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The identity of the Israeli body, that has arrived at the border in an ambulance accompanied by Hezbollah vehicles, was unclear।Al Jazeera's Rula Amin said from the Naqoura crossing that the body handed back to Israeli authorities was a civilian who died at sea and was washed up in Lebanon।Captured troopsLast year's conflict began after the Lebanese movement captured Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, two Israeli troops, and early reports had suggested that the remains being released were from a soldier.

Kuntar was to be freed at a later date in return for information on the fate of Ron Arad, an Israeli air force navigator who has been missing since October 1986 when his plane was shot down over southern Lebanon.An Israeli official tolf the AFP news agency that Hezbollah said it would provide information about Arad as part of Monday's deal. Kuntar was jailed for 542 years in 1980 for killing a scientist and his four-year-old daughter as well as an Israeli policeman.Bassam Kuntar, Samir's brother, told Al Jazeera that the exchange was a victory for Hezbollah and Lebanon."I think it is an additional victory for Lebanon and the Islamic resistance because we are speaking about the body of a civilian who was not captured during the July 2006 war," he said. Bassam said that Hezbollah would not give Israel any information about the two soldiers captured last July until his brother was released.Soldiers 'in Iran'Asharq Al-Awsat, an UK-based Arabic newspaper, reported on Sunday that the two Israelis had been handed to Iran and could be freed as part of a German-brokered exchange. It quoted a source identified as a high-ranking official in the office of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, as saying they had been transferred by the country's elite Revolutionary Guards. Last week, Germany decided last week to free an Iranian agent jailed for life for the murder of four Kurdish dissidents in 1992 and the newspaper suggested that this could have been part of the deal.Rula Amin said Monday's exchange had also been arranged by a German negotiator.A senior Israeli government official dismissed the Asharq Al-Awsat report as "nonsense" and said it was an "attempt to dissiminate disinformation on this extremely sensitive issue."Germany also dismissed suggestions that the agent was released as part of a deal with तेहरान

Posted by aljazeera.net

Sharif sets Pakistan return date

2007-08-30T13:03:00.000-04:00

Sharif said he would return to Lahore, his power base in the country's east

Nawaz Sharif, a former Pakistani leader, has said he will return home on September 10 to challenge General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, in forthcoming elections.

Sharif left Pakistan shortly after being ousted by Musharraf in a 1999 coup and risks arrest when he flies into capital Islamabad.
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At a news conference on Thursday, Sharif said: "Why am I going back? To respond to the call of duty ... To achieve the supremacy of the rule of law and the constitution and to rid my people of dictatorship forever."
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He described Musharraf's rule as illegitimate and said he would go straight to Lahore, his base of power in the east of the country, after landing in Islamabad.

Benazir Bhutto, another former prime minister, said on Wednesday that she had almost sealed a power-sharing deal with Musharraf under which he will quit as Pakistan's army chief.

But a presidential spokesman said on Thursday that Musharraf had yet to decide whether to step down as army chief.

Pakistan's Supreme Court ruled last week that Sharif, a two-time prime minister, should be allowed to return.

Sharif has vowed to oppose a bid by Musharraf for another term as president.
After he was overthrown, Sharif was sentenced to life in prison on graft and security charges. He was exiled in 2000.

With his term coming to an end and his popularity plummeting, Musharraf has turned to Bhutto for help to shore up his position, and his aides are meeting with the two-time prime minister in London.

But Bhutto has insisted an agreement would hinge on Musharraf stepping down as chief of the army, which has ruled for more than half Pakistan's history since independence in 1947.

'Setback'In an interview with the Financial Times published on Wednesday, Sharif, who is leader of the Pakistan Muslim League, called Bhutto's attempts to deal with Musharraf a "setback" and a "clear violation" of a deal agreed between them to do "no deals with military dictators".

In another development with potential political ramifications, Pakistan's supreme court agreed on Wednesday to hear an appeal against Musharraf's role as army commander.

The application was filed by Qazi Husssain Ahmed, the chief of Pakistan's main coalition of Islamist parties - the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, or United Action Front।

Javed Iqbal, a judge of the court, said: "The petition is fixed for regular hearing."
He said that objections from the court registrar's office that Ahmed had no authority to lodge the appeal, were "devoid of merit".

Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless military coup in 1999, is seeking re-election as president-in-uniform by parliament in September or October. "The people are fed up with the unconstitutional and dictatorial military regime," Ahmed said outside the court. The application says that under military regulations, Musharraf's term as chief of army staff had expired in 2001. Public pledge

The application also states that he was no longer eligible to continue in the post after turning 60 in August 2003. The legal challenge argues that in 2004, Musharraf had broken a public pledge to hang up his military uniform.
Musharraf has suffered a series of legal setbacks since his attempt in March to sack Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the chief justice of the supreme court। The court had reinstated Chaudhry in July after months of nationwide protests and then ruled last week that Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister, could return from exile.

Posted by aljazeera.net

Al-Qassam rocket

2007-05-30T10:53:00.000-04:00

The current Israeli military onslaught on the Gaza Strip, land and air, entitled "eradicate the Hamas movement and the elimination of its military wing Al-Qassam Battalions", and the main cause, according to the political circles and the Israeli Foreign Ministry, is to stop Qassam rockets falling on Jewish settlements and communities adjacent to the Gaza Strip। What is the story of the Qassam rockets, and when it started, and what are the real effects on the Israelis, and any prospects may emerge from the current war, and the role of the Qassam rocket?

The beginnings of industrialization and the gradual evolution

Use of locally manufactured Qassam rocket, entered the Palestinian resistance, a new phase of confrontation, which managed whenever wants to threaten the security of Israeli soldiers and settlers, and an unconfirmed number of deaths, not to mention the greater number of casualties, by the fall of missiles at Jewish settlements and military positions, and the failure of all attempts to prevent the occupation army, resistance came with the occupation in the equation of a new conflict। Confessions and Israeli military sources themselves, formed the Qassam rockets which the military wing of Hamas basically prepared and manufactured, qualitative leap in the performance of the strategy and tactics of resistance, imposed themselves on the field and military arenas, although simplicity that characterize this tactic, and despite suffering from a crisis in the Palestinian issue has not witnessed for decades। The resistance forces fought the midst of the first experiment to produce missiles threaten local settlements in the Gaza Strip during the first year of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, specifically late 2001, raw materials, and engineers are keen to develop continuously, where production has been more than a generation of them.

The initial stages of the rocket production and the means to search for explosive materials, and has faced many obstacles and difficulties, was the lack of necessary materials in the occupied territories, which led the engineering and development units of the armed wings of self-reliance in the manufacture of all materials necessary for the requirements of the missile. According to data of the Qassam Brigades, the first rocket produced by engineers reached 70 cm in length and 8 cm in diameter, and ranged between 2-3 km range, and held in the foreword explosive warhead containing 600 grams of a substance (TNT) of high explosives, and will be launched by Dasher. In the beginnings of manufacturing miss missile accuracy correction towards the objectives, which form an incentive for continued development and debugging that emerged when, not so long ago even announced development, and production of a new model is "Qassam 2", especially after radical amendments, which can range from access to the inside Israeli groupings. The length of 180 cm, and the range of between 9-12 km, and increased his load of explosives to hit 6 kg of high explosive, while the diameter of 12 cm. This was the qualitative development of resistance to shed more light upon further analysis of the nature and military strength, and according to "Shlomo Gazit" former head of military intelligence, the Qassam rocket features several foremost primitive manufacturing, ease of production, cheap. There has been no radical change in the way the rocket launch only appropriate Pitcher of the appropriate size, and thus are not controlled sensing, showed a number of video, which was distributed to the media the way ambush and rocket launchers. Where is arrested diagonally to the holder of three legs, and the elements of the Qassam, a device similar to the compass to restructure space, and adjusted accordingly, so become a military style has achieved successes on various levels. According to data army of occupation, resistance launched since the withdrawal from Gaza in September 2005 and at the time of writing, almost 1000 rocket-propelled grenade. Note that the most important towns fired Qassam rockets are : Sderot, Kibbutz Evere, Kfar Sa'ad, Kfar Azza, Nahal Oz, Ilit, Kissufim, Native Aatsra, Karni crossing, Vikim, Nair year, Kirm Shalom Netivot. In a precedent, the first of its kind, Qassam rocket landed on the coastal city of Ashkelon, and not the result of the fall recall any injuries, but the form of an ultimatum to the security hotline, which describes the city as "strategic" to contain the largest power generation plant belonging to the Electricity Company, and a "CTSA", which stores fuel and gas. Rockets effects on the domestic front after the occupation of evolution in the nature of Qassam rockets, the method of delivery, are not stray, but it is rare for the settlements came without any injuries or damage. It is noteworthy that the Israeli media had initially counted the house or car of the settlers or the army for damages, described as "minor", but after it became the missiles hit targets, media started talking about the "number" of houses, buildings and cars damaged as "serious" by bombing।

While the firing of rockets is in the midst of extremely complex and dangerous in light of the continuing flight of the reconnaissance plane and helicopter gunships, it resulted in the injury of dozens of settlers and soldiers various injuries, with damaged and destroyed dozens of houses in the colonies and commercial complexes and factories, in addition to military positions. In a quick look at the rate of firing rockets over the past six years, we find continuous escalation rate equal more than 200% annually. Although primitive Qassam rockets and manufacture of manual, the impact is clear to the Israelis who did not hide the great resonance in successive statements. Arrived with some Western media outlets that give strategic dimensions connected prevailing balance of power, while it described as primitive missile, which may change the face of the Middle East, as part of what CNN that the paper fierce in the region, it is not clear how these primitive rockets that affect the military balance in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and make "high-Israeli force" standing helplessly stranded, with the BBC channel that this missile is a corrosive effect on the transfer of Israeli military super power. All agreed views the Israeli political and military alike, as Qassam rockets growing threat to the occupation forces and settlements in the same time. Such missiles have started targeting for the settlement of "Sderot" adjacent to the Gaza Strip within the borders of occupied Palestine in 48, have their strengths and weaknesses and superiority in Badaeitha, it is difficult to monitor high-tech devices owned by the occupation army, which forced the Israelis to recognize their inability to prevent the launch. In this context, he said, "Avi Dichter," chief of the security "Shabak" and former Minister of Internal Security in the current security report submitted to the government, that the firing of Qassam rockets salary in an impressive manner. There include orderly start research and development, followed by the production of parts, Valterkib, then the distribution of roles field and responsibility for the launch, saying that the presence of the army in the Gaza Strip does not necessarily help to prevent the launching of these rockets. With the transfer of the Chief of Research at the military intelligence "Yossi Kobervasser" The Hamas movement through these missiles continues in its attempts to commit attacks against Israel strategy, and disbanded still continue to produce combat means, including missiles. Military experts also showed considerable Israelis pessimistic about the future of dealing with such rockets processed manually, especially after it succeeded in toppling the theory of "protection through the wall." Making security forums diminish the usefulness of the wall because it is no longer able to guarantee the security of Israel, Fsarukh Qassam on the wall means less appropriate for the situation, even if it is the opposite of what the army was forced to enter Khanions and Rafah, or closure of the border with Egypt. He even went to some security reports to talk about the inability of the former Prime Minister "Ariel Sharon" to sleep because of the problem of the missiles, which the Palestinians succeed in the capital Imatarwa by Israelis after they do that has found it difficult to martyrdom operations inside the territories occupied in 48 because of stringent security measures.

The Knesset deputy said, "Yisrael Hasson," Israel has become a hostage of the rockets of Hamas! With the military correspondent "Amir Rbabort" positives rocket saying : Although there are many generations of technological gap between disarmament flour used by the army, and between primitive missile launched by Hamas on Ashkelon, it smart bomb Thanks to its psychological, because one missile introduced tens of thousands of Israelis to the horror! । As for the direct effects of the missiles on the Israelis, are reflected in the following scenes : 1-enter periodic underground shelters. 2-disruption of schooling in all schools and educational institutions. 3 - The streets of pedestrians and the settlements are subject to a curfew. 4-high flee settlements and the targeted populations. 5-send more psychologists to address population of panic and shock they suffer. The form of escalating resistance to the rocket bombardment on Gaza settlements and some residential settlement inside the Green Line adjacent to Gaza, a political and military crisis Israel, under pressure from settlers to halt the bombing of the expected deaths and injuries, and much more destructive than ever before, where revolted in large demonstrations in some cities, demanding cessation. Evaluation procedures for the army to prevent rocket steady development in the manufacture of rockets hand, and the security strategy and military on the other hand, prompted the military establishment represented in the army for the biggest and broadest military campaign against the Gaza Strip. Such as : Days of Penitence, Field of Thorns, Hell rolling, Defensive Shield, a color-track firm, Faris night, the rainbow, southern arrow, firm road, the first shower, and finally the current campaign, all aimed at preventing the firing of Qassam rockets, and all failed to prevent the firing of rockets, which continued in the period between precipitation and again, the army also used several means to the same objective, namely : 1-bombing industrial workshops and lathes and metal plants. 2-activating warning systems security inside the settlements adjacent to Gaza. 3-demand from the Palestinian Authority deploy its forces north of the Gaza Strip to prevent the firing of rockets. 4-providing more than $ 20 million to complete early warning devices, voice, and fortify buildings surrounding settlements sector, and the immediate immunization of institutions and buildings that are in the range of the Qassam rockets, and install sirens and broadcasting via early warning device known as the "red dawn."

However, the long arm of Israeli helpless and useless in the face of resistance successive innovations in the development of missiles, more than that, the Israeli Foreign Ministry, "severed hand" and began the process of begging for international assistance through diplomatic campaign to halt the firing of rockets। The many analysis by the inability to overcome the Qassam rockets, including what political commentator "Ben cassette" : should stand bravely before the truth ॥ There is no army at this moment missiles toward a solution, the only way the occupation of the Gaza Strip and the result is dozens of dead Israelis, the loss of political momentum, a return to recession, the loss of hope, and then crawl back to abroad to international pressure. With Professor "Michel Freund" : Thousands of Israelis hiding in their homes waiting for the Qassam rocket can download over their heads, through the roofs of their homes that can not protect them rain, army officers say that the rocket is inaccurate, well, but it might hit your head! . After the failure of all security solutions and treatments, the military tried and innovation army tries to prevent the firing of rockets, the government economic solutions of funding promises generous financial settlements, particularly "Sderot", a package of support, and preferential excess in the areas of welfare, education, industry, health and employment. In step comes within the framework of changing the departure of the settlers, the Knesset majority for a bill granting special populations in adjacent areas of the Gaza Strip facilities tax, up 13%, as one of the front lines, as ratified by the Ministry of Defense multi-faceted plan to fortify towns in the vicinity of Gaza, at a cost of $ 50 million. However basket failed promises, facilities and attractions that characterized the government to settlers in establishing trust with the spirit, and convince them to stay and not go. This came on the tongue of one's own country "Sderot" favorite target of a missile resistance when he said : our life here has turned into an unbearable hell, we can live in this manner, we can not close their eyes throughout the night, Nhamlk remain in the sky all the time for fear of Qassam surprises! .

Posted By Al-Jazeera.net
Translated by NewsClock.com

Israelis children signing missiles

2007-05-24T13:56:00.000-04:00

Israelis children signing missiles. The Israeli’s government brain washes their children by having them writing their names on the missiles and a message saying with Love to the Lebanese children.

LOOK below what did the missiles do after were signed by the Israelis Kids.

Washington rejects Amnesty International accusations of violating human rights

2007-05-24T13:34:00.000-04:00

The United States rejected accusations by Amnesty International to use the world "Square big battle" in the "war on terror", terming the OSCE report published in this regard "political document"। A spokesman for the State Department Tom Casey "it is quite clear that Amnesty International considers us an ideological process to be directed punches and, unfortunately, this is not anything new।" The annual report, which was published yesterday in London drew criticism of the United States, and believed that "the war on Iraq, the climate of fear in George Bush's administration published worldwide increased international divisions।" The report also accused Washington of "double discourse on human rights by portraying itself as the champion in the defense of these rights and the rule of law on one hand and the application of policies undermined the most elementary principles of international law at the same time" on the other hand. The report says that the United States these practices "that jeopardize security in the long term, undermine credibility in the international arena." Amnesty International pointed out that in "late 2006, the United States was still holding thousands of people without charge or trial in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo." The report stated that "there is no senior official in the American government was accountable for acts of torture and ill-treatment suffered by persons arrested under the so-called war on terrorism, despite evidence to suggest that the exercise of violence in a systematic way."

Secret prisons

and said Secretary General of the Organization Irene Khan that "Nothing reflects the globalization of human rights violations over the deportation sector", in reference to the transfer of hundreds of people illegally to countries such as Syria, Jordan and Egypt। She Khan regretted "the American government to continue the deaf ears of the whole world calls for the closure of Guantanamo।" She said that Washington was "not totally regretted the establishment of a wide network based on the violation of human rights in the name of fighting terrorism," and that the results of this policy is "retreat moral authority of the United States to its lowest in the world while the insecurity permeates more than ever." On the American policy in Iraq and described the Amnesty International American military intervention as a "very adventurous", and considered that this conflict has had negative consequences on human rights.

Iraq attack kills five US soldiers

2007-05-12T12:42:00.000-04:00

Major General William Caldwell said the whereabouts of three US soldiers was unknown

Posted by Aljazeera.net

Five US soldiers were killed and three went missing when their unit was attacked south of Baghdad, the US military has said.

The attack on a patrol of seven US soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter occured early on Saturday morning.
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The US military said the attack took place at 4:44am near Mahmudiya, about 30km south of the capital.
Mahmudiya is a stronghold of Sunni Arab fighters opposed to the US-backed government in Iraq.
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Troops who arrived later found five of the soldiers dead and the other three remained missing, according to a statement from Major-General William Caldwell, the chief US military spokesman in Iraq.
"The quick reaction force reported finding five members of the team killed in action and three others whose duty status and whereabouts are unknown," Caldwell said.
Search operations
The military refused to specify whether the Iraqi interpreter was among those killed or among the missing, citing security reasons.
Soldiers were searching for the missing, using drone planes and jets and setting up checkpoints throughout the area.
Soldiers were also trying to enlist support from local leaders for information.
Caldwell said: "Make no mistake: We will never stop looking for our soldiers until their status is definitively determined, and we continue to pray for their safe return."
The attack occurred nearly a year after two American soldiers went missing following a June 16 attack in the same area, prompting a massive search. Their bodies were found tied together with a bomb between one victim's legs several days later.
Two other US soldiers remain missing in action from the current conflict, including Sergeant Matt Maupin, of Batavia, Ohio, missing since April 2004 and Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie, a 41-year-old Iraqi-born reserve soldier from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who was abducted while visiting his Iraqi wife on October 23 in Baghdad.

The British vampire is resigning

2007-05-10T08:21:00.000-04:00

Tony Blair the war vampire

Darryl Cunningham the artist

The British vampire is resigning

Today the beginning of the end of Tony Blair the war vampire
The Guardian newspaper said British Prime Minister Tony Blair will announce his resignation today, Thursday, the leadership of the Labor Party in the same room, which was inaugurated by the start of a campaign leading to the party on June 11, 1994
The newspaper added that Blair would end the curtain on his leadership at the center, which the heirs of John Smith, he was able to achieve the success story electoral what has become known as the new Labor party.
So the British vampire is leaving the office after Killing more than 650,000 of Iraqi people under the name of freedom and fighting against terror. (do they think we are stupid maybe)

Tony
NewsClock.com

Israeli report reveals the cruel torture of Palestinian prisoners

2007-05-06T17:49:00.000-04:00

Posted by aljazeera.net in Arabic and translated to English by NewsClock.com

Two Human right organizations in Haifa revealed that Israel is cruel torture against Palestinian prisoners and detainees brushing aside international instruments। She said the B'tselem human rights in the Palestinian territories and the status of individual rights in a joint report that today, Sunday, the Israeli General Security Service (Shabak) has torturing Palestinian detainees in ways that do not humane and multi-through investigation. According to the report, which is based certificates for 73 Palestinian prisoners in the period between July 2005 and March 2006 that 96% of the detainees were subjected to closer grasp for long periods in painful and that 64% of them had received threats and insults, cruel campus with 45% of sleep and hunger of 73%. In most cases - report adds-Chabak pursue ways to spare the captive from the outside world and the isolation of a few days of investigation and arrest humiliating conditions amid beatings and psychological pressure. It describes the Israeli investigators linking hands and legs detainee seat metal sorely deprived for a long period during which to eat and sleep in order to break his spirit, pointing out that "the pursuit of these roads are under the guidance of the Israeli government, fixed and ratification by officials and sponsored by the law."

To prove the government involvement with the Chabak in the torture of Palestinian detainees, the report pointed to a 500 complaints filed against the Chabak since 2001, pointing out that not even one single criminal investigation was opened. He added : "We have been mandated Shabak, a former investigator to look into complaints against the investigators, has decided that in the majority of cases the complaints uncertified In some few instances in which he affirmed that torture was behalf State closed the file based on tendentious interpretations." Five hundred complaints were filed against Chabak not investigated any of them (Jazeera Net) cells bleak In Israeli report said the detainee "t" in his testimony that the investigators threatened to arrest his family and evaded the demolition of his home draw with the detainee "M.. H "(37 years), they threatened to arrest his wife and his eldest daughter, and told him that they had ways of achieving, especially with ladies amid hints of the means of achieving sustainability sexual nature. The detainee also said "p. P "(24 years) - According to the report - that the investigator returned to the interrogation room after an hour of departure and told him that investigators were raped his wife pointing out its intention to open the area to watch himself. The report pointed out that investigations Chabak with the Palestinian detainees spread over very long hours and placed in solitary unclean and closed the Bulblet Dimly illuminated 24 hours a day would lead to the loss of the ability to set the time for pointing out boom phenomenon deprive detainee from meeting with his lawyer. The report pointed out that torture is a formal endorsement (Jazeera Net) of guarding the guards? He noted the B'Tselem report, the Center for the rights of the individual that Israeli High Court of Justice had in 1999 imposed significant restrictions on the use of violence with the detainees, noting that the Supreme rule was not clear and unequivocal enough, which led to open a wide margin of interpretations and thus to expand acts of torture and added, "so turned to the Supreme Court a mere rubber stamp." The report asked the government to intervene in order to stop acts of torture and called for closer investigation of video and wonder : from guarding the guards always lose accountability? In commenting on the report said the mouthpiece of the Ministry of elimination that the Israeli biased and not based of a representative sample, noting that the possibility of examining the accusations seriously because the complainants Mahjoubi identity. Manufacturer : Israel tortures worse than Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib (Jazeera Net) legitimize the crimes after his deputy counsel asked the manufacturer to the report by saying that the torture in detention Israel is worse than Guantanamo detainees, Abu Ghraib, pointing out that they are away from the camera media. He said the manufacturer of the island indicated that the Israeli Supreme Court began allowing torture means "shaking" and the practice of so-called "unreasonable pressure" and allowed the Shabak continue to commit crimes, and added, "It determines the reasonableness of this or that pressure?." The manufacturer of Red Cross and international bodies to carry out its tasks, indicating his intention to visit some prisons to collect testimonies and presented in the Knesset, attacked the Ministry of eliminating ignored serious charges.

How Barack Obama learned to love Israel

2007-04-30T12:20:00.000-04:00

first met Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama almost ten years ago when, as my representative in the Illinois state senate, he came to speak at the University of Chicago। He impressed me as progressive, intelligent and charismatic। I distinctly remember thinking 'if only a man of this calibre could become president one day।'On Friday Obama gave a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Chicago। It had been much anticipated in American Jewish political circles which buzzed about his intensive efforts to woo wealthy pro-Israel campaign donors who up to now have generally leaned towards his main rival Senator Hillary Clinton.Reviewing the speech, Ha'aretz Washington correspondent Shmuel Rosner concluded that Obama

"sounded as strong as Clinton, as supportive as Bush, as friendly as Giuliani. At least rhetorically, Obama passed any test anyone might have wanted him to pass. So, he is pro-Israel. Period."Israel is "our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy," Obama said, assuring his audience that "we must preserve our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military assistance and continuing work on the Arrow and related missile defense programs।" Such advanced multi-billion dollar systems he asserted, would help Israel "deter missile attacks from as far as Tehran and as close as Gaza." As if the starved, besieged and traumatized population of Gaza are about to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles. Obama offered not a single word of criticism of Israel, of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians.There was no comfort for the hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza who live in the dark, or the patients who cannot get dialysis, because of what Israeli human rights group B'Tselem termed "one cold, calculated decision, made by Israel's prime minister, defense minister, and IDF chief of staff" last summer to bomb the only power plant in Gaza," a decision that "had nothing to do with the attempts to achieve [the] release [of a captured soldier] nor any other military need." It was a gratuitous war crime, one of many condemned by human rights organizations, against an occupied civilian population who under the Fourth Geneva Convention Israel is obligated to protect.

From left to right, Michelle Obama, then Illinois state senator Barack Obama, Columbia University Professor Edward Said and Mariam Said at a May 1998 Arab community event in Chicago at which Edward Said gave the keynote speech। (Image from archives of Ali Abunimah)

While constantly emphasizing his concern about the threat Israelis face from Palestinians, Obama said nothing about the exponentially more lethal threat Israelis present to Palestinians। In 2006, according to B'Tselem, Israeli occupation forces killed 660 Palestinians of whom 141 were children -- triple the death toll for 2005. In the same period, 23 Israelis were killed by Palestinians, half the number of 2005 (by contrast, 500 Israelis die each year in road accidents).But Obama was not entirely insensitive to ordinary lives. He recalled a January 2006 visit to the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona that resembled an ordinary American suburb where he could imagine the sounds of Israeli children at "joyful play just like my own daughters." He saw a home the Israelis told him was damaged by a Hizbullah rocket (no one had been hurt in the incident).Six months later, Obama said, "Hizbullah launched four thousand rocket attacks just like the one that destroyed the home in Kiryat Shmona, and kidnapped Israeli service members."Obama's phrasing suggests that Hizbullah launched thousands of rockets in an unprovoked attack, but it's a complete distortion. Throughout his speech he showed a worrying propensity to present discredited propaganda as fact. As anyone who checks the chronology of last summer's Lebanon war will easily discover, Hizbullah only launched lethal barrages of rockets against Israeli towns and cities after Israel had heavily bombed civilian neighborhoods in Lebanon killing hundreds of civilians, many fleeing the Israeli onslaught. Obama excoriated Hizbullah for using "innocent people as shields." Indeed, after dozens of civilians were massacred in an Israeli air attack on Qana on July 30, Israel "initially claimed that the military targeted the house because Hezbollah fighters had fired rockets from the area," according to an August 2 statement from Human Rights Watch. The statement added: "Human Rights Watch researchers who visited Qana on July 31, the day after the attack, did not find any destroyed military equipment in or near the home. Similarly, none of the dozens of international journalists, rescue workers and international observers who visited Qana on July 30 and 31 reported seeing any evidence of Hezbollah military presence in or around the home. Rescue workers recovered no bodies of apparent Hezbollah fighters from inside or near the building." The Israelis subsequently changed their story, and neither in Qana, nor anywhere else did Israel ever present, or international investigators ever find evidence to support the claim Hizbullah had a policy of using civilians as human shields. In total, forty-three Israeli civilians were killed by Hizbullah rockets during the thirty-four day war. For every Israeli civilian who died, over twenty-five Lebanese civilians were killed by indiscriminate Israeli bombing -- over one thousand in total, a third of them children. Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israel's use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians. But Obama defended Israel's assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its "legitimate right to defend itself."There was absolutely nothing in Obama's speech that deviated from the hardline consensus underpinning US policy in the region. Echoing the sort of exaggeration and alarmism that got the United States into the Iraq war, he called Iran "one of the greatest threats to the United States, to Israel, and world peace." While advocating "tough" diplomacy with Iran he confirmed that "we should take no option, including military action, off the table." He opposed a Palestinian unity government between Hamas and Fatah and insisted "we must maintain the isolation of Hamas" until it meets the Quartet's one-sided conditions. He said Hizbullah, which represents millions of Lebanon's disenfranchised and excluded, "threatened the fledgling movement for democracy" and blamed it for "engulf[ing] that entire nation in violence and conflict."Over the years since I first saw Obama speak I met him about half a dozen times, often at Palestinian and Arab-American community events in Chicago including a May 1998 community fundraiser at which Edward Said was the keynote speaker. In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak at a campaign fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor. On that occasion and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing.As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front." He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, "Keep up the good work!"But Obama's gradual shift into the AIPAC camp had begun as early as 2002 as he planned his move from small time Illinois politics to the national scene. In 2003, Forward reported on how he had "been courting the pro-Israel constituency." He co-sponsored an amendment to the Illinois Pension Code allowing the state of Illinois to lend money to the Israeli government. Among his early backers was Penny Pritzker -- now his national campaign finance chair -- scion of the liberal but staunchly Zionist family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain. (The Hyatt Regency hotel on Mount Scopus was built on land forcibly expropriated from Palestinian owners after Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967). He has also appointed several prominent pro-Israel advisors.

Obama has also been close to some prominent Arab Americans, and has received their best advice। His decisive trajectory reinforces a lesson that politically weak constituencies have learned many times: access to people with power alone does not translate into influence over policy. Money and votes, but especially money, channelled through sophisticated and coordinated networks that can "bundle" small donations into million dollar chunks are what buy influence on policy. Currently, advocates of Palestinian rights are very far from having such networks at their disposal. Unless they go out and do the hard work to build them, or to support meaningful campaign finance reform, whispering in the ears of politicians will have little impact. (For what it's worth, I did my part. I recently met with Obama's legislative aide, and wrote to Obama urging a more balanced policy towards Palestine.)If disappointing, given his historically close relations to Palestinian-Americans, Obama's about-face is not surprising. He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power. Palestinian-Americans are in the same position as civil libertarians who watched with dismay as Obama voted to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act, or immigrant rights advocates who were horrified as he voted in favor of a Republican bill to authorize the construction of a 700-mile fence on the border with Mexico.Only if enough people know what Obama and his competitors stand for, and organize to compel them to pay attention to their concerns can there be any hope of altering the disastrous course of US policy in the Middle East. It is at best a very long-term project that cannot substitute for support for the growing campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions needed to hold Israel accountable for its escalating violence and solidifying apartheid.

posted by Ali Abunimah is the co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse

Swedes willing to lower living standards for climate

2007-04-24T21:35:00.000-04:00

posted by thelocal.se

Four out of 10 Swedes are willing to lower their standard of living to help stop global warming, while seven out of 10 say they are worried about climate change, a study published on Tuesday showed.
"The concern is to be expected but the willingness to change the way we live is more widespread than seen before. Climate issues are very powerful and affect people profoundly," Anders Lindholm, the head of the Demoskop polling institute which carried out the study, told the daily Dagens Nyheter.
"Previously people were not so affected by the phenomenon but now it has a personal impact on people. Buying environmentally friendly products, such as cars, now has status," he added.
A total of 89 percent of those polled said it was important for individuals to take responsibility for a better climate and as many as 72 percent said they already recycle their rubbish.
Many also said they buy environmentally friendly and locally produced products, or would be willing to do so.
Only a few however are willing to make changes in the way they travel and about half of the respondents said they would not travel less.
The study, in which some 2,500 people were interviewed on climate and environmental issues, was compiled by Demoskop and commissioned by Swedish TV4.

Malmström 'not interested' in Liberal Party leadership

2007-04-24T21:29:00.000-04:00

Posted by thelocal.se

Sweden's EU Minister Cecilia Malmström has announced that she is not interested in succeeding Lars Leijonborg as leader of the Liberal Party। Malmström said that there were a number of reasons why she did not want to become party leader, the most important of which being that she has two small children. "I'll say now what I have said before: I do not wish to become party leader," she said.The minister has called for a broad-based discussion within the party regarding its direction and future leader. But she has ruled out making herself available for the position, even if she were to prove the most popular choice. "I have no reason to reevaluate my decision," she said. Schools Minister Jan Björklund is hotly tipped to take over after Leijonborg, who announced his resignation on Monday. Prior to Tuesday's announcement, all major bookmakers regarded Cecilia Malmström as second favourite to take the post.

How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

2007-04-19T22:10:00.000-04:00

Bush Salute

Posted By The Guardian

Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell in WashingtonSaturday September 25, 2004

George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy

The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.
Remarkably, little of Bush's dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the documentation involving him. But now the multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush's business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson, George W, as he seeks re-election.
While there is no suggestion that Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, the documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade. The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen's US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war.
Tantalising
Bush was also on the board of at least one of the companies that formed part of a multinational network of front companies to allow Thyssen to move assets around the world.
Thyssen owned the largest steel and coal company in Germany and grew rich from Hitler's efforts to re-arm between the two world wars. One of the pillars in Thyssen's international corporate web, UBC, worked exclusively for, and was owned by, a Thyssen-controlled bank in the Netherlands. More tantalising are Bush's links to the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC), based in mineral rich Silesia on the German-Polish border. During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour from the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The ownership of CSSC changed hands several times in the 1930s, but documents from the US National Archive declassified last year link Bush to CSSC, although it is not clear if he and UBC were still involved in the company when Thyssen's American assets were seized in 1942.
Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush's involvement. All three are readily available, thanks to the efficient US archive system and a helpful and dedicated staff at both the Library of Congress in Washington and the National Archives at the University of Maryland.
The first set of files, the Harriman papers in the Library of Congress, show that Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of a number of companies involved with Thyssen.
The second set of papers, which are in the National Archives, are contained in vesting order number 248 which records the seizure of the company assets. What these files show is that on October 20 1942 the alien property custodian seized the assets of the UBC, of which Prescott Bush was a director. Having gone through the books of the bank, further seizures were made against two affiliates, the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. By November, the Silesian-American Company, another of Prescott Bush's ventures, had also been seized.
The third set of documents, also at the National Archives, are contained in the files on IG Farben, who was prosecuted for war crimes.
A report issued by the Office of Alien Property Custodian in 1942 stated of the companies that "since 1939, these (steel and mining) properties have been in possession of and have been operated by the German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to that country's war effort".
Prescott Bush, a 6ft 4in charmer with a rich singing voice, was the founder of the Bush political dynasty and was once considered a potential presidential candidate himself. Like his son, George, and grandson, George W, he went to Yale where he was, again like his descendants, a member of the secretive and influential Skull and Bones student society. He was an artillery captain in the first world war and married Dorothy Walker, the daughter of George Herbert Walker, in 1921.
In 1924, his father-in-law, a well-known St Louis investment banker, helped set him up in business in New York with Averill Harriman, the wealthy son of railroad magnate E H Harriman in New York, who had gone into banking.
One of the first jobs Walker gave Bush was to manage UBC. Bush was a founding member of the bank and the incorporation documents, which list him as one of seven directors, show he owned one share in UBC worth $125.
The bank was set up by Harriman and Bush's father-in-law to provide a US bank for the Thyssens, Germany's most powerful industrial family.
August Thyssen, the founder of the dynasty had been a major contributor to Germany's first world war effort and in the 1920s, he and his sons Fritz and Heinrich established a network of overseas banks and companies so their assets and money could be whisked offshore if threatened again.
By the time Fritz Thyssen inherited the business empire in 1926, Germany's economic recovery was faltering. After hearing Adolf Hitler speak, Thyssen became mesmerised by the young firebrand. He joined the Nazi party in December 1931 and admits backing Hitler in his autobiography, I Paid Hitler, when the National Socialists were still a radical fringe party. He stepped in several times to bail out the struggling party: in 1928 Thyssen had bought the Barlow Palace on Briennerstrasse, in Munich, which Hitler converted into the Brown House, the headquarters of the Nazi party. The money came from another Thyssen overseas institution, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvarrt in Rotterdam.
By the late 1930s, Brown Brothers Harriman, which claimed to be the world's largest private investment bank, and UBC had bought and shipped millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to Germany, both feeding and financing Hitler's build-up to war.
Between 1931 and 1933 UBC bought more than $8m worth of gold, of which $3m was shipped abroad. According to documents seen by the Guardian, after UBC was set up it transferred $2m to BBH accounts and between 1924 and 1940 the assets of UBC hovered around $3m, dropping to $1m only on a few occasions.
In 1941, Thyssen fled Germany after falling out with Hitler but he was captured in France and detained for the remainder of the war.
There was nothing illegal in doing business with the Thyssens throughout the 1930s and many of America's best-known business names invested heavily in the German economic recovery. However, everything changed after Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Even then it could be argued that BBH was within its rights continuing business relations with the Thyssens until the end of 1941 as the US was still technically neutral until the attack on Pearl Harbor. The trouble started on July 30 1942 when the New York Herald-Tribune ran an article entitled "Hitler's Angel Has $3m in US Bank". UBC's huge gold purchases had raised suspicions that the bank was in fact a "secret nest egg" hidden in New York for Thyssen and other Nazi bigwigs. The Alien Property Commission (APC) launched an investigation.
There is no dispute over the fact that the US government seized a string of assets controlled by BBH - including UBC and SAC - in the autumn of 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy act. What is in dispute is if Harriman, Walker and Bush did more than own these companies on paper.
Erwin May, a treasury attache and officer for the department of investigation in the APC, was assigned to look into UBC's business. The first fact to emerge was that Roland Harriman, Prescott Bush and the other directors didn't actually own their shares in UBC but merely held them on behalf of Bank voor Handel. Strangely, no one seemed to know who owned the Rotterdam-based bank, including UBC's president.
May wrote in his report of August 16 1941: "Union Banking Corporation, incorporated August 4 1924, is wholly owned by the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. My investigation has produced no evidence as to the ownership of the Dutch bank. Mr Cornelis [sic] Lievense, president of UBC, claims no knowledge as to the ownership of the Bank voor Handel but believes it possible that Baron Heinrich Thyssen, brother of Fritz Thyssen, may own a substantial interest."
May cleared the bank of holding a golden nest egg for the Nazi leaders but went on to describe a network of companies spreading out from UBC across Europe, America and Canada, and how money from voor Handel travelled to these companies through UBC.
By September May had traced the origins of the non-American board members and found that Dutchman HJ Kouwenhoven - who met with Harriman in 1924 to set up UBC - had several other jobs: in addition to being the managing director of voor Handel he was also the director of the August Thyssen bank in Berlin and a director of Fritz Thyssen's Union Steel Works, the holding company that controlled Thyssen's steel and coal mine empire in Germany.
Within a few weeks, Homer Jones, the chief of the APC investigation and research division sent a memo to the executive committee of APC recommending the US government vest UBC and its assets. Jones named the directors of the bank in the memo, including Prescott Bush's name, and wrote: "Said stock is held by the above named individuals, however, solely as nominees for the Bank voor Handel, Rotterdam, Holland, which is owned by one or more of the Thyssen family, nationals of Germany and Hungary. The 4,000 shares hereinbefore set out are therefore beneficially owned and help for the interests of enemy nationals, and are vestible by the APC," according to the memo from the National Archives seen by the Guardian.
Red-handed
Jones recommended that the assets be liquidated for the benefit of the government, but instead UBC was maintained intact and eventually returned to the American shareholders after the war. Some claim that Bush sold his share in UBC after the war for $1.5m - a huge amount of money at the time - but there is no documentary evidence to support this claim. No further action was ever taken nor was the investigation continued, despite the fact UBC was caught red-handed operating a American shell company for the Thyssen family eight months after America had entered the war and that this was the bank that had partly financed Hitler's rise to power.
The most tantalising part of the story remains shrouded in mystery: the connection, if any, between Prescott Bush, Thyssen, Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC) and Auschwitz.
Thyssen's partner in United Steel Works, which had coal mines and steel plants across the region, was Friedrich Flick, another steel magnate who also owned part of IG Farben, the powerful German chemical company.
Flick's plants in Poland made heavy use of slave labour from the concentration camps in Poland. According to a New York Times article published in March 18 1934 Flick owned two-thirds of CSSC while "American interests" held the rest.
The US National Archive documents show that BBH's involvement with CSSC was more than simply holding the shares in the mid-1930s. Bush's friend and fellow "bonesman" Knight Woolley, another partner at BBH, wrote to Averill Harriman in January 1933 warning of problems with CSSC after the Poles started their drive to nationalise the plant. "The Consolidated Silesian Steel Company situation has become increasingly complicated, and I have accordingly brought in Sullivan and Cromwell, in order to be sure that our interests are protected," wrote Knight. "After studying the situation Foster Dulles is insisting that their man in Berlin get into the picture and obtain the information which the directors here should have. You will recall that Foster is a director and he is particularly anxious to be certain that there is no liability attaching to the American directors."
But the ownership of the CSSC between 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland and 1942 when the US government vested UBC and SAC is not clear.
"SAC held coal mines and definitely owned CSSC between 1934 and 1935, but when SAC was vested there was no trace of CSSC. All concrete evidence of its ownership disappears after 1935 and there are only a few traces in 1938 and 1939," says Eva Schweitzer, the journalist and author whose book, America and the Holocaust, is published next month.
Silesia was quickly made part of the German Reich after the invasion, but while Polish factories were seized by the Nazis, those belonging to the still neutral Americans (and some other nationals) were treated more carefully as Hitler was still hoping to persuade the US to at least sit out the war as a neutral country. Schweitzer says American interests were dealt with on a case-by-case basis. The Nazis bought some out, but not others.
The two Holocaust survivors suing the US government and the Bush family for a total of $40bn in compensation claim both materially benefited from Auschwitz slave labour during the second world war.
Kurt Julius Goldstein, 87, and Peter Gingold, 85, began a class action in America in 2001, but the case was thrown out by Judge Rosemary Collier on the grounds that the government cannot be held liable under the principle of "state sovereignty".
Jan Lissmann, one of the lawyers for the survivors, said: "President Bush withdrew President Bill Clinton's signature from the treaty [that founded the court] not only to protect Americans, but also to protect himself and his family."
Lissmann argues that genocide-related cases are covered by international law, which does hold governments accountable for their actions. He claims the ruling was invalid as no hearing took place.
In their claims, Mr Goldstein and Mr Gingold, honorary chairman of the League of Anti-fascists, suggest the Americans were aware of what was happening at Auschwitz and should have bombed the camp.
The lawyers also filed a motion in The Hague asking for an opinion on whether state sovereignty is a valid reason for refusing to hear their case. A ruling is expected within a month.
The petition to The Hague states: "From April 1944 on, the American Air Force could have destroyed the camp with air raids, as well as the railway bridges and railway lines from Hungary to Auschwitz. The murder of about 400,000 Hungarian Holocaust victims could have been prevented."
The case is built around a January 22 1944 executive order signed by President Franklin Roosevelt calling on the government to take all measures to rescue the European Jews. The lawyers claim the order was ignored because of pressure brought by a group of big American companies, including BBH, where Prescott Bush was a director.
Lissmann said: "If we have a positive ruling from the court it will cause [president] Bush huge problems and make him personally liable to pay compensation."
The US government and the Bush family deny all the claims against them.
In addition to Eva Schweitzer's book, two other books are about to be published that raise the subject of Prescott Bush's business history. The author of the second book, to be published next year, John Loftus, is a former US attorney who prosecuted Nazi war criminals in the 70s. Now living in St Petersburg, Florida and earning his living as a security commentator for Fox News and ABC radio, Loftus is working on a novel which uses some of the material he has uncovered on Bush. Loftus stressed that what Prescott Bush was involved in was just what many other American and British businessmen were doing at the time.
"You can't blame Bush for what his grandfather did any more than you can blame Jack Kennedy for what his father did - bought Nazi stocks - but what is important is the cover-up, how it could have gone on so successfully for half a century, and does that have implications for us today?" he said.
"This was the mechanism by which Hitler was funded to come to power, this was the mechanism by which the Third Reich's defence industry was re-armed, this was the mechanism by which Nazi profits were repatriated back to the American owners, this was the mechanism by which investigations into the financial laundering of the Third Reich were blunted," said Loftus, who is vice-chairman of the Holocaust Museum in St Petersburg.
"The Union Banking Corporation was a holding company for the Nazis, for Fritz Thyssen," said Loftus. "At various times, the Bush family has tried to spin it, saying they were owned by a Dutch bank and it wasn't until the Nazis took over Holland that they realised that now the Nazis controlled the apparent company and that is why the Bush supporters claim when the war was over they got their money back. Both the American treasury investigations and the intelligence investigations in Europe completely bely that, it's absolute horseshit. They always knew who the ultimate beneficiaries were."
"There is no one left alive who could be prosecuted but they did get away with it," said Loftus. "As a former federal prosecutor, I would make a case for Prescott Bush, his father-in-law (George Walker) and Averill Harriman [to be prosecuted] for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. They remained on the boards of these companies knowing that they were of financial benefit to the nation of Germany."
Loftus said Prescott Bush must have been aware of what was happening in Germany at the time. "My take on him was that he was a not terribly successful in-law who did what Herbert Walker told him to. Walker and Harriman were the two evil geniuses, they didn't care about the Nazis any more than they cared about their investments with the Bolsheviks."
What is also at issue is how much money Bush made from his involvement. His supporters suggest that he had one token share. Loftus disputes this, citing sources in "the banking and intelligence communities" and suggesting that the Bush family, through George Herbert Walker and Prescott, got $1.5m out of the involvement. There is, however, no paper trail to this sum.
The third person going into print on the subject is John Buchanan, 54, a Miami-based magazine journalist who started examining the files while working on a screenplay. Last year, Buchanan published his findings in the venerable but small-circulation New Hampshire Gazette under the headline "Documents in National Archives Prove George Bush's Grandfather Traded With the Nazis - Even After Pearl Harbor". He expands on this in his book to be published next month - Fixing America: Breaking the Stranglehold of Corporate Rule, Big Media and the Religious Right.
In the article, Buchanan, who has worked mainly in the trade and music press with a spell as a muckraking reporter in Miami, claimed that "the essential facts have appeared on the internet and in relatively obscure books but were dismissed by the media and Bush family as undocumented diatribes".
Buchanan suffers from hypermania, a form of manic depression, and when he found himself rebuffed in his initial efforts to interest the media, he responded with a series of threats against the journalists and media outlets that had spurned him. The threats, contained in e-mails, suggested that he would expose the journalists as "traitors to the truth".
Unsurprisingly, he soon had difficulty getting his calls returned. Most seriously, he faced aggravated stalking charges in Miami, in connection with a man with whom he had fallen out over the best way to publicise his findings. The charges were dropped last month.
Biography
Buchanan said he regretted his behaviour had damaged his credibility but his main aim was to secure publicity for the story. Both Loftus and Schweitzer say Buchanan has come up with previously undisclosed documentation.
The Bush family have largely responded with no comment to any reference to Prescott Bush. Brown Brothers Harriman also declined to comment.
The Bush family recently approved a flattering biography of Prescott Bush entitled Duty, Honour, Country by Mickey Herskowitz. The publishers, Rutledge Hill Press, promised the book would "deal honestly with Prescott Bush's alleged business relationships with Nazi industrialists and other accusations".
In fact, the allegations are dealt with in less than two pages. The book refers to the Herald-Tribune story by saying that "a person of less established ethics would have panicked ... Bush and his partners at Brown Brothers Harriman informed the government regulators that the account, opened in the late 1930s, was 'an unpaid courtesy for a client' ... Prescott Bush acted quickly and openly on behalf of the firm, served well by a reputation that had never been compromised. He made available all records and all documents. Viewed six decades later in the era of serial corporate scandals and shattered careers, he received what can be viewed as the ultimate clean bill."
The Prescott Bush story has been condemned by both conservatives and some liberals as having nothing to do with the current president. It has also been suggested that Prescott Bush had little to do with Averill Harriman and that the two men opposed each other politically.
However, documents from the Harriman papers include a flattering wartime profile of Harriman in the New York Journal American and next to it in the files is a letter to the financial editor of that paper from Prescott Bush congratulating the paper for running the profile. He added that Harriman's "performance and his whole attitude has been a source of inspiration and pride to his partners and his friends".
The Anti-Defamation League in the US is supportive of Prescott Bush and the Bush family. In a statement last year they said that "rumours about the alleged Nazi 'ties' of the late Prescott Bush ... have circulated widely through the internet in recent years. These charges are untenable and politically motivated ... Prescott Bush was neither a Nazi nor a Nazi sympathiser."
However, one of the country's oldest Jewish publications, the Jewish Advocate, has aired the controversy in detail.
More than 60 years after Prescott Bush came briefly under scrutiny at the time of a faraway war, his grandson is facing a different kind of scrutiny but one underpinned by the same perception that, for some people, war can be a profitable business

Mahathir bin Mohammad 4th Prime Minister of Malaysia

2007-04-12T16:20:00.000-04:00

Mahathir bin Mohammad

Born in Alor Star, the capital of the northern state of Kedah, Mahathir said in his autobiography that he had Indian ancestry (from his father), with its origins tracing back to Tamil Nadu/Kerela border in India, while his mother was a Kedah-born Malay. Mahathir, however, considers himself to be a "full Malay", in line with Article 160 of the Constitution. Under Article 153 of the Constitution, Malays are granted particular rights not available to other citizens.

During World War II, he sold pisang goreng (banana fritters) to supplement his family income in the Japanese occupation of Malaya.
Mahathir first attended a Malay vernacular school before continuing his education at the Sultan Abdul Hamid College in Alor Star. Mahathir then attended the King Edward VII Medical College in Singapore, where he edited a medical student magazine called The Cauldron; he also contributed to the The Straits Times newspaper anonymously under the nickname "Che Det". Mahathir was also President of the Muslim Society in the college. In 1953, Mahathir entered the then Malayan government service as a medical officer upon graduation.

He married Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali—a former classmate in college—on August 5, 1956, and left the government service in 1957 to set up his own practice in Alor Star. Mahathir's practice thrived, allowing him to own by 1959 a Pontiac Catalina and a Chinese chauffeur (at the time most chauffeurs were Malay, owing to Chinese economic dominance). Some critics have suggested this foreshadowed a later hallmark of Mahathir's politics, which focused on the "cultivation of such emblems of power".
Active in politics since 1945, beginning with his involvement in the Anti-Malayan Union Campaign, Mahathir joined the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) upon its inception in 1946. As State Party Chairman, and Chairman of the Political Committee, he inadvertently angered some quarters with his proposal that the selection of candidates be based on certain qualifications for the 1959 general election. Hurt by accusations that he was scheming to put up candidates who were strongly allied to him, Mahathir refused to take part in the national election that year.

In the third general election of 1964, Mahathir was elected Member of Parliament for Kota Setar Selatan, defeating the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party's (PAS) candidate with a 60.2% majority. He lost the seat in the following general election in 1969 by a mere 989 votes to PAS's candidate, Haji Yusoff Rawa, after he categorically declared that he did not need Chinese votes to win. (Ironically, Mahathir won the 1999 general elections mainly due to Chinese votes, when the Malay grounds were split over his quarrels with his deputy Anwar Ibrahim.)

Following the race riots of May 13, 1969 in the May 13 Incident, Mahathir was sacked from the UMNO Supreme Council on 12 July, following his widespread distribution to the public of his letter to Tunku Abdul Rahman, the then Prime Minister. In his letter, he had criticised the manner in which the Tunku had handled the country's administration. Mahathir was subsequently relieved of his party membership on 26 September.
While in the political wilderness, Mahathir wrote his book, "The Malay Dilemma",[4] in which he sought to explain the causes of the May 13 Incident in Kuala Lumpur and the reasons for the Malays' lack of economic progress within their own country.

He then proposed a politico-economic solution in the form of "constructive protection", worked out after careful consideration of the effects of heredity and environmental factors on the Malay race. The book, published in 1970, was promptly banned by the Tunku Abdul Rahman government. However, some of the proposals in this book had been used by Tun Abdul Razak, the second Prime Minister, in his "New Economic Policy" that was principally geared towards affirmative action economic programs to address the nation's economic disparity between the Malays and the non-Malays. The ban on his book was eventually lifted after Mahathir became Prime Minister in 1981.

Mahathir rejoined UMNO on 7 March 1972, and was appointed as Senator in 1973. He relinquished the senatorship post in 1974 in order to contest in the general elections where he was returned unopposed in the constituency of Kubang Pasu, and was appointed as the Minister of Education.
In 1975, he became one of the three vice-presidents of UMNO, after winning the seat by 47 votes. Tun Hussein Onn appointed Mahathir as Deputy Prime Minister on 15 September 1978, and in a Cabinet reshuffle, appointed him concurrently as the Minister of Trade and Industry.
Mahathir became the Prime Minister of Malaysia on 10 July 1981 when Tun Hussein Onn stepped down due to health reasons. After 22 years in office, Mahathir retired on October 31, 2003, making him one of Asia's longest-serving political leaders. Upon his retirement on 31 October 2003, Mahathir was awarded a "Tun"-ship, Malaysia's highest civilian honour.

Posted By wikipedia.

Iran airs new video on UK sailors

2007-04-08T23:38:00.001-04:00

Lieutenant Felix Carman said the captives were only allowed to socialise for propaganda's sake [AP]

Posted By Aljazeera
Iran state television has broadcast video showing the recently freed British navy crew playing games, chatting, laughing and watching television during their captivity.

Tehran said the footage shown on Sunday refuted claims made by the soldiers two days earlier that they had been mistreated.
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The crew said they had been blindfolded, isolated in cold stone cells, tricked into fearing execution, and coerced into falsely saying they had entered Iranian waters.
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The video clips, which were briefly aired on Iran's state-run Arabic satellite channel Al-Alam, showed several of the sailors and marines dressed in track suits playing chess and table tennis, laughing and chatting.

Other short clips showed them watching football on television and eating at a long dining table that had vases filled with flowers on it.

The newscaster said the video proved "the sailors had complete liberty during their detention, which contradicts what the sailors declared after they arrived in Britain".

The crew reported having been under constant psychological pressure and being threatened with seven years in prison if they did not say they intruded into Iranian waters.

Media stunt

Lieutenant Felix Carman, one of the crew members captured on March 23, said they were rarely allowed to socialise and when they were, it was for the benefit of the Iranian media.

"We were kept in isolation until the last few nights, when we were allowed to get together for a few hours, in the full glare of the Iranian media," Carman said at a news conference on Friday.

"But that was very much a setup, very much a stunt for Iranian propaganda."

In the video broadcast on Sunday, Carman could be seen wearing a business suit and smiling at the camera.

Iran has dismissed the sailors' news conference as propaganda.

Two days before their release, Tehran had pledged not to show more videos of the captured crew.

The 15 were captured in the Gulf on March 23 and freed last week by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, who called their release a gift to Britain.

Israel rejects Arab peace plan

2007-03-29T16:59:00.000-04:00

Palestinian leaders hope Israel will accept the Arab League offer [Reuters]

Israel has refused to accept a revived Arab peace initiative, saying more negotiations are needed.

The plan, put forward after an Arab League summit in Saudi Arabia, offers Israel full diplomatic ties if it withdraws from all land seized in the 1967 war, allows the creation of a Palestinian state and the return of Palestinian refugees.
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Amr Moussa, the league's secretary general, read out a "Riyadh Declaration" reaffirming its commitment to an initiative offered in 2002.

The declaration "affirms a just and comprehensive peace ... based on the principles and resolutions of international legitimacy and the land-for-peace formula".
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Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, urged Israel "not to miss another chance" to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to accept the revived plan.

"I reiterate the sincerity of the Palestinian will in extending the hand of peace to the Israeli people."

Shimon Peres has rejected the new offer [EPA]

Israeli rejection

However, Shimon Peres, the Israeli deputy prime minister, rejected the initiative and said talks were needed on any final peace deal.

"There is only one way to overcome our differences, and that is negotiation," he told Israel radio.

Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, said the Israel rejection was not suprising.
"This has always been its approach. Whenever the Arabs come up with resolutions ... [offering] peace, they reject them categorically," he said.
Refugee issue
One obstacle is the the right of return of the Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes during the creation of Israel in 1948, and of their descendants.
However, the Riyadh Declaration makes no direct mention of the refugee issue and the 2002 plan calls only for a "just solution" to the problem.

Jacky Rowland, Al Jazeera's Jerusalem correspondent, said that Israel might see room for manoeuvre in this.

"Israel will be looking for any signs that the Arab League has toned down the 2002 plan - most notably on the right of return for refugees."

In their closing statement, Arab leaders also warned of a threat of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, seen as refering to Israel and Iran.

The leaders called for greater co-operation among Arab nations to develop their own peaceful nuclear energy programmes.

Many Arab states share Western concerns that Iran is developing nuclear weapons and are worried about its growing influence in the region's main hotspots - Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

British troops kill Afghan boy

2007-03-23T11:13:00.000-04:00

The boy died after the vehicle in which he was travelling was hit by arms fire [Al Jazeera]

posted by Aljazeera.net
A funeral has been held for a 12-year-old boy shot dead by British soldiers while he was travelling in a car with his family.

Nato officials have told Al Jazeera they "deeply regretted the loss of life" and had launched an investigation into the incident in the capital Kabul on Thursday.
British troops opened fire on the car as the boy and his family were driving home from a family gathering, James Bays, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Afghanistan, said.

Cradling the body of his dead son, the boy's father, Zemarai, said: "They killed my son - I can never get him back."

'Innocent victim'

Zemarai said he was driving seven of his relatives home and was several hundreds metres away from the soldiers' vehicles when they opened fire.

Speaking from his home before the burial of his son Zaryalai on Friday, he said: "All of a sudden they opened fire at our vehicle.

"The first three bullets hit my car and the fourth one hit my 12-year old son in the side of his head."

The Afghan interior ministry said Nato troops had opened fire on a minivan "which apparently tried to overtake the troops or maybe the car was too close to the troops".

Zemarai has denied trying to overtake the convoy and said he was unaware of any warning shots.

Bays said he later counted four bullet holes in the bodywork of the damaged vehicle.

"The boy is the latest innocent victim of a Nato mistake and his father has said he would join the Taliban or any other group that would force foreign troops from his country," Bays said.

'Deeply disturbed'

The area's police chief told Al Jazeera he was "deeply disturbed" by the incident involving International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) troops.

He said: "We've had this sort of problem all over Afghanistan.

"I hope the Afghan government deal with this seriously."

Bays said the police chief was later threatened with dismissal for speaking out over the killing.

A child was also hit and killed by a Nato vehicle in a convoy in the eastern province of Khost after he ran out from the side of the road, Isaf said in a statement late on Thursday.

Escape from UK-run prison in Iraq

2007-03-16T09:04:00.000-04:00

The inmates escaped from a British military prison

Posted by BBC

Eleven detainees have escaped from a British military prison in southern Iraq, the British Army has said.
Ten of them had "swapped" places with visitors over the past week, an Army spokesman said.
Their disappearance from the Shuaiba military base, west of the southern city of Basra, was only noticed on Friday.
It was not immediately clear when or how the prisoners escaped. The prisoners had been held for two years.
UK military spokesman Major David Gell confirmed that there had been an escape but gave few details.
"We are aware of the incident and it is now under investigation. We will make a statement soon," he told the AFP news agency.
A security source told the agency that the prisoners had been held without charge for the past two years.
BBC defence correspondent Paul Wood, who is in Basra with the British Army, described it as "a very embarrassing incident" for the army.
He said: "It does not speak of very tight security given that the British Army says these people were considered to pose a threat to the security of Iraq and to the multi-national forces."
Thousands of Iraqis are held in US and British-run prisons across Iraq for security reasons

Hillier has ‘no regrets' over detainees

2007-03-12T10:02:00.000-04:00

General Rick Hillier, the chief of defence staff, during an earlier visit to Kandahar. (Les Perreaux/CP)

Posted by Globe and Mail Update in Canada (JOE FRIESEN )

KANDAHAR — General Rick Hillier says he has no regrets about signing an agreement with the government of Afghanistan relinquishing the right to monitor the treatment of detainees.
“We think the agreement was pretty solid,” Gen. Hillier said. “We perhaps have improved it with this latest initiative, which really formalizes something which was informal and if we see an opportunity to do better ahead we will.”
Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor recently announced that Canada has asked the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission to monitor detainees handed over to Afghan authorities. Unlike Britain and the Netherlands, Canada did not retain the right to verify that detainees transferred to Afghan custody are being properly treated.
Mr. O'Connor planned to meet with Abdul Qadar Noorzai, head of the human rights commission, in Kandahar today, but meeting fell through because Mr. Noorzai was unavailable.

Mr. O'Connor said Sunday that he wanted to look Mr. Noorzai in the eye to confirm his group are “going to do what they say they're going to do.”
It's not known whether the meeting will be rescheduled.
Speaking to reporters after arriving at Kandahar airfield Monday morning, Gen. Hiller, the Chief of Defence Staff, also said the Afghan war is winnable, and that Canada can meet its troop commitments through 2009 and beyond.
“Over all, there is a growing feel that the Taliban can be put back, constrained, minimized, and diminished constantly. You're not going to do it all at once, and it's still going to take a lot of effort, but this thing is winnable,” he said.
“The Taliban is a robust force. They're a force you don't want to take lightly. At the same time they're not 10 feet tall. They took a significant body blow last fall” in Operation Medusa. He said that as time goes by, the value of Operation Medusa, and its impact on the Taliban, will become apparent.
Gen. Hillier said the Afghan mission is not putting undue strain on military resources. Canada has the capacity to keep between 2,000 and 3,000 troops out of the country, as it has done for several decades, he said.
“We've got the resources to complete this mission through to February, 2009, without question,” he said.
He also said that some soldiers will have to return for second tours of duty in Afghanistan, although the priority remains to expose as many troops as possible to a combat theatre.
“Many of our soldiers, after I talked about trying to reduce the numbers of those returning, many of the soldiers come to me constantly and say, ‘Sir, we don't like that policy,” he said. “We are going to use some people for repeat tours. That's a good thing.”

Anger as Bush takes on Chavez

2007-03-08T14:29:00.000-05:00

Bush's visit will take in Brazil, Uruguay,Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico

posted By Aljazeera

George Bush, the US president, is beginning a tour of Latin America - where he has been rated the worst US leader in recent memory.
Washington has lost its once undisputed economic and political influence there and the trip, which begins on Thursday in Brazil, is intended to dispel feelings that the US has been neglecting its regional neighbours.
But, as the "get out Bush" graffiti on walls in Uruguay indicates, Washington could be disappointed.
Thomas Shannon, the US assistant secretary of state, said: "The president's trip to the region gives us a great opportunity to say yet again how we are engaged in the region, to underscore our commitment to the region."
Over the last six years, while Bush ignored Latin America, many of the nations in the region turned to Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's president, for both leadership and money.
Romeo Perez Anton, a political analyst in Uruguay, told Al Jazeera: "The rhetoric, the proposals of Chavez, have finally opened the eyes of the United States, and I think this is the explanation for this diplomatic offensive."
Protests
Chavez, who has referred to Bush as "the devil", has called for protests during Bush's tour.
While the US president is in Uruguay a huge rally to repudiate the American leader's regional visit will be under way only 50km away in neighbouring Argentina with Chavez as the keynote speaker.
Demonstrators, many of them women from the Via Campesina farm workers movement, took over the Rio de Janeiro offices of Brazil's National Development Bank on Wednesday, as part of a protest.
Bush's visit will take in Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico, where he will be trying to mend relations damaged by US plans to build a 1,100km fence along the US-Mexican border to keep out illegal migrants.
Latin America has been frequently criticised for a lack of unity between its states and Washington has been trying to seduce Uruguay away from Mercosur, Latin America's regional trade bloc.
Regional clout
Jose Mujica, Uruguay's minister of agriculture and once a Tupamaro guerrilla fighter, told Al Jazeera he hopes Bush's overtures towards Uruguay will give the tiny and often ignored country more clout with its neighbours.

"We depend ferociously on Brazil and Argentina but they don't depend on us. Sometimes they need to be reminded that we exist," he said.
Brazil, the first stop on Bush's trip, is the world's biggest exporter and consumer of ethanol as an alternative fuel.
It has been enthusiastic about proposals to join forces with the US and create a world wide market for ethanol.
But despite concerns over unity in Latin America, if Bush's plan is to counter the Chavez charm offensive in the region, Washington may have its work cut out.
Lula Da Silva, Brazil's president, has made it clear that his priority is just that - unity between Latin American states, which includes, rather than isolates, Venezuela.

Sudan rejects ICC ruling on Darfur

2007-02-27T10:44:00.000-05:00

The International Criminal Court that started work in 2002 is supported by 104 nations [AP]

Posted By Aljazeera.net

Sudan's justice minister has rejected the International Criminal Court's charges against a former minister and a militia commander, saying they would not be handed over for trial.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC chief prosecutor, had said that Ahmed Haroun and Ali Muhammad Ali Abd al-Rahman were suspected of 51 counts of war crimes in Darfur.
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But Mohammed Ali al-Mardi, Sudan's justice minister, told The Associated Press on Tuesday: "We are not concerned with, nor do we accept, what the ICC prosecutor has opted for.

"Our position [on handing over any indictees] remains the same."
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Haroun, an ex-state interior minister, and Abd al-Rahman, a militia commander also known as Ali Kushayb, are the first two suspects to be sought by the ICC.

Al-Mardi confirmed that Abd al-Rahman has been in detention in Khartoum since November on suspicion of violating Sudanese laws and was under investigation for actions in Darfur.

Sudan has repeatedly said it will not respect any indictments handed down by the ICC, and it is not a signatory to the convention that created the international court.

The court said the two were suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity including rape and murder.
Haroun and Abd al-Rahman were part of a conspiracy to "persecute civilians they associated with rebels," Moreno-Ocampo said.
The UN Security Council in March 2005 had asked the ICC to launch an investigation into the violence in Darfur, which the US has called genocide, a charge Khartoum denies.

Osman Hummaida, a Sudanese human rights lawyer, said: "We eagerly await the prosecutor's recommendations for holding those responsible for the gravest crimes fully accountable."

Violent conflict

Experts say about 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million others driven from their homes in Darfur since 2003, when rebels took up arms against the government, charging it with neglect. Khartoum says about 9,000 people have died.

Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch based in New York said: "I hope the message that goes out from this action is that the days of absolute impunity that have existed for horrific crimes committed in Darfur are coming to an end."

UN and African Union observers blame pro-government militias, known as Janjawid, for the worst atrocities.

Sudanese media reported that Khartoum would put several people on trial next week, including military personnel and paramilitary troops, for suspected involvement in attacks in Darfur. Moreno-Ocampo has said he would examine whether Sudan's government is conducting its own judicial proceedings over Darfur as the ICC is only supposed to prosecute when national courts are unwilling or unable to act. Rights groups say Khartoum's own investigations and tribunals for crimes in Darfur have been largely for show. The ICC, the world's first permanent war crimes court, started work in 2002 and is now supported by 104 nations, although still not by Russia, China and the US. Washington fiercely opposed the creation of the ICC, fearing it would be used for politically motivated prosecutions of its citizens. But Washington has refrained from blocking Darfur's referral to the ICC.

Denmark follows UK Iraq pullout

2007-02-21T09:08:00.000-05:00

Tony Blair, the British prime minister, has been the US' main ally during the war in Iraq [Reuters]
Posted by aljazeera.net

Denmark has announced that it will pull all of its troops out of Iraq in August, as Britain unveiled a plan to scale down its forces in the country.

Tony Blair, the British prime minister, announced on Wednesday that troops numbers in southern Iraq would be cut by 1,600 to 5,500 in "the coming months.
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About 450 Danish troops are stationed in southern Iraq under British command.

They will be replaced by a unit of nine soldiers manning four observational helicopters, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish prime minister, said on Wednesday.
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Currently Britain has about 7,100 troops stationed in around Basra.

The British force is the second-largest foreign contingent of soldiers after that of the United States, which has more than 140,000 troops in Iraq.

'Grateful'

Josh Rushing, Al Jazeera's military analyst, said the British move could cause problems for the Bush administration which is trying to argue for an escalation in US troops in Iraq when its main ally seems to be pulling out.

He said on Tuesday that an announcement of a troop withdrawal by Blair would make the argument in Washington for what is being called a "troop surge" much more difficult to maintain.

"What was once called the coalition of the willing, was really just the US and Britain – and now Britain seem to be pulling out," he said.

Washington is planning to send some extra 21,000 troops into Iraq in addition to the 138,000 already there, in a last-ditch effort to restore security in the country.

Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the Bush's administration's National Security Council, however played down British plans, saying that Blair had informed Bush of his plans to withdraw troops on Tuesday morning.

Basra conditions 'improved'

He suggested that Blair's move was a signal of increasing stability in Iraq.

"President Bush sees this as a sign of success and what is possible for us once we help the Iraqis deal with the sectarian violence in Baghdad," Johndroe said.

"While the United Kingdom is maintaining a robust force in southern Iraq, we're pleased that conditions in Basra have improved sufficiently that they are able to transition more control to the Iraqis."

He added: "The United States shares the same goal of turning responsibility over to the Iraqi Security Forces and reducing the number of American troops in Iraq."

Analysts predict further violence

Colonel Bob Stewart, the former commander of British forces in Bosnia, said that while Iraqi troops might soon replace British troops on the streets of Basra, the UK's involvement in southern Iraq was far from at an end.

"The British have decided that in order to get out the precondition is that the 10th Iraqi Army division must be good enough, so they have put an enormous amount of time and effort into training them," he told Al Jazeera."The British have always wanted to get out ... but they'll be putting a masssive effort into continuing the training and the training will continue I expect long after the British soldiers have come of the Iraqi streets."The British can't withdraw until they feel the Iraqi armed forces are in a position to do the job without support."

Putin welcomes Opec-style gas group

2007-02-12T15:40:00.000-05:00

Putin pledged to develop ties with the Islamic world during his first visit to Riyadh [AFP]

posted by aljazeera.net

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has welcomed the idea of creating a gas version of the oil cartel Opec on his arrival in the gas-rich emirate of Qatar.

Putin said: "Who said that we rejected the idea of creating a gas cartel? We haven't rejected anything. I said it was an interesting proposition."
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At a press conference with Qatar's emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, Putin said: "Are we going to create this cartel, do we need it? That's another discussion."

Al-Thani said he supported the discussions but was unsure whether a gas cartel would be able to command the same market control as Opec.
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Putin said: "It is important for us to understand each other, to co-operate, to work on common approaches for the creation of unified conditions for consumers."

He also thanked Saudi Arabia for helping to broker the Mecca agreement between Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah.

The Russian president arrived from Riyadh where he offered to help Saudi Arabia develop atomic energy and pledged to develop ties with the Islamic world on the first leg of a regional tour to boost military and energy ties with traditional US allies.

Gas conference

Putin said he would send a team of experts to a natural gas conference being held in Doha in April, where they would discuss details of building a cartel resembling the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Qatar is an Opec member but Russia is not.

The emirate, which has the world's third largest gas reserves after Russia and Iran, is home to a pair of large US military bases, one of which houses the US command post for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In January, Iran - which is developing its gas industry - said it was in favour of forming a cartel. The country's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei proposed Iran and Russia create a gas cartel in talks with the head of Russia's security council, Igor Ivanov.

Olmert 'rejects ending al-Aqsa dig'

2007-02-08T19:54:00.000-05:00

Olmert gave the go-ahead for dig work to continue despite an appeal from his defence minister [EPA]
posted by aljazeera.net
Israel's prime minister is reported to have rejected a call from his defence minister to halt excavation work near Jerusalem's most important holy site, an Israeli newspaper reports.

Ehud Olmert, the Israeli leader, said he would allow the dig near the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem to continue after the appeal from Amir Peretz.
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"A thorough examination of the matter would reveal that nothing about the work under way will harm anyone, and there is no truth in the contentions against the work," the Ha'aretz newspaper quoted Olmert's office as saying.

Arab states have said the work could damage al-Aqsa's foundations.
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For years the Islamic Movement has waged a campaign to "save" al-Aqsa, the main mosque in a compound in Israeli-occupied and annexed east Jerusalem.

The compound is known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as the Temple Mount.

The mosque is the third holiest site in Islam.

The Israeli defence ministry did not immediately comment on Thursday's report and Olmert's office was not available for a response.

On alert

Israeli police remained on heightened alert on Thursday, with about 2,000 officers deployed throughout the Old City and nearby areas in east Jerusalem.

About 100 Palestinians briefly blocked an entrance to Jerusalem's Old City in response to the excavations.

Micky Rosenfeld, an Israeli police spokesman, said the protesters dispersed peacefully after police ordered them to do so.

Tensions have flared between Israel and the Palestinians over the Israeli excavation, which started on Tuesday.

Haaretz said Peretz wrote to Olmert on Wednesday calling for the immediate stop to the work, citing security concerns.

Palestinian warning

The Fatah faction of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, said any damage caused to the mosque by the dig work would "lead to a termination" of a November ceasefire deal operating in Gaza, and spark a "volcano of anger".

"I turn to Olmert to think anew," Sheikh Abdallah Nimr Darwish, head of Israel's Islamic Movement, told Israel Radio.

"Whoever wants to speak about peace does not excavate anywhere in the area around the holy al-Aqsa mosque," Darwish said, referring to Olmert's planned February 19 peace talks with Abbas and Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state.

Israel say the excavations are part of a search for ancient artefacts beneath the compound but would not harm the sacred site in Jerusalem's walled Old City.

Webcast proposal

The Israel Antiquities Authority is carrying out initial excavations before repairing an access ramp.

Osnat Gouez, an authority spokesman, said: "We are looking at the possibility of installing cameras at the start of next week that would broadcast real-time footage on the internet of the excavations being carried out at the site."

A parliamentary spokesman said Israel Hasson, an Israeli MP, made the suggestion on Wednesday to Olmert who ordered that the idea be put into practice.

Hasson said: "This initiative is to prove to the Arab world that the works under way on site pose no harm to the mosques."

Senate vote blocks Iraq plan debate

2007-02-05T21:49:00.000-05:00

Bush plans to send 21,500 more US troops to Iraq [EPA]

By Aljazeera.net

Republicans have blocked a debate on the Iraq war in the US Senate, dealing a setback to critics of George Bush's plan to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq.

Republicans largely united to employ Senate rules against the Democrat majority to derail the debate on a nonbinding resolution expressing disagreement with Bush's plan.
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But Democrats vowed that they would not give up trying to force Bush to change course and said they would return to the subject when considering billions more in funding for the Iraq war requested by Bush on Monday.

Harry Reid, the Senate Democrat leader, said: "We are going to debate Iraq.
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"They may stop us temporarily from debating the escalation but they are not going to stop us from debating Iraq."

The resolution would not have been binding on Bush, but it was the first serious attempt by Congress to confront him over the war.

Under Senate rules it needed 60 votes before the 100-member Senate could begin debate. It received only 49, with 47 voting against in a largely party-line vote.

'Real debate'

Opponents said the measure, sponsored by Virginia Republican senator John Warner and Michigan Democrat senator Carl Levin, was a thinly disguised political slap at Bush that would dishearten US troops and signal American disunity.

Republicans also said they voted against the measure in protest because they could not get amendments considered on their terms.

Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, said: "We are asking for a fair process. We are ready for the debate. We expected to have it this week."

Supporters said the resolution would be a first step, a warning to Bush that he must revamp his strategy to start moving toward a withdrawal of the 138,000 US troops in Iraq.

Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democratic senator, said: "I am troubled by this. If the Republicans in the Senate cannot swallow the thin soup of the Warner resolution how will they ever stomach a real debate on the war in Iraq?"

Some Democrats want Congress to move immediately to do something more decisive like refusing to fund the additional troops or capping troop levels.

Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman, said: "All sides have a right to be heard in this debate, and we support senator McConnell's and the Republicans' right to be able to offer the amendments they want to offer."

Two Republicans refused to follow their party leadership and voted with the Democrats to move to debate. They were senator Susan Collins of Maine and senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota, both of whom face re-election in 2008.

Before the vote, Reid said: "The American people do not support escalation. Last November, voters made it clear they want a change of course, not more of the same.

"The president must hear from Congress, so he knows he stands in the wrong place, alone."

Durbin said: "If the Republicans want to stand by their president and his policy, they shouldn't run from this debate.

"If they believe we should send thousands of our young soldiers into the maws of this wretched civil war, they should at least have the courage to stand and defend their position."

Naji Al-Ali (1936 - 1987)

2007-02-02T19:59:00.000-05:00

Naji Al-Ali (1936 - 1987)

Naji Al-Ali lived on the edge of danger because he was closest to the truth. He was the last scream that we never dared utter for fear to be quenched with it.
The Palestinian cartoonist par excellence, Naji Al-Ali is an artist who transcended fictional frontiers using lines that draw free borders, the boundaries of freedom without pavements, the freedom of the artist, the people, and the homeland.
Every morning, for more than 13 years (1975 - 1987) Palestinians everywhere followed the cartoonist Naji Al-Ali in whichever newspaper he published. His cartoons were re-printed in more than one form, and discussed in every forum. He made everyone read the newspaper starting from the back page. Everyone who worked with him said that he was wild, that the burning fire within him devoured everything, because his heart was in his quill and his quill was easily agitated and inflamed. He felt that Palestine was his own, and it will not return piece-meal, but all at once, all at once from the river to the sea, or else, no one will forgive. The bitterness within him was constantly expanding, and he eventually thrashed at everyone with his ruthless quill.
His character was "Handala", a young boy with curly hair whose back is always turned to the reader. His name means "bitterness" in Arabic, and he represents the distress the artist felt. In describing his work, Naji Al-Ali wrote:

"The child Handala is my signature, everyone asks me about him wherever I go. I gave birth to this child in the Gulf and I presented him to the people. His name is Handala and he has promised the people that he will remain true to himself. I drew him as a child who is not beautiful, his hair is like the hair of a hedgehog who uses his thorns as a weapon. Handala is not a fat, happy, relaxed, or pampered child, he is barefooted like the refugee camp children, and he is an 'icon' that protects me from making mistakes. Even though he is rough, he smells of Amber. His hands are clasped behind his back as a sign of rejection at a time when solutions are presented to us the American way. Handala was born ten years old, and he will always be ten years old. At that age I left my homeland, and when he returns, Handala will still be ten, and then he will start growing up. The laws of nature do not apply to him. He is unique. Things will become normal again when the homeland returns. I presented him to the poor and named him Handala as a symbol of bitterness. At first he was a Palestinian child, but his consciousness developed to have a national and then a global and human horizon. He is a simple yet tough child, and this is why people adopted him and felt that he represents their consciousness."

"What is the role of political caricature?""Its role is to bare life... caricature always hangs life to dry in the open air and in the public streets... it grabs life wherever it finds it to place it on the rooftops of the world where there is no place to fill the gaps or cover its holes.""When will people see Handala's face?""When Arab dignity is no longer threatened, and when the Arab individual regains his freedom and humanity. Still, the most tiring part is to continue the road with all its contradictions. The weariness of the homeland will always remain deep inside.""Handala is the witness of the century who will never die... the witness who entered life all of a sudden and will never leave it. He is the legend-witness. This character was born to survive... I will continue within him even after I die."
Naji Al-Ali was born in Ash-Shajara village in 1936, one of 480 villages destroyed after 1948. His family was displaced to Ein Al-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon. Between 1957 and 1983 he worked for a variety of newspapers in Lebanon and the Gulf. In 1983 he returned to Kuwait to work for "Al-Qabas" newspaper until 1985 when he was forced to leave to London to work with the same newspaper in its London office. During this period he published more than 40,000 cartoons. The New York Times once wrote: "If you want to know what the Arabs think of the US look at Naji Al-Ali's cartoons." The Time magazine also described him saying: "This man draws with human bones." The 'Asahi' Japanese newspaper wrote: "Naji Al-Ali draws using phosphoric acid."

On Wednesday July 22 1987 at 17:10 Greenwich meantime, Naji Al-Ali parked his car in central London, and walked a few meters towards the offices of Al-Qabas newspaper where he worked. A dark complexioned, curly haired, young man surprised him with a bulletin his head and ran away as Naji Al-Ali fell on the pavement. On August 29th, Naji Al-Ali finally died in hospital and was buried on September 3rd in Brookwood cemetery in Woking. His death marked the end of an era, and ironically, the beginning of the Intifada in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Until this day, his cartoons are used over and over again, and "Handala" is still as relevant today as he was twenty years ago.

From "This week in Palestine" No 14, August 1999

Posted by Martin BretterklieberUpdate: 26. Mai 2001.

Environment minister taking climate-change report "very seriously"

2007-02-02T19:47:00.000-05:00

Pollution and haze in Bangkok seen from a an aerial view during rush hour on February 2, 2007 in Bangkok, Thailand. A report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated that climate changes are "very likely" to have human cause and that global temperatures will rise by 3 degrees Celsius by 2100.
Photograph by : Getty Images

OTTAWA — The Conservative government says the scientific community’s "unequivocal" warning about climate change in a new report released in Paris on Friday is a turning point in history that it is taking "very seriously."
"I think the science is clear that these changes are occurring … and we must act," said Prime Minister Stephen Harper at an Ottawa news conference. "We are working through the Kyoto process to try and get international action to try and get action that will involve all of the world’s major emitters, and as you know, currently, most of the major emitters are not part of the protocol, or at least have no targets under the protocol. So these are efforts that are important that we will continue to work on."
The comments contrasted with statements Harper made as opposition leader in recent years when he questioned the scientific evidence, and described Kyoto as a "socialist scheme" to drain money from developed nations.
But Environment Minister John Baird said the government understands the message from the report, which was produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
"We recognize that the report is an important scientific study on climate change and we take its findings very seriously," Baird said at a news conference in Paris after being briefed by experts from Environment Canada and other international officials.
Hundreds of climate scientists delivered their findings on Friday morning after reviewing the work of more than 2,000 researchers — including skeptics.
They predicted global temperatures will rise faster in the 21st century than in the previous 100 years, with stronger increases for countries in northern regions such as Canada. They also concluded some aspects of global warming would continue for centuries, regardless of any mitigation efforts.
"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising mean sea level," reads the summary report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a peer-review panel representing scientists from nations around the world.
The report is the first volume of its fourth assessment of the latest scientific literature since the 1990s, and its strongest ever warning that human activity is responsible for global warming.
Baird promised his government would soon introduce regulations and targets for industry, but he refused to commit to meeting Canada’s legally binding targets to reduce greenhouse gas pollution as required under the international Kyoto Protocol. He said the government wanted to focus on what it could do, instead of what was not possible to achieve.
"The fourth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will constitute a turning point in the battle against climate change for the world," he said. "Therefore we must accept what the experts say. We must devote our energy to find solutions that would protect the fragile ecosystems of our planet, and we must adopt concrete measures to fight against climate change. And when I say ‘we,’ I mean Canada and all countries. Climate change is a global issue that requires a planetary solution."
Although the scientists concluded there was a 66 per cent probability humans were responsible for global warming in the last IPCC report from 2001, they now say the latest research tells them there is a 90 per cent probability that human activity, mainly through the burning of fossil fuels, are producing the greenhouse gases that cause the climate to change.
"The global concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, all greenhouse gases those are, have increased markedly since 1750, and they are now far, far above the values seen in ice cores in many, many thousands of years," said Susan Solomon, a U.S. climate scientist and lead author of the study, at a news conference. "The increases in carbon dioxide are mainly due to fossil fuel use and land-use, while those of methane and nitrous oxide are due to agriculture.
The findings come as Harper’s government faces widespread criticism from environmentalists and opposition parties for turning his back on Canada's international commitments to reduce greenhouse gases by slashing billions of dollars in climate change initiatives.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, the former Liberal government committed Canada to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by six per cent below 1990 levels, although when they left office, the country was about 35 per cent above its target.
The report predicted a 0.2 C average global temperature increase per decade over the next 20 years, and a 0.1 C increase for subsequent decades. An increase in hotter days and a decrease in colder days is virtually certain, according to the report. It also concludes there would be an increased probability of more frequent droughts in some regions, and heavy precipitation or extreme weather events in others.
But the scientists refrained from lecturing world leaders to take action.
"I believe that is a societal choice," said Solomon. "I believe science is one input to that choice, and I also believe science can best serve society by refraining from going beyond its expertise, so I do not feel that it would be in the best interest of society making this decision in the most responsible way for me to push for urgency or action. There are people out there who have that role. But it isn’t me, and in my view, that’s what IPCC also is all about: Namely not trying to make policy prescriptive statements, but
Posted by CanWest News Service
Published by
Mike De Souza, CanWest News ServicePublished: Friday, February 02, 2007

French socialists expel racist

2007-01-28T17:15:00.000-05:00

The expulsion comes at a bad time for Royal as she faces criticism for a series of gaffes [AFP]

The French Socialist party has expelled one of its leading members for having said there were too many black players in the national football team.

Georges Freche, president of the Languedoc-Roussillon region in the south and a founding member of the party, is a supporter of the Socialists' presidential candidate, Segolene Royal.
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She has backed his expulsion from the party but it comes at a bad time for her as she faces criticism for a series of gaffes.

On Friday, an imitator known for phone pranks on public figures tricked Royal into thinking she was talking to the premier of Quebec.
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The decision on Saturday was made at a meeting of members of a commission set up to resolve internal party disputes.

Patrick Mennucci, deputy director of Royal's campaign, said: "If he had not said what he said, we would all ... be in a much more agreeable situation."

"The situation is very unpleasant and the Socialist Party cannot continue to have someone who makes comments of this sort in its ranks."

'Sub-human'

In November, Freches was reported complaining at a local political meeting that nine out of the 11 members of the national soccer team were black.

"I am ashamed for this country. Soon there will be 11 blacks," the Midi Libre newspaper quoted him as saying.

Freches was also fined 15,000 euros by a French court on Thursday for having called Algerians who fought alongside the French in Algeria's war of independence "sub-human".

He had already been suspended from some party functions after making those comments last year and faced up to six months in jail for "abuse of a group of people because of their ethnic, racial or religious affiliations".

posted by aljazeera.net

Translated by NewsClock.com to Chinese

驱逐坏的时候,正值她面对批评皇家一系列气得[法新社]

法国社会党及其领导成员之一,已经开除因说黑人球员有太多的国家队. 乔治freche总统的郎-南区Roussillon创始党社会党的支持者是『总统候选人,segolene皇室. bodyvariable350="htmlphcontrol1_lblerror"; 她背靠他开除党籍,但不好的时候,正值她的批评,因为她脸上的一系列气得. / 在周五、一个电话恶作剧模仿闻名于公众人物的思想变成皇家上当她所说的魁北克总理. bodyvariable300="htmlphcontrol2_lblerror"; <决定>是在周六举行成立一个委员会的成员来解决党内纷争. 帕特里克mennucci副主任王国的战役,说:"如果他没有说什么,他说: ::我们都可以在一个更合意的情况. " "形势非常愉快和社会主义党不能继续作出评论,有人曾这样的队伍" '分人'11 freches报道抱怨当地政治会议的11个成员的九个国家足球队被黑. "我很惭愧,为这个国家. 很快会有11个黑人"午报该报引述他的话说. freches还被罚了1.5万欧元法国法院传唤周四为阿尔及利亚人并肩战斗的法国人在阿尔及利亚的独立战争"撒哈拉人". 他已被暂停职务后,一些党有心去年面对六个月徒刑"滥用一群人因种族、种族或宗教背景".

Russia and West divided over Kosovo

2007-01-26T09:41:00.000-05:00

A boy walks past graffiti in in Kosovo which reads: "No negotiation - Self-determination."

posted by Aljazera.net

Russia has reacted unfavourably to a United Nations plan to give Kosovo greater independence from Serbia.Martti Ahtisaari, the UN special envoy for Future Status Process for Kosovo, unveiled the plan at the UN complex in Vienna to the six-nation Contact Group on Friday. which
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The Group, comprising the US, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and Italy, has set policy on Kosovo since the United Nations took control of the province in 1999.

After the meeting, Ahtisaari said Russia had called for any decision on Kosovo to be delayed until Serbia formed a new government.
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The five other members of the group - the US, Britain, France, Italy, Germany - were in favour of the plan and saw no need for delay, he added.

Ahtisaari needs the approval of the Contact Group before he can make the plan public.Diplomatic sources had said that the Vienna meeting was intended to be the last step before Ahtisaari presented his blueprint to officials in Pristina and Belgrade on February 2.Serbs and Kosovo Albanians had been due to discuss the fine print of the deal during February, although there was little prospect of them reaching an agreement.Independence demandedEight years after Nato drove out Serb forces accused of ethnic cleansing in the province, Kosovo is demanding nothing less than full independence.

Meanwhile, Serbia is offering only far-reaching autonomy for a territory that it sees as the traditional birth-place of the Serb nation.Ahtisaari said on Wednesday that his plan would focus on "the protection of minority rights, in particular of the Kosovo Serbs" and "a strong international civilian and military presence within a broader future international engagement in Kosovo."Diplomatic and UN sources told Reuters news agency that Kosovo would be given the right to apply for membership of international organisations, potentially including the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. They said it would provide for a right to dual citizenship, and urge Pristina to establish good relations with Serbia and other neighbours, but would contain no reference to Serbian sovereignty. Self-determinationGermany, Britain, France, Italy and the United States have all said they believe the Albanians should be granted self-determination but Russia has said it will not back a solution that goes against the wishes of Serbia, a fellow Slavic and Orthodox Christian nation that is a natural ally.Diplomats had said they felt there was enough room for manoeuvre between the two positions to avoid a Russian veto in the UN Security Council later this year.Nato countries, which have more than 16,000 peacekeepers in Kosovo, have vowed to maintain support for international efforts to resolve its status but called a rapid resolution. "There was an enduring and unflagging commitment for Nato to play its part in the process related to status and beyond it," James Appathurai, Nato spokesman, said."There was a strong sense around the table on the need for a resolution as soon as possible. Long delays risk a lack of clarity, risk fostering instability," he added.

posted by aljazeera.net

Curfew follows fatal Beirut clashes

2007-01-25T14:57:00.000-05:00

Posted By Aljazeera.net

A curfew has been declared in Beirut after four students were reported killed as rival groups of pro- and anti-government students fought a pitched battle at a university, leaving at least 35 others wounded.

The curfew, from 8.30pm (1830 GMT) until dawn on Friday, was declared by the Lebanese army following hours of violence in the capital.
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Students wielding clubs and throwing rocks attacked each other at the Al-Arabiya University in a southern sector of the Lebanese capital. Al Jazeera correspondent Mike Hanna said the fighting "started with an argument and then got physical".
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"It was a very intensive and very serious clash on the campus highlighting the political divisions across the country."

The fighting began on the main campus and then moved out on to the street, as students set fire to tyres and cars in order to block traffic. Dozens of men wearing construction helmets and carrying makeshift weapons - chair legs, pipes, garden tools, sticks and chains - converged on the university and fought with police.
University cordoned offTroops fired into the air to try and break up the crowds and cordoned off the neighbourhood. Military trucks were used to evacuate the streets of civilians trapped by the violence.

Some students claimed that during the fighting they came under fire from snipers on the surrounding rooftops.
Followers of the Future Movement led by Saad al-Hariri, the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority leader, and opposition supporters of the Shia Hezbollah movement and its ally Amal, were said to have been involved in the clashes.
Television stations run by both camps blamed each other for the violence. Fouad Siniora, the prime minister, appealed to the Lebanese to "avoid tension and escalation.""I call on everyone to return to the voice of reason," he added.
Call for calmHezbollah issued a statement urging its supporters to leave the streets around the university and respect the curfew."We are using a Fatwa (religious decree) ... in the interests of the country and civil peace ... everyone should evacuate the streets, remain calm and leave the stage for the Lebanese army and security forces," he said.

The Lebanese army fired shots into the air to disperse the students

Nabih Berri, the parliamentary speaker and leader of Amal, told several Lebanese television stations: "What everyone should do now is halt the strife.""I call upon you once again to channel all your powers towards reconciliation ... towards national unity," he said.Al-Hariri urged his followers to "remain calm and not respond to provocation".The fighting followed widespread unrest in the country earlier this week when the opposition staged a general strike and subsequent fighting left at least six people dead and scores injured.
The opposition is seeking veto power in government and early parliamentary elections to topple the Siniora's cabinet.
Siniora and al-Hariri have refused to accept the demands.
Al-Taamir clash
Another clash between troops and armed men, belonging to a group called the Jund al-Sham, in al-Taamir district near Ain al-Helwa camp in southern Lebanon left three people hurt, including a soldier.
Al Jazeera's correspondent reported that the fighting erupted after the armed men obstructed the troops' deployment in the area.
Soldiers opened fire after the armed men threw stones. Witnesses said three people were injured.
The violence came as Siniora won pledges of more than $7bn in aid at a donors' conference in Paris to help rebuild Lebanon following the war between Israel and Hezbollah last summer.

Posted By Aljazeera.net

Olmert urges president to go

2007-01-24T20:23:00.000-05:00

Katsav said he had already faced a "trial by media

posted by aljazeera.net

Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, has called for Moshe Katsav, the Israeli president, to resign over allegations of rape and sexual assault.

On Wednesday, immediately after Katsav publicly refuted the allegations against him and promised to clear his name, Olmert said he had "no doubt" that Katsav should stand down.
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Olmert said: "I have no doubt that the president cannot continue and fulfill his position and he should leave the residence of the president of Israel."
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In a statement on Tuesday, Menachem Mazuz, the attorney general, announced he planned to indict Katsav on suspicion that he raped a former staff member and sexually assaulted three other women who worked for him.

Katsav called the allegations "smears and lies" that were "terrible, hurtful" and said: "I will fight to my last breath to clear my name."

He said he had already suffered a "trial by media".

Appeal to the citizens

Analysts saw Katsav's speech as an attack on the media and an appeal to public opinion.

He appealed directly to the citizens of Israel, saying: "As time goes by and as the facts emerge you, the citizens of Israel, will understand what terrible injustice has been done here."

Gill Hoffman, a journalist with the Jerusalem Post, told Al Jazeera: "He [Katsav] was really talking to the media and the Israeli citizens rather than members of the knesset [Israeli parliament]. A lot of Israelis will sympathise with him - they will now question what they thought before."

Jacky Rowland, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Israel, said: "He was trying to appeal over the heads of the opinion makers.

"The bottom line is that the fact that any allegations have been made against him casts a stain over the presidency.

"And people feel the president, in the interests of the dignity of the office that he holds, should step down."

Earlier in the day Katsav notified the knesset that he was taking a leave of absence from his duties.

Dalia Itzik, the knesset speaker, will temporarily fill the position - the first time the country has had a female president.

Under Israeli law, the president cannot be put on trial while in office but the knesset does have the power to impeach him.

But analysts say an investigation could take over a year and Katsav's presidency is due to end in July.

Mazuz said he would invite Katsav and his lawyers to a hearing, the date of which has not been set, before finalising charges.

Katsav has said he will resign if he is charged.

Corruption

Nour Odeh, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Gaza, said that Palestinians, who are also experiencing internal political conflict, "know that when there is internal trouble in Israel, it is Palestinians who end up paying the price".

She also said the events were "a further indication to Palestinians not to put their faith in Israeli politicians".

The post of president in Israel is largely ceremonial and the case is unlikely to have any direct impact on the government or on Olmert, who himself is under investigation over alleged corruption.

The knesset elected Katsav as president in 2000, after Ezer Weizman, the previous president, resigned from the post following revelations he had received $450,000 in gifts from a French millionaire.

Posted By Aljazeera.net

Bush warns against failure in Iraq

2007-01-23T22:49:00.000-05:00

For the first time in his presidency Bush addressed a Democrat-controlled congress [Reuters]

George Bush, the US president, has used his seventh annual State of the Union address to urge Congress to give his Iraq plan "a chance to work".

He warned against "failure" in Iraq and described the war there as part of a larger battle against Sunni and Shia extremists who were "faces of the same totalitarian threat".
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"Many in this chamber understand that America must not fail in Iraq - because you understand that the consequences in failure would be grievous and far reaching," Bush said.

He also addressed domestic issues, proposing fuel usage cuts to curb climate change and health care and education reforms.
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"Totalitarian threat"

He said the Iraq war had changed dramatically with the outbreak of sectarian warfare and reprisals.

"This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we are in," he said.

"It is still within our power to shape the outcome of this battle," the president said. "So let us find our resolve and turn events toward victory."
He said Shia extremists backed by Iran and Sunni extremists aided by al-Qaeda and the "old regime" would take over in Baghdad if America "failed" in Iraq.
He said the most important mission in America's history was to "spare the American people from this danger" and asked for support for his plan to send an extra 21,500 US troops to Iraq.
A Washington-Post/ABC News poll released on Monday gave Bush a job approval rating of 33 per cent, showing him to be at the weakest point of his presidency.
In his address to a nation increasingly opposed to the Iraq war and to a congress which for the first time in his presidency is controlled by Democrats, Bush stressed the need for unity.

Domestic policy

Bush also used the address to outline a domestic policy for the year.

"A future of hope and opportunity begins with a growing economy - and that is what we have. Unemployment is low, inflation is low, and wages are rising," he said, adding that more enterprise rather than increased government intervention was key.

He also called for Republicans and Democrats to overcome differences concerning the direction of social security spending.

He proposed a reduction in US fuel usage by 20 per cent in 10 years, an increase in health care for Americans, a new immigration policy and improvements to education.

Bush said that improved vehicle fuel standards and diversification of energy sources – such as the use of ethanol fuel – was necessary.
"It is in our vital interest to diversify America's energy supply and the way forward is through technology," he said.

The energy proposals by Bush fall short of seeking mandatory caps on carbon emissions which are sought by some Democrats in the congress.

Bush is not pushing for a specific increase in the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, which many experts see as critical to reduce oil usage but which the White House fears would prompt manufacturers to build smaller, less-safe cars.
Instead, he will ask congress for authority to reform CAFE standards, with the goal of reducing projected annual fuel use by up to 8.5 billion gallons, according to Joel Kaplan, the deputy White House chief of staff.

Strategic reserve

Bush also called for doubling the strategic petroleum reserve from 727 million barrels to 1.5 billion barrels, in a bid to bolster US energy security.

The US will begin buying extra oil this spring as part of a plan by the Bush administration to expand emergency reserves, the White House said on Tuesday.

"Expanding the strategic petroleum reserve is a wise and a prudent policy decision that would provide an additional layer of protection for our nation's energy security," said Sam Bodman, the US energy secretary.

Meanwhile, Bush's health care plan will propose making health insurance taxable income and deductible up to $15,000 a year for families, starting in 2009.

The move could raise taxes for as many as 30 million Americans but lower costs for many others.
A US official said the plan would cost $30 to $40 billion in its formative years but eventually pay for itself.

posted by aljazeera.net

The Iraqi Sniper - القناص العراقي

2007-01-22T16:55:00.000-05:00

Baghdad -
لم يكد الجندي الأمريكي ايفرسون يخرج من دبابتة، - قرب مدخل مخفر أمريكي يسمى السيف في الانبار- حتى التقطه قناص عراقي برصاصة 7.62 ملليمتر فأصابته إصابة مباشرة فوق الجزء الأعلى من صدريّتة الواقية، فمزقت كتفه وخرجت من ظهره.No sooner had the American soldier Iverson out from the tank, near the entrance station-called American sword in Anbar - even plucked an Iraqi sniper bullet 7.62 millimeters injuring him directly over the upper part of the protective Sadrith, fracturing his shoulder and exited from his back.
وسقط في داخل الدبابة جريحا .ومن على سطح المخفر رد جنود المدفعية الرشاشة بوابل من النيران . لكن القناص قد اختفى.وقال الرقيب أوّل جيرمي غان، هذا القناص يعرف ماذا كان يفعل. حيث نواجه هنا بعض الرجال مع الأسلحة يستيقظون فجأة وهمهم اطلاق النار على الأمريكان. ولكنهم لا يصوبون على الجسم المحمي بواسطة الصدرية الواقية، واعتقد بأنهم يستخدمون المنظار المرتبط ببندقية القنص. تم نقل الجندي المصاب إفيرسون بواسطة الطائرة المروحية إلى مستشفى في شمال بغداد وبقي على قيد الحياة. كان الضحيّة الرابعة للقنّاص العراقي منذ سبتمبر/أيلول من بين 40 جنديا أمريكيا يخدمون في مخفر السيف، وهو عبارة عن قصر محاط بأكياس الرمل في جنوب وسط الرمادي. يقول الجنود والضبّاط الكبار في الجيش الأمريكي إن المشكلة ومنذ بداية الحرب هي التهديد الذي يشكله القنّاصة والذي إشتدّ في الأشهر الأخيرة. حيث طور الرجال المسلحون مهاراتهم واكتسبوا معدات أفضل، وبشكل خاص بنادق مزودة بأجهزة الرؤية ألليلية لاستهداف القوات الأمريكية بعد أن غروب الشمس.They were inside the tank were injured. It is on the roof of a police station troops artillery barrage of automatic fire. But the soldiers have disappeared. He said Sergeant Jeremy Gan, the sniper knows what he did. As we face here some of the men with weapons wake up suddenly, their fire on the Americans. But do not aiming to object protected by the protective chest, and I think they are using the telescope associated with a Kalashnikov hunting. The injured soldier was transferred Iverson by helicopter to a hospital in the north of Baghdad remained alive. The fourth victim of a sniper Iraqi since September of 40 American soldiers serving in the post sword, a palace surrounded by sandbags in the south-central Ramadi. Says soldiers and senior officers in the American army said that the problem, since the beginning of the war was the threat posed by snipers, which has intensified in recent months. Armed men stage where their skills and acquire better equipment, particularly rifles equipped with night vision to target American forces after sunset.
إن جنود البحرية والجنود الآخرين الذين استهدفهم رجال القناصة العراقيين تحطم هذه الطلقات روحهم المعنوية، حيث تأتيهم طلقة واحدة بدون سابق انذر ولا يعلمون متى تأتي. حيث يقول العريف بنجامين إوبست، الذي يخدم في مخفر السيف: الجنود هنا تعبوا جدا من هذه المهمة وهم محبطون، وهي تشبه محاولة لإيجاد ذبابة في غابة." وقال إوبست ان المشكلة في محافظة ألانبار أصبحت جدّية بحيث ان خبراء عسكريين زاروا مخفر السيف مؤخرا لدراسة مشكلة القنّاصة في المنطقة، على أمل تطوير طرق لمواجهة هذا التهديد.The marines and other soldiers who have been targeted by Iraqi sniper bullets shattered the morale, been brought in one shot without prior warning and did not know when to come at all. Corporal Benjamin says Obst, who served in the post sword : the soldiers here very tired of this task and they are frustrated, and resembles an attempt to find a fly in the jungle. " Obst said that the problem in the province of Anbar has become so serious that the military experts visited the station sword recently to study the problem of snipers in the area, hoping to develop ways to face this threat.
وقال الملازم أوّل جيرارد داو، آمر مخفر السيف، إن الجنود الأمريكان يتحرّكون عادة خلال الليل في الرمادي لتقليل الخطر. لكن الآن بعض الرجال المسلّحين يستعملون أجهزة الرؤية الليلية لذا فهم يستطيعون الضرب في أي وقت يشاءون.ونعرف ان هؤلاء القناصة يمتلكون أفضلها.He said First Lieutenant Gerard Dow station is the sword, that the American soldiers usually move during the night in Ramadi, to minimize the danger. But now some armed men using night vision devices so they can strike at any time they chose. We know that they have the best snipers.
في خلال إسبوع من المقابلات، مع الجنود في مخفر السيف تكلّموا بتكرار حول القنّاصة خارج بوّابات حصنهم .وفي المناقشات اللاحقة مع جنود البحرية والقادة عبر محافظة الأنبار كشفوا بأنّ التهديد أصبح واسع الانتشار. ويقول الرائد ماثيو فان واجينين،وهو ضابط من الكتيبة الأولى، الفوج المدرّع السابع وثلاثون، ان موالين لصدام حسين في المنفى في سوريا والأردن قد موّلوا برامج التدريب لهؤلاء القنّاصة.Within a week of interviews with soldiers in the outpost have spoken to happen on the sword snipers outside the gates of its Datule. In subsequent discussions with Marine soldiers and commanders across Anbar province revealed that the threat has become widespread. He says Major Matthew van Agenin, an officer of the 1st Battalion, 7th armored brigade and the 30th, that loyal to Saddam Hussein in exile in Syria and Jordan had financed training programs for those snipers.
وأضاف نواجه رجالا مسلّحين بسطاء يصوبون الطلقات ضدنا ، لكنّ عندهم قيادة متوسطة المستوى أيضا تستطيع القيادة في جميع أنحاء الأنبار، ويتنقلون جيئة وذهابا في البلدة حينما يريدون. القيادة العسكرية الأمريكية في بغداد قلّلت من أهميّة تدفّق المقاتلين الأجانب في العراق، لكن العديد من الجنود وجنود البحرية في الأنبار قالوا بأنّهم يواجهون أفضل القنّاصة من جميع أنحاء الشرق الأوسط يأتون إلى العراق لفرصة قنص أمريكي بطلقة واحدة. ونحن لا نملك حتى قنّاصة جيّدين مثلهم. تعلّم بعض القنّاصة حرفتهم الأساسية عندما خدموا في جيش صدام. لكن هناك قلق واضح أيضا بين الأمريكان من إن تدريب الجيش العراقي الحالي في المعسكرات الأمريكية ينشر المهارات بين الجنود الذين ينقلبون على القوات الأمريكية.His face armed men discharging simple shots against us, but they also lead the average level can command in all parts of Anbar, and move back and forth in the town when they want. American military command in Baghdad, played down the importance of the flow of foreign fighters in Iraq, but many soldiers and marines in Anbar said they were facing the best sniper from all parts of the Middle East come to Iraq for the opportunity to hunt American single shot. We do not have to like good snipers. Learn some basic craft snipers when served in the army of Saddam. But there is also clear concern among Americans that the current Iraqi army training in the camps of America publishes skills among soldiers who overthrow the American forces.
وقال الرّقيب شون جي . إجير، أيضا من الفوج المدرع سابع وثلاثون. "أنا لا أحبّ الطريقة التي يحاربوننا بها ، لكنني كنت سأعمل نفس الشيء إذا شخص ما يحتلّ بلادي. وكان هذا الرقيب هو مدفعي يقف في أعلى عربة همفي -قرب محطة قطار الرمادي المدمرة - وفي أغسطس/آب أخطأته رصاصات مرت بمسافة بوصات عنه وأنقذه زجاج الأمان، لكنها أصابت مدفعه الرشّاش، وأصيب بشظايا في وجهه. لكنه سيحتاج إلى عملية جراحية بعد أن يترك العراق لإزالة نصف الشظايا العشرة التي ما زالت غائرة في وجهه.He said Sergeant Shawn Gee. Agir, also of the armored regiment seventh and 30th. "I do not like the way in which Iharbonna out, but I was the same thing I will if someone occupies my country. This was an artillery sergeant was standing at the top of a cart near-barricaded railway station in Ramadi destroyer-August Akhtath bullets passed inches from a distance and saved him safety glass, but hit the machine-gun, and injured by shrapnel in the face. But he will need surgery after leaving Iraq to remove shrapnel half of the ten that are still wounds in the face.
وألان يحاول الجنود أن يجعلوا أنفسهم أهدافا صعبة للقناصة من خلال التعرج أثناء المسير ولا يقفون في مكان واحد إلا ثواني معدودات.لكن أفضل القنّاصة ينتظرون لساعات، في أغلب الأحيان قرب المطبات الطبيعية حيث تجبر القوات الأمريكية على التوقّف.حيث يجثمون في الممرات،وفي البنايات المتروكة، أو يشقّون طريقهم بالقوة عبر العديد من البيوت ويطلقون النار من المنافذ ويطلقون النار أيضا من نوافذ السيارات.Now that the soldiers were trying to make themselves targets of snipers difficult through meandering during contain not stand in one place only a few seconds ago. But the best snipers waiting for hours, often near the natural bumps where American forces are forced to stop. Where rode in the corridors, in the abandoned buildings, or making their way through the force of many houses and fire outlets and also firing from the windows of cars.
وهناك مجموعة واحدة من القناصة في الرمادي عندهم سيارة مجهزة بمصدات ومعتمات جهّزت لهذا الغرض حي يتمكن القنّاص داخلها أن يقنص للحظات دون أن يكتشف. يصيبون هدفهم مرة واحدة ويختفون، ويلتقطون معهم أغلفة الرصاص ويغطّون الفتحات التي يطلقون.منها الرصاص. حتّى عندما يخفقون في القتل، فان جرح الجنود كافيا لأن يعرقل العمليات العسكرية لساعات، من اجل إخلاء المصاب. والبحث عن القنّاص عادة هو تمرين في الإحباط، فمن المستحيل احتوائه.There is one group of snipers in Ramadi have a car equipped Bmusdat Maatmat and equipped for this purpose neighborhood that soldiers inside the Ignas of moments without detection. Inflict their once and disappear, and with them picking up bullets and casings covering the openings with a bullet. Including petrol. Even when they fail to murder, the soldiers injured enough as hinder military operations for hours, in order to evacuate the injured. The search for a sniper is usually an exercise in frustration, it is impossible to contain.
قبل منتصف الليل بقليل بعد قنص الجندي إفيرسون ترك 20 جنديا أمريكيا وستّة من الجنود العراقيين مخفر السيف لاكتساح البيوت في جهة الشرق من المخفر وهي المنطقة المحتملة التي انطلقت منها الاطلاقة. وكون معظم الرمادي بعد حلول الظلام بدون قوّة كهربائية و القلة الباقية من السكّان قرب مخفر السيف مجتمعين على ضوء الشّموع في غرف جلوسهم وهجم عليهم الجنود الغاضبين وحطّموا أبوابهم.Shortly before midnight after attacking a soldier Iverson left 20 American soldiers and six Iraqi soldiers station sword to overrun homes in the east of the station a potential region which launched Alatalagh. The fact that most of Ramadi after dark without electrical power and the few remaining populations near the station gathered on the sword light candles in the rooms seating and angry soldiers attacked them and destroyed their doors.
وصاح الناس"نعم، نعم، بأصوات مرعوبة — لقد كانت كلمات نعم بالانكليزية كل ما يعرفونه. في بعض البيوت، طلب جنود معلومات من السكان من خلال مترجم بدون تدمير الكثير من متاعهم .لكن في البيوت الأخرى كسروا النوافذ، وقلبوا الأرائك ومزّقوا الصور من الحائط كما فتّشوا كل شيء.The people shouted "Yes, yes, the votes of Kinshasa - The words Yes I know everything. In some houses, the soldiers information from the population through an interpreter without the destruction of many of their belongings. But in the homes of other broken windows, and turned sofas and tore the pictures from the wall and searched everything.
وأطفأ الجنود العراقيون أعقاب سكائرهم في السجاد الأرضي المحاك يدويا. وصرخ بهم الملازم أوّل داو. "هل تعرفون من الشخص الذي جاء وأطلق النار علينا! تعرف من هم الغرباء! "قل "أخبرنا! "وهنا تلعثم وائل حقي- الذي يعيش مع أبّيه المسن-"أنا سائق سيارة أجرة، "أذهب للعمل طوال اليوم ولا أعرف شيء." كما هو الحال عادة، لا أحد يعرض أيةّ معلومات عن القنّاص وأصرّوا على إن المسلحين يأتون من الأجزاء الأخرى من المدينة. لكن على سقف منزل متروك، أكتشف الجنود فتحة، قطعت في ستار السقف وأخفيت بقطع من الطابوق ، وهي توفر منظرا جيدا لمشاهدة مخفر السيفIraqi soldiers and extinguished in the aftermath of Scarham carpets ground simulator manually. And shouted First Lt. Dow them. "Do you know who the person who came and opened fire on us! Know who the strangers! "Say" told us! "Here stammering Wael my right - who lives with his father-sitter," I am a taxi driver, "Go to work throughout the day, I do not know anything." As is usually the case, no one offered any information on the soldiers and insisted that the armed men had come from other parts of the city. But on the roof of the house up, the soldiers found the hole, made in the guise of the ceiling and hidden piece of brickwork, which provides a good sight to watch the station sword وكانت كبيرة بما فيها الكفاية لدس بندقية فيها.The large enough Ldes including the rifle.

Israel to name new military chief

2007-01-22T09:57:00.000-05:00

Ashkenazi was passed over for the chief of staff position in 2005

posted by aljazeera.net

A former general who spent several years fighting Hezbollah in southern Lebanon is set to be named as Israel's news chief of the armed forces, the country's media has reported.Gabi Ashkenazi will replace Lieutenant-General Dan Halutz who resigned last week after heavy criticism of Israel's war with Hezbollah last summer.
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An aide to Amir Peretz, the defence minister, said the appointment was likely to be announced later on Monday.Israeli media said Ashkenazi would get the job after his leading rival for the post, Moshe Kaplinsky, the deputy chief of staff, wrote a letter to Peretz dropping out of the race.
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After Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, and Peretz have met to discuss the appointment it will need to be approved by Israel's parliament.Northern commandAshkenazi served extensively in southern Lebanon and headed the army's northern command in the final years before Israeli troops, after constant attacks by Hezbollah fighters, withdrew from the country in 2000.He was passed over for the chief of staff post in favour of Halutz in 2005.The outgoing military chief tendered his resignation after months of public condemnation of the military's failure to defeat Hezbollah, retrieve two captured soldiers or halt rocket attacks on Israel during the 34-day war during July and August last year.The former air force chief was criticised by military affairs correspondents over what they described as his over-reliance on air power during the conflict.Defence ministry roleAshkenazi's current position as director of the defence ministry is a civilian role and he is therefore seen as reasonably safe candidate to replace Halutz ahead of the preliminary findings of an inquiry examining the handling of the war.Alon Ben-David, senior defence correspondent for Israel's Channel 10, told Al Jazeera: "I think Ashkenazi's first assignment will be to rehabilitate the IDF [Israeli defence force] ground forces." "On top of that I think he will have to prepare the IDF for a potential confrontation with Iran because the issue of Iran, and the nuclear programme of Iran is definitely going to be on the agenda," he added.Ashkenazi, 53, a retired major general, fought as a young infantryman in the 1973 Mideast War and took part in Israel's rescue of more than 100 hostages held by Palestinian and German hijackers at Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976.He served as an officer in the first Lebanon war in 1982, and then oversaw the withdrawal of all Israeli forces from south Lebanon in 2000.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

In Memoriam Rachel Corrie 1979 - 2003

2007-01-20T11:05:00.000-05:00

19 March 2003
Press Release from the Parents of Rachel CorrieOur daughter Rachel, a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement in the Occupied Territories, died Sunday in the Gaza Strip while courageously trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home. Our loss is immense, but we are buoyed by the outpouring of support and love that we’ve received from around the world. We understand that Rachel is being remembered in many places in many beautiful ways, and we are grateful. We are comforted and heartened by the compassionate expressions of love that we have received from both Palestinian and Israeli people. We will forever remember and be thankful for Rachel’s ISM and Palestinian friends who cared for her and who held her for us as she died.We are speaking out today because of Rachel’s fears about the impact of a war with Iraq on the people in the Occupied Territories. She reported to us that her Palestinian friends were afraid that with all eyes on Iraq, the Israeli Defense Forces would escalate activity in the Occupied Territories. Rachel wanted to be in Gaza if that happened.In the last six weeks, Rachel became our eyes and ears for Rafah, a city at the southern tip of Gaza. Now that she’s no longer there, we are asking members of Congress and, truly, all the world to watch and listen.One week ago I came rather timidly to members of Rachel’s delegation in Congress, expressing my concerns for the safety of those in the International Solidarity Movement. A piece of me wonders if I had spoken louder or sooner, if this week’s tragedy might have been averted. So today I am speaking up in memory of my daughter and on behalf of all her friends in Gaza.We are greatly concerned for the non-violent internationals volunteering in the Occupied Territories. We ask that members of Congress call upon the Israeli government to cease harassment of these individuals and, specifically, to cease firing upon them when they are engaged in protecting the Palestinian water supply, protecting Palestinian homes from illegal demolitions, and retrieving bodies of murdered Palestinians for return to their families – all events Rachel witnessed.In my last phone conversation with Rachel, she expressed that when we fail to support and protect the Internationals who resist non–violently, we also undercut the non-violent initiatives of the Palestinians. We are, therefore, asking our members of Congress to demand that the American Embassy in Tel Aviv, when called upon for assistance, provide all reasonable support to non-violent, American volunteers in the Occupied Territories, as well as support to other internationals as appropriate.We are asking members of Congress to bring the U.S. government’s attention back to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis and to recognize that the occupation of the Palestinian territories is an overwhelming and continuous act of collective violence against the Palestinian people. We ask that military aid to Israel be commensurate with its efforts to end its occupation of the Palestinian Territories and to adhere to the rules of international law.Rachel would not want her death to overshadow that of others. In barely glancing at headlines since word came of Rachel’s death, I note that many have died this week in the Occupied Territories – one a four-year-old child. I would like to be able to hold the mother of that child and to have her hold me.Yesterday, I looked at a publication entitled "Who Will Save the Children?" with photos of children who have died since September 2000 in Israel and in the Occupied Territories. I understand that the next publication will be dedicated to Rachel and will include her photograph. I want the mothers of these children to know that I have looked at the beaming faces of each of their babies and that I know how much the world has lost with the passing of each one of them.In one of her e-mails Rachel wrote, "Today as I walked on top of the rubble where homes once stood, Egyptian soldiers called to me from the other side of the border, ‘Go! Go!’ because a tank was coming. Followed by waving and "what’s your name?" There is something disturbing about this friendly curiosity. It reminded me of how much, to some degree, we are all kids curious about other kids: Egyptian kids shouting at strange women wandering into the path of tanks. Palestinian kids shot from the tanks when they peek out from behind walls to see what’s going on. International kids standing in front of tanks with banners. Israeli kids in the tanks anonymously, occasionally shouting - and also occasionally waving – many forced to be here, many just aggressive, shooting into the houses as we wander away." How I wish that the young man in the bulldozer that killed Rachel could have just stopped, hopped out, and talked to her. He would have met a beautiful soul.In another e-mail, Rachel wrote, "This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don’t think it’s an extremist thing to do anymore. I really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my co-workers. But I also want this to stop. Disbelief and horror is what I feel. Disappointment. I am disappointed that this is the base reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate in it. This is not at all what I asked for when I came into this world. This is not at all what the people here asked for when they came into this world. This is not what they are asking for now. This is not the world you and Dad wanted me to come into when you decided to have me."Rachel’s brutal death illustrates dramatically the madness of war.

Craig and Cindy Corrie

Ethiopian troops in Somalia ambush

2007-01-20T10:58:00.000-05:00

Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the Somali president, hopes to bring stability to his country [AFP]
Posted By Aljazeera.net

A convoy of Ethiopian troops has been ambushed in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, just hours after government troops repelled an attack on the president's palace.

At least one bystander was killed in the fighting that erupted after unknown men attacked the military convoy with machineguns and rocket-propelled grenades on Saturday morning.
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The Ethiopian troops responded to the ambush by returning fire with heavy weapons. Some accounts said that as many as four people were killed in the ensuing firefight.

The government played down the attack, dismissing speculation that it was part of a broader anti-government offensive.
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"Neither government forces nor our Ethiopian friends suffered any casualties in the attack, which was carried out by simple gunmen to show the international community that Mogadishu is still very unsafe," Abdirahman Dinari, a government spokesman, said.
Several people were also wounded in the brief exchange of fire.

"The Ethiopians shot me," Ali Kheyre Mumin, one of the wounded, said. "They shot at me and the others indiscriminately ... they shot everybody who was moving around."

A senior leader of the Union of Islamic Courts, which controlled Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia until December, took credit for the attack.

"This is a new uprising by the Somali people," Ahmed Qare, deputy chairman of the movement, told the Associated Press.

"The only solution can be reconciliation and talks between the transitional federal government and the Islamic courts."

The attack is the latest of several targeting Ethiopian troops who helped Somali's weak government drive fighters from the Union of Islamic Courts out of the Somali capital last month.

Presidential compound attacked

Late on Friday, attackers fired three mortars into the presidential compound and then engaged guards in a 30-minute fire fight, residents living nearby said.

Ethiopian and government troops riding tanks and heavily armed trucks rolled out of the compound and immediately sealed off the area

There were no reports of casualties.
The president and prime minister were in Mogadishu, but their exact whereabouts were unclear.

Dinari, the government spokesman, said one shell hit the presidential palace, known as Villa Somalia, but that no one inside was injured or killed.

"Those who ambushed the presidential palace escaped, and this is a cowardly act intended to terrorize the public," Dinari said.

The attacks have increased pressure on the Ethiopian troops to withdraw from Somalia.

The African Union has it wants to send troops to replace the Ethiopians but it has yet to prove that it has the troops, money or logistical capability to keep the peace in Somalia.

Somalia has lacked a functioning central government since the authoritarian government of Muhammad Siad Barre was toppled in 1991.